Author: Maverisk

[Spiritual enlightenment]

Yes, it’s bias time again. The seventh of the series of biases that you, yes you, have. Even if you are aware of these, and even if you consciously try to correct for them to be, heh, ‘objective’, as in what e.g. auditors pursue, you will fail.

Informal fallacies

• Argument from repetition (argumentum ad nauseam): signifies that it has been discussed extensively (possibly by different people) until nobody cares to discuss it anymore
• Appeal to ridicule: a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument is made by presenting the opponent’s argument in a way that makes it appear ridiculous
• Argument from ignorance (appeal to ignorance): The fallacy of assuming that something is true/false because it has not been proven false/true. For example: “The student has failed to prove that he didn’t cheat on the test, therefore he must have cheated on the test.”
• Begging the question (petitio principii): where the conclusion of an argument is implicitly or explicitly assumed in one of the premises
• Circular cause and consequence: where the consequence of the phenomenon is claimed to be its root cause
• Continuum fallacy (fallacy of the beard): appears to demonstrate that two states or conditions cannot be considered distinct (or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states. According to the fallacy, differences in quality cannot result from differences in quantity.
• Correlation does not imply causation (cum hoc ergo propter hoc): a phrase used in the sciences and the statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not imply that one causes the other
• Demanding negative proof: attempting to avoid the burden of proof for some claim by demanding proof of the contrary from whoever questions that claim
• Equivocation (No true Scotsman): the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time)
• Etymological fallacy: which reasons that the original or historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day meaning.

Fallacies of distribution

• Division: where one reasons logically that something true of a thing must also be true of all or some of its parts
• Composition: where one reasons logically that something true of part of a whole must also be true of the whole
• Ecological fallacy: inferences about the nature of specific individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong
• Fallacy of many questions (complex question, fallacy of presupposition, loaded question, plurium interrogationum): someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved. This fallacy is often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner’s agenda.
• Fallacy of the single cause (“joint effect”, or “causal oversimplification”): occurs when it is assumed that there is one, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.
• False attribution: occurs when an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument
• Contextomy (Fallacy of quoting out of context): refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source’s intended meaning
• False compromise/middle ground: asserts that a compromise between two positions is correct
• Gambler’s fallacy: the incorrect belief that the likelihood of a random event can be affected by or predicted from other, independent events
• Historian’s fallacy: occurs when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision. It is not to be confused with presentism, a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas (such as moral standards) are projected into the past.
• Incomplete comparison: where not enough information is provided to make a complete comparison
• Inconsistent comparison: where different methods of comparison are used, leaving one with a false impression of the whole comparison
• Intentional fallacy: addresses the assumption that the meaning intended by the author of a literary work is of primary importance
• Loki’s Wager: the unreasonable insistence that a concept cannot be defined, and therefore cannot be discussed.
• Moving the goalpost (raising the bar): argument in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded
• Perfect solution fallacy: where an argument assumes that a perfect solution exists and/or that a solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it was implemented
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc: also known as false cause, coincidental correlation or correlation not causation.
• Proof by verbosity (argumentum verbosium) (proof by intimidation): submission of others to an argument too complex and verbose to reasonably deal with in all its intimate details. see also Gish Gallop and argument from authority.
• Prosecutor’s fallacy: a low probability of false matches does not mean a low probability of some false match being found
• Psychologist’s fallacy: occurs when an observer presupposes the objectivity of his own perspective when analyzing a behavioral event
• Regression fallacy: ascribes cause where none exists. The flaw is failing to account for natural fluctuations. It is frequently a special kind of the post hoc fallacy.
• Reification (hypostatization): a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a “real thing” something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea.
• Retrospective determinism (it happened so it was bound to)
• Special pleading: where a proponent of a position attempts to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule or principle without justifying the exemption
• Suppressed correlative: an argument which tries to redefine a correlative (two mutually exclusive options) so that one alternative encompasses the other, thus making one alternative impossible
• Well travelled road effect: estimates of elapsed time is shorter for familiar routes as compared to unfamiliar routes which are of equal or lesser duration.
• Wrong direction: where cause and effect are reversed. The cause is said to be the effect and vice versa.

