Ad Hominem
also called the personal attack, playing the man
The argument doesn’t get answered. The person who made it gets discussed instead, and the two activities are allowed to feel like the same one.
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Explainers
You just did a thing.
Here’s what it’s called.
Short, plain explanations of the ways thinking goes wrong — in an argument, on your own, and in a room full of reasonable people. What each one is, what it looks like, and why it doesn’t work. One page each, no rant attached. Made to be sent to somebody instead of typed out for the hundredth time.
Anchoring
also called the anchoring effect, anchor-and-adjust
The first number said drags every judgement that follows toward it — including when it was obviously arbitrary, and including when you watched it being made up.
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Anecdotal Evidence
also called the plural of anecdote, it worked for me
One vivid case, well told, outweighs a study of ten thousand — because the case has a face and the study has a table.
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Appeal to Authority
also called argumentum ad verecundiam, the credential as proof
The reason to believe it is who said it. Nothing the expert actually knows has been passed along — only the fact that they’re the sort of person who would know.
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Argument from Incredulity
also called the appeal to personal incredulity
“I can’t imagine how that could be true, therefore it isn’t” — treating the limits of your own imagination as a measurement of the world.
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Begging the Question
also called circular reasoning, petitio principii, assuming the conclusion
The reason given for a claim turns out to be the claim again, wearing a different coat.
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Bikeshedding
also called Parkinson’s law of triviality, the colour of the bike shed (which is not Parkinson’s)
The enormous, expensive, irreversible decision goes through in four minutes. The small one everybody understands eats the rest of the meeting.
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Cherry-Picking
also called the suppressed evidence fallacy, quoting selectively
Every fact presented is true and every one of them checks out, and the set was assembled so that the true facts add up to a false picture.
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Cognitive Dissonance
also called dissonance reduction, effort justification
Holding two things that don’t fit is genuinely uncomfortable, so one of them quietly gives — and it’s never the one that already cost you something.
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Confirmation Bias
also called the positive test strategy, looking where the answer already is
You go and check, you find support, and you stop — because the search was shaped by the answer before it started, and a search for confirmations returns confirmations.
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Correlation and Causation
also called cum hoc ergo propter hoc, post hoc ergo propter hoc
Two things move together, so one gets announced as the cause of the other — and the third thing driving both is never mentioned, because nobody went looking for it.
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Equivocation
also called trading on ambiguity, the shifting word
One word appears twice meaning two different things, and the argument only works for as long as nobody notices it changed jobs in the middle.
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False Dichotomy
also called false dilemma, the either/or fallacy
Two options get put on the table as though they’re the only two, and the entire middle of the range quietly disappears.
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Gish Gallop
also called more claims than anyone can answer
Bury the other side in so many claims at once that answering all of them is impossible — and then let “unanswered” get scored as “unanswerable.”
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Goodhart's Law
also called when a measure becomes a target, teaching to the test
The number was useful because it tracked the thing you cared about. Then you started rewarding the number, and people optimised the number — which is precisely what stopped it tracking anything.
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Group Polarization
also called the risky shift, the group as a polarizer
A group of people who broadly agree talk it over, and every one of them comes out holding a more extreme version of what they walked in with — including the moderates.
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Groupthink
also called concurrence-seeking, closing ranks
The group values its own agreement more than it values being right, so the doubts stop being spoken — and eventually stop being had.
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Law of the Instrument
also called Maslow’s hammer, the golden hammer
You already have a favourite tool, so every problem starts arriving pre-shaped to fit it.
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Loaded Question
also called the complex question, the trick question
A question with a claim smuggled inside it, so that any straight answer concedes something you never agreed to.
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Motte and Bailey
also called the bait-and-switch argument
Make a bold claim. Get challenged. Retreat to an obvious one. Then pretend the bold claim was never in question.
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Moving the Goalposts
also called shifting the goalposts, raising the bar
You meet the standard you were given, and a new and higher standard appears where the old one used to be.
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No True Scotsman
also called the appeal to purity
A counterexample turns up, so the definition quietly grows a new requirement that excludes it — and the original claim survives by no longer meaning anything.
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Proof by Assertion
also called ipse dixit, the bare assertion, argument by assertion
The claim gets repeated with more confidence instead of more support — and “everybody knows this” is handed over as though it were the evidence.
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Slippery Slope
also called the thin end of the wedge, the camel’s nose
The first step gets objected to on the strength of the last one, and every step in between is assumed rather than argued — so a modest proposal is answered as though it were the extreme one.
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Special Pleading
also called one rule for me, the convenient exception
The rule applies to everybody — right up until it applies to you, and then there’s a reason it doesn’t, and the reason has never come up before.
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Straw Man
also called strawmanning
Swap somebody’s actual argument for a dumber one, knock the dumb one down, and act like the job is finished.
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Survivorship Bias
also called survivor bias, survival bias, counting only the ones that made it
You study the things that came through, work out what they had in common, and never notice that the things that didn’t come through had all the same qualities.
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The Abilene Paradox
also called the drive to Abilene, agreement nobody wanted
Everybody goes along with a plan that not one of them wanted, because each believes the others are keen — and the group does something every single member was against.
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The Sunk Cost Fallacy
also called throwing good money after bad, the Concorde fallacy
The reason given for continuing is everything already spent — which is gone whatever happens next, and therefore cannot be a reason for anything.
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The XY Problem
also called asking about your guess instead of your goal
You need X, you decide Y will get you there, and you only ever ask about Y — so everybody helps you perfect an approach that was never going to work.
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Whataboutism
also called tu quoque, the appeal to hypocrisy
Answer a criticism by pointing at somebody else’s — so the original one never has to be addressed.
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Nothing matches that. Try a different word.