Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
If you’re on episode 171 of this podcast, you’re clearly enjoying learning about Logical Fallacies & good thinking! And I’m so glad you’re here - we need a generation of good thinkers in society today!
Did you know I have a membership called Crazy Thinkers where I teach the SKILLS of good thinking? Here’s the deal: most logic courses out there that you’ll pay for spend most of their time teaching you the fallacies, but I give all that to you for free in this podcast, and you can go back and review it over & over whenever you want to.
But just learning the fallacies doesn’t mean you have great thinking skills. It means you know what the fallacies are, and that’s a great start!
But if you want to actually learn the SKILLS of good thinking and give those skills to your kids, I invite you to check out Crazy Thinkers. What is Crazy Thinkers? It’s something I started to do two key things:
One, learn the skills of good thinking that will help you actually use what you’re learning here on the podcast. And yes, there are specific skills you can learn to use and I teach them to you in Brain Cell University, a 10-week course where you’ll I’ll give you very specific, but super simple tools that you can use to think well about anything.
The second key thing Crazy Thinkers is designed to do is to practice those skills using real life stuff, which I give you every month in Brain Gym.
I’ve been working on building this resource out for several months now and doors will be opening again soon. If you want to get on the waitlist, just go to filteritthroughabraincell.com/crazy and sign up to be the first to hear when the doors open.
Just like I do on this podcast, I keep it super simple, super practical with no fluff or time wasters.
Alright then, let’s start off today’s episode by reviewing a fallacy we covered earlier this season, Card Stacking.
Card Stacking is actually a propaganda technique where certain information is either selectively shared or omitted in order to create a biased view of a topic.
People use this technique to make the best possible case for their side and the worst possible case for the opposing side by carefully only using the facts that support their side of the argument while trying to get the audience to accept those facts as a conclusion. They are stacking the cards in their favor. This term comes from skilled & crafty card players who know how to stack a deck of cards in their favor even as they’re shuffling the cards. And yes, it’s basically the same thing as Cherry Picking.
Question to ask yourself: “Are the facts being distorted or omitted? Can I find any other arguments to either support or refute these assertions?”
If you want to review or hear more about this fallacy, go back & check out Episode 104.
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Alright, let’s dive into today’s new fallacy, the Fake Precision Fallacy. The Fake Precision Fallacy happens when someone presents numbers or stats in a way that is unnecessarily exact. It gives an impression of accuracy and certainty that can’t be backed up by real research. They'll use specific numbers or decimal places to make it seem like there’s a level of accuracy that actually can’t be reasonably supported.
Imagine you have a friend who tells you something like, "I can guess your height with 100% accuracy, down to the millimeter!" That sounds really impressive, right? Ok, is that really true? Can they really guess it down to the millimeter?
Or here’s another example: "Studies have shown that 78.67% of people prefer a particular brand of soda." Ok really? What’s the point of using such an exact percentage when you’re talking about people who prefer a certain brand of soda? Are they using all those percentages to try to make it seem more impressive than it is?
Or how about this example: “This castle is 802 years old.” How do you know that? “Because the tour guide told me it was 800 years old and that was 2 years ago.”
The problem behind the Fake Precision Fallacy is that when people use Fake Precision, they're trying to make their information sound more accurate and trustworthy than it really is. They might give you a specific number with lots of decimal places, making it seem like they know things down to the tiniest detail. But often, they don't actually have enough evidence or data to support that level of precision.
Here’s another way this fallacy could happen, and I’m going to give you this example from two different perspectives. An Evolutionist says, “The 6.724 billion years old.” To which the Creationist responds, “No, the earth is 6,463 years and 2.5 months old” they would both be committing the same fallacy. In both instances, are they really able to prove what they’re saying with exact accuracy? No.
Question to ask yourself: “Do you really have data to back that number up?” *repeat*
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
