There's a difference between a logically sound debate with rational Eisenhower conservatives and facepalming the shit out of yourself every six seconds to Yahoo-level assholery that's laced with minimum one, usually 3 to 5, logical fallacies per post.
Example: Nixons_Ghost. What the flibbity-fuck do I do with that? You can toss novel after novel (which is pretty much what that dickface wants, for you to give his praxeological horseshit merit) . . . . what's it going to do except waste my time? The guy's an Austrian schooler (PFFFFFFFFFFFFT) who insists supply-side economics never happened, fascism is a LEFT-wing movement and privatizing everything not nailed down would work infinitely better than anything government has ever done. Just, NO.
You know . . . . sometimes stupid is just stupid.
The balance fallacy, also known as false balance,[2] occurs when two sides of an argument are assumed to have equal value regardless of their respective merits. This is primarily a problem in the media, where confrontational or adversarial journalism might present more of a controversy than actually exists. It is effectively the opposite of bias - whereas bias over-emphasises one view to the detriment of another legitimate, well-supported view to give the impression of one being favoured, false balance over-emphasises a minority or unsupported view to the detriment of a well-supported view to give the impression that neither is favoured.
The application of the fallacy leads to two major problems:
* Firstly, it can lead to equal exposure to arguments despite their lack of merits or relevance. This may arise due to a misunderstanding of probability; that two outcomes or positions lead to a probability of 50:50 for each, and so both deserve an equal chance to put themselves forward. In fact, probability is not necessarily equal.
* Secondly, it can lead to the belief that the truth must lie somewhere in-between the two opposing sides, when it's very much possible that one side is completely wrong. In this context the fallacy is sometimes known as the argument to moderation or argumentum ad temperantiam, and may be the result of attempts to reach a compromise between mutually exclusive positions, as often found in political debate where there is not necessarily an objective "truth," as such, to be found behind a political policy.
Avoiding the balance fallacy requires objective criteria for assessing arguments, and cannot rely on just giving all arguments equal exposure for the sake of fairness. Arguments must be assessed using criteria such as formal logic, scholarly consensus and empirical evidence to see if a legitimate controversy exists between two viewpoints. Avoiding the balance fallacy does not entitle someone to the freedom to reject any and all criticism because they claim to have sufficiently "proven" their position, however.
Wikipedia avoids the balance fallacy (to some degree) with its policy of not giving undue weight[4] to minority viewpoints or fringe theories[5] in its articles. RationalWiki, on the other hand, avoids the balance fallacy by calling fringe theories bullshit from start to finish.
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