Blog of Andreas Eschenbacher

 Now, I want to cover some fallacies that we are all prone of. Ad-Hominem Fallacy Bad people (as your opponents) necessarily have bad arguments. (This may not be true) Good people must have good arguments. (Again, this must not be true)   Loop Reinforcement Statement: aircrafts purposely spray chemicals in order harm nature and people (so-called chemtrails). Proper response: extraordinary claims should be backed-up by thorough measurements. Counter answer: proper measurements are hindered by the government. Therefore, chemtrails exist. The more official sources deny facts, the truer they must be. All official explanations are necessarily wrong, because government and industry always have nefarious intentions (called: overriding suspicion)   Reversal of the Burden of Proof Alice says: we should invest our money in gold. Bob answers: why should we. Now Alice has to provide an explanation. This was the good example. Now the bad one: Alice says: we should invest our m

Ad-hominem Attacks (attacking a person)    Unfortunately, there are many ways to attack or discredit an opponent. One is to publicly question their ability to follow the proposed arguments (though they are illogical) and blame them for being uncapable (or unwilling) to do so. This attitude is often sustained by spreading (through social media) negative statements about the opponent, like: not trustworthy, unethical, stubborn fundamentalist, fanatic, lunatic, only cui-bono-driven, biased, not qualified, industry-paid. This is often times done in a subversive way, e.g., when ‘just’ saying that other people hold this opinion. On the other hand, wrong statements can be uttered blatantly and repeated again and again: Obama was not born on American soil. Or: many world leaders are in reality shape-shifting reptilian aliens taking on human form. Key is to repeat these statements over and over again (ad nauseam) and in different ways to make them stick to the audience, since a statement

  Debunking It is worthwhile to inform / educate people about attempts and methods of planting something into their brain. This may make the recipients of such misinformation more aware of what is going on and what effect it could have on them. This is called: inoculation or pre-bunking, i.e., providing cognitive vaccines. This is why Twitter and Facebook use Fact Checking Warnings as their pre-bunking approach. If the damage is already done: It is important to debunk and refute false statements as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Doing it with detailed facts can make such misinformation ‘unstuck’ (at least partially). And, as you surely know: it is key to repeat your refutation many times and in different ways. This is part of the strategy to tackle the ‘illusory truth effect’ of Fake News, because they follow the Maxime: the often you hear it, the more it becomes true. Now, I don’t know if it is ethical to do it likewise (using the same method as the spreader of Disinformati

  Conspiracy Myths Why read this post: If you have to deal with conspiracy myth spreaders, right wing populists or extremists, this article may give you some insights into what methods they use in order to influence people, and how you can protect yourself and others from falling prey to their attacks. Because the entire matter is quite complex, I split it into several blog posts. In order to cover this subject, I have used the following sources that describe how to deal with intentionally disseminated false statements, and how to uncover illogical (and otherwise silly) argumentation. The Debunking Handbook 2020. Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Ecker, U. K. H., Albarracín, D., Amazeen, M. A., Kendeou, P., Lombardi, D., Newman, E. J., Pennycook, G., Porter, E. Rand, D. G., Rapp, D. N., Reifler, J., Roozenbeek, J., Schmid, P., Seifert, C. M., Sinatra, G. M., Swire-Thompson, B., van der Linden, S., Vraga, E. K., Wood, T. J., Zaragoza, M. S. (2020). The Debunking Handbook 2020. Available at ht