While I was watching the political convention last week (and the week before as well, actually), it astounded me at how often the speakers would resort to obvious logical fallacies. I counted five false dichotomies and four straw men within the Sarah Palin speech alone. Now, just to not be political: I’m sure Joe Biden also committed a whole bunch of logical fallacies, I just didn’t think about it until I heard Sarah Palin ‘poison the well‘ against Barack Obama.
As a result, I’ve decided to throw a ‘Spot the Logical Fallacy’ party during the first debate September 26. You can participate too, but I probably won’t be paying as much attention to you as I will to my guests. I’ll come up with a list of logical fallacies, along with their definition, and print them out in a handy two-sided sheet.
Here are the rules:
- The first person to spot a logical fallacy must exclaim it, but only AFTER the speaker commits the fallacy.
- The winner is the person who catches the most logical fallacies.
- After the debate, a discussion on psychological, rhetorical, and propagandistic techniques will commence, but nobody is allowed to have a debate over the issues, unless there is a direct appeal to their logical consequences.
- No headbutting is allowed.
Update: Wow, speak of the devil. Someone seems to have come up with the same idea at around the same time as me. Weird..
