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- You're going to learn the top seven logical fallacies. It's important to learn these because you don't want to mistakenly use logical fallacies yourself, and you can be on the lookout for them when you hear other speakers use them.
Communication coach Alexander Lyon explains seven common logical fallacies professionals should avoid and watch for, with examples from politics, science, and sales.
Key Takeaways
- Avoid logical fallacies to maintain credibility with informed audiences
- Popularity and personal attacks do not establish whether a claim is true
- Most either-or choices can be challenged with a single follow-up question
- Causal claims and generalizations require actual evidence
What the video covers
- Learning logical fallacies helps speakers avoid them and recognize them in others' arguments
- Using fallacies can signal poor preparation and erode credibility over time
- Bandwagon fallacy: assuming something is true because many people believe it, illustrated with string theory's rise and fall
- Red herring fallacy: diverting attention from the original question to an irrelevant topic, common in political debates
- Ad hominem attack: attacking the person rather than addressing their argument
- Either-or fallacy: presenting a false dilemma that forces listeners toward a preferred choice
- Slippery slope fallacy: claiming one action will inevitably lead to a chain of undesirable consequences without evidence
- False cause fallacy: connecting two events that may have no causal relationship, sometimes resembling superstition
- Hasty generalization: assuming a single experience applies to all situations
- Recognizing these fallacies protects professional reputation and improves persuasive reasoning
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Part of my job is to help you build your credibility, impact and influence. So my warning is that if you as a speaker use one or more of these, it can create the impression that you have not prepared adequately.
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You're tryna camouflage the lack of good evidence, reasoning, or logic for your position. Other people eventually will draw negative conclusions about you if you use these.
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And remember, my channel is for professional communicators. I'm gonna share lots of bad examples.
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Lots of politicians use these, for instance. But just because some communicators do these and may seem to get away with them in the short run, that doesn't mean you should use these.
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Most high-status professionals I know would consider it an insult to their intelligence if somebody tried to persuade them using one or more of these fallacies.
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Here are the top seven. Let me know if I left any important ones out.
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Number one is the bandwagon fallacy. This is all about popularity, essentially. The faulty logic is that something must be true because, quote, "everybody believes it." They use this fallacy in sales because this can be about social pressure and fear of missing out or fear of being wrong.
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Salespeople can make it seem like, quote, "everybody likes a certain product." So there's really no reason to doubt that product according to them, right?
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Something that also might be happening in listeners' minds is that if this so-called everybody already agrees, has actually looked into this and has really scrutinized and double-checked everything, and has come to the informed conclusion that something is good, true, or desirable,
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well, that should be good enough for everybody else who comes along later. But even if so-called everybody believes something, everybody can still be wrong in the end.
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Bandwagon fallacy can happen even in the hard sciences. A good example is what happened with a theory called string theory.
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It was invented in the 1960s, became really popular. It's a theory about the universe.
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I would estimate it was popular through the 1990s. And for a while, it was the theory that, quote, "this everybody" was talking about.
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There are lots of publications about it. And so the thinking goes, if everybody's talking about it, there must be something to it.
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It must be accurate in some way and describe the way the universe really works.
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But after the 1990s, most of the scientific community just sort of moved on. In the end, the theory wasn't testable, and people stopped talking about it.
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Many scientists now believe string theory is essentially a dead end. Once it lost its popularity, then people thought, "Well, maybe it's not accurate." Just because something's popular, that does not make it true or the right decision to make.
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And just because an idea is unpopular, that doesn't make it wrong or false. So don't be swayed, one way or the other, by this so-called everybody who believes something.
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Number two is the red herring fallacy. Put simply, this is a distraction. It's when the speaker presents some kind of irrelevant or off-topic information that draws the conversation away from the original discussion or question.
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It's changing the subject but making it seem like the new subject is the one we should be talking about.
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Politicians do this constantly in televised debates. Let's say the moderator asks a question about crime, but instead of answering the question about crime because maybe the politician doesn't have a good answer, the politician quickly moves the conversation to a topic
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that he or she would rather be talking about, like the economy or criticizing the opponent.
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And it's called the red herring fallacy, because a herring is a fish. And as the legend goes, when a hunting dog was too caught on a scent that the hunter didn't want the dog to follow, the hunter would distract the dog by dragging a smelly fish,
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a herring, across the path so the dog would lose the original scent. And I looked into this for just a few minutes on Google, and it sounds like this technique was never really used by hunters ever.
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It's just a fictional story most likely. But the story still helps because it's a visual image of what it would look like to distract a dog with a scent.
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And the same way, a speaker might attempt to distract listeners by changing the topic and introducing irrelevant information to the question on the table at the time.
