Friday, August 06, 2004

Thirty-eight rhetorical tricks, with the methods of overcoming them

From 'Straight and crooked thinking' by Robert H. Thouless, Pan Books, ISBN 0 330 24127 3, copyright 1930, 1953 and 1974.

A marvelous resource.

Review here.

Updated 10/22/2011: The original link has vanished and the domain was acquired. I can't find a summary of the book online, but I found a PDF that can be downloaded from the 1953 edition. A wikipedia article lists some key excerpts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for presenting these pitfalls in a nutshell.
Dispassionate debates in which both speakers and listeners aim to improve their level of understanding without scoring points, have become scarce. Blogging gives one a chance to market opinions that are not contested by ones peers. As laymen we must unveil the rhetorical tricks of experts who disenfrachise us by avoiding our questions.

Marty Carbone said...

Thanks for posting this.

I am involved with writing a report on our (U.S.A.) system of money and banking and have been reading lots of historical information on the subject.

Lots of it is cleverly misleading. Some of the writers are experts at leading the reader astray.

Murray Rothbard is a master at weaving verbal traps.

I hope to become better at spotting charlatans and frauds.

Thanks again.

martycarbone@yahoo.com
website: http://www.alphabeticalist.com
blog: http://moneykaboom.blogspot.com/