The book continues, and we continue to analyze the common logical fallacies in life and how to avoid them.
Suppose you are the personnel manager of a company. As part of your job, you know a lot about famous universities in China and know the basic situation of graduates like the back of your hand. You know a major in a university is notorious in its field. Now, your company is recruiting an important position. When browsing your resume, you see Xiao Wang, a college graduate. Without thinking about it, you immediately rejected the possibility of letting him come for an interview.
By this time, you have made the fallacy of "discussing heroes by birth".
Your decision may be reasonable, because most college graduates of a certain major are poor, and Xiao Wang may be one of them. But logically, this is not inevitable. We have all heard the story "A shining star rises from the abyss". Every item deserves to be taken seriously in resume screening.
The logical fallacy you make is as follows: knowing that individuals from one source are generally bad, you assume that all individuals from this source are bad.
We must admit that people's thinking is inert, which is why Born Hero is so popular. However, if you have enough time and energy, it is logical and in your own interest to conduct a careful investigation of individuals.
Logically, analysis is basically equal to decomposition. Human beings are born with the instinct of analysis. When we meet something new, our first thought is how it is formed and what basic parts it can be broken down into. Looking back on childhood, most of us may have taken apart the expensive toys our parents bought and were finally scolded.
But in logical reasoning, it is not enough to just decompose, we also need to be able to reassemble them into a whole. The reason why we are blamed in childhood is precisely because we can only decompose, but not combine. When doing logical reasoning, the purpose of our argument is not only to simply know what parts things are made of, but to find out how these parts are interrelated, interact and eventually form a whole.
There is a famous concept in biology called "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". People are made up of chemical elements, but you can't simply say that people are just a lot of chemical elements. Only by understanding the essence of things can we complete the decomposition and combination and form a complete argumentation ability.
This fallacy occurs when we selectively focus on only a part of the whole. For example, many times when we don't like a person, we only see his shortcomings and think that these shortcomings are all he has. At this point, the fallacy of reductionism is happening.
To avoid this fallacy, we must understand a thing objectively and comprehensively. Just like diamonds, everyone and everything have different sides. Knowing only one or a few of them can't tell us the whole picture. It is the right way to get rid of preconceived attitudes and face the object of argument with ignorance.
If analysis is a human gift, then classification is another human gift. We always like to define new things with familiar things. If a first contact thing has the same characteristics as many things we know, we will definitely put it in this category and deepen our understanding of it (this is also the first step of logic).
If there is an error in classification, it may have serious consequences. There are thousands of books in the library. If any book is wrongly classified and misplaced, it may be searched for years without success. Putting things in the wrong category is because we didn't have a correct understanding at the beginning, and the most likely reason behind this is our lax attitude.
We have discussed several forms of fallacies in order to make us miss the real argument, which is usually achieved by diverting our attention from the current things. As we see in the fallacy of "treating people with things"-attacking opponents by providing explosive emotional information that has nothing to do with argument.
Confusion provides another sample for this strategy. It deliberately puts forward some irrelevant emotional information to distract the other party's attention. This fallacy has two characteristics: 1, directly appealing to emotion instead of reasoning; The information it provides has nothing to do with the argument to be put forward.
For example, a demonstration of a new sales strategy is going on, and when it seems that his strategy will be rejected, a manager suddenly throws out the explosive news that there is no year-end bonus at the end of the year, which instantly causes confusion, attracts everyone's attention and stops the demonstration. This is an example of confusing people.
Sometimes, we can't make a reasonable response to an argument. For example, I feel embarrassed emotionally, or I can't face it because of indefensible. At this time, many people will adopt the strategy of "laughing right", pretending that this issue is not worthy of attention, in an attempt to muddle through.
Making people laugh at an argument is an important way to oppose it, but this way has no effect on the value of the argument itself. To make matters worse, if the audience can't laugh off the argument itself, people who use this strategy may try to treat the opponent as a joke and draw the audience's attention to some irrelevant topics, such as the opponent's appearance or stuttering, so as to avoid the debate that they are not qualified for.
This is the opposite of "laughing at mistakes". In addition to ridicule, you can also achieve the same goal by gaining sympathy. This fallacy is vaguely displayed through carefully designed emotional ups and downs.
As we mentioned, people are emotional animals. When we encounter emotional problems in the process of argument, we must make more efforts to control our emotions than usual. Strong emotions and clear thinking are incompatible. Once the emotion exceeds a certain limit, the probability of correct argument will be zero.
The users of this fallacy also deliberately ignore the real or existing problems and focus on the peripheral or irrelevant issues of the argument, thus directly affecting the mood of the audience and trying to win their sympathy.
Such an example most often appears in court. When defending defenders, lawyers often design "Lacrimosa" tactics, trying to win the sympathy of judges and juries, thus affecting the judgment. We can see such a bridge in many film and television works, and the truly rational and sober judges can always see through such tricks and bring the argumentation process back to the right track.