Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Have You Ever Encountered the "What's Your Better Idea?" Fallacy

Last week I did the math on Girl Scout cookies only to discover that their sale annually contributes over three quarters of a million pounds of trans fat and thirty million pounds of sugar to the American diet. I then suggested that the charitable sale of trans-fat laden, sugary cookies is a practice that in this day and age can no longer be considered charitable and instead is part of our growing dietary woes.

This upset people, and it also brought up the, "what's your better idea" fallacy. It's a fallacy of distraction in that a practice or a program can most assuredly be fairly described as awful regardless of whether or not a solution for said practice or program is proposed.

Logical fallacies are a frustrating bunch and familiarizing yourself with their various incarnations is well worth your time. Here's a handy dandy poster highlighting some of the most common ones.

Have you ever been faced with frustrating logical fallacies?