Fallacy Shorts

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

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

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

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 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 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 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 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 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: The Ad Hoc Fallacy is committed when someone makes stuff up in order to avoid accepting evidence against their belief.

Description: The Double Standard Fallacy is committed when someone treats two very similar situations differently (usually to their advantage) with no explanation why.

Description: The Golden Hammer Fallacy occurs when someone assumes it is sensible to rely on a single tool or method to solve every problem.

Description: The Zero Sum fallacy occurs when someone assumes gains and losses in a specific situation are directly balanced when in fact they are not.

Description: The Tautological Templar Fallacy involves a person claiming their actions are good or right because they are a good person who only does good things.

Description: The Broken Clock Fallacy occurs when someone suggests that because they were right once (even if it was for the wrong reason) they should be trusted generally.

Description: The Jingoism Fallacy occurs when someone attempts to appeal to patriotic emotions rather than reason to persuade others.

Description: The Reification Fallacy is committed when someone suggests an abstract concept is real and has intent or agency.

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

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 Equivocation fallacy relies on using a word with more than one meaning to set up a misleading argument. Often the word will be used in one sense in the premise, and in the other sense in the conclusion, implying that because the word is the same, the meanings are the same.