Recently AT reminded us of FLICC, a taxonomy of contrarian tactics introduced in 2007 by MarkH. His bro’s Deck still shines. As a first post of a science blog, it does the job. As a permanent classifier, it deserves some love. I propose my own model – FAIL. First, some light criticism. Mark lists these items: conspiracy, selectivity (cherry-picking), fake experts, impossible expectations (also known as moving goalposts), and general fallacies of logic. Conspiracy does not resemble a tactic. Moving the goalposts doesn’t imply an unrealistic demand, it only switches criteria in a line of argument {1}. Finally, the last rubric could comprise others. Thus it needs specificity and homogeneity.
That can be accomplished by organizing the tactics along strategies, or as Mark himself observes, as means to frustrate legitimate discussion. How to break exchanges? A classic answer stipulates that communication relies on cooperation. Accordingly, four principles guide our contributions: we try to make them informative, truthful, relevant, and perspicuous. Generalizing or rebranding, we get FAIL:

(Click on the image to zoom in)
In this model, an exchange FAILs when factuality, authenticity, importance or lucidity breaks down. All well and good, now comes the fun part – sorting tactics. To that end I cataloged tricks and determined how they succeed in FAILing. See the tree diagram above. Three characteristics underlie each principle. Connected to them, leaves (the white bubbles) exemplify frustrating tricks {2}. Most terms are commonplace. Before explaining the others, let’s put the model into words:
A contribution is factual with true support, a reality-based conclusion, and under reliable judgment. It is authentic if its author is truthful, committed to the position advanced, and habilitated to propound it. It has import if it addresses the question being discussed, implies a functional call to action, and abides by social conventions. It is lucid if the position is correctly specified (think WYSIWYG), to the point, and not self-defeating. This interprets the cooperative part, shown in colored bubbles. The leaves illustrate obstructive tactics. I offer pairs not for completeness but for contrast. Let’s explain the first row.
Mind probes are as easy to presume as hard to verify; the target of tilting at windmills fails to exist or apply; two sorts of unsoundness. Card stacking is one-sided, the BS Artist says stuff: two clashing ways to lack authenticity. The Peddler exploits cues to hook a recurrent pet topic whatever the exchange, whereas squirreling is the art of deflecting in any other direction than the actual topic. Parsomatics refers to overanalysing words so much that nothing of what is said makes sense anymore; the Soapboxer epilogues and sloganeers with vague platitudes. Two conflicting tactics that drown the exchange in gibberish.
You surely know about armwaving, punting, backpedaling, astroturf, charlatanism, double binds, playing the ref, galloping, soapboxing, racehorsing, and moving the goalposts. Incredibilism has been covered years ago at MT’s, peddling here at AT’s, and Eli introduced parsomatics in his aptly named Law Blogging. Four neologisms beg for a short description. Super Leap denotes any inferential overextension (H/T AlbertC). Void Operation does the exact opposite: nil, with self-sealing, circular or question-begging arguments. Infinite Replays echoes endless quests for Climateball perfection, seldom worth it. Fist Pumping represents excessive celebration, like in SpeedoScience.
Labels and examples ought to help develop a feel for the game. They do not caution to play Fallacy Man: it often bends acceptability {3}. They rather show how to spot what breaks. An unsound argument fails because it lacks support. Astroturfing fails because it fakes support. A double bind fails because nothing can satisfy the support requested. A double standard fails to support anything consistently.
Climateball players do not need any model to understand this. You already know the drill: say what you mean, mean what you say, keep on topic, and try not to hog the mic. Cool kids express their critical skills by meming the eternal questions: (1) u sure, (2) who dis, (3) why tho, and (4) wut. So you got no excuse. Nevertheless, the exercise allowed me to get a better grasp of the tactics for my Manual.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. FAIL again. FAIL better.
Notes
{1} An expectation can be unreasonable without being impossible to meet it. There are many other dimensions to consider: cost, time, overkill, etc. A point-refuted-a-thousand-times comes to mind.
{2} There is an infinity of rhetorical tricks and more ways to classify them. To capture each one in an exhaustive list would be a fool’s errand. I contend that each breaks at least one of the four axes of FAIL.
{3} Fallacy Man fails to realize that his stance falls to the fallacy fallacy. In fairness, the fallacy fallacy succumbs to the fallacy fallacy fallacy, in turn countered by the fallacy fallacy fallacy fallacy. In short: don’t be the Fallacy Guy.
{4} Here is a simple recipe to recognize a trick. Ask yourself: how does it hinder the ball from moving forward? In a way, armchair contrarians know how to run out the clock.