Fallacies

Formal fallacies are arguments that are fallacious due to an error in their form or technical structure.^[1] All formal fallacies are specific types of non sequiturs.

• Ad Hominem: an argument that attacks the person who holds a view or advances an argument, rather than commenting on the view or responding to the argument.
• 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.
• 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.
• Package-deal fallacy: consists of assuming that things often grouped together by tradition or culture must always be grouped that way
• Nirvana fallacy: when solutions to problems are said not to be right because they are not perfect.
• Naturalistic fallacy: a fallacy that claims that if something is natural, then it is "good" or "right".

Informal fallacies are arguments that are fallacious for reasons other than structural ("formal") flaws.

• 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)
• 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
• 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.
• Circular cause and consequence: where the consequence of the phenomenon is claimed to be its root cause
• 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.

A red herring is an argument, given in response to another argument, which does not address the original issue.

• Ad hominem: attacking the personal instead of the argument. A form of this is reductio ad Hitlerum.
• Argumentum ad populum ("appeal to belief", "appeal to the majority", "appeal to the people"): where a proposition is claimed to be true solely because many people believe it to be true
• Argument from silence (argumentum ex silentio): a conclusion based on silence or lack of contrary evidence
• Appeal to tradition: where a thesis is deemed correct on the basis that it has a long-standing tradition behind it
• Sentimental fallacy: it would be more pleasant if; therefore it ought to be; therefore it is
• Straw man argument: based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position