It is difficult for me to ascertain when the person I am communicating is using a logical fallacy to trick me into believing him or doubting my judgement, even when I realise it hours after the argument.
I have seen countless arguments in Reddit threads and I couldn't figure out who was in the right or wrong unless I looked at the upvote counts. Even if the person is uttering a blatant lie, they somehow make it sound in a way that is completely believable to me. If it weren't for those people that could exactly point out the irrationality behind these arguments, my mind would have been lobotomised long ago.
I do want to learn these critical thinking skills but I don't know where to begin from. I could have all these tips and strategies memorised in theory, but they would be essentially useless if I am not able to think properly or remember them at the heat of the moment.
There could be many situations I could be unprepared for, like when the other person brings up a fact or statistic to support their claim and I have no way to verify it at the moment, or when someone I know personally to be wise or well-informed bring up about such fallacies, perhaps about a topic they are not well-versed with or misinformed of by some other unreliable source, and I don't know whether to believe them or myself.
Could someone help me in this? I find this skill of distinguishing fallacies from facts to be an extremely important thing to have in this age of misinformation and would really wish to learn it well if possible. Maybe I could take inspiration from how you came about learning these critical thinking skills by your own.
Edit: I do not blindly trust the upvote count in a comment thread to determine who is right or wrong. It just helps me inform that the original opinion is not inherently acceptable by everyone. It is up to me decide who is actually correct or not, which I can do at my leisure unlike in a live conversation with someone where I don't get the time to think rationally about what the other person is saying.
The very first step is to know the fallacies. Find a list.
The second step is to familiarise yourself with them. Learn the fallacies. It can also be called sophism in some languages. Familiarising yourself with them will allow you to recognise them.
Third is to be vigilant during a conversation to detect them. Sometimes you will be the one to use them.
The easiest, and amont the most common, are fallacies tied to reputation: when you consider something right or wrong because of who made the statement. It's sketchy because it can be used as a shortcut in conversation, but by itself the truth or wrongness of the argument doesn't depend on who said it, never. But some people have demonstrated expertise or they habit of lying or manipulating. Other fallacies usually involve the language or the logic, so it's harder to detect, but it's a great mental exercise.