How We Choose

We’ve selected the top most engaging news articles on Twitter from Australian news media. The selection criteria are based on logical fallacies statistics found in the retweets and comments.

Critical Concentration

By The Age: “Every few months, we are forced to listen to an old white famous man take to a public platform to claim that ‘cancel culture’ and the ‘PC Police’ are ruining…”

The response contains approximately 49% of comments that look a lot like fallacious reasoning of any type our detector can recognise. Spread between reasoning type groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Discussion about cancel culture, old events, and of course, racism in wide sense.

Examples of logical fallacies from responses:

Racist scum

Hey Hey it’s Saturday was a stupid show for stupid people.

When will leftists crawl back into their pathetic whiney fear filled cave for good. It’s disgusting.

Triggering News

Inspiring Ad Hominem and Name Calling.

In this reference to the person, name-calling, and identity politics trigger group during last week, the most prominent tweet was by ABC News:

“Children in US encouraged to burn face masks… "

The response contains approximately 27% of comments that look a lot like Ad Hominem Attacks. The spread controversial arguments between logical fallacy groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

On the wave of covid some governments are imposing wearing mask orders with intention to reduce the desease spread. In the state of Idaho in protest against these measures people were burning face masks.

Examples of Argumentum ad Hominem and Argumentum ad Personam from the comments

I guess you cannot help stupid,can you?

Poor kids learning from idiots !

Sick ignorant people

Food for Thoughts

In this smart argument category - where comments contain a lot of reasoning that looks really like Appeal to Ignorance, Reduction to Absurd, Conspiracy Theory, False Dichotomy Fallacy, Fallacy of Composition or Fallacy of Division.

Last week, the most worth reading tweet in this group was

“AstraZeneca vaccines yet to arrive in the NT were never ordered, federal government says…”

The response contains approximately 6% of comments that look a lot like logical fallacies of the types listed above. The distribution between this and other groups of reasoning types:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Missed ordering anti-covid vaccines. People are discussing who is responsible.

The example of False Dichotomy from the comments:

Not ordered? Why ordered? Thought it was just being “rolled out’ to places! Or is it only being rolled out to marginal seats & the rest have to put in orders?

Emotional Trigger

Inspiring in comments something that looks really like Appeal to Emotion.

In this Emotional Appeal category last week, the most worth reading tweet was

“Adelaide paedophile pleads for ‘merciful’ sentence over sexual abuse of Cambodian children …”

The response contains approximately 16% of comments that look a lot like emotional appeals. To compare with other groups:

Logical Fallacies Composition

Examples Appeal to Emotions:

Mercy for the lion is cruelty to the lamb.

Team and Status Quo

Inspiring readers for some arguments that look like contain these logical fallacies Appeal to Popularity, Hasty Generalization, Appeal to Tradition, Appeal to Authority or Slippery Slope. In this class last week, the most prominent piece of news was from ABC News:

“Non-academic skills, such as critical and creative thinking, are increasingly considered important in education. But how they are taught and assessment remains largely a mystery…”

The response contains approximately 13% of comments that we would associate with this group. The reasoning types composition:

Logical Fallacies Composition

The article is behind a paywall. But the idea about soft skills are important.

Appeal to Authority example:

It is absolutely amazing how I managed to do a bachelors degree, masters degree and doctorate in philosophy without developing any non-academic skills such as creative and critical thinking.

And Hasty Generalization. Or Wishfull Thinking?

Anyone who has critical thinking skills avoids your sh.tty rag at all costs.

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Other top news: All News Articles reviews with Logical Fallacies examples from comments.