Spot the Flaw
Name the fallacy, break its spell
A Field Guide to Bad Arguments
A bad argument can feel completely convincing: until you can name the move it's making. The common fallacies are the recurring ways reasoning goes wrong, and learning them is a kind of self-defense for the mind. Once you can say 'that's a straw man' or 'that's a false dilemma,' the trick stops working on you. For each, identify the flaw.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself: and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Where this sits in the course
“Spot the Flaw” is lesson 2 of 3 in Think for Yourself, a course about finish by using philosophy as a skill: steelman, critique, and apply.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.
Think for Yourself is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.
In the app this lesson is followed by 6 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.