It is difficult for me to ascertain when the person I am communicating is using a logical fallacy to trick me into believing him or doubting my judgement, even when I realise it hours after the argument.
I have seen countless arguments in Reddit threads and I couldn’t figure out who was in the right or wrong unless I looked at the upvote counts. Even if the person is uttering a blatant lie, they somehow make it sound in a way that is completely believable to me. If it weren’t for those people that could exactly point out the irrationality behind these arguments, my mind would have been lobotomised long ago.
I do want to learn these critical thinking skills but I don’t know where to begin from. I could have all these tips and strategies memorised in theory, but they would be essentially useless if I am not able to think properly or remember them at the heat of the moment.
There could be many situations I could be unprepared for, like when the other person brings up a fact or statistic to support their claim and I have no way to verify it at the moment, or when someone I know personally to be wise or well-informed bring up about such fallacies, perhaps about a topic they are not well-versed with or misinformed of by some other unreliable source, and I don’t know whether to believe them or myself.
Could someone help me in this? I find this skill of distinguishing fallacies from facts to be an extremely important thing to have in this age of misinformation and would really wish to learn it well if possible. Maybe I could take inspiration from how you came about learning these critical thinking skills by your own.
Edit: I do not blindly trust the upvote count in a comment thread to determine who is right or wrong. It just helps me inform that the original opinion is not inherently acceptable by everyone. It is up to me decide who is actually correct or not, which I can do at my leisure unlike in a live conversation with someone where I don’t get the time to think rationally about what the other person is saying.
I taught my daughters the usual logical fallacies from a young age. While doing that I learned that while occasionally, they appear in pristine form (looking at you, Slippery Slope and No True Scotsman), usually, they come rather nuanced, often clustered together, and difficult to identify.
A great way to get good at them is watch Fox News and identify them as they come. You can watch other networks and find them, but for a constant stream, Fox is a goldmine.
All news is a goldmine, you just find them easier to identify on Fox because you disagree with them, which sets off your alarm bells. It’s A LOT harder to identify fallacies that support your own biases.
Your final statement is very true, however there is a reason that Fox News had to defend themselves by claiming they are entertainment. Anyone who believes that Fox News does not have more logical fallacies than most other news really needs to assess their own cognitive biases. I can see logical fallacies on topics I agree with and they piss me off more because I believe that they throw discredit on the perspective that can be argued on it’s own merits.