dagblog - Comments for "Meet Your New Roommate or Obama’s Plan to House the Guantanamo Prisoners"

Whatever. You guys are so

Orlando — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:23:37 +0000

In reply to That would be best. Logic is

Whatever. You guys are so mean. Stop picking on the girl.

You coasties sure like to

elliottness — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:08:55 +0000

In reply to That would be best. Logic is

You coasties sure like to look down on us midwesterners...

Using Google, I found this good example of which the O does speak:

All Jackasses have long ears

Karl is a jackass

Therefore, Karl has long ears

I resisted the urge to substitute names...

I like ellipses...

My first link click through was for:

Equivocation is the use in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time.

Alas I think it is tried and true (repulbicans seem to love this one):

deductive fallacy, or logical fallacy, is defined as a deductive argument that is invalid. The argument itself could have true premises, but still have a false conclusion^[1]. Thus, a deductive fallacy is a fallacy where deduction goes wrong, and is no longer a logical process.

That is my 2 canadian pennies.

That would be best. Logic is

Michael Wolraich — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:31:00 +0000

In reply to Great. I'll just stick to my

That would be best. Logic is hard.

Seriously, I'm sorry to deflate your sense of midwestern achievement, but this is not a strawman fallacy. A strawman fallacy is an argument that you attribute to your opponent and then proceed to demolish the hell out of, when in fact, the argument that you've just demolished the hell out of is a total misrepresentation of your opponent's argument, which explains why it was so easy to demolish the hell out of. It's called "strawman" because demolishing the hell out of a misrepresented argument is like winning an epic battle with a strawman. It's not real.

The fallacy you describe is the Asshat Fallacy.

Great. I'll just stick to my

Orlando — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:29:37 +0000

In reply to Actually, I'm not sure if

Great. I'll just stick to my simple words from now on.

Actually, I'm not sure if

Nebton — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:27:09 +0000

In reply to Meet Your New Roommate or Obama’s Plan to House the Guantanamo Prisoners

Actually, I'm not sure if that qualifies as a strawman – unless they're claiming that this is an argument being presented by "the other side". (I'm sure Genghis will correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm no expert in the sophistic arts myself.) Of course, that does leave open what the proper terminology for such an argument is, and it's surely not a new type of argument from them. I think this fallacy is similar to the argument some pro-choicers make that if you don't support allowing abortion you need to be willing to adopt every child that's not wanted. (Don't get me wrong: I'm not wanting to make abortion illegal. I just find that particular argument to be flawed.)

As I'm cogitating on it, "non sequitor" is the expression that comes to mind.