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
A false dilemma (or false dichotomy) is a logical fallacy that occurs when a limited number of options are wrongly presented as being mutually exclusive or the only available options. For example, a false dilemma occurs when someone says that we must choose between options A or B, without mentioning that we can pick both or that option C also exists.| 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 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
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
Reactive devaluation is a cognitive bias that causes people to devalue things that are offered to them, especially if offered by someone they perceive negatively. For example, reactive devaluation can cause someone to wrongly dismiss a good business proposal as bad, just because they dislike the person who offered it.| Effectiviology
The credentials fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone dismisses an argument by stating that whoever made it doesn’t have proper credentials, so their argument must be wrong or unimportant.| 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