Paul Rosenberg – We’ve thus far covered quite a few fallacies of logic. Today I’d like to change our direction a bit and start dealing with other word-borne attacks; they affect critical thinking also, and that’s what this series is really about.

And so we’ll start today on attacks that aren’t quite fallacies of logic.

The open lie

It can be hard to tell if somebody is lying as they’re speaking; it usually takes time for the truth to become clear. And so we need tools to help us. The first and most important of them is to remember that there are millions of sociopaths in the world, and that these people tend to lie whenever it might suit their immediate ends, and that they’ll feel no remorse over it. Continue reading →