[Baroque ideas of yours]

Yes, it’s bias time again. The sixt of the series of biases that you, yes you, have. Even if you are aware of these, and even if you consciously try to correct for them to be, heh, ‘objective’, as in what e.g. auditors pursue, you will fail.

Formal fallacies

Formal fallacies are arguments that are fallacious due to an error in their form or technical structure. All formal fallacies are specific types of non sequiturs.

• Appeal to Law: an argument which implies that legislation is a moral imperative.
• Appeal to probability: assumes that because something could happen, it is inevitable that it will happen. This is the premise on which Murphy’s Law is based.
• Argument from fallacy: assumes that if an argument for some conclusion is fallacious, then the conclusion is false.
• Bare assertion fallacy: premise in an argument is assumed to be true purely because it says that it is true.
• Base rate fallacy: using weak evidence to make a probability judgment without taking into account known empirical statistics about the probability.
• Conjunction fallacy: assumption that an outcome simultaneously satisfying multiple conditions is more probable than an outcome satisfying a single one of them.

Correlative based fallacies

• Denying the correlative: where attempts are made at introducing alternatives where there are none.
• Suppressed correlative: where a correlative is redefined so that one alternative is made impossible.
• Fallacy of necessity: a degree of unwarranted necessity is placed in the conclusion based on the necessity of one or more of its premises.
• False dilemma (false dichotomy): where two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options, when in reality there are more.
• If-by-whiskey: An argument that supports both sides of an issue by using terms that are selectively emotionally sensitive.
• Ignoratio elenchi: An irrelevant conclusion or irrelevant thesis.
• Is-ought problem: the inappropriate inference that because something is some way or other, so it ought to be that way.
• Homunculus fallacy: where a “middle-man” is used for explanation, this usually leads to regressive middle-man.
• Explanations without actually explaining the real nature of a function or a process. Instead, it explains the concept in terms of the concept itself, without first defining or explaining the original concept.
• Masked man fallacy: the substitution of identical designators in a true statement can lead to a false one.
• Naturalistic fallacy: a fallacy that claims that if something is natural, then it is good or right.
• Nirvana fallacy: when solutions to problems are said not to be right because they are not perfect.
• Negative proof fallacy: that, because a premise cannot be proven false, the premise must be true; or that, because a premise cannot be proven true, the premise must be false.
• Package-deal fallacy: consists of assuming that things often grouped together by tradition or culture must always be grouped that way.
• Red Herring: also called a “fallacy of relevance.” This occurs when the speaker is trying to distract the audience by arguing some new topic, or just generally going off topic with an argument.

Propositional fallacies

• Affirming a disjunct: concluded that one logical disjunction must be false because the other disjunct is true; A or B; A; therefore not B.
• Affirming the consequent: the antecedent in an indicative conditional is claimed to be true because the consequent is true; if A, then B; B, therefore A.
• Denying the antecedent: the consequent in an indicative conditional is claimed to be false because the antecedent is false; if A, then B; not A, therefore not B.

Quantificational fallacies

• Existential fallacy: an argument has two universal premises and a particular conclusion, but the premises do not establish the truth of the conclusion.
• Proof by example: where examples are offered as inductive proof for a universal proposition. (“This apple is red, therefore all apples are red.”)

Formal syllogistic fallacies

• Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise: when a categorical syllogism has a positive conclusion, but at least one negative premise.
• Fallacy of exclusive premises: a categorical syllogism that is invalid because both of its premises are negative.
• Fallacy of four terms: a categorical syllogism has four terms.
• Illicit major: a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its major term is undistributed in the major premise but distributed in the conclusion.
• Fallacy of the undistributed middle: the middle term in a categorical syllogism is not distributed.