Moralist: Closing this factory would destroy 500 jobs and devastate families. We therefore should keep the factory open.

Environmentalist: Ridiculous. Merely pointing out negative consequences of the proposed factory shutdown does not prove we must keep the factory open. You’re overlooking potential benefits! This shows we should proceed with the factory shutdown.

Moralist: Pure nonsense. Obviously I know that I should have considered potential benefits and established why the costs of the factory shutdown would outweigh those benefits. But the fact that my argument was inadequate to prove my conclusion does not show that my conclusion was wrong! So your own response is flawed when you conclude that we should close the factory. Given your fallacious response, it’s clear that we should keep the factory open.

Environmentalist: Foolish hogwash. You’re the one committing the “fallacy fallacy”! Even if my own response was flawed, that doesn’t prove that we should keep the factory open. You can’t just reject my conclusion because my argument for closing the factory was a weak and unpersuasive criticism of your own argument for keeping it open. This is why the right course of action is to shut down the factory.

Moralist: Utter codswallop. Yes, perhaps I committed the “fallacy fallacy,” but the conclusion of my fallacious argument could still be true! What reason have you given for proceeding with the shutdown? None. All you’ve done is criticized my own argument against the shutdown. Hence, we should keep the factory open.

Concerned citizen: Please, just stop! Don’t you hear yourselves? You’re both committing the same fallacy over and over. Moralist, if you want to argue in favor of keeping the factory open based on the costs of a shutdown, you should show that you’ve considered potential benefits and that they either don’t exist or are outweighed by the costs. And Environmentalist, if you want to argue that we should proceed with the shutdown, you should tell us about the benefits of the shutdown and why they outweigh the costs. Tearing down each other’s arguments doesn’t build up your own. That’s why you’re both wrong. We should neither close nor keep the factory open.

Moralist and Environmentalist: Absurd drivel. Pointing out that our arguments were flawed doesn’t prove that our conclusions were false. That’s why, contrary to your absolute bilge-water conclusion, we should both close the factory and keep it open.