My Short Stories Illustrating �The Five
Common Thinking Errors�
����������� When I was a child I made a lot of statements based off of Non sequiturs, and I still do, but the most obvious example I can think of comes from when I was a lot younger. In sixth grade a lot of the athletic kids (some might call them �jocks�) had girlfriends. I always looked up to them because I thought they were cool because of what they could do and did do. I thought that in order to fit in with them I would need a girlfriend.
����������� To use a format like your RB pages, Mr. Sciuto, here�s how my thought process went:
Premise: ��������� I think those athletic kids are cool
Premise:���������� They have girlfriends.
Conclusion:������ I need a girlfriend
This conclusion doesn�t follow from the premises I based it on, so it is a Non sequitur.
����������� An example I can think of that illustrates False and Vague Premises thinking errors comes from a time when I was riding in the car with my dad after coming home from seeing the movie �X-Men�. We were stopped at an intersection and my dad turned the radio on to a station I was not familiar with and said �That�s them over there� and pointed out the window. I got kind of excited an asked him �How do you know that?!� thinking that he knew what the car up ahead of us was listening too. It turn�s out he was pointing to that particular radio station�s van not too far ahead, and my dad laughed at me and said I got too into the movie.
����������� This was my False Premise thinking error:
����������� Premise: ��������� Any one I know could be a �mutant� and have super powers.
����������� Premise:���������� My dad knows what station that guys listening to.
����������� Conclusion:������ My dad has some kind of super power.
Both of these premises were based off of false ideas I had in my mind, making the False or Vague Premises.
This comes from http://www.asdfplus.com/Posters/YZ1/XMen.gif
����������� Many nights I struggle with my brother because I am trying to do my homework and he is either being too loud while doing his or just coming in to distract me on purpose. He always brings up the point of why should he stop or why should he get out for me because it�s his room too. Until recently I used to tell him �because you�re too stupid to function� or �because my homework is more important than yours!� Now I realize that this really makes no sense and have become more convincing, but then I didn�t realize that I was making a thinking error, I was using Ad Hominem by attacking my brother rather than his argument.
����������� My thought process went like this:
Premise:���������� David doesn�t think he should get out of the room because it is his room too.
Premise:���������� David is stupid.
Conclusion:������ David�s argument don�t matter
����������� One day in school I was particularly proud about figuring out a hard proof for geometry the previous night that no one else seemed to have gotten. I went up to a kid in my class and sold him �I�m a genius because I got that really hard problem last night� and he asked me �how do you know you got it right if we haven�t had geometry yet?� so I told him �because I�m a genius and genius�s don�t get problems like that wrong.� I had just begged the question, meaning that in proving that I was right, I already assumed that I was right.
����������� When I was eleven I broke a Lego creation of my brothers, and when he first came across it he asked who did it and of course everyone in the room said no. Then I saw his eyes look up to where the item was, which was rather high up, meaning only my mom, my dad, or I could have reached it. Before he could work out exactly who had the motives to do it of us three (me of course) I threw a �red herring,� I interrupted his thought and asked him �remember the time Dad slipped when he was chasing Katie?� He started to laugh, making my ploy successful. A �red herring� is when someone says something beside-the-point (like a funny event) to distract everyone from the real issue at hand.
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