>

So next time you ask yourself why are our democracies and institutions so often a total shitfest, here is your answer. Humans are kinda garbage epistemologicaly.
Could have made this just "People are generally gullible and illogical, and smart people know that." >

You said it better than I was gonna >

Yes they do and it is really really bad that folks are swayed by them.
Education... fallacies should be introduced in grade school and by high school the ability to identify them should be automatic. >

Fallacies are just that because they don't make sense. I don't think public policy should be based on things that don't make sense.  
Yes, appealing to emotion is powerful, but it's not necessarily good. >

Yeah I never said it was good, but that it's very persuasive. If you know how to exploit human emotions, you can persuade anybody. >

This has less to do with the fallacy itself, and more to do with the fact that most people will believe what they want to believe, and will take any excuse to do so. With no other means to defend their standpoint, people will resort to flat-out denying the truth without a shred of evidence to back it up. No fallacy needed; just complete, willfull ignorance of reality.
Logical fallacies aren't "powerful"; people are just idiots. >

This only works because people are stupid and think with their emotions instead of their logic. 
Also, TIL I learned that some redditors think politicians are smarter than average people. >

I mean the fact that they are successful proves that there are enough stupid people to make it work. >

True.
As much as I hate to admit it, I see this all the time in my own country. >

Critical thinking isn't taught enough in schools.
Because you are right, and the fact that you are is a massive problem. >

Oh,  it is taught, but people just ignore it and bury it away. 
Reminds me when I wrote a persuasive speech on why logical fallacies are powerful persuasion tools. I failed that one but my friends thought it was brilliant lmao. >

If it was taught in schools then people won't use them.
Otherwise we end up becoming dumber and dumber. >

There's nothing controversial or unpopular in this. You've just observed that most people are stupid and easily lied to. >

I’ve always wondered if politicians use them purposefully. Contrary to popular belief most of these people aren’t stupid. But they know that parroting certain arguments appeals to their base. >

Take Trump for example. People always call him an idiot, but as I got older I realized that he purposefully used these words to appeal. If you were too logical, you would basically end up like Al Gore. I bet if Al Gore was more extreme and appealed to emotions more, he would've won, but he was wayyy too logical.
You will also realize the politicans with the most attention also happen to be the most interesting ones. Liek Jimmy Carter, my god, such a boring guy. Biden is kinda boring too. Buchanan was boring too. FDR wasn't boring. JFK wasn't boring. Too much logic kills all the emotion in your words. People want to feel an emotional connection. >

Yeah he’s actually pretty smart for basically being able to form a cult just by spewing a few buzz words lol >

In my experience, I've found that persuasion has little to do with logic, and much more to do with emotion. To that end some "fallacies" are useful tools I suppose. 
Personally, I think people are taught rational thinking. It's a skill like any other, and people can be more or less gifted in a large range. I don't see it as intrinsic.
Practically, I think most persuasion works by fiddling our psychological buttons.  It's only after the fact that we engage our minds to come up with a rationale.
In that regard, I think great intelligence can be double-edged. You can manage to talk yourself into anything, no matter how absurd with enough creativity. >

Informal logical fallacies are convincing because they aren't always bad arguments. They are fallacies because they don't-prove- something but can still be evidence of it. Many things cannot be easily proven using formal deductive reasoning. Things we measure are probabilistic and require heuristics rather than proof, and logical fallacies can often be good heuristics... which is what makes them so convincing and so dangerous, when someone knowingly uses a fallacy which seems like a good heuristics but they know leads to the wrong conclusion.