a guide to fallacies

not an expert just a nerd with a pet peeve for improper argument form compiling a library of internet dummies for your edification :)

[fallacies-examples]

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[exeggcute]

the sunk cost fallacy has been my favorite fallacy for as long as I can remember. so at this point it's probably too late to pick a different one

[terri-theslime13]

I just heard about the recency bias, and honestly I think it's gotta be the best one ever

[blueflyingturtleontheway]

Everyone is saying that the bandwagon effect is the best bias, so they have to be right

[embrace-of-the-cold]

I once had this one logic professor who said that appeal to authority is the best fallacy. She's an expert in logic, so she must be right.

[dikleyt]

there's a common motte and bailey argument used by a certain part of "the left" seeking to attack Jews in the name of anti-Zionism

e.g. someone might say, "Jews made up being a nation so they could colonize palestine"

and a Jew might respond "this is an antisemitic myth aiming to assassinate Jews epistemically. in reality, the concept of Jewish nationhood goes back to antiquity, and the idea that Judaism was just a religion originated in the early Reform movement, which later backtracked on this"

but instead of rebutting the second person's argument, the first person will go "oh, so opposing genocide is antisemitic?"

is "opposing genocide" what you were actually doing? no, it's not. that's what you can defend, but it wasn't your original argument.

the first argument can be any number of things; it's the rhetorical switch I'm talking about

this is one of my shibboleths for bad faith and antisemitic intentions. it's shockingly common

[fallacies-examples]

this is a pretty good explanation of motte and bailey actually

[the-library-alcove]

One of the most routine Jew-hating canards I've seen about the ongoing war is that "Israel is committing a genocide because there are 19,000 dead children, and that's all the proof I need!"

Okay.

First, let me get the requisite statement of "any dead child is a tragedy" made, because that's true.

Now I want to break this down to get past the emotional appeals and show why it's antisemitic libel.

This "argument" (in quotation marks because it's just an emotional appeal) is usually framed in the "Israel is deliberately targeting children out of sheer bloodlust and cruelty."

If that was the case, however...

Half of the Gaza Strip's population is under 18. The death toll is, at present, approximately 60,000 after 700 days.

If the IDF was deliberately and preferentially killing children in the Gazan population, then you'd expect that the number of dead children would be more than 50% of the death toll.

It's not.

Instead, it's less than a third.

Which can only argue that the IDF is deliberately going out of its way to avoid killing children.

The fact that they haven't managed to keep it lower is down to a few facts:

Hamas uses children and civilian infrastructure as human shields, and there have been numerous times when the only way to get at them is through, which is on them.

Hamas uses child soldiers, and an indoctrinated 17-year-old with a gun is still an enemy militant, even as they're also a child death in the statistics.

Hamas has deliberately cultivated a culture of martyrdom in the Gaza Strip in order to have people be willing to put their children into harm's way in the hope of harming an Israeli.

Hamas and other militant groups have killed a fair number of Palestinian children themselves (from misfired rockets that hit Palestinian homes or just shooting the children themselves).

But this canard/emotional appeal has to ignore all of that and basically paint the IDF as cruel and deliberately going out of their way to kill children in order to make them into the Ultimate Evil.

Meanwhile, pretty much none of the people spouting this canard care about the 25,000 children dead in the Syrian Civil War, or the half million children dead in the Sudan Civil War.

Just Israel and Gaza.

And the reason for that fixation is pretty damn clear.

[evil-fact-checker]

This person is running a very common apologetic line: if Israel really wanted to kill children, the percentage would be higher, therefore the “genocide” claim is antisemitic. Let’s break it down step by step so you can see where the reasoning bends:

Straw man framing – They rephrase the claim as “Israel is deliberately killing children out of sheer bloodlust”—a cartoonish motive nobody serious actually argues. The real accusation is about indiscriminate or disproportionate use of force that foreseeably produces massive civilian casualties, not “bloodlust.”

