Because I think this needs to be said:

1789009
Yeah, too bad almost no one follows this anymore. What ever happened to civilized, intellectual debate? I miss it. It was fun to sharpen ones mind against another person, and even learn something about a subject, without it devolving into insulting one another.

1789009
Missing final piece to make this complete...

1789016 You can still do that. Calm, reasoned debate is no more uncommon now than it ever was. It's just that being the emotional, social creatures we are, we sometimes let our emotions do the talking instead of our reason.

Excellent excellent post, absolutely critical. There are some debate forums where if you do not follow this, you get banned. Obviously this isn't one of them, but if you avoid these fallacies you will definitely have a better time where debates are concerned. I am going to sticky this. Good job.

1789009
Your list is incomplete. It's just a bunch of rules saying what not to do (and even then there are more; don't assume correlation = causation, for one). What about all the things one should do in a debate?

1789023 Note that the thread is stickied. If you or anyone else wants to add to the body of advice, please by all means do so.

1789023 I'll post it as soon as I find a picture with that list. I just found this this morning, I have to leave for school soon, and I wanted to post it before I lost my train of thought.

1789020
Any time I try and debate issues it almost always devolves to the other person attacking me, no matter what side of the issue I'm on. This site is one of the few where that rarely happens. It mostly happens in face-to-face conversations for me. Ex: When I was in high school, I was debating a teacher on a political issue, and she outright attacked me as a person, and didn't even address the point I had made. While I expect that from immature students, didn't expect that from a teacher.

1789025
Who says you need a picture? I'll start with a couple terms.

- An argument is valid if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
- An argument is sound if it is both valid and has true premises.

You should aim to always make sound arguments.

I know I just knocked on pictures, but here's one anyway

Edit: 1789024
I know, I was just being deliberately obtuse for fun

1789033 I know a teacher like that, and her biases often get on the way of her teaching. It bothers me to no end.

1789035 You're right, I don't need a picture. I just thought the message would be easier to convey with it than without it.

1789038 Well... a picture is worth a thousand words, but when your picture is a picture of words...

Sorry, I'm just messing with you. Like I said, this got stickied because it is REALLY good information, and few people know how to debate properly, so this can only help improve the forum.

1789038
The best part of the story, is that our debates became well known in the school, and there was one time that I had the teacher backed into a corner (metaphorically speaking), and the classroom laughed at her for lashing out at me. I ignored her attack, turned and started chewing the class out for being rude and insubordinate. There is nothing wrong about being wrong in a debate. It's how we learn. While the teacher may not always be right, she does have the authority of a teacher, and should have the amount of respect that any authority figure deserves given to her.

Two things I realized that were not on 1789035's picture was the idea of agreeing to disagree and faith. You can have a logical debate with faith as a component, but if you are not able to convince either side, be willing to part as friends that have agreed to disagree.

1789009 Seen them before and whole heartedly agree. I try my best to uphold them though I will admit I've overstepped the bounds at least once that I can remember, probably a few more times thinking about it.

The issue is sooner or later someone tends to brake them and then things become more difficult because some one else will then brake them to counter that person and it will spiral out of control in some description of a flame war.

This thread needs more principle of charity.

This species needs more principle of charity.

1789146 I won't argue with that, and the Principle of Charity is indeed a fine thing to apply, but I would point out that the purpose of this thread is to avoid logical fallacies in your OWN arguments, not necessarily how to spot them when others use them. By all means, apply the Principle of Charity to other individuals' arguments, but you hardly need to take the most rational view of your own arguments, since one can assume that since said arguments are from your own viewpoint, you will have already assumed they are rational.

If this is not true, and you are making arguments that you know aren't rational and contain fallacies, you are either being a troll, or you're being dishonest, because in a true debate, there is no need to resort to logical fallacies if your argument holds water. Logical fallacies are a tactic that individuals arguing an untenable position use to muddy the issue or "score points".

1789009 Seems legit.

Rational debate died the day 4chan and the Youtube comments section were invented.

1789016

What ever happened to civilized, intellectual debate?

Your avatar, more or less.

1790397
Well, if you gotta go out, a satchel charge full of C4 is a hell of a way to go.

1789020 Glad you told him that.

1789017 There is no such thing as over-thinking. Some people don't think enough

Just another thought:
- Don't be that guy (or girl) who always has to get the last word in.

Edit:
- Define your terms to eliminate confusion.