The appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy that involves manipulating people’s emotions to strengthen their support for the conclusion of an unsound argument (e.g., one that’s misleading or baseless). For example, a person using an appeal to emotion in a debate might encourage the audience to ignore certain, by trying to make the audience angry at their source.| 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 overkill backfire effect is a cognitive bias that causes people who encounter a complex explanation to reject it in favor of a simpler alternative, and to sometimes also reinforce their belief in the simpler alternative.| 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
The principle of charity is a philosophical principle that denotes that, when interpreting someone’s statement, you should assume that the best possible interpretation of that statement is the one that the speaker meant to convey. Accordingly, to implement the principle of charity, you should not attribute falsehoods, logical fallacies, or irrationality to people’s argument, when there is a plausible, rational alternative available.| Effectiviology
A logical fallacy is a pattern of reasoning that contains a flaw, either in its logical structure or in its premises.| 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