The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [61]
(Never lie unless you have to.)
And remember the clichés. To be believed, carry a hanky, and never scratch your nose.
HOW TO SPOT—OR MASK—A BAD IDEA
Verbal sharp practice may hone the appearance of reason. Equally, many a bad case has stifled a good idea. Don’t be misled by rhetorical feints or, alternatively, miss an opportunity to beef up your argument. Here is a catalog of alluring nonsense, baseless assertions, and fallacious conclusions that arise in conversation at work, rest, and play.
The assertion-request
A blackmail technique for leveraging demands with an emotional but evidentially challenged premise. As in “Everyone has one, Mum. Why can’t I?”
Character assassination
Ad hominem/feminam arguments discredit ideas by attacking the advocate. Or conversely, they collapse distinctions between actor and act. They call the child naughty because it has done a naughty deed. Or call the man evil because they call the word evil because, once upon a time, an evil use was made of it—e.g., the plot-spur to Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain, a misunderstanding over the word “spook.”
If X, then Y
“If they hiked up your salary, then they should mine.” Says who? Note that “then” is not the same as “therefore.”
“We have no reason to doubt”
But no reason to believe either. (Popular with politicians.)
Wrong case, right answer?
So they use a rubbish argument for why the sky is blue (Jupiter spilled his ink). Does that invalidate the proposition?
Begging question
These clever smears can smuggle assertions into questions. Such as “When did you stop beating your wife?” or “Ideal for curing cottage cheese.” Since when is cellulite a disease?
We are the great and the good; our agency is great and good.
Logicians call this the “composition fallacy”—assuming that a group has the qualities of its members.
Britain is rich; every Briton is rich.
Oh sure. The reverse of the composition fallacy, this is the divisive fallacy, which assumes all members share the qualities of the group. As in, “Each Beatle is a towering musical genius.”
If X, then Y. Not X, therefore not Y?
Not true! Just because the business made lots of money last year and we got bonuses, now the profits are down our bonuses shouldn’t automatically flop.
Either X or Y. X, therefore not Y.
Again, says who? Why not both? Who says they’re contingent anyway? For instance: “This pie tastes awful. Either the blueberries were off, or I forgot to add sugar. The blueberries taste funny. So I must have added sugar.”
Bogus analogy
Misleading comparisons, comforting though they may be, lead to loony conclusions: “Shakespeare was a genius and he never learned how to use the Internet. Therefore I can still be a genius but foxed by Google.” or “Saddam is like Al Qaeda. Therefore, blast Saddo, bye-bye Al Q.”
What a dilemma!
Another either/or fallacy, whereby false equivalences are linked to form the basis of a decision. As in “Either I lose weight or I’ll never be happy.”
Unhappy averages
The golden mean fallacy is what democracy rests on: the notion that the best solution is a blend of all the different views out there. But think about it: If applied in the realm of interior decoration, the average wouldn’t be golden, but a world in sludge gray.
Nice argument, shame about the premise
You can build logic on a wild idea, but it won’t make the argument right. As in “In a world made of strawberries, sugar and cream would be fatal, due to maceration . . .”
Upgrading evidence
You may have data; this cannot determine ultimate values: “No skin cream smoothes more soothingly, say our tests on twenty-three women basted in it for a year. Ergo, this is the elixir of youth.”
After X, therefore because of X
So she left after you burned the toast; that doesn’t make Breville the reason why.
Do I smell fish?
Don’t let a niffy red herring throw you off the scent: presented with data, question whether it’s relevant enough to be called information.
Price = Value
Our management consultant cost a lot; therefore his