But if we never practiced sophistry, how dull life would be!  Nothing is as charming as defeating an opponent with a gorgeous logical fallacy he's too dull to comprehend.  It's like playing one of those hideous opening gambits in chess that are supposed to make you lose, against someone who cannot see ahead more than one move.

This comment itself is sophistry, I see now.  "The controversial method of an opponent, distinguished from one's own, by superior insincerity and fooling."  I can't beat Bierce at his own game.

Sophism abounds on this sit and I plead guilty that I do it from time to time.  Some reviewers, I am said to report indulge in it exclusively.  That is a road that has many "rocks" in it if you get my drift.

A practice indulged in by a large number of RIA reviewers, occasionally including, I regret to admit, myself.