Rationally Speaking #146 - Jesse Richardson on "The pros and cons of making fallacies famous"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2015

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode of Rationally Speaking features Jesse Richardson, a creative director who has been using his advertising background "for good and not for evil," as he puts it -- by building skeptic sites that go viral. Jesse's most famous creation is "Your Logical Fallacy Is," an illustrated poster featuring the names and descriptions of various common fallacies. Julia asks: Aren't many so-called logical fallacies not actually fallacious? Is encouraging people to call out fallacies helping rational discourse overall, or harming it? And is there a trade-off between accuracy and virality?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.4	For more information, please visit us at NYCCEceptics.org.
0:35.6	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense. I'm not going to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:41.5	I'm your host, Julia Galef, and with me today is our guest, Jesse Richardson.
0:46.4	Jesse is an award-winning creative director from Australia.
0:50.4	He's the man behind several very successful campaigns about skeptical thinking and rationality that have gone viral.
0:59.4	Basically, the way he describes his life quest now is that he wants to use his advertising powers for good instead of evil.
1:07.6	Jesse is the man behind what is probably, although correct me if I'm wrong, Jesse, his most
1:13.4	well-known and widely shared campaign called Your Logical Fallacy Is, which is a catchy and
1:22.1	attractively presented catalog of different logical fallacies that's been shared and liked by hundreds of thousands of people
1:29.0	on Facebook. So today, we're going to talk about logical fallacies in general and the role that
1:35.1	they play in discourse and how we as skeptics should be talking about logical fallacies. And also more broadly, this question of how to, how to spread principles of skepticism widely, and what are some techniques for doing that.
1:51.5	So, without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Jesse. It's great to have you.
1:55.3	Thank you, Julie. Lovely to be here.
1:57.2	So maybe to start off, you could just talk about what motivated you.
2:01.3	Let's focus on your logical fallacy is for the moment.
2:05.1	What motivated you to start that project?
2:08.0	Well, essentially, I wanted to use kind of my design and communication skills for good
2:12.4	and stood of evil, as you mentioned, and to popularize critical thinking and make it more accessible. And I focused on
2:20.1	felices as a kind of proof of concept for that line of thinking, specifically because there's
2:25.2	something that I think everyone intuitively gets, even if they're not academic. I mean, kids kind of
2:32.0	get that idea that something's not right about the logic of something,
	...

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