Falling into the Trap of Logical Fallacies

The upcoming section of the course is going to be all about logical fallacies. Because very often we fall into common fallacies that our brains just aren't wired for, for one reason or another. And they're common and they happen all the time. And we often think like, oh, you know, we are strong and we can solve some problems. What we don't realize is that it's not just about making ourselves smarter, it's also about making ourselves not shoot ourselves in the foot because we often are our worst enemies. Hasn't it in hindsight sometimes been like that for everyone? We're like, oh my God, if I just didn't make that simple error, things would have been so much better. And I'm not saying you should regret your decisions. What I'm saying is that in the future, since we're going to go over this section, you're going to be less likely to, to fall into the absurd logical fallacies that in hindsight you go like, oh my God, why? But they make sense because we all fall into them. So now that you understand, and also it's going to, before we start, also we're going to talk about the reasoning.

What is a Logical Fallacy?

A logical fallacy is a flaw or error in reasoning that weakens an argument. It happens when the logic connecting evidence to a conclusion is faulty, even if the conclusion itself might be true. Fallacies can make arguments persuasive but ultimately unreliable or invalid.

They often show up in debates, discussions, writing, or advertising, either by mistake or to deliberately mislead.

Example of a fallacy:

"Everyone is buying this product, so it must be the best."

This is a bandwagon fallacy (just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s the best).

Avoiding the Logical Fallacy

So once you start avoiding logical fallacies, well, how do you reason correctly? Because that of course impacts a lot of your life. Not just in problem solving and critical thinking, but also when making the right decisions at work. In your personal life, things might go well for you, then you make one or two really bad decisions, you infer wrong conclusions, you run into logical fallacies in the wrong things, and then things go really sideways and really bad for you. So in this section, we're going to avoid all the bad outcomes and get you positioned to achieve and to attain all the better outcomes of avoiding logical fallacies. And that's going to be by learning about logical fallacies reasoning so that it can become a strength and not a weakness. So with that, let's get started.