Fallacious reasoning

Fallacious reasoning (or spurious correlation if you're a sociology faggot) is present in almost all IRC 'debates'.

Typical logical fallacy

It is also widely used by Christians, Furries, Liberals, Minorities, White People and everyone else. It comes from Greek: reasoning = logos, fallacious = of or relating to phallus. Here are a few timeless examples to get you started:

• Trees move when the wind blows, therefore trees must cause the wind.

• People kill other people with guns. People will stop killing each other if we take away their guns.

• People will get mad at one another and be stupid with or without their firearms, so removing their firearms will make no difference whatsoever to the rate at which people kill each other.

• Many heroin users started with marijuana. If we get rid of marijuana, people will stop using heroin.

• Joan Collins is famous, she's fucked a lot of people, she must be attractive/good in bed

• McDonald's is everywhere, a lot of people eat there, it must be a good place to eat.

• This dog keeps sniffing my crotch, it must be in heat, I should have sex with it

• I have no friends. I also own a hugbox. Therefore, I must have the ass burgers.

• She's bleeding, she must be old enough

• God exists because the Bible says so.

Commonly used fallacies

• Appeal to Authority - The source is a person of power, therefore the argument is right. Commonly used on the interwebs whenever a mod in any forum posts and thus attracts dozens of sheep to give him the yes-man treatment. However, because mods are fags, we know that this technique is full of shit.

• Appeal to Emotion - This fallacy attempts to use emotions rather than LOGIC AND REASON to persuade an argument. This is commonly used by liberals who whine about abortion and not letting a woman choose, being similar to "TEH TYRANCY OPRESSION" and feminists to post bullshit almost raped stories to try to mask the fact that they are batshit insane sexually frustrated psychopaths.

• Ad hominem - The presenter of this fallacy attempts to distract from the actual point of the fallacy by attacking the speaker. A very common example of this occurs in deviantart where in response to being told that her art is as skillfully-made as an average middle-school male's fellatio, a lolcow responds "STFU TROLL!!1! >:(", disregarding the fact that her fingers in her artwork resemble tootsie rolls. Used either to dismiss the author's authority and turn cool story bro into a valid rebuttal or to distract from the fact that presenter is getting pwned by whatever humiliating group he is arguing against.

• Tu Quoque - NO U in argument form.

• (Shift of) Burden of Proof - NO U in pics or it didn't happen form.

• Chronological snobbery - Commonly used by atheists to dismiss the Bible on some claim such as "People also believed the Earth was flat when the Bible was wrote" (The claim used is incorrect, but anyone seriously stupid enough to use this fallacy isn't well researched enough to know any better).

• Appeal to tradition - This holds that because something was, it should be. While Christfags often use this to justify living their lives according to how people thousands of years did so, other examples include many of the businesses that died because of the internet because they didn't want to adapt, and Pokemon "genwunners". This breed of fan argues that only what is similar to the first generation is the best. Charizard is the best starter because he's always been "good", and et cetera. Neither statements are true.

• Judgmental language - Often combined with name calling in order to do nothing but unintentionally make the poster look like a crybaby. Typically used by NORP populations regarding sensitive issues, with phrases such as "racist bigot", "baby murderer", and, but not limited to "sexually oppressive conformist".

• Strawman - An argument is based off of a projection of the opponent, rather than what the opponent has actually revealed about his or her case. An example of this is "you're an atheist. how can I take anything you say seriously when you have no morals? how can you say you don't believe in god and yet you believe that fish turned into monkeys, then us?" No understanding of the opponent's argument often leads to a hefty amount of fail on the attack of the user.

• Loaded question - This is commonly used by people who engage in flame wars not to actually learn and understand the opponents' sides and make the world a better place, but to stroke their own deluded ego in an attempt to feel superior by belittling their opponent's point through the use of direct manipulation of said point. Typically used in the abortion debate on both sides:

1. Why do you think it should be legal to kill babies?
2. Why do you believe that women shouldn't be allowed to make their own decisions?

As you can see, because neither side wants to do anything but simply wave their e-peens around in a desperate attempt to say "I'm right", nothing of value gets added to the discussion. Because fallacious reasoning is common, this is often the norm for internet discussions.

• Hasty generalization - This results from a tldr understanding of source material being the basis of an argument. Anyone who has encountered an atheist online frequently is bound to run into this fallacy at some point, with such gems as "the bible features 8 lines about people being oppressed. Therefore, all christfags are racist!"

• No true Scotsman - Whenever an entire group is spoken for as having some type of non-doctrine personal standard, this fallacy occurs when exclusion occurs. This is largely used by furries to dismiss sections of their own community ("We're in it for the art, nothing more. Yiffers count as their own seperate group because normal furries don't yiff").

• Fallacy fallacy - This fallacy is often used by people who think that knowing Latin phrases copied from Wikipedo substitutes for intelligence. This fallacy reads that because a fallacy is involved, an argument is invalid. While formal fallacies can indeed undermine an argument, more information must be held against the argument in order to render it invalid. An example of this is found that because this article uses numerous instances of strawman, this article's information is wrong. However, because the strawman arguments here are used for demonstration and not for the central content of the fallacy list section, we can clearly see why this fallacy can fail hard, and why people who rely on it and expect to win flame wars are ironic morons (as well as hypocrites for using fallacy).

Common reactions to fallacious reasoning

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See Also

• Circular logic
• Your argument is invalid
• Purelily
• Andy Schlafly
• Cigarskunk

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Fallacious reasoning is part of a series on Psychology