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Premise 1: The problem with the game not starting is either that the cartridge is not pushed in all the way (first option) or the Atari system is not plugged into the TV (second option).

Premise 2: I checked and the Atari system is plugged into the TV.

Conclusion: Therefore, the cartridge is not pushed in all the way.

So, guess what Rob did next? He tried to push the cartridge in all the way. Guess what happened then? Nothing. Still a fuzzy screen. Why? Because Rob committed the false dilemma fallacy. He incorrectly thought there were only two options (cartridge not pushed in or system not plugged in) when, in fact, there was a third option that he had not considered, namely that the TV was on Channel 4 when it should have been on Channel 3! So, he fallaciously drew the conclusion that the cartridge was not pushed in all the way—and that this mishap is what accounted for the fuzzy screen—when, in fact, there was a third option he had not considered. This is another Pitfall you should avoid whether it’s Burger Time, or you’re on an Asteroid, or you’re chasing a Centipede, or you’re in the Pole Position, or you’re Mr. Do himself. (See, gamers aren’t the only geeks.)

Another fallacy to avoid is equivocation. Equivocation occurs when someone draws an inappropriate conclusion where the meaning of one of the words (or set of words) has shifted in the move from premise to premise, or from premise to conclusion. In other words, someone changes the meaning of a word (thus, equivocates) at some point in the argument. For example:

Premise 1: The war in Iraq is no news,

Premise 2: And no news is good news,

Conclusion: Therefore, the war in Iraq is good news.

In this argument, an equivocation occurs with “no news;” in Premise 1 no news means “known by all or most,” while in Premise 2 no news means “nothing bad is happening.” So, making the argument transparent, we actually see this:

Premise 1: The war in Iraq is known by all or most,

Premise 2: And, nothing bad is happening is good news,

Conclusion: Therefore, the war in Iraq is good news.

Now we can all see that the conclusion has absolutely nothing to do with the premises and in no way, shape, or form follows from the premises. In fact, we can also ask, “What the heck do the premises have to do with one another?!?”

Notice that in the argument about Link’s earliest adventure a few pages ago, we also equivocated by shifting from talking about the order in which the games were commercially released (came out) on Planet Earth to talking about the order in which Link’s adventures occurred in the Zelda universe. However, the Planet-Earth release-order of the games doesn’t necessarily relate to the chronological ordering of adventures in the Zelda universe. Because the argument contains an equivocation, it isn’t deductively valid, and we aren’t entitled to the conclusion even if (and even though) the premises are true. And, in fact, our conclusion isn’t just unsupported: it’s plainly false! In November of 1998, Nintendo Power published an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto in which he identified Ocarina of Time as the earliest story in the Zelda timeline. Of course, several Zelda games have been produced since this interview, and it might be outdated information, but it’s sufficient to establish that our conclusion above (that the original The Legend of Zelda is the first adventure) is false. (Incidentally, note that we’ve just made an argumentative appeal to authority, but it’s a good one: Shigeru Miyamoto is the creator of the fictional Zelda universe, and presumably we couldn’t hope for a better authority regarding it.)

Another common fallacy is ad hominem. In this fallacy, one inappropriately concludes that a person’s statements or arguments are not worth listening to or their conclusion is false because of premises that deal with an attack on the actions, personality, or ideology of the person putting forward the statement or argument. Ad hominem is Latin