Type of logical fallacy?

[Dicentra]

Can I tap the Hive mind wisdom? 🙂  I just read two statements from some friends who were arguing online and I'm sure that Friend B committed a logical fallacy but I can't think of which one it would be.  Here is, roughly, the exchange:

Friend A: The website that you are getting your information from, news site X, is biased and questionable.

Friend B: And news sites Y and Z are any better??  (Friend B is also making an assumption that Friend A is getting their information from sites Y and Z (which are sites that would be considered biased from the opposite direction from Friend B's site X) but that's not what I'm thinking about.)

Is Friend B committing a fallacy?  If so, which one?  I feel like it's some kind of false equivalency but that doesn't seem quite right.  Basically, Friend B's response to Friend A saying that Friend B's site of choice (site X) is biased and questionable is Friend B sarcastically commenting that sites Y and Z (the assumed sites of choice for Friend A) aren't any better.

I feel like this should be an easy one to identify but my brain is not cooperating this evening. 😉

[Garga]

Tu quoque, maybe?

[popmom]

Definitely a fallacy. I'm very interested in these things, but I'm also not an expert by any means. I would think that friend B's response could be classified as a red herring. A brief definition: Red Herring: This is a diversionary tactic that avoids the key issues, often by avoiding opposing arguments rather than addressing them. 

Fallacy detectives are heroes in my book. Keep up the good work.

Edited December 30, 2020 by popmom

[Happy2BaMom]

I highly recommend Mark Manson's summary of 8 Logical Fallacies (heads up: he writes with f-bombs, in case you find that bothersome), as he gives a very brief overview of the most common fallacies.

I think your example is probably a red herring (e.g. the issue of whether site X is biased/questionable is a separate issue than whether sites Y and Z are). It may also be a false dichotomy.

 

[Ailaena]

To me, a red herring is more like two totally unrelated things being compared.  Like, when somebody says “Save the Rainforest” the person will say, “What about whales?? Why aren’t whales important??”

I see this as more of tu quoque.  Like, “My news source is bad?  Well YOUR news source is bad.”  But I think that “They’re ALL bad so nobody is right.” is a different fallacy whose name is slipping my mind 😞

[Farrar]

It's almost like nut picking - where you choose a few examples (two sets of "bad" news sites in this case) and ignore others.

I think it depends a little on the point friend B was making. Was their point to attack friend A's news and supports for their arguments? Or was their point to undermine the idea that news can ever tell the truth or that facts are ever knowable?

[Lori D.]

Friend A is stating an opinion without backing it up with evidence; not necessarily a fallacy, but also not a supported argument -- just an opinion.
Friend B is making a retort, or swapping opinion for opinion, also without backing it up with evidence -- so also not necessarily a fallacy, but certainly just another opinion.

It's a bit shaky that either Friend has made a logical fallacy (since there is no argument, just opinion swapping), but possibly:

Friend A
- Possibly a definist fallacy = "defining a term used in an argument in a biased manner (e.g., using 'loaded terms'). The person making the argument expects that the listener will accept the provided definition, making the argument difficult to refute." *
(In the example, Friend A defines website X with the loaded terms of "biased and questionable" without evidential backing. Evidential backing is providing supporting evidence in the form of  facts, statistics, data, quotations, examples, anecdotes.)

- Possibly a mind projection fallacy -- "assuming that a statement about an object describes an inherent property of the object, rather than a personal perception." *
(Here again, without evidential backing, Friend A's choice of descriptors ("biased and questionable") is personal perception rather than inherent property.)

Friend B
- Possibly a false equivalence fallacy -- "describing two or more statements as virtually equal when they are not." *
(In the example, Friend B describes both websites as virtually equal by stating are "X and Y websites any better than website X" -- Note: this fallacy has to do with *statements* rather than *things* being described as virtually equal, so this may be a stretch to apply this fallacy...)

- Possibly an incomplete comparison " -- "insufficient information is provided to make a complete comparison." *
(Again, because neither Friend has provided any additional information to back their opinions, Friend B's opinion retort is an incomplete comparison to Friend A's incomplete initial opinion.)

* = quoted definitions from Wikipedia: "List of Fallacies" -- under the subheading of informal fallacies


From that Wikipedia article, under the subheading of "Red Herring Fallacies" are a few more possibilities:

- association fallacy -- "(guilt by association and honor by association) – arguing that because two things share (or are implied to share) some property, they are the same." *

- one of the forms of appeal to emotion -- "manipulating the emotions of the listener rather than using valid reasoning to obtain common agreement" *
   • judgmental language –- "using insulting or pejorative language in an argument" *
   • pooh-pooh -- "stating that an opponent's argument is unworthy of consideration" *

Edited December 30, 2020 by Lori D.

[Pam in CT]

A "logical fallacy" presumes that some sort of claim to "logic" is being made. I don't see any such claim being made by either person in this example. One person makes a claim (offering up neither substantiating evidence, nor logical underpinnings); the other person makes a retort (also without either substantiating evidence, or logical underpinnings).

