Tag Archives: logical fallacies

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LSAT in Real Life: The Logical Fallacies of Charles Ramsey

Last week, Charles Ramsey rose to Internet fame with one TV interview following the rescue of three women in Cleveland who had been kidnapped for about a decade. And it was one hell of a TV interview (see below), covering everything from how surprised he was to find kidnapping victims in the house next door to a rather cynical take on race relations in the US — or at least in Cleveland. And as often happens when someone goes from unknown to media darling in so short a time, in the days since he was first on TV we’ve found out some unsavory details from Charles Ramsey’s past.

It turns out that Ramsey was convicted of domestic violence more than 10 years ago. But if we were to try to deny him credit for his recent good deeds on that basis, we’d be committing an ad hominem fallacy, attacking the person rather than the argument.
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May 14, 2013 - 6:44 pm - By Aaron Cohn
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LSAT Flaws I Experienced on My European Vacation

I recently got back from a three-week European vacation, a trip filled with magic and wonderment and standoffish northern Europeans. It’s a land of picturesque fjords, rugged alps, and an abundance of LSAT logical fallacies.

LSAT logical fallacies such as…

Flying on Ryanair – A Composition LSAT Fallacy

Have you ever flown on Ryanair? It’s the Greyhound of the skies, but without the friendly charm. You get a millimeter of legroom, no free food or drinks, and a crew that consists entirely of surly Eastern European teenagers. Ryanair makes United look like Emirates. How do they get away with treating you like human waste? Well, their fares are incredibly cheap; I flew from Dublin to Oslo on Ryanair, an 800-mile trip, for a mere $14. Sounds amazingly inexpensive, right?
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Aug 8, 2012 - 6:00 pm - By Colin Elzie
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Spend Mother’s Day With Some LSAT Logical Fallacies

This Sunday is the holiday known as Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day 2012 is actually the 98th official Mother’s Day, and its origins stretch long before that. It was originally a holiday for mothers who lost sons in the civil war, and was later broadened to honor all mothers. Soon after it was characterized by the rampant commercialism we all know and love today. In fact, Anna Marie Jarvis, the woman responsible for the holiday’s popularity in America, spent the end of her life campaigning against the bastardization of Mother’s Day. Sending a greeting card is just a way of saying you’re too lazy to actually write a letter, she said. Was she right? Probably. At any rate, she died penniless, having spent her inheritance fighting the greeting cards. The greeting cards won, and the wheel in the sky kept on turning. Anyway.

There’s a lot of fallacious reasoning going on with mothers and Mother’s Day.
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May 10, 2012 - 6:06 pm - By Colin Elzie
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Spend the Holiday with Some Presidential LSAT Flaws

It’s Presidents’ Day, which means a day off for the lucky ones among us. Since our business here at Blueprint is the LSAT, it’s also the perfect time to look at some President-related logical fallacies. The official federal holiday is in honor of George Washington’s birthday, but we’ll take a broader look.

Equivocation: Bill Clinton, our 42nd President, famously said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Now that we know many of the details of his affair with one Monica Lewinsky, it would be easy to call this statement a fantastic lie. We could also say that President Clinton was simply doing what an LSAT flaw question answer choice might call equivocating with respect to a key term.
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Feb 20, 2012 - 5:11 pm - By Aaron Cohn
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Down! Set! LSAT Logical Fallacies at the Super Bowl! Hike!

Super Bowl XLVI, also known as “Super Bowl Extra Large Six,” is a mere three days away. You have exactly that much time to fly to Las Vegas and lay down your savings on the Giants, the Patriots, the over, the under, or whether or not Madonna kisses Gisele Bündchen during the halftime show.

By this time next week, the big game will be a thing of the past and the February LSAT will once again engulf your concentration. But there’s no reason we can’t tie the two subjects together.

So throw on your jersey, huddle around, and read these five Super Bowl-themed logical fallacies.

HUT! HUT! HIKE!
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Feb 2, 2012 - 6:44 pm - By Hank
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Tackling Some LSAT Fallacies in the NFL

Watching the NFL can be an annoying pastime for anyone familiar with the LSAT. Commentators, prognosticators and whoever Frank Caliendo is portraying that week can’t help but make fallacious leaps and bounds in their analysis and predictions. Sometimes it’s as complicated as “Team A will beat Team B because Team A beat Team C and Team C beat Team B,” and sometimes it’s as simple as “Team A will beat Team B because Team B stinks.” We as fans are just as guilty of this kind of erroneous logic.

That’s why I thought it would be fun to take a look around the league and apply some of Blueprint’s flaw types — like a Super Bowl of LSAT silliness. So let’s kick it off:

Chatter amongst NFL commentators indicates that the majority of fans believe Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is the best player in the league.
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Nov 15, 2011 - 6:18 pm - By Hank
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The LSAT and Project Runway: A Match Made in Heaven

I’ve admitted it in the past and I’ll say it again.  I, Jodi Triplett, love Project Runway.  Possibly more than brownies.  Certainly more than the caramel apple I consumed at the LA Country Fair, which I found to be woefully inadequate in the treat department.  Get the funnel cake, people.
At any rate, in this stage of your LSAT development, you’ll have noticed a propensity to spot fallacies in many of the ads you see and in the television shows you watch.  For me, this surfaced while watching the latest episodes of my beloved PR.  So for your enjoyment, here are the biggest Project Runway fallacies I’ve spotted that also appear quite frequently on the LSAT.

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Oct 18, 2010 - 2:20 pm - By Jodi Triplett
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