"Conversational Terrorism"

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Reading this today, I realised how many of the examples in the article occur on social forums generally. It would be interesting to see how many of them occur in say five pages of the PPR forum on Wrong Planet! However they can crop up on any of the sub-forums here and particular ones I have seen reasonably often here, eg the nitpicking questions, which can sometimes be ok and at other times they seem to cross a line. Interesting, informative and also entertaining, here it is:

http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html

cool source, thanks for sharing it

i like the visitor's submissions too

Seen a lot of these in most of the sub boards.
Thanks, B19. Interesting read!

That's just a modified list of informal fallacies, much like the one I keep on my browser bar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

It's not as useful as one might think, as most people who make fallacious arguments don't do it knowingly, and absent a debate referee to keep score, pointing out fallacies isn't an effective tool of persuasion in my experience.

People, with relative frequency, tend to make use of rhetorical techniques and a syllogistic version of "logic" to further their own viewpoints, without actually proving the validity of that viewpoint.

These sorts of techniques, to me, tends to "force" the discussion away from the true essence of it.

"These sorts of techniques, to me, tends to "force" the discussion away from the true essence of it"


Me too