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Third is an ad hominem attack. And that's considered a fallacy because instead of addressing the argument or question on the table, the speaker instead makes a personal attack on an opponent, on the person who asked the question or made an argument.
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In Latin, ad hominem means against the man or to the person. The goal of the speaker who uses an ad hominem attack is to avoid a conversation about the real issue, about evidence, about a legitimate problem or question
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by trying to make the other person look bad. The thinking goes, behind the fallacy, if you can undermine the credibility of the other person, then the issue the other person brought up isn't relevant anymore.
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So let's say one politician is explaining his or her amazing plan to create more jobs.
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And let's pretend that it really is a good plan. When it's the other person's turn to talk, they might say something along the lines of this, "My opponent here says he knows about how to create jobs, but the truth is he's never worked
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an honest day in his life. Everything he's ever had has been given to him." Now, is this true?
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I don't know. I just made that up. But a personal attack makes it sound, like on these grounds, we don't need to think about the plan itself because we've discredited the speaker.
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Fourth is the either-or fallacy. This is where the speaker puts listeners in a false dilemma where the speaker makes it seem like only two choices are available, and the speaker also signals that only one choice is the right one.
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The either-or fallacy is really about trying to force listeners into the preferred choice. You'll sometimes hear this in professional settings when people are pitching a product or a direction for their team.
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They might say something like, "We either move forward with this plan, or we go backwards doing it the same way we've always done it." This approach is a fallacy because most situations are not an either-or forced choice.
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The either-or situation isn't always obvious, but most listeners will quickly see outside of whatever two option choice the speaker's trying to force them into.
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Most either-or choices can be shattered even with one good follow-up question. Number five is the slippery slope fallacy.
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This is where a speaker argues that you must reject a decision or a course of action because it will inevitably lead to a chain reaction of other undesirable outcomes.
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The whole enterprise will slip down the slope, and there's no way to stop it.
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In other words, without any actual evidence, the speaker says, "If you allow this one thing, then it will cause these other 10 undesirable things to happen." Now, this one is tricky because there are sometimes cause-effect relationships between a decision and a secondary intended
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or unintended outcome. That happens. Sometimes one choice really does open the door for more consequences in the same direction.
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But what makes this a fallacy is when the speaker makes a connection between the first move and the inevitable and sometimes unrealistic supposed outcomes that will follow.
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Let's say there's a proposal, to lower the drinking age to 18, and somebody uses a slippery slope argument against it.
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They might say, "If you lower the drinking age to 18, then what's next? Are we gonna eventually let 10-ye-olds drink too?
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Why don't we let five-year-olds drive cars and fly planes while we're at it?" So there's no evidence that lowering the drinking age to 18 will inevitably lead to those other far-fetched outcomes.
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They sound drastic, like catastrophic exaggerations, scare tactics. Number six is the false cause fallacy.
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Here, the speakers connecting two events that may have no connection at all. And this can almost feel like superstition at times.
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If you've ever worn a certain shirt while you're watching a sports game for your favorite team and they won, you may make the false connection where there is none.
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That you have to wear that shirt, that same shirt, for the next game because in some mysterious way, wearing that shirt caused your team to win.
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Now, that sounds obvious that it's irrational thinking, and you probably realize there's no actual cause.
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Most people realize that it's a little silly to think that even though they still might do it.
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But the point is just because one thing happened before another, or two things happened at about the same time, that does not mean there's a cause-effect relationship.
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And number seven is the hasty generalization fallacy. A short explanation goes like this. If it's true in one situation, then it must be true in all situations.
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I used to work in an organization many years ago, and one of my coworkers had one bad experience with an external consultant.
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Fast forward to her work in our organization, anytime anybody brought up, the organization reaching out or working with the assistance of a consultant, she expressed immediate distrust in all consultants.
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She hastily generalized consultants as untrustworthy. Let's take another look at the top seven fallacies we've talked about here.
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Did I leave anything out that you would consider important? What fallacy did I miss?
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And the big takeaway here is that you certainly don't wanna use any of these fallacies when you're communicating.
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It will undermine your credibility and your long-term reputation as a reasonable professional. And now that you know these, you should also be on the lookout for them.
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If you hear somebody using any of these fallacies, that is your cue to ask a follow-up question and make sure you test their thinking.
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Be sure to take a look at my website. There are free resources there, including a free class on the top five communication skills that every professional should have.
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There are free downloads. There's a whole lot of things, plus you can take a look at our other classes and group coaching options and the Communication Coach Academy.
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Until next time, thanks, God bless, and I will see you soon.
Topics:logical fallaciescritical thinkingpersuasioncommunication skillsrhetoricpublic speakingargumentationprofessional communication
