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Team Member:

Astha Prajapati (100961993)

Hemanshi Radadiya (100972847)

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Definition:

This happens when emotions like fear or hope are used to make something seem true even if there’s no solid proof.

Connection:

Appealing to emotions can cloud our ability to use critical thinking. Instead of asking for facts or using the scientific method people may rely on anecdotes that sound touching. Without realizing it we ignore how important it is to evaluate the evidence and define the claim clearly. This kind of emotional pull can also lead to group-think where we just follow what others feelings instead of thinking it through. A reputable source would focus on real data not just feelings.

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Appeal to Emotion: Explanation and Examples

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Definitions of Appeal to Emotion An appeal to emotion is when someone tries to get you to agree with them by making you feel a certain way, rather than using real reasons or evidence. It’s like when a friend tells you a sad story about their pet to get you to agree to watch it over the weekend, even though you may not have the time. Another way to understand appeal to emotion is to think of it as a trick where someone tries to tap into our feelings to get us to make a choice or hold a belief. Imagine someone telling you that everyone who cares about the environment uses a special kind of toothpaste, hoping that your care for the environment will make you want to buy that toothpaste, even if it’s not any better for the environment than other kinds. Examples of the Appeal to Emotion Fallacy Example in Media Beer commercials that show cool and happy-looking people are using appeal to emotion. They make you feel like if you drink that beer, you could be as happy or as cool as them. But the commercial isn’t giving real reasons why that beer might be better or healthier, it’s just trying to make you want that feeling of being cool or attractive. Why is this an example?: It’s an appeal to emotion because it plays on your desires to fit in and be well-liked, rather than giving you facts about the beer itself. Example in Charity Advertising The ASPCA commercials with sad music and images are designed to make you feel pity and sadness. They want those feelings to make you donate money. The commercials don’t give you detailed reasons about how the ASPCA uses donations or its effectiveness, they just make you feel sorry for the animals and hope that feeling will cause you to donate. Why is this an example?: It’s an appeal to emotion because it uses sadness to persuade you to donate rather than information about the cause or how your donation helps. How to Avoid an Appeal to Emotion Fallacy Most of us use our feelings to make choices, which can be fine in many personal situations. But when it comes to buying things or deciding who to vote for, our emotions can be used against us. Companies and politicians may try to manipulate our feelings to benefit themselves. To resist this, always ask yourself why you are making a decision – is it because of strong facts or just strong feelings? Try to base your choices on evidence and logic, and you’ll make wiser decisions. Related Topics Logical Fallacies: These are errors in reasoning that weaken arguments. They distract from the truth and may make bad ideas seem good if people aren’t careful. Critical Thinking: This is when you think carefully about something, analyzing all parts of it before making a judgment. It helps you not to be tricked by appeals to emotion. Rhetorical Strategies: These are ways people use language to persuade others. Appeals to emotion are one kind of rhetorical strategy, but there are many others that try to persuade with logic and evidence. Argumentation: The process of discussing, creating, and examining arguments. Knowing about appeals to emotion helps you understand and create stronger arguments. Conclusion In conclusion, an appeal to emotion is when someone tries to get us to agree with them by making us feel certain emotions instead of giving us solid reasons. We see this in ads and can even hear it from friends or politicians. It’s important to recognize when our feelings might be clouding our judgment so that we can make decisions that are really best for us. This means asking yourself why you feel the way you do and looking for the facts before you act. By doing so, we become better at spotting these appeals to emotion and protecting ourselves from being influenced by them without good reason.

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Definition:

Many pseudoscience claims are tied to selling products or services and making money is more important than truth.

Connection:

These types of claims usually lack demonstrable validity there’s no proof they work. When we do not evaluate the source it is easy to get fooled especially if we do not recognize bias. People may be drawn in because they haven’t practiced skepticism or used the critical thinking process. It is a good reminder to ask who’s benefiting from this claim financially.

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Ranking and Reviews of the Best Detox Teas

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Discover how to use detox tea for weight loss today to cleanse your body and flatten your stomach. We test, rank and review all of the best detox teas.

