Podcast

How to Spot Fallacies – Podcast

Last week I was interviewed by Pat Coffin on his show about Everything You Believe Is Wrong.

Best part: very little mention of coronadoom. We are all sick sick sick of it.

Coffin’s description:

On Twitter, mathematics PhD (Cornell) Dr. Briggs is @famedcelebrity, and his website subtitle is “Statistician to the Stars”—both digs at our culture’s silly celeb worship. He co-authored an important book about the Covid scam titled The Price of Panic, and has a new one out, that does many things well, including explaining the difference between conservative and based; and scores of examples of fallacies and how to spot them.

A very enjoyable exchange with a natural raconteur, practicing Catholic, and man of hard science and logic.

In this episode, you will learn

  • The basic (and more profound than you think) difference between actually based and merely conservative.
  • The true definition of based (and debased)
  • What a fallacy is.
  • The top fallacies used online in debates, and by politicians every day.
  • Why everyone inescapably imposes his viewpoint on others
  • Why there are no “gay people” and no “transgendered people”
  • Why offending some people is necessary for communication success.

Resources mentioned in this episode

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Categories: Podcast

10 replies »

  1. Listened to the whole thing. Patrick Coffin is a fine interviewer, he has a good radio voice, deep, calm, well modulated. Maybe a bit too NPR. But you can listen to it like good music. And he’s well dressed. Coffin gets Briggs going with excellent questions, and this is the true test of a good interviewer: he provokes the interviewee into saying interesting stuff, without speaking much himself. Briggs gets all excited, as he usually does, and says interesting things. At the end, Coffin makes an incisive comment about Briggs’ style, characterizing it as “lean and funny” — quite right, especially in this last book, which reads like Hemingway + Will Rogers + Aquinas, leavened with funny dyslexic typos. My only criticism is that Briggs appears as an open-collared louche, poorly lit against a bland background. Fire the production designer.

  2. Long ago I made the claim that “conservatism” is anti-Christian because conservatives want to keep things as they are! That’s diametrically opposed to the Christian mission implied in the very notion of a “Church Militant” that is required to be the “salt”, the agent that changes the flavour and operation of human society so that it is easier for Man to accept the “gentle yoke and light burden” of Truth and Virtue. It necessarily is a product of the good order of the most fundamental society; a man, a woman, their children. Every concept of social order is an extension of that basic unit.

    I don’t think it is any random accident that the very first Commandment after our duties to God is to honour father heritage and mother culture.

    Anyhow, I don’t think it’s very hard to spot fallacies these days. If it is something relentlessly flogged in the media and supported by politicians it’s bullsh!t. Back in the ’50’s when I was a child it was almost ubiquitous that the men would ridicule the pronouncements of the “press” and politicians were universally (in our company anyway) assumed to be liars and con men.

    How things have changed in about 70 years. Incomprehensibly the new Caesar (democracy; that I call demolatry) has become the sole arbiter of what’s good and true.

    I’m a curmudgeon, you can’t rely on me to skip after bandwagons. I’m going to poke Billy Briggs in his Yankee ribs and challenge him to explain how the Yank Republic is not just an extension of the Republic of Venice that practically screwed the known World with usury and arbitrary “Maritime Law” before the centre of operations was shifted to the “City of London” and some franchises that include the “District of Columbia” in North America.

  3. ‘The things that THEY believe are wrong, the things that WE believe are right.’ Such self-awareness! Jesus was obviously onto something with that whole speck/log/eye thing.

    ‘There are no gay people’ Having listened to this section of the podcast at least five times, your argument seems to be that:

    1. The word ‘homosexual’ was invented to describe a sexual disorder.

    Response: So what? All words are invented, and ‘homosexual’ isn’t even the same word as ‘gay’ anyway.

    2. Gay people are supposed to be a special category of people completely different to and other than male or female people.

    Response: This is a strawman. Gay people had to identify themselves as a distinct group only to the extent that they asked to be treated the same as everyone else, and not carted off to prison, or beaten-up. But gay people are just regular people who happen to be attracted to members of their own sex. You are the one who is continually trying to make out that gay (and trans) people are some kind of weird alien race. It is simply a fact that some people are attracted to members of their own sex, just as it is a fact that some people are very good-natured, some people are autistic, and some people are tall.

  4. “I’m going to poke Billy Briggs in his Yankee ribs…”

    Pure poetry, pal.

    I don’t expect Billy Briggs to take you up on the challenge of explaining how the Yank Republic is NOT just an extension of the Republic of Venice… Only on whether it’s best described as a traveling clown show, circus, or patent medicine show. Or traveling revival. Or all of those mashed-up with a dollop of ponzi on top.

    Welcome back my friends
    to the show that never ends
    we’re so glad you could attend
    come inside, come inside!

  5. Such self-awareness! Jesus was obviously onto something with that whole speck/log/eye thing.

    But the part you are forgeting is that we’re still right! Which make you, by comparison, wrong! So it is okay when we do it!

    So what? All words are invented, and ‘homosexual’ isn’t even the same word as ‘gay’ anyway.

    So we agree then! Regardless of whatever fancy word one uses, it remains a sexual disorder!

    This is a strawman. Gay people had to identify themselves as a distinct group only to the extent that they asked to be treated the same as everyone else, and not carted off to prison, or beaten-up.

    This is a strawman. Normal people are also forbidden from committing all the same sodomitical acts for which they too should be rightfully be punished and treated the same way and carted off to prison if not beaten up. It is very equal.

    But gay people are just regular people who happen to be attracted to members of their own sex.

    And pedophiles are just regular people who happen to be attracted to members who are underaged.

    You are the one who is continually trying to make out that gay (and trans) people are some kind of weird alien race.

    Been to a Pride parade or a Trans-library reading hour lately? Why are you so against them by denying them their freedom to openly expressing their alien distinction from normies and normie culture with their own unique flamboyantly alien one?

    It is simply a fact that some people are attracted to members of their own sex, just as it is a fact that some people are very good-natured, some people are autistic, and some people are tall.

    And some people are pedophiles, and some good-natured people enjoy sado-masochism, and scat-play, and just want the same freedom to have a close and loving relationship with a corpse in the morgue. It is just a fact of life, like walking and talking and eating bananas. I agree! Simple as!

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