Lesson 1. Red herring and straw man

If cognitive biases are glitches of perception and intuition, logical fallacies (also called sophisms or tricks) are defects in the reasoning itself: the link between the reasons and the conclusion breaks, even though from the outside the speech may sound convincing. It's important to distinguish arguing on the merits (we attack the argument itself) from tricks (we attack something else, creating the illusion that we've refuted the other person). Tricks are especially dangerous because they're often emotionally satisfying: they make it easy to “win” without getting to the heart of the matter. In this unit we'll cover the four most common moves: the straw man, ad hominem (personal attack), the false dilemma, and the red herring. Learn to recognize them — and half of the pointless arguments on the internet will become transparent to you.

— Straw man (attacking a caricature of the argument). Instead of the opponent's real position, a distorted, weakened version of it is built — a “straw man” — and knocked down with a flourish. It creates a false sense of victory. Example. — “I think we should be less involved in this military conflict.” — “So you want our country to be left with no army at all and get conquered?!” The second speaker isn't arguing with the real claim (be less involved) but with a caricature (disband the army). — Red herring (changing the subject). In the course of an argument, the question under discussion is quietly swapped for a different, more convenient one, and then that one is “won”. Example. They were discussing whether a particular drug is safe. The opponent: “Drug companies are greedy and profit off people anyway!” Maybe so — but that's a DIFFERENT question; the original one (is the drug safe) is left unanswered. What the two moves have in common: they attack something other than what was said. The defense is to calmly bring the conversation back: “That's not what I said. My claim was…”.