So to my mind, this is mere nyah-nyah insult-swapping, with neither logic nor even fallacy: just childishness.

 

 

 

(It's been a long year, 2020; here's hoping to better news and better moods ahead....)

[Moonhawk]

I forget the formal name. Whataboutism is the common term for that fallacy.

"News X is biased."

"But what about News Y? They are biased too!" <-- implies the first person is being a hypocrite and therefore invalid. But it doesn't directly refute the claim that News X is biased and instead attempts to focus the argument elsewhere. 

[Danae]

Has anyone ever given names to the types of logical fallacy that result from identifying similarities between a statement and cases identified in the various field guides to logical fallacies?

 

[Dicentra]

10 hours ago, Farrar said:

It's almost like nut picking - where you choose a few examples (two sets of "bad" news sites in this case) and ignore others.

I think it depends a little on the point friend B was making. Was their point to attack friend A's news and supports for their arguments? Or was their point to undermine the idea that news can ever tell the truth or that facts are ever knowable?

I think Friend B was more making the first point rather than the second but I don't want to read too much into an online interaction.  It's hard to know what anyone means online (or heck - even in person. 😉 )

10 hours ago, Lori D. said:

Friend A is stating an opinion without backing it up with evidence; not necessarily a fallacy, but also not a supported argument -- just an opinion.
Friend B is making a retort, or swapping opinion for opinion, also without backing it up with evidence -- so also not necessarily a fallacy, but certainly just another opinion.

It's a bit shaky that either Friend has made a logical fallacy (since there is no argument, just opinion swapping), but possibly:

Friend A
- Possibly a definist fallacy = "defining a term used in an argument in a biased manner (e.g., using 'loaded terms'). The person making the argument expects that the listener will accept the provided definition, making the argument difficult to refute." *
(In the example, Friend A defines website X with the loaded terms of "biased and questionable" without evidential backing. Evidential backing is providing supporting evidence in the form of  facts, statistics, data, quotations, examples, anecdotes.)

- Possibly a mind projection fallacy -- "assuming that a statement about an object describes an inherent property of the object, rather than a personal perception." *
(Here again, without evidential backing, Friend A's choice of descriptors ("biased and questionable") is personal perception rather than inherent property.)

Friend B
- Possibly a false equivalence fallacy -- "describing two or more statements as virtually equal when they are not." *
(In the example, Friend B describes both websites as virtually equal by stating are "X and Y websites any better than website X" -- Note: this fallacy has to do with *statements* rather than *things* being described as virtually equal, so this may be a stretch to apply this fallacy...)

- Possibly an incomplete comparison " -- "insufficient information is provided to make a complete comparison." *
(Again, because neither Friend has provided any additional information to back their opinions, Friend B's opinion retort is an incomplete comparison to Friend A's incomplete initial opinion.)

* = quoted definitions from Wikipedia: "List of Fallacies" -- under the subheading of informal fallacies


From that Wikipedia article, under the subheading of "Red Herring Fallacies" are a few more possibilities:

- association fallacy -- "(guilt by association and honor by association) – arguing that because two things share (or are implied to share) some property, they are the same." *

- one of the forms of appeal to emotion -- "manipulating the emotions of the listener rather than using valid reasoning to obtain common agreement" *
   • judgmental language –- "using insulting or pejorative language in an argument" *
   • pooh-pooh -- "stating that an opponent's argument is unworthy of consideration" *

As always, you're the research queen, Lori D. !  Thank you!

9 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

A "logical fallacy" presumes that some sort of claim to "logic" is being made. I don't see any such claim being made by either person in this example. One person makes a claim (offering up neither substantiating evidence, nor logical underpinnings); the other person makes a retort (also without either substantiating evidence, or logical underpinnings).

So to my mind, this is mere nyah-nyah insult-swapping, with neither logic nor even fallacy: just childishness.

 

 

 

(It's been a long year, 2020; here's hoping to better news and better moods ahead....)

Both you, Pam, and Lori D. are correct - it wasn't the most logical of arguments to witness. 😜 There was just something about the substitution of the denigration of presumed sites Y and Z by Friend B instead of confronting the validity of site X (the site the original article was from that Friend B chose to share) that twigged something in my brain to think that the "whataboutism" (thanks for that,  @Moonhawk!) was violating some rule of logical argument.

Thank you so much, Hive mind!!  You folks are the greatest! 🙂

[Dicentra]

9 hours ago, Moonhawk said:

I forget the formal name. Whataboutism is the common term for that fallacy.

"News X is biased."

"But what about News Y? They are biased too!" <-- implies the first person is being a hypocrite and therefore invalid. But it doesn't directly refute the claim that News X is biased and instead attempts to focus the argument elsewhere. 

Just looked it up.  Whataboutism is a variant of tu quoque. 🙂

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