The straw man

I tried to make this book a simple reference for every person who cares enough to think, and for every student who insists on remaining a sincere student of the truth. I gathered in it what was easily collected — enough to meet the need and serve the necessity — of logical fallacies and cognitive biases, revealing the methods of deception used in the reasoning process, and the flaws that accompany them in the thinking process. In accordance with Arthur Schopenhauer's saying: "How wonderful it would be if we could assign a short and clear name to each sophistical trick, and explain it in a way that allows us — whenever one of these tricks is committed — to rebuke the person immediately." I wrote this book because I believe in the necessity of its content, especially in our Arab societies, and in various intellectual debates in general. The world of argument and debate is slippery and deceptive, and humans are complex and fluctuating beings, filled with emotion and subjectivity. This makes the integrity of communication and the effectiveness of reasoning depend, beyond the content, on the nature of the parties involved and their ability to deliver and receive. That is why Plato, in the dialogue of Gorgias, said: "In a debate held in front of an audience of children about food, the confectioner can defeat the doctor; and in a debate before an audience of adults, a politician armed with rhetorical ability and persuasive tricks can defeat any engineer or military officer, even if the topic of debate is their specialization. Stirring the emotions and desires of the audience is more convincing than any appeal to reason." Author: Youssef Samit Bouhayek Number of pages: 279