Argument 1 of 3
Three arguments from everyday life. Decide, then see why.
Car ride. Hana: “I like the new album, but it’s mixed so loud that the vocals get buried under the drums.” Kwame: “Not every album has to be soft acoustic stuff. Some music is supposed to hit hard, and that’s fine.”
It’s a straw man.
Hana complained about the mix, with the vocals buried under the drums, not about loud music. Kwame defends hard-hitting albums against a complaint she never made.
A fair reply
“I love loud records. I just want to hear the singer.”
Concert group chat. Leah: “Some guy named Kyle Booth on the resale site has floor seats for $90 each. Way under face value!” Ana: “Kyle Booth sold fake tickets for the spring tour. The site banned his last account for it. I’m not sending that man $180, and you shouldn’t either.”
The reasoning holds.
Why it holds up
Pointing at someone’s past is only a personal attack when the past is beside the point. A seller caught selling fake tickets is exactly who you shouldn’t trust with money for tickets.
Group chat. Nate: “This season the league added replay review, signed a big new streaming deal and got Okafor back from his knee injury.” Jo: “And TV ratings are up 20%. Replay saved this league. I’ll never complain about a review again.” Nate: “Ha. Give it a week.”
It’s post hoc: after it, so because of it.
Ratings rose in a season with three big changes, and a star’s return or a new streaming deal could easily explain it. Jo credits replay just because it came before the bump.
A fair reply
“Could be replay, but Okafor’s back and the games are on a new platform. How do we know which one did it?”
Coming soon
Steelman is argument training: short practice on arguments that sound like real life, judged line by line. Catch the sneaky jumps, learn how to answer them, and learn when a point is actually fair.
Coming soon to iPhone and Android. Join the waitlist and we’ll email you the day it’s out.
You’re on the list.
We’ll email you the day Steelman is out.
Thanks for offering to test. We’ll write before the beta with how to join.
Every example is written the way someone would actually say it, about sports, music, films, money, school and the issues people really argue about. In Debates, you judge 12 whole conversations line by line.
Calling a fair point a fallacy is a mistake too: a false alarm. In 199 of the 744 questions the reasoning is fine, and every lesson shows when an argument that looks like a fallacy isn’t one.
In Spotter, longer arguments ask you to tap the sentence where the reasoning breaks before you name it. Rounds move from Warm-up to Close calls to Full strength as you improve, and the higher stages ask for names from memory.
Straw man or red herring? Ad hominem or tu quoque? Tell them apart drills close cousins side by side, including mirror pairs: the same reply, fair after one setup and a fallacy after the other.
Knowing the Latin doesn’t help mid-conversation. Every question ends with a fair reply you could actually say, and every lesson shows that reply in use.
74 fallacies in four tiers, from ad hominem to the motte-and-bailey, each checked against sources such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Master one and Straw gets a plate of steel armor.
Studying for the LSAT? 20 LSAT-style flaw questions, every answer explained and linked to the lessons behind it.
Each has its own page: what it is, an example, when it’s not a fallacy, and a question to try.
Free The classic mistakes you hear every day. 17 fallacies.
Free Arguments that fail because of their shape alone. 14 fallacies.
Pro Subtle errors hiding inside reasonable-sounding talk. 26 fallacies.
Pro Debate tactics, statistical traps and the fine print of logic. 17 fallacies.
The first two tiers (31 fallacies), Spotter and Tell them apart for those tiers, 6 debates, the Daily Challenge, a rematch of the day’s misses and 3 LSAT drills. No ads.
Adds Stealth Fallacies and Cross-Examiner, every debate, a Mistake Bank that keeps every miss until you get it right, and all 20 LSAT drills: $3.99 a month, $29.99 a year, or $59.99 once.
I’ve been arguing about religion, philosophy and politics since high school. For years I hit the same wall: someone made an argument that sounded reasonable, I saw exactly where it broke, explained it, and watched the explanation bounce off. Nobody learns logic in the middle of defending something they care about.
What I had wasn’t a talent. It was a reflex, built by years of practice. Steelman is that practice, on arguments that sound like real life, and it counts false alarms too, because shouting “fallacy!” at everything isn’t clear thinking either.
Steelman