By David Mansheim

Besides the internet and social media, another reason for the rise of misinformation, conspiratorial
thinking, and political division is our lack of training in critical thinking. Many people seem to be
susceptible to sophistical trickery, but we can all tune up our B.S.  detectors by keeping in mind the
following logical fallacies:

1. Slippery Slope – a trivial action will start an irreversible chain of events leading to a catastrophe.
2. The burden of proof – is on the claimant. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
3. Sequence is not causation – Just because B follows A does not mean A caused B.
4. Correlation is not causation – My knee hurting is not a cause of the weather change.
5. Self-interest – a personal stake in the outcome.
6. Appeal to tradition – the way it always has been done.
7. Appeal to authority – follow the leader or an authority with dubious credentials.
8. Appeal to emotion – anger, fear, sympathy.
9. Appeal to stereotypes or prejudices. “People from those S*** hole countries”
10. Appeal to popularity – bandwagon effect.
11. Appeal to analogy – an inference based on resemblances.
12. Non-sequitur – no connection between claim and evidence.
13. Strawman – arguing a claim that has not been made.
14. Hasty generalization – based on insufficient number of examples.
15. Circular reasoning – a claim should follow from the evidence and not the reverse.
16. Begging the question – making one claim dependent on other claims not proven.
17. Ignoring the question – use of a red herring to throw you off the trail.
18. Self-sealing argument – one that can’t be tested. “God wants us to …”
19. Testimonial – using one person’s experience to prove a generality.
20. Ad hominem – attacking the person, not the proposition.
21. Obfuscation – introduction of irrelevant facts or issues.
22. Misuse of statistics – figures don’t lie but liars will figure.
23. Confusion of facts with opinions.
24. Connecting unrelated dots – to find a pattern where none exists.
25. Bias – interpreting information that supports pre-existing beliefs.
26. Ends justifying means – overlooking lies if they serve a higher purpose.
27. Repetition – Madison Avenue knows to pound it into your brain.
28. Solution aversion – If we don’t like the solution, we try to deny the problem.
29. Dunning-Kruger – overestimating our competence. We don’t know what we don’t know.
30. Hindsight bias – In retrospect we knew it all along.
31. Gaslighting – manipulating reality to make someone question their own perception or memory.
32. Scapegoating – blaming someone else.
33. Truthyness – Steven Cobert’s word for a grain of truth in a false argument.
34. Intuition – “I feel X is true”. A gut feeling is not a substitute for factual inquiry.
35. Oversimplification – reducing complex issues to a slogan.
36. Short attention span – Won’t read more than a 25-word tweet. Don’t confuse me with facts.
37. I heard it on the grapevine – I saw it on Facebook or the internet.
38. Social pressure – the need to agree with my group, team, religion, party, tribe.