>The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques
I don't know where you're from, but it's part of the Victorian (possibly Australian) curriculum for all year 12 students. And we still ended up with Rupert Murdoch.
I don't know where you're from, but it's part of the Victorian (possibly Australian) curriculum for all year 12 students. And we still ended up with Rupert Murdoch.
We were taught common logical fallacies, and then tested on how well we could spot instances of them in a news article. But I remember also being asked to write persuasive essays, without being taught how to reason in a way that avoided those fallacies.
Every single invocation of an expert is an argument from authority.
Every single invocation of logic like "it is more like nature therefor it is more good" is a naturalistic fallacy.
Do we even need to get to other ones like "appeal to emotion"?
Maybe we should instead recognize that "logic" does not necessarily describe reality (given that there are an infinite number of possible logics based on which axioms you start with), and that being worried about and trying to avoid "logical fallacies" in our reasoning does not help us see reality more closely to how it is.
Naturalistic fallacy really depends on how much you value the natural state of things, but it is usually used to point out that just because it is 'natural' doesn't mean it is good or sensible to do/continue.
Appeal to emotion. Appeals to emotion are often used to incite people without them thinking through. "They killed our people!" sounds a lot more convincing/inciting than, "They had an altercation which unfortunately escalated, leading to the deaths of several people that we knew". Using emotion to obscure or not properly think about how it came to be to that point and what should be done from then on.
I think you're conflating logic (ex: mathematical logic, or far less rigorous careful reasoning) with an overly strict definition of a logical fallacy.
> Maybe we should instead recognize that "logic" does not necessarily describe reality
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but it sounds a dangerous path to go down. People have already discarded facts - I think discarding logic as well would make things even worse.
For example, if during a formal debate you were to threaten to harm your opponent if they didn't agree with you (an "Appeal to Force" fallacy), this wouldn't be an appropriate argument for this context. But in, say, a contract negotiation between a union and a business, the union could threaten to strike if the business doesn't agree to terms, and it can be part of a valid argument. Thus appeals to force (and, as Walton argued, all "informal fallacies") aren't inherently fallacious in all contexts. Rather, the threat of harm was an inappropriate change in context from a formal debate to a negotiation, and it's the change in context which creates these fallacies.
It would later come out that there was exaggerations and embellishments in his reporting (https://insidestory.org.au/the-myth-of-keith-murdochs-gallip...)
In Australia, Gallipolli and the ANZAC mythos became part of our national identity. It is hard to explain to non-Australians the impact of the "Anzac legacy" on our culture it was like Australia's Gettysburg or Waterloo etc. Anzac Day is still celebrated and observed more than 100 years later it is a major patriotic celebration.
Murdoch also tried to use his influence to block the advancement of Sir John Monash (arguably the greatest allied general of WWI and the last person to ever be knighted on the battlefield).
consider (for example) k-12 mathematics pretty much anywhere...
I moved here 7 years ago, and my son has gone through a public elementary school and is currently in the last year of a public middle school. If it was just one year or just one teacher or even just one school (or one district), I could write it off to bad luck. Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that the whole system is abysmal.
The basics are just being taught differently.