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Definition:

Pseudoscientific ideas often stay the same over time and do not change when new evidence appears

Connection:

Real science moves forward and updates based on new findings. But pseudoscience ignores that part of the scientific method. Believers may skip evaluating evidence or draw the same conclusion no matter what discovered. This shows a distorted view of truth where they hold on to outdated ideas. Using critical thinking helps us see when something just refuses to evolve.

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The word “pseudo”
means fake, and the surest way to spot a fake is to
know as much as possible about the real thing, in this case science
itself. When we speak of knowing science
we do not mean simply knowing scientific facts (e.g., the distance from
earth to sun; the age of the earth; the distinction between mammal and
reptile, etc.) We mean that one must clearly understand the nature of
science
itself— the criteria of valid evidence, the design of meaningful
experiments,
the weighing of possibilities, the testing of hypotheses, the
establishment of useful theories, the many aspects of the methods of
science
which make it possible to draw accurate, reliable, meaningful
conclusions about the phenomena of the physical universe.

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Definition:

Some people think somethings must work just because it's been around for a long time.

Connection:

We often forget to evaluate the source when we hear phrases like used for centuries. But being old does not mean it is true. Believing this way skip over critical thinking and ignores steps like summary and testing ideas using the scientific method. It’s also a sign of lack of practice with thinking things through.

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Post 2# Confusion of Correlation With Causation

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Post 2# Confusion of Correlation With Causation

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Definition:

This is when people think two thing that happen at same time are connect even tho they are not.

Connection:

Just because A and B happen together does not mean A caused B. Good critical thinking involves taking a step back to define the claim and evaluate evidence. People often jump to the wrong conclusion because they forget to ask Is this just coincidence? practicing skepticism helps stop that.

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Definition:

Sometimes people believe things just because it matches what they already believe politically or personally.

Connection:

This is a huge sign of recognize bias. Instead of looking at the facts people filter out anything that does not match their views. That is how they build a distorted view of truth. A reputable source should challenge beliefs not just support them. When we skip the steps in the critical thinking process like evaluating the source we fall into this trap. It also makes us reject anything that might debunk our opinion.

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Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems* | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core

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Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems* - Volume 63 Issue 2

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Definition:

This is when people claim there is some invisible energy that can heal or affect things but they do not have proof.

Connection:

These claims sound cool but have no demonstrable validity. If people do not evaluate evidence they may believe anything that feels magical. This can also tie into agenticity where people think forces are behind everything. Without the scientific method it is impossible to show that these energies are real and it leads to confusion due to lack of practice in critical thinking.

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Healing Crystals was founded in 2003 with the goal of providing affordable and quality crystals worldwide. Our Mission is to "Promote Education and the Use of Crystals to Support Healing". We sort, pick and pack all of our crystals with great care. We also offer a special Prayer to each crystal and include it with every order.

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Definition:

Using big words and long explanations to make something sound smart hoping no one questions it.

Connection:

This trick works because people may not understand the words and assume it is correct. That’s why critical thinking is so important. It helps us recognize bias and not fall into group-think just because others accept it. This also blocks us from seeing a real summary or evaluating the source properly. The goal is to confuse people not to explain them.

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Phil Smolenski, Proof by Verbosity - PhilPapers

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This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called ′ proof by verbosity (PVB)’. PVB is a favorite device among conspiracy theorists who utilize it to obfuscate…

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Definition:

This is when we assume that things happen because someone or something is behind it even if it is not true.

Connection:

We all like to find patterns or someone to blame but this often skips important steps like defining the claim or evaluating evidence. When we believe everything happens for a reason it blocks skepticism and keeps us from reaching a logical conclusion.

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Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World

A Skeptic's take on souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens and other invisible powers that be

By Michael Shermer

Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspirators, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention are believed to haunt our world and control our lives. Why?

The answer has two parts, starting with the concept of "patternicity," which I defined in my December 2008 column as the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. Consider the face on Mars, the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, satanic messages in rock music. Of course, some patterns are real. Finding predictive patterns
in changing weather, fruiting trees, migrating prey animals and hungry predators was central to the survival of Paleolithic hominids.

