An Illustrated Book Of Bad Arguments Learn The Lost Art Of Making Sense Bad Arguments

“This short book makes you smarter than 99% of the population. . . . The concepts within it will increase your company’s ‘organizational intelligence.’. . . It’s more than just a must-read, it’s a ‘have-to-read-or-you’re-fired’ book.”—Geoffrey James, INC.com From the author of An Illustrated Book of Loaded Language, here’s the antidote to fuzzy thinking, with furry animals! Have you read (or stumbled into) one too many irrational online debates? Ali Almossawi certainly had, so he wrote An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments! This handy guide is here to bring the internet age a much-needed dose of old-school logic (really old-school, a la Aristotle). Here are cogent explanations of the straw man fallacy, the slippery slope argument, the ad hominem attack, and other common attempts at reasoning that actually fall short—plus a beautifully drawn menagerie of animals who (adorably) commit every logical faux pas. Rabbit thinks a strange light in the sky must be a UFO because no one can prove otherwise (the appeal to ignorance). And Lion doesn’t believe that gas emissions harm the planet because, if that were true, he wouldn’t like the result (the argument from consequences). Once you learn to recognize these abuses of reason, they start to crop up everywhere from congressional debate to YouTube comments—which makes this geek-chic book a must for anyone in the habit of holding opinions.

“This is a book for every thinking person, the perfect antidote to today’s culture wars.”—Hope Jahren The creators of An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments return with this desperately timely guide to how words can trick us. Learn to “hear” hidden bias, slant, and spin—from an irresistible cast of woodland creatures! Public discourse? More like public discord. The battle cries of our culture wars are rife with “loaded language”—be it bias, slant, or spin. But listen closely, or you’ll miss what Ali Almossawi finds more frightening still: words that erase accountability, history, even identity through what they leave unsaid. Speaking as wise old Mr. Rabbit, Almossawi leads us through a dark forest of rhetoric—aided by Orwell, Baldwin, and a squee-worthy cast of wide-eyed woodland creatures. Here, passive voice can pardon wrongdoers, statistics may be a smokescreen, gaslighting entraps the downtrodden, and irrelevant adjectives cement stereotypes. Emperor Squirrel isn’t naked; he has a clothes-free sartorial style. Mouse’s roof becomes flattened (Elephant’s foot just happens to be there at the time). And when keen-eyed Owl claims a foreign shore, he seems to be overlooking someone . . . Fans of Almossawi’s An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments couldn’t ask for a better primer on the less logical ways that words can trick us. It takes a long pair of ears to hear what’s left unsaid—but when you’re a rabbit in a badger world, listening makes all the difference.

A timely and accessible guide to 100 of the most infamous logical fallacies in Western philosophy, helping readers avoid and detect false assumptions and faulty reasoning You’ll love this book or you’ll hate it. So, you’re either with us or against us. And if you’re against us then you hate books. No true intellectual would hate this book. Ever decide to avoid a restaurant because of one bad meal? Choose a product because a celebrity endorsed it? Or ignore what a politician says because she’s not a member of your party? For as long as people have been discussing, conversing, persuading, advocating, proselytizing, pontificating, or otherwise stating their case, their arguments have been vulnerable to false assumptions and faulty reasoning. Drawing upon a long history of logical falsehoods and philosophical flubs, Bad Arguments demonstrates how misguided arguments come to be, and what we can do to detect them in the rhetoric of others and avoid using them ourselves. Fallacies—or conclusions that don’t follow from their premise—are at the root of most bad arguments, but it can be easy to stumble into a fallacy without realizing it. In this clear and concise guide to good arguments gone bad, Robert Arp, Steven Barbone, and Michael Bruce take readers through 100 of the most infamous fallacies in Western philosophy, identifying the most common missteps, pitfalls, and dead-ends of arguments gone awry. Whether an instance of sunk costs, is ought, affirming the consequent, moving the goal post, begging the question, or the ever-popular slippery slope, each fallacy engages with examples drawn from contemporary politics, economics, media, and popular culture. Further diagrams and tables supplement entries and contextualize common errors in logical reasoning. At a time in our world when it is crucial to be able to identify and challenge rhetorical half-truths, this bookhelps readers to better understand flawed argumentation and develop logical literacy. Unrivaled in its breadth of coverage and a worthy companion to its sister volume Just the Arguments (2011), Bad Arguments is an essential tool for undergraduate students and general readers looking to hone their critical thinking and rhetorical skills.

