almossawi / badarguments Goto Github PK

hello!

there are some css bug on
https://bookofbadarguments.com/ru/?view=allpages

page 57 - no light background image here,
and we can not see black text on black background
https://i.imgur.com/DOEQwS0.png

browser - firefox

I believe the section "Appeal to irrelevant authority" is, in some respects, incorrect. The section confuses the concepts of "belief" and "truth". It is reasonable to form a belief on the basis of authority, but appeal to authority of any kind is a logical fallacy. Nothing becomes true simply because someone says that it is. This ties in with the "genetic fallacy". The final paragraph of the genetic fallacy section of the book demonstrates this exact point. Leading on from this, appeal to irrelevant authority is an unreasonable basis to form even a belief and such appeals are indeed bad arguments. I also believe it is incorrect to say that scientists typically appeal to authority. It is wrong for a scientist to appeal to expert opinion and present this as fact. Scientists cite data and research. It is the evidence alone that matters.

My suggested re-wording is below. Because I have introduced some new ideas, I have also shortened the piece in the hope that it still fits on a single page. I didn't go into any depth about the genetic fallacy. There's a separate section dedicated to that.

Let me know what you think.

Suggested wording:
An appeal to authority is an appeal to one's sense of modesty [Engel], which is to say, an appeal to the feeling that others are more knowledgeable. While this is a comfortable and natural tendency for humans, such appeals cannot tell us which things are true and which are false. All appeals to authority are a type of Genetic Fallacy; Experts do not have the characteristic of producing absolute truth. To determine truth from untruth we must rely on evidence and reason.

However appeals to relevant authority can tell us which things are likely to be true. This is the means by which we form beliefs. The overwhelming majority of the things that we believe in, such as atoms and the solar system, are on reliable authority, as are all historical statements, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis.

It is fallacious to form a belief when the appeal is to an authority who is not an expert on the issue at hand. A similar appeal worth noting is the appeal to vague authority, where an idea is attributed to a vague collective. For example, Professors in Germany showed such and such to be true. Another type of appeal to irrelevant authority is the appeal to ancient wisdom, where something is assumed to be true just because it was believed to be true some time ago. For example, Astrology was practiced by technologically advanced civilizations such as the Ancient Chinese. Therefore, it must be true. One might also appeal to ancient wisdom to support things that are idiosyncratic, or that may change with time. Such appeals need to weigh the evidence that is available to us in the present.

On the bandwagon page, Barry Marshal's hypothesis is referred to as a theory. Especially given the common use of "theory" to dismiss scientific claims, I think this could be misleading as it is written.

Ali, a friend lent me your book. I liked very much. The main problem I saw with it is that the word "premise" is spelled incorrectly throughout. It is spelled "premiss," but a premise is not when you miss something in advance! ;-)

Some readers have reported formatting issues that result in lines bleeding into the margins.

My city council has been pushing through a bad plan for a heritage spot downtown. One of the first things they did was cut down a lot of trees. That upset a lot of people. This week at a council meeting, he argued that a tropical storm could have taken them down anyway. Well, it could have, but it might not have, and it probably wouldn't have taken them all down even if it took some of them down.

This is obviously a bad argument, but I'm not sure which category it falls into. It's not exactly Slippery Slope.

On page 44, the example of one character claiming a non-believing character is condemned to hell doesn't seem correct. Maybe there is something missing? The text says:"In this example, the unstated premiss is that there exists a God who sends a subset of people to hell. Hence, the premiss ‘There exists a God who sends non-believers to hell’ is used to support the conclusion ‘There exists a God who sends non-believers to hell.’" To put the example in the form of an argument would imply the premiss (if is wasn't stated explicitly as such in the scene) that there exists a God who sends non-believers to hell. However, for the brief description of the example scene, that premiss is used with the premiss that the other character is a non-believer (apparently supported by the evidence of attestation to that fact) to support conclusion the non-believing character is going to hell. This is an example of the valid argument construction, If A->C;A|-C. The criticism of this argument as circular, therefore, appears to be a straw man. The argument is unsound, however, as the non-believer does not feel that the evidence supports the implied premiss, and the believer is not offering evidence in support of the premiss nor another argument for which that premiss could be a conclusion. It would be circular if the accuser took the non-believer's heel-bound status (as deduced from the argument) as proof that there was a god who sends non-believers to hell.

I made this graph using Emacs Org-mode / Org-Roam. It's not super pretty but I found it useful. I intend to keep working on it. Let me know if I made any mistakes.

!PNG

GitHub does not accept the SVG format, but I can send it via email if you think this would be useful.

Though it's possible to jump to a page, the feature isn't at all apparent: https://bookofbadarguments.com/?page=18

Moreover, perhaps add fallacy names to permalinks on pertinent pages. Reported by Karen Giangreco.

https://bookofbadarguments.com/?page=36

The translator instead of translating "pigs" to it's Arabic meaning "الخنازير", He used a totally different word "الخراتيت" which means "Rhinoceros".

hello!

We want to add ukrainian translation, one question --
maybe there are illustrations without captions (without text)?

thank you!

Reported by @kerray. Occurs in the 'View all pages' mode of translated versions.

On Page 36, Appeal to Hypocrisy, the video link referenced in the second paragraph Have I Got News For You is broken.

On page 6 of the book the text reads "and had things like, “try not to make general claims about things.” That is obvious to me now .. ". The issue is that the statement "try not to make general claims about things " is in itself a general claim. It speaks about how arguments should be conducted. Perhaps making general claims is not so bad after all? Perhaps some general statements are not as obvious as others.