Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring /
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, /
And drinking largely sobers us again.”
When you first learn some formal logic and about fallacies, it’s hard to not use the shiny new hammer to go around playing ‘fallacy bingo’ (to mix metaphors): “aha! that is an
ad hominem, my good sir, and a logically invalid objection.” The problem, of course, is that many fallacies are perfectly good as a matter of inductive logic:
ad hominems are often highly relevant (eg if the person is being bribed). A rigorous insistence on formal syllogisms will at best waste a lot of time, and at worst becomes a tool for self-delusion by selective application of rigor.