2012-12-05 03:34
1 Comment
I came across this definition at Wikipedia just now. It's a good read!
"Name calling is a cognitive bias and a technique to promote propaganda. Propagandists use the name-calling technique to incite fears and arouse prejudices in their hearers in the intent that the bad names will cause hearers to construct a negative opinion about a group or set of beliefs or ideas that the propagandist would wish hearers to denounce.
The method is intended to provoke conclusions about a matter apart from impartial examinations of facts. Name-calling is thus a substitute for rational, fact-based arguments against an idea or belief, based upon its own merits, and becomes an argumentum ad hominem."
benthor
Here is the website I told you about yesterday. It contains a lot of resources on cognitive biases and how to overcome then. Be warned that you can literally spend weeks on reading through all the material that has been posted there. (Although you could argue that you couldn't invest your time any better than that, see http://lesswrong.com/lw/33j/yes_a_blog/)
2013-01-18 13:18