Happy Sunny Skeplandia!–Doesn’t exist…

We skep­tics alert the pub­lic all the time when we iden­tify a cer­tain fal­lacy in mar­ket­ing and debate.  We imag­ine that we are talk­ing to an equally minded demo­graphic, how­ever, and that they will accept our log­i­cally rea­soned argu­ments.  I am always con­fused by this strange place in which I live.  Every­thing tends to make so much sense, but many care noth­ing for it.  I used to inno­cently think that it was because some peo­ple had an eye for it, and oth­ers had their eyes on other things.  It turns out that many other stances on the eth­i­cal use of logic exist.  Many use logic for their own self­ish pur­poses.  I just don’t get what to do when I want to play fair, but the other party just wants to cheat and steal with every word he negotiates.

Been out lately?

Logic is a tool.  It can be used for truth or profit.

Just because an argu­ment is sound, does not make it valid. 

Lets face real­ity: this is not some occult secre­tive sci­en­tific the­ory, we all knew this pro­found fact when we all said our first lie.  We thought of a clever cover story, that fit the events con­ve­niently, and got away with it.  Most of us dab­bled in lying and found it to be gen­er­ally harm­ful in the long run, and I do believe that most of us don’t bother lying because it is not worth the trou­ble.  How­ever, in all arts, there are some trou­ble mak­ers that become expert liars, and have found a way to lie for profit.

These peo­ple do not care about the truth, they just want to jus­tify what they’re selling.

Ad Hominems, Argu­ing from Igno­rance, False Cor­re­la­tions, etc… are cer­tainly dan­ger­ous in the wrong hands. Fal­lac­ies tend to dis­guise them­selves as clever thought, and many peo­ple are both deceiv­ing oth­ers and them­selves by their use.

The worst: some­times they don’t even real­ize that they’re being log­i­cally rude; they don’t even know they’re com­mit­ting fallacies.

Many peo­ple, rich and poor, suf­fer from poor reasoning.

Or so it seems? Can fal­lac­ies be prof­itable? For exam­ple, remem­ber that bully who called you names? He prof­ited greatly by this intim­i­da­tion, and heck, you may have even given him your lunch money or done his homework.

Imag­ine want­ing to be illog­i­cal, for the sake of cer­tain gains?

How do you rea­son with some­one who is rea­son­able, but chooses to fight unrea­son­ably?  Some­one who is actively and con­sciously com­mit­ting fal­lac­ies because he knows that the gen­eral pub­lic will fall for them?  Every time you call this per­son out on his Ad Hoc, or his Argu­ment from Pop­u­lar­ity, he strate­gi­cally repeats it, pre­tend­ing that he doesn’t under­stand you.

To weaker philoso­phers, they may bulk to the con­fi­dence of this per­son, and con­tem­plate if what they just rea­soned to him was non­sen­si­cal (even though it was actu­ally a good point!).

Should one per­sist?  Do not accept his red her­rings and keep on the path.  If this naughty logi­cian feels trapped in admit­ting he is being absurd, then he may get angry.  Indeed, if he is caught deal­ing unfairly, he is both shown to be a poor philoso­pher for being caught, and a poor busi­ness­man who needs to scam to get ahead.  For the sake of pride, he will stub­bornly per­sist in his fan­tasy, and the con­ver­sa­tion will nat­u­rally break down.

So how is it done?  How shall we rea­son in an unrea­son­able world?