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Debating against logical fallacies
I realized I probably posted in the wrong section, but I'm unable to delete it. Anyway, here it is:
I was just having a debate with someone and he kept using logical fallacies in his rebuttals. The most common one is "moving the goalposts," which is when people keep adding criteria as to what would constitute a valid argument during the argument itself.
FYI:Â https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Moving-the-Goalposts
I find this to be very common amongst the average person. How do you deal with it? Normally, I would think they're stupid and stop talking to them. People need a certain level of intelligence in order to be persuaded. But I'm thinking, what if I was in a situation where I had to deal with them (like if he or she was my boss)?
Hi JP,
Do you have a clear example, like a mock dialogue (maybe there's some in that link but it's not loading right now)?
I think I know what you mean, but with an example, it's even better.
Hey Lucio, so here's kind of how the conversation went:
Let's call the other person Mike. The context is talking about the whole BLM stuff.
Mike: "The police really have the worst job in the world"
JP: "Nah, I'm sure there are worse jobs out there. "
M: "like what?"
J: "Sewer cleaning guy, crime scene cleanup... Those guys are cleaning up literal human guts. The sewer cleaning guy has to swim in literal shit"
M: "Yeah but cops don't make that much"
J: " Are you kidding? Cops make pretty decent money, especially with pension and benefits too. The ones that get sent to remote areas make 100-200k a year."
M: "Yeah but those aren't city cops" [raises the goal posts on my rebuttal]
J: "Right, but the argument was whether cops really had the worst job, and it's not. Plus you didn't specify "city cop" in your original argument. Oh, and being a prostitute is worse than a cop"
M: "Prostitution is illegal" [raises the goal posts again]
J: "It's still a job, that was literally the argument"
M:"Yeah but it's not legal" [circular reasoning]
And on and on it goes... It's like when I give an example, he'll pick on something that is not relevant to the argument. In hindsight, I probably should not have put more words than necessary in the argument. The more I elaborated, the more he words he can pick to attack.
Although not an argument, another example a few years ago went like this:
(Let's call him Mike again. The context is that Mike is trying to get me onboard with his MLM scheme)
M: "So this business idea works like this: You set up your website and people can buy off of it, but it's great because you don't need to hold inventory yourself. You can also talk to your friends and family about it, and this is how you'll make money"
J: "Ok so it's basically like Amazon then?"
M: "No, it's different. Basically, you set up your business on a website...(proceeds to literally repeat what he just said)" [circular reasoning]