Misuse of statistics –

Gaza is majority under-18, but war doesn’t distribute death randomly. Adults move differently, fight differently, live differently. Saying “if kids aren’t 50%+ of the deaths then Israel is sparing them” is nonsense. By the same logic, if 30% of all deaths in a war zone are kids, that’s still extraordinarily high compared to almost any modern conflict.

For comparison: in Syria, UN reports show children made up about 11% of civilian deaths. In Gaza, the reported ratio has been 30–40%. That’s not evidence of “protecting children.” It’s evidence of an extremely deadly environment for them.

Human shield argument – It’s true Hamas embeds in civilian areas, but international humanitarian law (IHL) is crystal clear: the presence of human shields does not erase the attacker’s responsibility to avoid excessive civilian harm. You can’t say “they used kids as shields” and walk away.

Shifting blame entirely – They bring up Hamas rockets misfiring or children being combatants. Both exist, but they account for a tiny fraction of the dead compared to Israeli bombardment. Pointing to these as if they balance the ledger is rhetorical sleight of hand.

Whataboutism – “What about Syria? Sudan?” This doesn’t prove anything about Gaza. People can consistently oppose atrocities in multiple places, and many do. Highlighting one doesn’t erase the reality of the other.

The antisemitism claim – Conflating criticism of Israeli military policy with hatred of Jews shuts down discussion rather than engaging with the legal and moral questions. Genocide is a legal category; using the word isn’t inherently antisemitic.

So in short:

Children being ~30% of the dead isn’t evidence of restraint—it’s alarmingly high.

Intent in genocide law isn’t about “bloodlust” but whether disproportionate, predictable civilian slaughter is tolerated or facilitated.

Pointing to Syria/Sudan doesn’t negate scrutiny of Gaza.

[the-library-alcove]

Ah, yes, "Evil Fact Checker", I'm sure you're completely unbiased.

I can give examples of the people making that claim of explicit bloodlust, including people who are significant movers in the "Pro-Palestine" camp, such as Kai Pritsker, one of the major producers of "The Encampments" film, as well as many, many, many people on this site and other social media sites. Claiming that this example doesn't exist doesn't make it go away.

The misuse of statistics is laughable--you're making a claim by assertion; you're right that children do not move about and interact in the same way... and they do so in a way that makes them more vulnerable. The fact that the numbers are disproportionately skewed so that children are fewer in the death statistics makes it clear that Israel is doing its best to reduce fatalities.

Also, you're comparing apples and oranges; yes, the death toll for Syrian children as a proportion of the population is lower... because the total number of Syrian children is lower as compared to their population.

50% of the Gazan population was under 18 in 2023, compared to 20% of the Syrian population being under 18 in 2010, before the start of the civil war.

As for the human shield argument... this is another argument from assertion; Israel does do its best to reduce civilian death toll, noticeable from the fact that there aren't more dead, and numerous attestations from other militaries around the planet. You wanting there to be more death doesn't get away from the fact that fewer people are dead.

And it's not Whataboutism--it's showing the double standard at work.

The differences are literally multiple orders of magnitude.

And the double standard is antisemitism. Sorry.

@fallacies-examples, anything to add? I plan on blocking the clearly unbiased "evil-fact-checker" as per my policy of not debating with bigots, but this can be a useful learning moment.

[fallacies-examples]

Well this is interesting... I have evilfactchecker blocked on my main because all they do is shove posts at chat gpt and then copy/paste the answer but this is the first time I have seen them "fact check" a SERIOUS POLITICAL POST. What the hell.

Library my friend you did a wonderful job with this post but I'm afraid you're wasting your time- generative language models don't know international law. I mean, if time is taken to think about the arguments it makes it doesn't actually follow a logical path through reasoning it just kinda shoves a pile of fancy sounding nonsense at you (and hopes you wont look up the fact that the geneva convention and ICC consider the use of human shields a crime falling on the shoulders of the side using them, and that the obligation of proportionality only requires that the means/ends and strategic necessity be weighed.)

The entire purpose of my blog is good faith, logical, and well framed arguments. Entering posts into an AI for the sole purpose of spreading misinformation and bad faith arguments is just about the opposite of everything I stand for and I request that everyone who sees this kindly considers blocking evilfactchecker lest they find their way onto your posts with this blatantly unethical behavior.

