Week 13 - Post 2: Mission Critical Website

Upon looking at the Mission Critical Website, I was initially a bit confused. But, after further reading, I realized that this website offers a great review for many forms of arguments and reasoning that I have already learned in the class. For instance, I am very familiar with vague and ambiguous sentences, inference indicators, and many of the fallacies at the bottom of the page. While we just went over inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and casual argument, the exercises on this page allowed me to practice with these concepts to gain a greater understanding of them. As I read over the fallacies, I realized that I was not familiar with the false equity fallacy or the false compromise fallacy. I learned that false equity occurs when someone hopes to make a good point just by covering both sides of the argument. It also seems that someone would use this form of argument when they lack the solid evidence they need to make one argument particularly thorough. I also learned that false compromise is a compromise that is incorrectly reached due to a lack of information and rushed decision-making. I agree with the website’s statement, “If the issues under debate are too complicated or specialized for us to make an informed decision, then we should suspend judgment, rather than create a false compromise.” I feel that knowing these fallacies will help me detect a greater number of weak arguments in the future.