I’m a bit new to self-studying logic (and rhetoric) but I think you should learn about “Formal fallacies” and “Informal fallacies”. Formal fallacies are those that arguments that are systematically false, like all A is B, some C is A, some C is not B, therefore all C is A. But in real arguments you have to convert those organic arguments into these terms (which could be the hardest part), and then you find out if it is a fallacy… I remember there was a way to find out if arguments are valid based on adding stars, I’ll probably send it later… But be warned, an argument can be “valid”, but still have the wrong premises! You can say, All cats are on fire, therefore some things on fire are cats… and the argument would still be valid, but rest on false premises… Informal fallacies, I think, are somewhat out of the scope of formal logic, but they are still considered faulty arguments, like Strawman…

Read some of the old “Miss Marple” Stories, then some “Hercule Poirot” Stories.

Probably not entirely related but I like Judge Judy’s comment: If something doesn’t make sense, it probably isn’t true.

Sometimes a strawman gets more upvotes/reception than a well thought out argument. Its difficult to win over people when their minds are made up in the first sentence. It only gets harder if you are doing this irl so your best bet is to gaslight them before they gaslight you. Its the American way.

There used to be poster you could buy / wallpaper you could download that essentially summarised this Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Otherwise it’s practice (eg critical appraisal training).

I would suggest getting a book called Thinking Fast and Slow, and reading it slowly and deliberately, less than 5-10 pages a day. It not only tells you how to find these kind of fallacies but also why you’re likely to fall for them and how.

I taught my daughters the usual logical fallacies from a young age. While doing that I learned that while occasionally, they appear in pristine form (looking at you, Slippery Slope and No True Scotsman), usually, they come rather nuanced, often clustered together, and difficult to identify.

A great way to get good at them is watch Fox News and identify them as they come. You can watch other networks and find them, but for a constant stream, Fox is a goldmine.

Maybe this helps, it has some good examples on what the various fallacies look like, and combining that knowledge with a hunch of “something here sounds fishy” is basically what I do I think.

https://youtu.be/Qf03U04rqGQ

I recommend using your fallacy is as both a handy reference and a shortcut for explaining it to the person committing one of the most common fallacies as well as anyone else reading.

By using that, you’ll be able to spot a lot of bullshit you might otherwise miss and eventually get to the point where you’re able to spot the ones you come across most often without looking it up 🙂

I have seen countless arguments in Reddit threads and I couldn’t figure out who was in the right or wrong unless I looked at the upvote counts. Even if the person is uttering a blatant lie, they somehow make it sound in a way that is completely believable to me. If it weren’t for those people that could exactly point out the irrationality behind these arguments, my mind would have been lobotomised long ago.

Upvotes on a comment or thread are absolutely not the way to determine which person is right, and it’s not even the way to determine which point of view is more popular. All those numbers give you is how many upvotes the comment got. In two separate communities, you’ll see completely contradictory statements be most popular because the people who feel a certain way tend to congregate.

If you want to become a more discerning information consumer, you can look up the common logical fallacies and keep them in mind, but nothing beats actually being informed, and forming your own opinion. Now, this is pretty hard because all news media is inherently biased, and so many things happen all the time that it’s hard to keep up.

What I’ve found helpful, is when it comes to things I don’t know about, I read the discussion as “this person says this, and that person says that”, rather than “this person is saying the truth, and that person is lying”. If it’s a subject that matters to me, I’ll have a look at some news, see where the general consensus is, analyze it from my own point of view, and form my opinion like that. If it doesn’t really matter to me, I don’t really do that, and just relay information as “I heard it might be either X or Y, but I don’t know for sure”, “I heard from Z that something or other”.

Edit: Of course, it’s not like I’m some paragon of unbiased information crunching. I have my own biases that I’m aware of, but naturally I think I’m right, so I think they’re not a problem, which is probably a problem. Everything you experience is relative.

It doesn’t look like it has been mentioned here yet: https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760533
This book goes really deep into every different kind of logical fallacy.

It helps to remember that the mind is not a truth machine, but a survival machine.

I recommend learning some psychology. The more you know about how the mind works, the easier it is to understand and spot logical fallacies, both in yourself and others.

Edit: also, you should practice those critical thinking skills instead of just keeping them in theory. You could apply them to past situations, for example.

There’s this app called cranky uncle and it goes through things like this and then helps to you learn how to identify them. It was developed by a university researchers in Australia with the aim of improving people’s ability to recognise misinformation

I’m genuinely curious here, why is learning to identify logical fallacy at the point of conversation that important to you? Just research yourself afterwards, otherwise how would you know what is wrong unless you have already decided or learnt it is wrong to begin with. In my opinion, it is not that important unless you are engaged in professional persuasion or your opinion at the very moment holds a lot of weight. You could maybe identify inconsistency or twist their words until they contradict themselves? Otherwise, the best approach if you are not sure is to find out later. At the end of the day what matters to me most is my opinion, I do not care if I disagree with the person I am interacting with, or if the person disagrees with me. Maybe cause I’m not a politician. ;-)

Logical fallacies don’t necessarily disagree with facts. While the most common examples are simply unsupported statements that sound supported, very often we don’t have the luxury of working with clearly factual statements as a basis.

All rhetoric is at the end of the day a fallacy, as the truth of the matter is independent on how it is argued. Yet we don’t consider all rhetoric invalid, because we can’t just chain factual statements in real debates. Leaps of logic are universally accepted, common knowledge is shared without any proof, and reasonable assumptions made left and right.

In fact one persons valid rhetoric is another persons fallacy. If the common knowledge was infact not shared, or an assumption not accepted, the leap in logic is a fallacy.

I would try to focus less on lists of fallacies or cognitive biases and more on natural logic. Learn how to make idealised proofs, and through that learn to identify what is constantly assumed in everyday discussions. The fallacies itself don’t matter, what matters is spotting leaps in logic and why it feels like a leap in logic to you.

After all, very often authoritive figures do tell the truth, and both sides of the debate agree on general values without stating them. If someone starts questioning NASA or declares they actually want more people to live in poverty, they did infact spot very real logical fallacies in the debate, but at the same time those fallacies only exist from their point of view, and others might not care to argue without such unstated common ground.