[xclowniex]

Why are you talking about antisemitism when there are bigger issues

If I someone serves me a bowl of spiders and I refuse to eat it and they go "well there are starving children in africa" that doesn't suddenly make the bowl of spiders appealing or yummy. It's still a bowl of spiders. Me eating that bowl of spiders also doesn't cure starvation in Africa or any other part of the world.

All it means is that I was served food I refuse to eat and there are starving children in Africa.

Me shutting up about the rise in antisemitism doesn't make it go away nor will it help or fix any other issue in the world. It just means that there is antisemitism and other issues in the world.

Whilst I'm not going to say that antisemitism is the biggest issue in the entire world, it is a big issue to me because it affects my safety and wellbeing.

[awnowimsad-deactivated20260306]

@fallacies-examples Fallacy of Relative Privation spotted!

[wlw-god-offical]

why does every other offical have a partner? 😭😭😭 I haven’t dated in 3 years 😭😭

[agam-shel-barvadim]

HOW MANY OFFICALS ARE THERE ATP

[fallacies-examples]

mayhaps i should change my name to fallacies-examples-official to make more officials

(and to help op be less lonely because i am single lol)

[fallacies-examples]

"this" and "it" in this context refers to the legalization of assisted suicide. do these tags contain some sorta fallacy? I cant really think right now... it just seems wild to compare terminally ill people asking to die in their own terms (voluntary euthanasia) to nazi propaganda using that as an excuse to promote involuntary euthanasia

(though of course I understand the concerns with disabled people being coerced into "voluntary" euthanasia... that doesn't mean it's all exactly the same...)

On a related note - the plot of that propaganda film presents a case of voluntary euthanasia, so people might've thought it was arguing for it - but of course the nazis wanted to "euthanize" disabled people in general whether they wanted it or not.

... is that something like a motte and bailey argument? though it's not really an "argument" per se.

I am not familiar with the film so I cant really be sure but from what you describe it might be slippery slope fallacy? (insisting that something is automatically the first step towards another thing, usually comes up politically when people act like america instituting the same healthcare system the rest of us have will automatically turn into communism)

[charlesoberonn]

[flightyquinn]

Is there a word for this? Where you assume that a trend will continue indefinitely without considering other factors? I tried looking it up and found a lot of things that sounded similar, but not really anything specifically for the idea that current conditions will continue. If I was going to put a name to it myself, I'd call it a "False Constant Fallacy", but searching that doesn't turn up anything.

[patheticperipatetic]

I call it the Disco Stu Graph. Disco record sales went up 400% by the end of 1976. If these trends continue.... Eeeeeeeyyyyyyy

[the-library-alcove]

@fallacies-examples

[fallacies-examples]

The closest I can think of is probably the Ludic Fallacy: assuming that flawless statistical models apply to a situation in defiance of any other logical reasoning, observed phenomena, or other factors at play.

Realistically, I've just looked up that twitter user and they are heavily invested into the popularity of AI so I believe this to be an example of lying with statistics (instead of, well, stupidity), which is listed in my refrence as a fallacy despite being probably a giant category of fallacies so take from that whatever you will.

[fallacies-examples]

https://www.tumblr.com/horsesharkinahatadventures/792459162070220800/tumblr?source=share

if you have time maybe you could point out the fallacies in this? thank you :)

the link does not work :(

You're welcome to dm me a screenshot though!

[fallacies-examples]

is this the etymological fallacy? Wikipedia specifically lists this argument ("antisemitism means discrimination against all semitic people") as an example.

(There's also the fact that "semites" is an obsolete racial classification but that's not what I'm asking about... sigh)

It is indeed the etymological fallacy!

The meaning of a word can be guessed based on its building blocks but the real meaning doesn't always match that. Another example is that "inflammable" and "flammable" mean the exact same thing even though most people would interpret the former as "not flammable" based on other words with similar structure. When people use the etymological fallacy they ignore that and try to argue that they are right about the real meaning of a word in flagrant disregard for the hard work of lexicographers.