The problem is that we did not evolve a baloney-detection device in our brains to discriminate between true and false patterns. So we make two types of errors: a type I error, or false positive, is believing a pattern is real when it is not; a type II error, or false negative, is not believing a pattern is real when it is. If you believe that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is just the wind (a type I error), you are more likely to survive than if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator (a type II error). Because the cost of making a type I error is less than the cost of making a type II error and because there is no time for careful deliberation between patternicities in the split-second world of predator-prey interactions, natural selection would have favored those animals most likely to assume that all patterns are real.

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But we do something other animals do not do. As large-brained hominids with a developed cortex and a theory of mind-the capacity to be aware of such mental states as desires and intentions in both ourselves and others-we infer agency behind the patterns we observe in a practice I call "agenticity": the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents. We believe that these intentional agents control the world, sometimes invisibly from the top down (as opposed to bottom-up causal randomness). Together patternicity and agenticity form the cognitive basis of shamanism, paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, and all modes of Old and New Age spiritualisms.

Agenticity carries us far beyond the spirit world. The Intelligent Designer is said to be an invisible agent who created life from the top down. Aliens are often portrayed as powerful beings coming down from on high to warn us of our impending self-destruction. Conspiracy theories predictably include hidden agents at work behind the scenes, puppet masters pulling political and economic strings as we dance to the tune of the Bilderbergers, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers or the Illuminati. Even the belief that government can impose top-down measures to rescue the economy is a form of agenticity, with President Barack Obama being touted as "the one" with almost messianic powers who will save us.

There is now substantial evidence from cognitive neuroscience that humans readily find patterns and impart agency to them, well documented in the new book SuperSense (HarperOne, 2009) by University of Bristol psychologist Bruce Hood. Examples: children believe that the sun can think and follows them around; because of such beliefs, they often add smiley faces on sketched suns. Adults typically refuse to wear a mass murderer's sweater, believing that "evil" is a supernatural force that imparts its negative agency to the wearer (and, alternatively, that donning Mr. Rogers's cardigan will make you a better person). A third of transplant patients believe that the donor's personality is transplanted with the organ. Genital-shaped foods (bananas, oysters) are often believed to enhance sexual potency. Subjects watching geometric shapes with eye spots interacting on a computer screen conclude that they represent agents with moral intentions.

"Many highly educated and intelligent individuals experience a powerful sense that there are patterns, forces, energies and entities operating in the world," Hood explains. "More important, such experiences are not substantiated by a body of reliable evidence, which is why they are supernatural and unscientific. The inclination or sense that they may be real is our supersense."

We are natural-born supernaturalists.
Note: This article was originally published with the title, "Agenticity".

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Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World

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A Skeptic's take on souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens and other invisible powers that be

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Definition:

People love complex answer even when the real answer is complex.

Connection:

This makes us skip the steps in the critical thinking process like evaluate the source or ask deeper questions. It can lead to a wrong conclusion especially if we are not practicing skepticism. This is a barrier to critical thinking specially when we want something easy instead of something true.

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So, what is it? Are we leaning towards the silver bullet or the complicated solutions? And how does that play out in sales and marketing?

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Definition:

Just because something has not been explained yet people use that as proof for their belief.

Connection:

The truth is science does not always have every answer right away. But saying we do not know yet is different from saying it must be aliens. If we do not use the scientific method or evaluate the evidence we risk believing in nonsense. People often rely on anecdotes or skip the step where we ask Is this a reputable source?

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The argument from ignorance (or argumentum ad ignorantiam and negative proof) is a logical fallacy that claims the truth of a premise is based on the fact that it has not (yet) been proven false or that a premise is false because it has not (yet) been proven true. This is often phrased as “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”.

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Definition:

Believing something just because we saw or felt it ourselves even if it is not true.

Connection:

Our senses can fool us specially when we are not practicing skepticism. People might skip evaluating evidence and rely only on what they saw. This leads to a distorted view of truth and shows lack of practice with critical thinking. Just because it felt real does not mean it is real.

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Reality is not what it seems: the science behind why optical illusions mess with our minds

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Beau Lotto talks about the science of perception, with extracts from his upcoming book Deviate: the Science of Seeing Differently