The Fallacy Fallacy - by Maarten Boudry - Persuasion
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Why you shouldn't go looking for faulty reasoning everywhere.
Detail from The Triumph of Truth, Luigi Massini, 1880. (Photo by Molteni&Motta/Universal Images Group.) Have you ever wondered why people believe the moon landing was faked, vaccines secretly poison us, and Mercury in retrograde can ruin your love life? Why does irrationality seem so pervasive? A popular answer, beloved by academics and educators alike, points to fallacies—certain types of arguments that are deeply flawed yet oddly seductive. Because people keep falling for these reasoning traps, they end up believing all sorts of crazy stuff. Still, the theory offers hope: if you memorize…
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