A surprisingly high % of stupid arguments & fights on Twitter are rooted in a tiny number of fairly obvious fallacies.

Stupid arguments & the fallacies that feed them, a thread:

Fallacy 1/

Just because it’s true that all squares are rectangles, you argued that all rectangles must be squares. (And you did it with so much swagger.)

Example of Fallacy 1

X says: Successful people aren’t afraid of hard work.

Y argues: That’s BS. I work 90 hours a week at Tech Co and am still stuck in this dead-end job.

Fallacy 2/

Just because you found an exception to a general pattern, you argued that the entire pattern is false.

Example of Fallacy 2

X says: Venture capital is useful for startups.

Y argues: Not true. Foo’s startup took VC money and they crashed & burned.

Z piles on: I agree with Y. In fact, Bar’s startup did not take VC money and it’s worth a bajillion.