In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for “appeal to the people”) is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it, often concisely encapsulated as: “If many believe so, it is so”.

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“Everyone likes The Beatles and that probably means that they didn’t have nearly as much talent as , which didn’t sell out.” (source)

Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position.

In statistics, sampling bias is a bias in which a sample is collected in such a way that some members of the intended population have a lower or higher sampling probability than others. It results in a biased sample, a non-random sample of a population (or non-human factors) in which all individuals, or instances, were not equally likely to have been selected.

Escalation of commitment is a human behavior pattern in which an individual or group facing increasingly negative outcomes from a decision, action, or investment nevertheless continues the behavior instead of altering course. The actor maintains behaviors that are irrational, but align with previous decisions and actions.

The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes (the “vital few”). Other names for this principle are the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity.

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Mathematically, the 80/20 rule is roughly described by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution for a particular set of parameters, and many natural phenomena have been shown to exhibit such a distribution. It is an adage of business management that “80% of sales come from 20% of clients”.

Zipf’s law is an empirical law formulated using mathematical statistics that refers to the fact that many types of data studied in the physical and social sciences can be approximated with a Zipfian distribution, one of a family of related discrete power law probability distributions.

Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue. The most common form of this fallacy is “A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong”.

I’m entitled to my opinion or I have a right to my opinion is a logical fallacy in which a person discredits any opposition by claiming that they are entitled to their opinion. The statement exemplifies a red herring or thought-terminating cliché. The logical fallacy is sometimes presented as “Let’s agree to disagree”. Whether one has a particular entitlement or right is irrelevant to whether one’s assertion is true or false. Where an objection to a belief is made, the assertion of the right to an opinion side-steps the usual steps of discourse of either asserting a justification of that belief, or an argument against the validity of the objection. Such an assertion, however, can also be an assertion of one’s own freedom or of a refusal to participate in the system of logic at hand.

The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:

1. Person 1 asserts proposition X.
2. Person 2 argues against a superficially similar proposition Y, falsely, as if an argument against Y were an argument against X.

[for example]

[Person 1]: We should relax the laws on beer.

[Person 2]: No, any society with unrestricted access to intoxicants loses its work ethic and goes only for immediate gratification.

Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent’s position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument.

Moving the goalposts is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. That is, after an attempt has been made to score a goal, the goalposts are moved to exclude the attempt. The problem with changing the rules of the game is that the meaning of the result is changed, too.

A false dilemma (sometimes called false dichotomy) is a type of informal, correlative-based fallacy in which a statement falsely claims or assumes an “either/or” situation, when in fact there is at least one additional logically valid option.

Argument from ignorance also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents “a lack of contrary evidence”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.

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False positives

Often seen in anecdotal evidence, superstitions, correlation-causation fallacies, and experiments with small sample size

• “I took a placebo pill and now my symptoms are completely gone. The placebo cured my symptoms.”

Absence of evidence

These examples contain or represent missing information.

• Statements that begin with “I can’t prove it but …” are often referring to some kind of absence of evidence.

False negatives

These examples have the potential for “false negative” results.

• When the doctor says that the test results were negative (a month later the test is positive).

Evidence of absence

These examples contain definite evidence that can be used to show, indicate, suggest, infer or deduce the non-existence or non-presence of something.

• One very carefully inspects the back seat of one’s car and finds no adult-sized kangaroos.

Arguments from ignorance

Draws a conclusion based on lack of knowledge or evidence without accounting for all possibilities

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are overemphasized. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred. […] A Swedish study in 1992 tried to determine whether power lines caused some kind of poor health effects. The researchers surveyed persons living within 300 meters of high-voltage power lines over a 25-year period and looked for statistically significant increases in rates of over 800 ailments. The study found that the incidence of childhood leukemia was four times higher among those who lived closest to the power lines, and it spurred calls to action by the Swedish government.[6] The problem with the conclusion, however, was that the number of potential ailments, i.e., over 800, was so large that it created a high probability that at least one ailment would exhibit the appearance of a statistically significant difference by chance alone, a situation known as the multiple comparisons problem. Subsequent studies failed to show any association between power lines and childhood leukemia.

In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition.

Queerbaiting is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment[6] in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation.

Quoting out of context (sometimes referred to as contextomy or quote mining) is an informal fallacy in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning. […] One of the most familiar examples of contextomy is the ubiquitous “review blurb” in advertising. The lure of media exposure associated with being “blurbed” by a major studio may encourage some critics to write positive reviews of mediocre movies. However, even when a review is negative overall, studios have few reservations about excerpting it in a way that misrepresents the critic’s opinion.

The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action.

Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one’s own discourse. This is done out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities or preferences (actual or perceived) of others and without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority. Self-censorship is often practiced by film producers, film directors, publishers, news anchors, journalists, musicians, and other kinds of authors including individuals who use social media.

In authoritarian countries, creators of artworks may remove material that their government might find controversial for fear of sanction by their governments. In pluralistic capitalist countries, repressive judicial lawmaking can also cause widespread “rivercrabbing” of Western media.

Doomscrolling is the act of consuming a large quantity of negative online news, typically without pause, to the detriment of the mental health of the person consuming it. Essentially, if the news is bad or depressing, one can ‘doomscroll’ it.

In a legal context, a chilling effect is the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights by the threat of legal sanction.

A lawsuit initiated specifically for the purpose of creating a chilling effect may be called a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (“SLAPP”).

The Streisand effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing that information, often via the Internet.

Creeping normality (also called gradualism, or landscape amnesia) is a process by which a major change can be accepted as normal and acceptable if it happens slowly through small, often unnoticeable, increments of change. The change could otherwise be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period.

The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians’ individual preferences.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people’s inability to recognize their lack of ability.

In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object.

“Think of the children” (also “What about the children?”) is a cliché that evolved into a rhetorical tactic. Literally, it refers to children’s rights (as in discussions of child labor). In debate, however, it is a plea for pity that is used as an appeal to emotion, and therefore it becomes a logical fallacy.