As astute readers will recall, in MTG's somewhat comical thread about "logic" and "critical thinking" in relation to the JFKA, Professor Payette noted at least two logical fallacies in MTG's original post: the
ad populum (appeal to popularity) fallacy and the appeal to authority fallacy. These two are the lifeblood of MTG's thinking. This was not an inspiring start when your thread has "logic" and "critical thinking" in its very title.
Today we highlight the third leg of MTG's fallacious thinking.
Astute readers, and even complete dolts, cannot fail to notice how often -
i.e., constantly - MTG employs absolutist terms such as "unsolvable," "undeniable" and "impossible." Scarcely a thread title or post of MTG's does not employ such absolutist terminology, which you "cannot refute."
This is called the absolutist language fallacy or sometimes the "black-and-white thinking" fallacy. When you add it into the mix with the appeal to popularity fallacy and appeal to authority fallacy, MTG's posts and indeed his thinking are pretty much One Big Fallacy.
The interesting part is that the psychological and sociological studies that Professor Payette often references have identified absolutist thinking and the use of absolutist language as among the hallmarks of the conspiracy-prone mindset:
"Study 2 introduced the concept of Socio-Cognitive Polarization (SCP) as a potential mediating factor. SCP encompasses xenophobia, absolutism, and conservatism—factors that have been increasingly recognized as relevant to the formation and maintenance of conspiracy beliefs (e.g., van Prooijen & van Vugt, 2018; Zmigrod et al., 2019)." Carola Salvi, Marta K. Mielicki, Alice Cancer, Paola Iannello, Tim George; "Exploring Meta-Reasoning Propositional Confidence in Conspiratorial Beliefs and Socio-Cognitive Polarization."
Open Mind 2025; 9 1339–1362. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi.a.20“Specifically, it has been shown that individuals with depression more frequently use a variety of terms that describe negative emotions, first-person pronouns (FPPs), common symptoms, and linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC) categories deemed to correspond to ‘absolutist’ language.” The researchers then looked for what Cognitive Behavioural Therapists would label as “cognitive distortions’ in their speech in naturalistic conversations. Here they identified the overriding power of emotional reasoning (believing something is true because it feels true rather than because it logically makes sense)." Richard Bolstad, "Psychotherapy as Recovery from Conspiracy Theories,"
Transformations 2022,
https://transformations.org.nz/conspiracy-therapy/Keep this triad in mind as you giggle, titter, chortle and guffaw your way through MTG's work:
- Appeal to popularity
- Appeal to authority
- Absolutist language