Abhishek Chakraborty (Page 13)

25 Common Logical Fallacies That Sway You From Winning Arguments

People knowingly and unknowingly engage in bad reasoning—especially in meetings and arguments. Here’s a list of common logical fallacies that would help you arm yourself against false arguments disguised to look good.

Thinking in Bets: Use This Simple Framework to Vet Ideas And Avoid Misbeliefs

In the beginning, gossip gave us an advantage over apes, and thereby helped in the progress of Homo Sapiens. Later, gossip helped us form social groups and bands. In practice, gossips are not very distinguishable from facts—that’s where lies the problem.

Mediocristan and Extremistan: The Two Categories of Random Events

We misappropriate the correlation between one event for some reason and another event for a different reason. What we need to be concerned is with systemic effects: things that can affect more than one person should they happen.

How to Build a Virtuous Feedback Loop

Bad feedback or no feedback at all prevents the exchange of dialogue between members. Most of the things are left unsaid, and this leads to build up of resentment. Despite that, it’s actually hard to build an efficient feedback culture, unless we start understanding the root cause of the problem.

Oversimplification: There Are Hidden Risks Inside Quick And Easy Solutions

People often oversimplify things to sound good or make their ideas easily comprehensible. It’s common in professions where they are rewarded for perception, not results. Just because something sounds simple, or just because a lot of people subscribe to it, doesn’t make it right.

The Lindy Effect: Things That Age In Reverse

According to the Lindy Effect, while a book that has been a hundred years in print is likely to stay in print another hundred years, a 100 year old human being has only a couple more years to go.

Control What You Can Control. Devise a Strategy For The Rest.

There are things that are in our control, and there are things that aren’t. But we often confuse between the two, and repent over spilt milk. Preparing for your upcoming physics exam is completely in your control. But wishing friends and families to live forever is foolish as it isn’t up to you.

Learning Through Thrills and Pleasure

The opposite of learning through pain is learning through thrill and pleasure. Doing experiments to find faults in the laws, doing mathematics to find errors in the theorems makes studying a whole new game.