This book is a crash course in effective reasoning, meant to catapult you into a world where you start to see things how they really are, not how you think they are. The focus of this book is on logical fallacies, which loosely defined, are simply errors in reasoning. With the reading of each page, you can make significant improvements in the way you reason and make decisions. Logically Fallacious is one of the most comprehensive collections of logical fallacies with all original examples and easy to understand descriptions, perfect for educators, debaters, or anyone who wants to improve his or her reasoning skills. "Expose an irrational belief, keep a person rational for a day. Expose irrational thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime." - Bo Bennett This 2021 Edition includes dozens of more logical fallacies with many updated examples.

Logic seems like a simple thing. And yet, somehow, mistakes in logic happen all the time. But how do these mistakes, these "fallacies," happen? Maybe they are caused by a lack of knowledge. Maybe they are caused by a lack of critical thinking. Maybe they are caused by small monsters that live in people's heads, encouraging them to believe someone's lies, or maybe pick the easy, deceitful way to win a difficult argument. This book is about those monsters.

Critical thinking is now needed more than ever. This accessible and engaging book provides the necessary tools to question and challenge the discourse that surrounds us—whether in the media, the classroom, or everyday conversation. Additionally, it offers readers a deeper understanding of the foundations of analytical thought. Informal Logical Fallacies: A Brief Guide is a systematic and concise introduction to more than fifty fallacies, from anthropomorphism and argumentum ad baculum, to reductionism and the slippery slope argument. This revised edition includes updated examples, exercises, and a new chapter on non-Western logical fallacies. With helpful definitions and relevant explanations, the author guides the reader through the realms of fallacious reasoning and deceptive rhetoric. This is an essential guide to philosophical reflection and clear thinking.

“If I have learned anything in ten years of formal debating, it is that arguments are no different: without a good understanding of the rules and tactics, you are likely to do poorly and be beaten.”—HENRY ZHANG, President of the Yale Debate Association Your argument is valid and you know it; yet once again you find yourself leaving a debate feeling defeated and embarrassed. The matter is only made worse when you realize that your defeat came at the hands of someone’s abuse of logic—and that with the right skills you could have won the argument. The ability to recognize logical fallacies when they occur is an essential life skill. Mastering Logical Fallacies is the clearest, boldest, and most systematic guide to dominating the rules and tactics of successful arguments. This book offers methodical breakdowns of the logical fallacies behind exceedingly common, yet detrimental, argumentative mistakes, and explores them through real life examples of logic-gone-wrong. Designed for those who are ready to gain the upper hand over their opponents, this master class teaches the necessary skills to identify your opponents’ misuse of logic and construct effective, arguments that win. With the empowering strategies offered in Mastering Logical Fallacies you’ll be able to reveal the slight-of-hand flaws in your challengers’ rhetoric, and seize control of the argument with bulletproof logic.

A relatable, interactive, and funny exploration of algorithms, those essential building blocks of computer science—and of everyday life—from the author of the wildly popular Bad Arguments Algorithms—processes that are made up of unambiguous steps and do something useful—make up the very foundations of computer science. But they also inform our choices in approaching everyday tasks, from managing a pile of clothes fresh out of the dryer to deciding what music to listen to. With Bad Choices, Ali Almossawi presents twelve scenes from everyday life that help demonstrate and demystify the fundamental algorithms that drive computer science, bringing these seemingly elusive concepts into the understandable realms of the everyday. Readers will discover how: • Matching socks can teach you about search and hash tables • Planning trips to the store can demonstrate the value of stacks • Deciding what music to listen to shows why link analysis is all-important • Crafting a succinct Tweet draws on ideas from compression • Making your way through a grocery list helps explain priority queues and traversing graphs • And more As you better understand algorithms, you’ll also discover what makes a method faster and more efficient, helping you become a more nimble, creative problem-solver, ready to face new challenges. Bad Choices will open the world of algorithms to all readers, making this a perennial go-to for fans of quirky, accessible science books.