Fallacies Summary

This week I am going to summarize about fallacies.  These are arguments that many people use in their essays that are misleading.  These are a very common mistake for writers of argumentitive essays because they think that they can use these different types of fallacies and they think that this is a sufficient argument for their paper when it really is not.  Using fallacies in an essay is wrong because many times the writer is just making a statement about something that has no evidence to back it up or they do not have any grounds to make that statement at all.  There are many different types of fallacies and they all have different names that pertain to the way that they are wrongly used in papers.  The first fallacy that is very common is ad hominem.  This fallacy is when a writer attacks a person of a source instead of attacking their argument or qualifications that make themselves a viable source.  This is commonly used because many people do not know how to discredit a source so instead they come up with some kind of made up stuff that attacks a person personally rather than attack what their background is in the field that they are being used as a source for.  The book talks about how you should look for the argument and not the man.  This is very true because no matter what the person believes in should not matter.  What they write and how knowledgable that they are about the subject should be the keys to evaluate whether or not they are a credible source.  Another common fallacy is ad ignorantiam.  This fallacy is saying something is true just because they have no evidence that is false.  This is common in society today, especially in sports, where if a guy has an amazing season they are accused of using steroids when nobody really has any evidence to back their accusations at all.  The next fallacy is ad misericordiam.  This fallacy is when people try to use pity in order to gain special treatment for themselves.  A great example of this is the no late grade policy in this class.  If the internet is down right at the deadline nobody is going to feel sorry for that person and give them extra time because they should have been prepared to turn the assignment in ahead of the deadline just in case that problem arises.  Ad populum is the next fallacy and it is when the writer tries to make somebody do what they want by saying that everyone is doing it. This should not be used because even if everybody is doing something, that does not make it right at all.  Affirming the consequent is the next one and that is when a person says if something is happening then it is caused by something else.  This is a common mistake because just because two events happen together does not mean they happened because of each other.  Begging the question is when the writer uses their conclusion as a premise.  The book brings up a great example of this by saying that it says in the bible that God exists, and since God wrote the bible this must be true.  There is no basis for this argument at all because the writer assumes that God wrote the bible when really they have no evidence to back this up.  There are plenty of other fallacies that are not as common that I am going to just define so that this will not take all day to read.  Circular argument is very much like conclusion in which you use your conclusion as a premise.  Complex question is asking a question that a person can not really agree or disagree with.  When using denying the antecedent the writer makes a 2 part statement and says since the first part of a statement did not happen then the second part could not have happend either.  Equivocation is when the writer is arguing something and they move to a different meaning of the term during the argument.  False cause is the questionable conclusion for cause and effect. False dilemna is when there is many sides to an argument and it is reduced to just two when this is not necessary at all.  Loaded language is a fallacy that the writer uses to try to manipulate the readers thoughts.  Non sequitur is drawing a conclusion that is not really related to the evidence.  Overgeneralizing is when the writer has almost no examples but tries to generalize a subject anyways.  Overlooking alternatives is when people do not realize that things could have happened for a lot of different reasons instead of the one that they see.  Persuasive definition is making a definition look straightforward but actually making it so the reader interprets it in the writers favor.  Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is assuming causation on the basis of succession in time.  Red herring is introducing an irrelevant subject so that attention is diverted from the main subject.  The last fallacy is straw man and this is an exaggerated opposing view in a paper so the writer has something to easily refute.  It is of great importance that when writing an argumentative essay that the writer avoids all of these and they will have made great steps in writing an A paper.

