Fallacy Socks
Description: Typically, the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. The more outrageous the claim, the more the claimant should be expected to provide evidence before anyone is likely to believe him. When the claimant instead challenges others to prove his claim is not true he is Shifting the Burden of Proof.
Description: Latin for ‘after this, therefore because of this’, this fallacy is committed when people confuse correlation for causation and assume that because one event followed another, the former was caused by the latter. Of course, while this may be the case, it is by no means certain. The two events may be completely independent for example, or there may be a third element that in fact caused both events.
Description: The Playing the Victim fallacy occurs when someone tries to deflect criticism by arguing the target of criticism is just being persecuted, without addressing the content of the accusation. By attributing negative traits to someone before they even have the chance to make their argument, the well poisoner primes the listener not to believe what they are about to hear. As it does not seek to address the actual argument at all, this reasoning is fallacious.
Description: This is more accurately called the Argument from Improper or False Authority. After all, it’s entirely valid to support your argument by invoking a relevant authority like, say, climate scientists opinions on climate change. However, when the authority you invoke is not an authority on the subject at hand, or objectively not reliable or trustworthy, you are committing a fallacy.
Description: The Argument from Ignorance fallacy describes a situation where someone claims a proposition to be true simply because it has not yet been proven to be false. Obviously if an outlandish claim is made and it cannot immediately be proven to be false that does not mean it should automatically be assumed to be true.
