Creative Commons
Blogs I Follow
Category Archives: Logical Fallacies
Annals of Self-Contradiction (“Words with Friends” Edition)
No, brah, it’s not “ok” … Hat tip: I_Say_I_Say (via reddit).
Posted in Logical Fallacies
1 Comment
Cowen’s First Law is self-refuting
The hyper-productive Tyler Cowen recently formulated his “first law” of logical argumentation as follows: “There is something wrong with everything (by which I mean there are few decisive or knockdown … arguments, and furthermore until you have found the major flaws … Continue reading
Crimes against economic logic (“lump of labor fallacy” edition)
Check out Adam Davidson’s explanation of the so-called Lump of Labor Fallacy in his essay “Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant.” Here is an excerpt from Mr Davidson’s excellent essay (edited by us for brevity):
Crimes against logic (Lifehacker edition)
Patrick Allan, a writer at Lifehacker, has just posted a nifty little essay ambitiously titled “The Definitive Guide to Winning an Argument.” One fun tip is to let the other side present his or her arguments first: “The more you talk, the bigger the chance you’ll say something that … Continue reading
Crimes against logic
Via reddit, why don’t they teach this in law school?
Borgesian infinite regress
“On some shelf in some hexagon [within the Library of Babel], it was argued, there must exist a book that is the cipher and perfect compendium of all other books *** How was one to locate the idolized secret hexagon … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Logical Fallacies, Paradoxes
Tagged Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel
2 Comments
A recent example of the reference-class problem
As Zeynep Tufekci explains in this excellent essay, the now-infamous Catcalling Video was not based on a random sample of New York City neighborhoods. Here is the actual and non-random breakdown of time spent in each neighborhood: In other words, the methodology of the … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Culture, Logical Fallacies, Probability
Tagged Biased Samples, Catcalling Video, Reference Class Problem
1 Comment
If philosophy is a game …
… who are the umpires? Created by Landon Schurtz.
Posted in Games, Logical Fallacies, Philosophy, Uncategorized
Tagged Logical Fallacies, Philosophy
Leave a comment
Supreme Court Selection Bias?
Where do Supreme Court justices get their facts from? Oftentimes, they get their “facts” from amicus curiae legal briefs that are filed by “friends of the court,” i.e. private parties with axes to grind. Now, check out this fascinating report by Adam … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Deception, Law, Logical Fallacies
Tagged Selection Bias, Supreme Court
1 Comment
Questions for Richard Epstein
On page 71 of his beautiful book The Classical Liberal Constitution, Richard A. Esptein acknowledges “how difficult it is to deal with systematic errors in [constitutional] interpretation that perforce creep into all interpretive efforts with the passage of time” (emphasis ours). … Continue reading
Posted in Law, Logical Fallacies, Politics
Leave a comment
prior probability 