Logical Fallacies For This Week

Poisoning the Well:
When you "poison the well," you say negative things about a person or thing, so that everything that that person or thing does becomes suspect.

Example:
A person says about her cousin, "My cousin is a jerk. He doesn't care about people."
The person then sees her cousin give money to a homeless man. She responds to this by saying, "He's just giving the homeless man money to look like he's nice. He's really a jerk who doesn't care about people." By poisoning the well, the person makes it impossible to see anything good about her cousin.

Think of someone you don't like. Nothing he or she does will seem like a good thing, right?

Another example:
Hitler is evil.
Hitler says the world is round.
Therefore, the world must be flat.
--Because we recognize that Hitler is evil, we feel we have to "poison the well" and disagree with everything that he says, even if he says, "Ice is cold."


False Dilemma:
A "false dilemma" is a claim that if we do not do X, then Y will happen, or it is a claim that we can only do 'X' or 'Y'. The dilemma is false because X does not cause Y, or it is false because we have more choices than 'X' or 'Y'.

Examples:
Either Taiwan is independent, or it is part of China. <--We know this is a false dilemma because right now it is (politically and legally) neither.

If you don't study every day, you will fail your classes. <--You know people who do well in school even though they don't study very often. (It is okay to hate them.)

Either you are a good student, or you are a bad student. <--There are more categories than 'good' or 'bad'.

Straw Man

A "straw man" is an inaccurate characterization of someone's argument. The "straw man" is easy to argue against while the person's real argument is more difficult.

Example:
Person A says, "We should reduce the military's budget."
Person B says, "Person A wants to make the military weak. We need a strong military, so Person A's idea is bad."

Wanting to reduce the military's budget does not mean that you want to make the military "weak"; it just means that you want to spend less money. Now, you could argue that giving the military less money could weaken the military, but what Person B says is a "straw man" because it isn't really what Person A said.

Person A says, "We need higher taxes."
Person B says, "Person A wants to take food out of your child's mouth."
Yes, higher taxes will mean less money for people, but does Person A really want your child to starve? Is somebody thinking of the children?