How to convince people they are being fallacious?

"Expose an irrational belief, keep a person rational for a day. Expose irrational thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime."

Every time I try and do this, people just seem to dig their heels in deeper. They seem to hate the fallacies that I present to them by attacking with things like, "You can shove your fallacy theories right up where the sun doesn't shine. Keep your day job instead of spouting off fallacy theories that do not impress anyone, especially me."

I have corrected 1000s of peoples errors in reason with fallacies by name, and to this day I am not aware of one singe person that has listened or accepted it, or changed their fallacious reasoning. In fact, they just fight against it with more fallacies, and they just keep getting more and more angry and ideologically stuck.

Seems we have an epidemic on our hands, as our entire society seems to be based on teaching us to be fallacious thinkers. Too much marketing, advertising, political agenda, propaganda and narcissists out there.

Sometimes I feel like its hopeless and just want to stay away from everyone in society. Because ever since I have learned fallacies, epistemology, philosophy and science I see fallacious and inaccurate people everywhere.

I always go by the somewhat new agey apothegm: "whatever somebody else thinks about me is none of my business".
Likewise, with any argumentative riposte, ad hominem insult, or misological slur these days (the days of illogic, anti-science, religious and political fanaticism, and internet thuggery) I adhere to the concept:

theconversation.com/no-yo. . . via @ConversationEDU " target=_blank>NO, You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.” theconversation.com/no-yo. . . via @ConversationEDU <>

I also strongly believe it is a mistake to buy into the notion that you're going to successfully convince or persuade anyone however carefully you
articulate your argument. In fact, studies confirm that informal argument with fanatics only succeeds in making them more, well, fanatical. Remember the meme about arguing with creationists is like playing chess with a pigeon? (They just knock all the pieces down and crap all over the chess board).

The best you can do is plant a grape seed in their cognitive processes and let it go without any further attachment. Sometimes it takes a while for a truth or factoid to settle in. If they're not ready for it, there's nothing you can do but make the best argument you can for your own edification and skill set. No one else's.

Hi Jason,

It is not as bad as it appears :) Sure, there is something called the Backfire Effect , which is something that some people do in some circumstances when then are presented with evidence that contradicts their firmly-held beliefs. This isn't as ubiquitous as it is made out to be. People may appear to not accept a fact but they often are starting to realize their errors and just trying to save face. In other words, the long-term effects of being presented with reasonable arguments does generally work.

The best way to show someone that something is fallacious is through analogy with ideology removed or used to your advantage. A simple example is what is been dubbed "the outsider's test of faith. Say a Christian says that we should trust faith, and that faith is a reliable method to know things. We then ask if a radical Muslim's faith that killing infidels will get them 72 virgins in paradise should be accepted as a truth, since, according to them, faith is a reliable method to knowledge. We can use this strategies with fallacies by presenting the other person with an example of the same fallacy that they are committing in a different context (ideally, using an opposing ideology). This will cause serious cognitive dissonance and this is what helps people think better over time. Sometimes, we just need to be more patient than we would like.

Dr. Bo has a good point about the backfire effect. Here's one article:

https://fbaum.unc.edu/teaching/articles/PolBehavior-2010-Nyhan.pdf

A basic principle of persuasion is that people tend to change their attitudes and beliefs very slowly. It's generally a tactical mistake to try to get people to make a major change in ideology of belief systems, because people tend to resist this.

I think that logic and reasoning are very important – they have been the basis of my career – but people often make decisions emotionally, not rationally. Good luck with that.