[0x262d]

> While pseudoscience is particularly prone to causal fallacies and cherry-picking of data, the most common fallacy in obscurantist pseudophilosophy is equivocation. This fallacy exploits ambiguities in certain key terms, where plausible but trivial claims lend apparent credibility to interesting but controversial ones. When challenged, the obscurantist will typically retreat to the safe house provided by the trivial interpretation of his claims, only to reoccupy the controversial ground once the critic has left the scene.

I found this to be a very helpful description of a specific kind of sloppy argumentation I have seen a lot of (usually about politics) in the last few years. It seems like it's made worse by anonymous online group arguments - one person will make one trivially true claim, another person will make a farther-reaching, incorrect claim and say it is proven by the first, a third person will defend a critique of any bad claims by just defending the first trivially true one, and bad ideas thrive in the space between all these people.

[leetcrew]

FYI, there is a name for (roughly) this style of argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

useful to know, as you say it describes a lot of arguments people make online and face-to-face unfortunately.

[bondarchuk]

It's typically known as motte-and-bailey.