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Artifact 10

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/movies/the-24-hour-movie-and-digital-technology.html?_r=1&emc=eta1  I chose this title "out there in the dark, all alone."  This article is about how many people do not go to the movies anymore and instead use technology to see any movie that they want to see.  Back in the early days of movies they got such high attendence because after the movie was out of theaters there was no way to watch it anymore because they did not have videos or anything else back then that a person could watch the movie on after it was out of theaters.  Since they could only watch it in theaters, if it was a good movie then they would go back to the theaters many times before the movie was gone so they could soak in as much of the movie as they could.  Now with ways to rent movies after they are out of theaters or even stream them instantly onto your phone, computer, or gaming device, people do not see it as a necessity anymore to go to the movies.  It is even possible now to watch movies online while they are still out in theaters.  There are many websites out there that film the movie while it is in theaters and allow you to watch the movie in your own home while everybody else has to pay at the movie theater to watch it.  While this is illegal, many people do it anyways because it saves money and it is almost impossible to get caught because nobody ever comes to people's homes and checks up on what they have been looking up on the internet.  These are all reasons why people do not go to the movies anymore.  Another one is that the prices of a movie ticket keep skyrocketing as the years go by.  Now for a regular ticket at a lot of the movies the prices are reaching almost 10 dollars a ticket.  That is outrageous and many people do not want to pay it because not only is that expensive, but it also cost about 4 dollars a gallon to get gas so by the time you add all of that up it cost a lot of money to go to the movies.  That is another reason why many people went back in the old days because movies cost less than a dollar to get in so it was pretty easy for most people to be able to afford to get in.  With movies being watched on these internet sites that are illegal or a lot of the sites that has the movies right after they are realeased, many of them are free.  This is very convenient for people and most people will wait that extra few monthersthat they have to wait in order for the movie to leave the theaters and to be released on dvd and everything else.  Netflix is a very popular way to watch movies now becuase people can sign up for it on their PS3 or XBox and they can pick from thousands of movies and they will instantly play on their device.  This is a great luxury because it is only like 7 dollars a month so many people can easily afford that when they can watch multiple movies or shows a day if they really want to.  With technology becoming better and better it may come to a point where the movie theaters will not need to be used anymore because many people will want to watch movies right away when they first come out and many movie making companies will probably start making it so that new release movies will stream instantly to whatever device that they want to watch it on.

Artifact 9

Using the internet to share information with people is something that has been going on since internet first started to become big in the 1990's.  It has always been easy to get online and search for a place where you would want to go to and it would usually have a website with the address and the hours that the company would run.  While it may have taken a few minutes back then to access this it was still a convenient tool to use because many people could stay in their homes and still be able to access whatever information they needed to know about a company so they could pick what time they would be able to go.  Now the interent has advanced even further from this and now it is easy to get interactive with many companies online.  For example this article talked about how this art museum had many ways for its visitiors to keep up with all the things that were currently going on in the musuem so that they would allows be ready when something new happened there and they could go as soon as they heard about it.  They gave an example of them showing how a teepee was being built so they would make many people want to come see the finished product.  I think this is good that people can now be interactive with a place that they love to go to so they always can tell what is new and exciting at that place and they will always know when the right time to go is.  A good thing that the head lady of this art musuem does is put good and very important information onto the websites that she has the company on, but she also makes sure that the information only goes to a certain extent so that people still need to come to the musuem to enjoy the art first hand.  This is a good way that people use new ways of marketing to their advantage.  In this era with so many people using the internet, that is probably the best way to market your store or showroom is by putting many things about it online so that many of the fans of that place can get an in depth look on what is going on there.  Not only is this used by this art musuem but it also is becoming commonplace with many sports teams.  For example the cardinals will put many promotions on their website and use propoganda to an extent so that people will want to come out to the stadium and watch the team play.  On the main website they try to only talk about the good features about what is going on with the team and they usually leave out the bad things that they do not think that the fans will want to hear and if they do hear it then they will maybe not want to come watch the team play.  They also have pretty much every player on twitter so that fans can always follow what type of comments that these players have about the game and the season.  This thing that the cardinals do is also a great way of sharing by the internet because it allows fans to see every little thing that is going on with their favorite sports team.

