Fallacy Magnets

Description: The Scapegoating fallacy occurs when someone unfairly blames a problem on an already unpopular person or group.

Description: The Prosecutor's Fallacy is committed when someone mixes up the conditionals when stating a probability or doesn't factor the conditionals in at all.

Description: The Imposter Fallacy is committed when someone claims without sufficient evidence that a member of their group who is making them look bad is actually an infiltrator from another group.

Description: The Accent Fallacy is committed when the meaning of a sentence or phrase is changed by placing the emphasis on a different part, or leaving emphasis ambiguous in writing.

Description: The Gambler's Fallacy is committed when someone confuses dependent and independent events or claims that a particular outcome is 'due' because it hasn't happened for some time.

Description: The Planning Fallacy describes the tendency for people to underestimate the time a task will take to complete.

Description: The Historical Fallacy is committed when someone assumes the current situation was always inevitable and ignores or denies the context of what led up to it.

Description: The Toupée Fallacy is a type of Argument from Ignorance where someone doesn't notice evidence that would prove that they don't notice confounding evidence, such as when someone claims that all toupées are bad because they've never seen a convincing one (possibly because if it was convincing, they wouldn't know it was a toupée).

Description: The Furtive Fallacy occurs when someone assumes that significant events are due to hidden actions by nefarious powerful people.

Description: The Politician's Fallacy is committed when someone recognises that 'something' must be done about a problem and assumes that any 'something' will do.

Description: The Sanctimony Fallacy occurs when someone claims to be morally superior to their opponent, either without evidence or in the face of contradictory evidence.

Description: The Anecdotal Fallacy is committed when someone allows an anecdote to lend far more weight to an argument than it warrants.

Description: The Labelling Fallacy occurs when someone assigns a (usually negative) label to a person or idea as a shortcut to avoid providing evidence of how the person or idea is wrong.

Description: The Accident Fallacy is committed when someone applies a general rule to a specific situation which is actually an exception to the rule.

Description: When supporting your claims by comparing two things, it's important to be consistent in terms of what you're actually comparing. If you are not fair when setting up the parameters, and you end up comparing the two in different ways, you are engaging in the fallacy of Inconsistent Comparison.

Description: The Ethnocentric Fallacy occurs when someone starts from an assumption that their own culture is superior to others or was more instrumental in history than it really was.

Description: The Ambiguity Fallacy is committed when someone is deliberately vague or ambiguous to make their point or avoid answering a question.

Description: The McNamara Fallacy is committed when someone treats something as important because it is easy to measure, or dismisses something as unimportant because it is hard to measure.

Description: The Fallacy Fallacy occurs when you assume a claim is false because a logical fallacy was used during arguments supporting the claim.

Description: The Exact Definition Fallacy occurs when someone disingenuously demands their opponent provide a definition solely to score debate points when they can't provide one that meets an arbitrary standard

Description: The Holmesian Fallacy occurs when someone assumes they have eliminated all incorrect answers and arrive at their conclusion because it is the only remaining answer they can think of.

Description: The Square One Fallacy occurs when someone dismisses all the work and research that has been done and pretends we need to start from the beginning to solve or understand a problem.

Description: The Just Because Fallacy occurs when someone refuses to give a reason or evidence for their assertion, instead expecting others to trust their authority just because.

Description: The Sunk Cost Fallacy is committed when someone justifies maintaining or extending a course of action based on the cost already incurred (whether in terms of money, time, effort or intellectual capital).

Description: The Broken Window Fallacy is committed when someone tries to claim when a bad thing happens, that good things will result from it, which makes it OK.

Description: The Pooh Pooh Fallacy is committed when someone dismisses a claim, argument or question as not being worthy of discussion, especially as a technique to avoid having a difficult conversation.

Description: Sunk cost fallacy. The “sunk cost fallacy” is where sunk costs made in the past influence future investment. Whilst it may make sense to discontinue investment and “cut ones losses” often the fact of the past costs are used to justify continuing. This could be true of for example economic investments or relationships. Throwing good money after bad.

Description: The Appeal to Definition Fallacy occurs when someone relies on a specific definition, from a dictionary or other authority, which supports their argument, and ignores the possibility that other definitions are also reasonable.

Description: The Euphemism Fallacy occurs when someone uses a misleadingly positive word or phrase in order to avoid a negative reality.

Description: When someone supports their argument by making a statement that is significantly more emphatic than can possibly be supported by evidence, they may be committing the Hyperbolic Fallacy.

Description: The Counterfactual fallacy is often committed when someone speculates on the specifics of how things would be different in different circumstances, or in the future if a particular thing happens. Where the arguer purports to have more certainty of the hypothetical situation, or their speculation goes against evidence, they are more likely to be committing the fallacy.

Description: The Hedging Fallacy is committed when someone changes their story or point of view and then acts like nothing has changed and they always thought like that.

Description: Hypophora occurs when someone answers their own question without giving anyone else a chance to answer. It can be fallacious if the answer given serves them better than other plausible answers.

Description: Nutpicking is the practise of choosing an extreme view or fringe member of a group and representing it as typical of that group to support an argument or point of view.

Description: The Tokenism Fallacy is committed when someone makes a minimal gesture and claims it is far more significant than it really is.