A red herring is a piece of information that’s meant to distract people from something important in a misleading manner. Red herrings are usually used either as a literary device, such as when an author uses a side character to divert attention from another character, or as a rhetoric technique, such as when someone responds to a question with unrelated information in order to hide their refusal to answer the original question.| Effectiviology
The burden of proof (“onus probandi” in Latin) is the obligation to provide sufficient supporting evidence for claims that you make. For example, if a politician claims that a new policy will lead to a positive outcome, then the politician has a burden of proof with regard to this claim, meaning that they need to provide evidence that supports it.| Effectiviology
The appeal to nature is a logical fallacy that occurs when something is claimed to be good because it’s perceived as natural, or bad because it’s perceived as unnatural.| Effectiviology
A false premise is an incorrect assumption that forms the basis of an argument and makes it logically unsound. For example, in the argument “all birds can fly, and penguins can’t fly, so penguins aren’t birds”, the assumption that “all birds can fly” is a false premise (since some birds can’t fly).| Effectiviology
The fallacy fallacy (also known as the argument from fallacy) is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone assumes that if an argument contains a logical fallacy, then its conclusion must be false.| Effectiviology
An ad hominem argument is a personal attack against the source of an argument, rather than against the argument itself. Essentially, this means that ad hominem arguments are used to attack opposing views indirectly, by attacking the individuals or groups that support these views.| Effectiviology
A logical fallacy is a pattern of reasoning that contains a flaw, either in its logical structure or in its premises.| Effectiviology
The appeal to the stone is a logical fallacy that occurs when a person dismisses their opponent’s argument as absurd, without actually addressing it, or without providing sufficient evidence in order to prove its absurdity. For example, a person using the appeal to the stone in a debate might simply laugh off all of their opponent’s claims and calls them ridiculous, with no justification.| Effectiviology
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from rationality, which occurs due to the way our cognitive system works. Accordingly, cognitive biases cause us to be irrational in the way we search for, evaluate, interpret, judge, use, and remember information, as well as in the way we make decisions.| Effectiviology
A strawman is a fallacious argument that distorts an opposing stance in order to make it easier to attack. Essentially, the person using the strawman pretends to attack their opponent’s stance, while in reality they are actually attacking a distorted version of that stance, which their opponent doesn’t necessarily support.| Effectiviology