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Common Online Debating Fallacies

Updated: Aug 3, 2023


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Ad hominem

An ad hominem is a personal attack injected into what is ostensibly a logic-based argument. It means attacking the person as a means of debate, which is never acceptable. Ad hominem attacks are not to be confused with regular insults.

Fine (if rude): "You're wrong, and your failure to see so indicates that you're emotionally immature."

Ad hominem: "You're wrong, because you're a big biased dumbhead."

Note that I'm not encouraging you to call people stupid when arguing with them (certainly not when debating fictional matchups). I'm saying that, in itself, calling someone stupid isn't a logical fallacy. I'm a Christian, and I try to be gracious to others (and I try not to use my Asperger's as an excuse to be a jerk), but if you want to call Alex Jones an idiot to his face, I'm not going to object. (I might join you, even, though "con man" might be higher on my list of things to call Jones.)



"That's just your opinion/belief"

This one is a logical cul-de-sac: Yes, I do hold an opinion on the subject being discussed (say whether the Moon landing was real or faked) and it may be strong. However, this does not make me wrong (or not worth listening to). Buzz Aldrin has a very strong opinion about whether he went to the Moon, and this doesn't disqualify him from saying he flew there.



"Dude none of this is real"

This tactic is used sometimes to say "Well, [fictional universe] isn't real, and neither is [other fictional universe] so you can't use scientific methods to determine who would win in [matchup]."

This is tautology that serves as a total evasion—how exactly are we supposed to analyze fictional matchups, if not with science? We could use the "author's intent" strategy, but this can't give us any actual cold hard numbers. The moment one starts mentioning joules or pascals, they have (intentionally or not) agreed to use scientific methods.

We should always analyze capabilities scientifically, but obviously we have to suspend disbelief to allow for many of the capabilities.



Shifting the burden of proof

This is a very easy fallacy to fall into, and most people do on occasion. It involves dodging a burden of proof and tossing it back to the other person. For example:

Person #1: "John Wick is immortal."

Person #2: "Can you provide some evidence of this?"

Person #1: "Can you disprove it?"

In this scenario, the first person is making an assertion, and one that most viewers would likely disagree with. The second person wisely asks if they can justify this assertion. Person #1 shifts the burden of proof, evading the question and asking person #2 to disprove his assertion. But that is not person #2's job! Person #1 made the assertion—they must back it up.



Overreliance on dialogue

A lot of sci-fi fans commit this, all the time (most especially Trekkies). They take vague offhand statements about general things with more precedence than actual observations of the phenomena talked about. The "no laser" argument is the instance of this I most hate: Picard once said "lasers can't even penetrate our navigational deflectors" and Trekkies everywhere will now tell you that lasers physically cannot get through Star Trek Federation shields. Never mind that electromagnet radiation has overloaded or penetrated Federation shields on numerous occasions, or that Picard was referring to the weaponry of a tiny spacecraft—these people will even argue that since Star Wars "laser cannons" and "turbolasers" (both of which do not primarily rely on laser technology to inflict damage) have "laser" in the name, they will be unable to do anything to Federation shields. They even throw in a bunch of technobabble involving "subspace fields", none of which has any canon justification.

I have (very widely) seen people use the quote "You'll be taking the full force of a star" in Avengers: Infinity War as meaning that "Thor took the full force of a dying star" (yes, with that ridiculous use of bolding too). However, "force" is a physics term which does not directly apply in this scenario, and the fact that we see glowing (where Thor isn't) means the energy is not all being transferred to him. In this case it doesn't affect the feat that much, but it still irritates me how scientifically illiterate even very knowledgeable Marvel fans can be.

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