"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself
and you are the easiest person to fool."
— Richard P. Feynman
Straw Men. Slippery Slopes. Circular Reasonings. Ad Hominen attacks. Appeals to Fear, Ignorance, and irrelevant Authorities. Equivocation. — in a word, politicians.
But actually, logical fallacies run rampant much closer to home: up and down our Facebook threads, throughout conversations with friends, and, yes, in our own minds. An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi maps 19 of these fallacies with the "hope that you leave with greater awareness of the dangers of flimsy arguments and how commonplace they are in our everyday lives."
But actually, logical fallacies run rampant much closer to home: up and down our Facebook threads, throughout conversations with friends, and, yes, in our own minds. An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi maps 19 of these fallacies with the "hope that you leave with greater awareness of the dangers of flimsy arguments and how commonplace they are in our everyday lives."
WHY I RECOMMEND READING IT
Pictures! Cute, funny pictures — with animals! They make the expedition through illogic land a laugh out loud page-turner. Along the way you'll meet a mischaracterized toucan, who's fallen victim to a Straw Man attack, an election-losing frog who's opponent used fear-mongering to spread anti-frog feelings, two bickering bears trying to one-up one another by pointing out the other's hypocrisy, and a ton more.
Second, part of doing anything is learning what not to do. From the book's Introduction: "In his book On Writing, Stephen King writes, 'One learns most clearly what not to do by reading a bad prose.' He describes his experience of reading a particularly terrible novel as 'the literary equivalent of a smallpox vaccination.'"
Second, part of doing anything is learning what not to do. From the book's Introduction: "In his book On Writing, Stephen King writes, 'One learns most clearly what not to do by reading a bad prose.' He describes his experience of reading a particularly terrible novel as 'the literary equivalent of a smallpox vaccination.'"
FAVORITE SECTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR
Author Ali Almossawi works as a data visualization designer on Mozilla's Metrics Team in San Francisco. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Wired, The New York Times, and Fast Company. I just pre-ordered his second book, Bad Choices: How Algorithmns Can Help You Think Smarter And Live Happier from Amazon, which ships April 4th, 2017.
Illustrator Alejandro Giraldo is a freelance artist living and working in Medellín, Columbia. He's the co-founder of Velmost clothing line and really really really likes Wes Anderson.
Illustrator Alejandro Giraldo is a freelance artist living and working in Medellín, Columbia. He's the co-founder of Velmost clothing line and really really really likes Wes Anderson.
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