Fallacy Quiz

Strawman

Changing or exaggerating an opponent’s position to make it easier to refute

Ex.
Person A: I think we should spend less money on fast food

Person B: So you want everyone to stop eating food they enjoy?

False Cause (Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc)

concluding that since A happened before B, A must have caused B

Ex. I wore my lucky bracelet today and got an A on my test, therefore my bracelet must be the reason I got the good grade.

Begging the Question (circular reasoning)

P is true because Q is true, and Q is true because P is true

Ex. My sister is trustworthy because she always tells the truth

Ad ignoratum (appeal to ignorance)

arguing that a claim is true just because it is not shown to be false

Ex.
Person A: Aliens do not exist
Person B: No one has proven that Aliens do not exist, so they must exist.

Ad populum

appealing to the emotions of the crowd; also, appealing to a person to go along with the crowd

Ex. Everyone in my class is buying the new iphone, so it must be the best phone to buy.

red herring

when someone is avoiding the question and introducing an irrelevant argument

Ex.
Person A: Why did you get a bad grade on your test?

Person B: Well my teacher gives way too much homework

false dilemma (either-or)

When someone asserts that we must choose between two things, when in fact we have more than two alternatives

Ex. You are either with us, or against us

hasty generalization

generalizing about a class based upon a small or poor example

Ex. I met two students from Rutgers who are rude, so that means that all students from Rutgers are rude.

equivocation

changes the meaning of a word in the middle of an argument

Ex.
Person A: I have the right to speak
Person B: If everything you say is right, then you can never be wrong

ad hominem (to the man)

attacking the person of a source rather than his or her qualifications or reliability or the actual argument he or she makes

Ex.

Person A: I think we should get a dog

Person B: Your opinion doesn’t matter because your’e annoying

slippery slope

if we take one step, nothing will stop us from taking a series of steps because each step is the same

Ex. If I fail this test, then I will fail this class, and then I will never graduate high school. If I never graduate high school, I will never get a job, and I will have to live with my parents forever.

composition (part-to-whole)

what is true of part of something must also be true of the whole thing

Ex. Every player on the basketball team is talented, so the team must be one of the best in the leagues

division (whole-to-part)

what is true of something as whole must also be true of each of its parts

Ex. Rutgers is a prestigious university, so every student that attends Rutgers must be intelligent.

Tu Quoque

dismissing someones viewpoint on an issue because he himself is inconsistent in that very thing

Ex.

Person A: You should stop smoking because it leads to lung cancer
Person B: You smoke too, so you have no right to tell me to stop

Loaded Question

When someone asks two questions, but one is hidden behind the other

Ex. Have you stopped cheating on your tests?

availability heuristic

judging the frequency or probability of an event or attribute by asking ourselves how easily we can bring examples to mind from memory

confirmation bias

the tendency to notice or focus on potential evidence for our pre-existing views, and to neglect or discount contrary evidence. Confirmation bias can be present with or without an underlying motive to have the belief in the first place.

evolutionary mismatch

when a trait or feature evolves in an organism because it is adaptive in one environment, but survives even when the environment changes enough that its no longer beneficial

heuristic

cognitive shortcut used to bypass the more effortful type of reasoning that would be required to arrive at an accurate answer. Heuristics are susceptible to systematic and predictable error.

System 1

The collection of cognitive processes that feel automatic and effortless but not transparent. These include specialized processes that interpret sensory data and are the source of our impressions, feelings, intuitions, and impulse. (The distinction between the two systems is one of degree, and the two systems often overlap, but it is still useful to distinguish them)

System 2

The collection of cognitive processes that are directly controlled, effortful, and transparent. (the distinction between the two systems is one of degree, and the two systems often overlap, but it is still useful to distinguish them)

Bias Blindspot

the tendency not to recognize biases as they affect us, due to the fact that the processes that give rise to them are not transparent, even when we recognize them in others

binary belief

treating beliefs as if they are on/off. For example, we either believe that the cat is on mat or that the cat is not on the mat, without allowing for different degrees of confidence

considering the opposite

a technique to reduce biased evaluation of evidence, where we ask ourselves either one of two questions:

(i) How would I have treated this evidence had it gone the opposite way?

(ii) How would I have treated this evidence if I held the opposite belief?

decoupling

separating our prior degree of confidence in a claim from our assessments of the strength of a new argument or a new piece of evidence about that claim

Introspection Illusion

the misguided assumption that our own cognitive biases are transparent to us, and as a result, that we can diagnose these biases in ourselves through introspection

optional stopping

allowing the search for evidence to end when convenient; this may skew the evidence if (perhaps unbeknownst to us) we are more likely to stop looking when the evidence collected so far supports our first or favored view

possibility freeze

the tendency to consider only a few possibilities in detail and thereby end up overly confident that no alternative view is correct

bare purals

the use of a plural noun phrase without a determiner (e.g., “Canadians started laughing” instead of “Some Canadians started laughing”)

The Law of Small Numbers

the cognitive bias in which people expect small samples to resemble the population more closely than they actually do, ignoring the greater variability of small samples

Anchoring Effect

When people rely too heavily on an initial number or piece of information when making an estimate or judgment. Even when the initial number is random, irrelevant, or obviously wrong, it can influence the final answer.