Something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time is to memorize logical fallacies. I like to debate controversial topics, and knowing this information well could be helpful.
If you would like to take up this memory challenge, you could set the difficulty level by the number of fallacies you choose the memorize.
I recently watched Dr. Metivier’s video about applying the W.R.A.P. decision making model to memory wheel and ı am fascinated by it and this got me thinking what other mental models can be applied.
Do you have mental models for thinking? Did you memorize them?
I put my own version of W.R.A.P. to a memory palace cuz ı don’t trust the memory wheels as much as palaces.
I saw your other posts about memorizing cognitive biases and looks like we were thinking about the same things. Have you done it by the way? cuz ı’m still struggling.
With longish (100+) lists that needn’t be remembered sequentially, I have a memory journey. Eg snippets of poetry, quotes, jokes, cognitive biases, logical fallacies, quotable comics, proverbs, witty anecdotes and lines from songs
It’s the same as the method of loci, but slightly “larger than life”. My inner eye finds it tedious and too untidy to use a small room or house where the pegs/landmarks are too close to each other
I pick a longish route I know well and choose landmarks that won’t change soon (unlike shops and cafes which come and go):
Educational institutes
Traffic signals
Big malls
Educational institutes
Police stations
Bus stops
Huge corporations/offices
Hospitals
Courts of law
Parks
Playgrounds
Cultural centres
Banks
Petrol pumps
Houses of worship
Etc
I liberally use Google Maps too
And then I place in front of them a vignette (image, but multisensory and animated and bizarre) for each thing to remember
When the landmarks on a route “get over”, I will mentally “stick” another route at the end of the first one. I might choose the second route that’s closest to the first route, so that I don’t pick my first route in Tokyo, the second in Toronto and the third in Torrino
I go over the route mentally once a week till I know the material very well.
I realise that this is an old post, but someone else has just replied to it so I might as well have a look and express some of my opinions. After reading a couple of the logical fallacies and the examples used to clarify them it has become painfully obvious to me that there is an agenda behind this free information. Just about every example seems like an attempt to bash (creationist) Christians, alternative medicine advocates and conspiricy theorists. Luckily for the so called skeptics I am not allowed to come to the conclusions that the bashing of the aforementioned groups is by design as this would be a teleological fallacy.
Just one example of the many you will find in the article to get an idea.
Confusing currently unexplained with unexplainable
Because we do not currently have an adequate explanation for a phenomenon does not mean that it is forever unexplainable, or that it therefore defies the laws of nature or requires a paranormal explanation. An example of this is the “God of the Gaps” strategy of creationists that whatever we cannot currently explain is unexplainable and was therefore an act of god.
So let’s pretend (strawman argument fallacy, more about this one further down this post) that creationist don’t even have any arguments but just use a strategy to fool the masses. Don’t listen to them spreaders of misinformation.
Furthermore it appears that the writer of this article doesn’t even make an effort to avoid using the fallacies him or herself. The most often (mis)used fallacy appears to be the strawman argument (see also above example).
A straw man argument attempts to counter a position by attacking a different position – usually one that is easier to counter. The arguer invents a caricature of his opponent’s position – a “straw man” – that is easily refuted, but not the position that his opponent actually holds.
And then we get the alternative medicine bashing disguised as an appropriate example of the strawman fallacy:
For example, defenders of alternative medicine often argue that skeptics refuse to accept their claims because they conflict with their world-view. If “Western” science cannot explain how a treatment works, then it is dismissed out-of-hand. If you read skeptical treatment of so-called “alternative” modalities, however, you will find the skeptical position much more nuanced than that.
Those silly low IQ alternative medicine defenders, they are confused about the world view of the high IQ sceptics; of course no one of these tree huggers ever says anything about the underlying business model of modern medicine. If only they had read every skeptical treatment of so-called “alternative” modalities, they would surely have found out that the skeptical position is much more nuanced than that. And if, lo and behold, they stumble upon a skeptic treatment that is not nuanced at all, well we can safely assume that the treatment is not from a true skeptic. If you happen to think "hang on a bit isn’t that a not a true Scottsman fallacy, we can just scream falseanalogy and put our fingers in our ears and go “la la la”.
I can humbly recommend The fallacy detective books, for beginners.
Very easy to grasp and to train.
Also, there is an interesting Website to play with the fallacies https://dontfallacy.me