Artifact 8

Health online is becoming a very convenient thing that many people use these days when they have some kind of injury.  It used to be before the internet became so popular that any little injury had to be seen by the doctor because people did not know what to do to fix it.  But now with websites like web md it is very simple to find out what to do when it is just a click away on the internet.  It is also available on many people's phones so they can check what to do as soon as they get sick or they hurt themselves in some way.  I think that these types of sites are very great because it is good that it so simple to look up health problems online because that saves a lot of time and money.  When you have to go to the doctor that usually takes at least an hour out of the persons day.  This hurts because normally it would have to be during their work hours because the doctor is open during the day.  So not only does it cost money to go to the doctor, but it also costs even more money because they lose at least an hours pay on top of what they already have to give to the doctor.  If i ever have any kind of pretty bad injury I will always try to look on Web MD because that would be a lot simpler and so much cheaper than having to go to the doctor.  Another good thing that is springing up for health online are websites that allow people with very bad diseases to get to meet one another and discuss online what they are going through.  Many people that have cancer or deadly diseases like that can meet other people like them and discuss the rigors of the every day grind that they must face in order to survive.  This is good because it keeps people with cancer motivated because they know that they are not the only people in the world suffering with this tough disease and they know that if other people can fight through it then they should be able to also.  This motivation tool is very important and before the internet these people with deadly diseases did not have this to go to in order to meet other people like them.  That would be bad because they would have to suffer by themselves and they would think that they were the only one going through this horrible disease so it would not be near as easy to fight through it and live longer than they expected to.  The last great thing that the internet now provides to combat deadly diseases is games that allow children to fight their disease.  For example there was a disease that has some sort of alien going through and fighting off cancer cells.  This is a very fun way for the children to learn that the cells like that in their body are bad so they need the chemotherapy to act as the alien and fight off the bad cells in their bodies.  They said that wen kids play these games they have a much better chance of being successful with their therapy because they want to do it because they believe that it is going to work.  I think this is a very good way to teach kids how bad the disease is that they are going through so then they know that it needs to be dealt with right away.

Artifact #7

It is great that teachers are starting to use technology to stop cheating.  Cheating has always been a huge problem when it has come to large colleges because teachers are just not able to go around and make sure that every student is taking the test honestly.  This is why it is outstanding that colleges such as Central Florida have implemented a way for students to take tests with having almost no chance of cheating.  These rooms that have cheat proof computers are perfect because it stops almost any chance that students had of trying to cheat.  Not only is it really hard for them to cheat, but even if it is possible they are so scared to try because of the environment that they are in that most of the time they probably will not try to do it.  It would be really great if many of the other colleges in the nation would use this system so that students do not cheat on tests, but with funds often times hard to come by it will probably be a long time before many of the schools move to this system.  The use of stopping plagairism through technology is becoming more widespread though.  In high school I had to always submit my papers to turnitin.com which was a place that looked to see if the paper you wrote had i phrases or anything in common with any other papers that were posted on the internet.  This is a very good tool to stop plagairism and there are many other websites like it that teachers use on the college level.  Plagairism is probably the most common problem today because many students like to take the easy way out and just copy and paste a paper from the internet.  So websites like this are essential so that this humungous problem is prevented as much as possible.  What is important about technology now becoming a big factor in stopping cheating is that the percent of people that admitted to cheating in college has gone down and probably will continue to go down.  With the great advancements in technology for stopping cheating only continuing to get better, I bet as the years go by and these different ways to prevent it become more affordable for schools the percent of people in college that cheat will probably fall below 10 percent.  This would be a huge step for colleges because it has probably been a really long time since the number of people that cheat was this low.  This would help many of the students learn more in the long run because they would actually do what they are supposed to do when they are in college, which is study.  The more the technology gets better and cheating gets stopped, the more that students will learn during their time in college.  This will only teach them how much hard work that they need to do once they get to the real world and this will make them better business people because they will often times be very advanced compared to the other workers that they are working with because they know the value of hard work.

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Artifact 3 blog
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Artifact 4 blog
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Artifact 5 blog
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Artifact 6 blog
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