A huge amount of baloney circulates throughout society, not just on social media.
Let’s help other people and ourselves avoid getting fooled or misled.
Here is a list of 15 fallacies to watch out for:
Ad Hominem: Attacking the person instead of dealing rationally with what the person is saying
Straw-man Argument: Distorting what the other person is saying, and arguing against that instead of what the person has really said
Appeal to Ignorance: Promoting gullibility and saying something must be true if it has not been explicitly disproven
False Dilemma: Disregarding the complexity of an issue, and boiling it down into just a few simplistic options, which leads to false solutions
Slippery Slope: Assuming that something will lead to a series of other things
Circular Argument: Arguing in a loop that traps the issue in the same nonsense and a big lie
Hasty Generalization: Using just a few examples to extrapolate to make sweeping (unjustified) conclusions
Red Herring: Distracting the issue by substituting something else and wanting the other person to focus on that
Appeal to Hypocrisy: Instead of logically making words and actions consistent, disrupt the connections
Causal Fallacy: Just because something happened after something else, this does not mean that the second thing caused the first. (This is also summarized as “correlation does not prove causality.”)
Fallacy of Sunk Costs: Just because you’ve wasted time or money in something, this does not mean you need to keep pursuing something. It could be a lost cause. Know when to stop.
Appeal to Authority: Just because a supposed expert says something, this does not prove it.
Equivocation: Using words to confuse or mislead
Appeal to Pity: Appealing to emotions
Bandwagon Fallacy: Just because some people believe something does not mean it is true.
Not only should we beware of OTHER PEOPLE using these logical fallacies, but WE OURSELVES must guard against using them ourselves. Let’s honestly pursue the truth.
