Vox

Logic of B & B

I was going through my massive collection of email and found this - from 2002.

Sure, "Learn Logic with Beavis and Butthead!" is a bit dated, but it's funny.

Learn Logic with Beavis and Butthead

A work in progress, where our two friends exemplify logical fallacies, types of causation and other cool stuff. Quotations are from memory, and so may not be entirely accurate, e.g. I may have substituted "buttmunch" for "buttknocker"....

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Circular definition
This is where you include the concept you are defining in the definition of that concept.

Butthead: Shut up, bunghole!
Beavis : What's a bunghole?
Butthead: A bunghole is what you are, bunghole!

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Fallacy of Accident
Assuming that a generalisation will hold in every case.

Butthead: They must be cool, they're from Seattle.

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Converse Fallacy of Accident(?)
Making a generalisation from insufficient evidence.

Storekeeper: Hello, Maximart. We've got a robbery in progress
Police : Are they armed?
Storekeeper: Er...of course they're armed. Aren't all kids armed?

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Equivocation
Equivocation means many things, but is often taken to mean using a word in a different sense to that which was intended. In fact the word "equivocation" is pretty equivocal.

(Beavis, under the influence of a music video, is "dancing" on the sofa.)

Butthead: Get down, Beavis!
Beavis : I am getting down!

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Circular causation
A chicken and egg situation. Not always the result of faulty logic, of course - life is often like that, as Butthead demonstrates here....

Beavis : How come Tom Petty's on TV?
Butthead: Coz he's famous, dumbass.
Beavis : Yeah, but how come he's famous?
Butthead: Coz he's on TV, buttmunch!
Beavis : Yeah, but how come he's on TV?

and so on....

Posted by Vox at January 16, 2006 09:10 PM | TrackBack | humor