"are by definition literally" in this screenshot is also a good example of a different etymological concept: that of "literally" meaning the antithesis of its classical definition -- because antisemitism was coined to mean, currently is used to mean, and is in the dictionary (OED, webster, the whole shebang) to mean discrimination or hate against jews.

[fallacies-examples]

a submission from my top librarian:

The Left is Always Right Too Early

From slavery and child labor in the 19th century to the Iraq War and Gaza, the Left position has been accepted only after horrible human cos

an entire doozy containing:

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

False dichotomy

No true Scotsman

Circular reasoning

Straw man

Hasty generalization

Cherry-picking

Slippery slope

Appeal to emotion

Ad hominem

Anecdotal fallacy

Tu quoque (whataboutism)

Confirmation bias

Loaded language

Appeal to hypocrisy

Appeal to authority

Genetic fallacy

Composition fallacy

Bandwagon fallacy

Moral equivalence

Overgeneralization

Appeal to ridicule

Red herring

False cause

Begging the question

Guilt by association

[btrfs-unofficial]

cat is warm and sits on your lap. laptop is warm and sits on your lap. therefore, laptop is kibty?

[relevant-wikipedia-articles]

[dragonsheepstudios]

whenever I see gimmick blogs I don't consider that they have a separate main blog or anything else. That's just what they do all the time. God put them on the internet to count the number of lobsters in other posts and nothing else.

[fallacies-examples]

That's by choice, I don't want my personhood and ideas to get in the way of the education

I have no pronouns and no identity

[charlesoberonn]

most murders are committed be people known to the victim, but next to zero murders are committed by men with meat hooks for fingers, so children are statistically safer around meat fingers than anyone else.

There's probably a name for this logical fallacy but I'm too tired to look it up right now.

[charlesoberonn]

I don't know if it has a name but the fallacy in question is applying an unconditional probability to a conditional situation.

The examples above are comical but this fallacy does have adverse effects in real life.

A famous example is Sally Clark, who was tried and convicted of murdering her infant sons. The prosecution claimed that the chance of Clark having two children die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) was vanishingly small (1 in 73,000,000), making it beyond a reasonable doubt.

They arrived at that probability by multiplying the probability of a single SIDS death in affluent families (1 in 8500) by itself. But this calculation assumed that the two probabilities are independent when they're not.

A family that already experienced a SIDS death is likelier to have genetic or environmental factors that make SIDS occurrences more likely. Applying the probability of the general population to their case is a statistical error and a miscarriage of justice.

[charlesoberonn]

A good name for this fallacy could be the Killer Cow Fallacy, based on this iconic tumblr post

[the-library-alcove]

@fallacies-examples

[fallacies-examples]

thank you very much for tagging me but i did actually manage to see this earlier lol

[charlesoberonn]

most murders are committed be people known to the victim, but next to zero murders are committed by men with meat hooks for fingers, so children are statistically safer around meat fingers than anyone else.

There's probably a name for this logical fallacy but I'm too tired to look it up right now.

[charlesoberonn]

I don't know if it has a name but the fallacy in question is applying an unconditional probability to a conditional situation.

The examples above are comical but this fallacy does have adverse effects in real life.

A famous example is Sally Clark, who was tried and convicted of murdering her infant sons. The prosecution claimed that the chance of Clark having two children die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) was vanishingly small (1 in 73,000,000), making it beyond a reasonable doubt.

They arrived at that probability by multiplying the probability of a single SIDS death in affluent families (1 in 8500) by itself. But this calculation assumed that the two probabilities are independent when they're not.

A family that already experienced a SIDS death is likelier to have genetic or environmental factors that make SIDS occurrences more likely. Applying the probability of the general population to their case is a statistical error and a miscarriage of justice.

[charlesoberonn]

A good name for this fallacy could be the Killer Cow Fallacy, based on this iconic tumblr post

[prickly-porcupine-memes]

[bdalak]

[unsolicited-opinions]

Correlation ≠ Causation

[Signal > Noise: Think critically and habitually]