20. Laughter as Diversionary Tactic

We fall into this fallacy when, unable to come up with a reasoned response to an argument, we try to dodge it by pretending that it is not worth taking seriously. We might go so far as to contend that it is no more than a laughing matter. Getting people to laugh at an argument can serve as a powerful way of dismissing it, but this may have nothing to do with the intrinsic worth of the argument. If a devious debator cannot get an audience to laugh at an argument, he might try to turn his opponent into a laughingstock, say by calling attention to some irrelevancy like a speech impediment, and thereby divert attention away from an argument he cannot handle.

To be sure, there are arguments that are comically inept and therefore deserving of laughter. But even in those cases it is better, rather than dismissing an argument with easy ridicule, to take the time to show how and why it fails as an argument.