Book Summary: An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments

by yaobin.wen

I recommend to everyone the book “An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments” for several reasons:

• First of all, you can finish reading it in one hour. The book is thin, less than 60 pages, while almost half of them are illustrations so you only need to read about 30 pages which makes it possible to finish reading it in one hour.

• Secondly, you can immediately apply them to your everyday life. This book doesn’t use any mathematical formula to explain the bad arguments and why they are bad. Instead, it explains them in plain words with examples, allowing you to grasp the core of the bad arguments to identify them in the daily life.

• Moreover, the book is cost-effective as it conforms to the 80/20 rule. Although a thin book, it selects the most commonly seen argument pitfalls that you can come across frequently in your life. In other words, by applying this book’s knowledge effectively, you can avoid getting deceived by most of the bad arguments in the everyday life.

The book can be purchased on Amazon and also available an an ebook.

Here is a summary of the book. The book covers the following logical fallacies:

• Argument from consequences
  • Meaning: Use the good or bad consequences of a statement to speak for or against it. However, causing good or bad result doesn’t mean the statement is true or false.
• Straw man
  • Meaning: Twist one’s original argument, maybe intentionally, to something else to make it an easier target to attack.
• Appeal to irrelevant authority
  • Meaning: Use somebody, though a knowledgeable one, to justify a statement while that person is not an expert in the discussed area.
  • Variations:
    • Appeal to vague authority Such as “According to some professors in Germany…”.
    • Appeal to ancient wisdom
• Equivocation
  • Meaning: In a statement, the same word is used in several places but its meaning changes slightly in every occurrence due to the ambiguity of language.
• False dilemma
  • Meaning: Show you a situation in which you seem to have to choose between “Yes” and “No”. In fact, however, there exists a third or even more possibilities.
• Not a cause for a cause
  • Meaning: Confuse coincidence or correlation with causal relationship. Two events that one happens at the same time with or after the other doesn’t necessarily lead to causal relationship. It could be coincidence or correlation.
  • Example: Divorce rate in Massachusetts correlates with Number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in
• Appeal to fear
  • Meaning: Try to oppose a statement by imagining a scary consequence if the statement were accepted, rather than provide solid evidence.
• Hasty generalization
  • Meaning: Use too small a sample to make a general conclusion.
• Appeal to ignorance
  • Meaning: In the form of “Because there is no evidence that shows the statement is false, it must be true.”
• No true Scotsman
  • Meaning: Excerpted from the book: “This argument comes up after someone has made a general claim about a group of things, and then been presented with evidence challenging that claim. Rather than revising their position, or contesting the evidence, they dodge the challenge by arbitrarily redefining the criteria for membership in that group.”
• Genetic fallacy
  • Meaning: Attack or support the statement by attacking or supporting its origin.
  • Example: “He is asian so he must be good at math.”
• Guilt by association
  • Meaning: Attack an idea because another bad guy shares it.
• Affirming the consequent
  • Meaning: Suppose this statement is true: “If A, then B”. This fallacy is: “B, hence A”. In other words, the result occurs doesn’t necessarily mean the condition holds.
• Appeal to hypocrisy
  • Meaning: Attack a statement by pointing out it conflicts with the claimer’s past actions, rather than providing evidence to prove why that statement is bad.
• Slippery slope
  • Meaning: Attack a statement by arguing that accepting it could result in a series of bad events. Although possible, these events may not necessarily happen.
• Appeal to the bandwagon
  • Meaning: Support a statement simply because many people support it.
• Ad hominem
  • Meaning: Attack the person rather than what the person says.
• Circular reasoning
  • Meaning: In the form of “Because of X therefore X”: the premise and the conclusion are in fact equivalent.
• Composition and division
  • Meaning: In the form of “Because a part of the whole is true, the whole is true”, or “Because the whole is true, a part of it is true”.