Appeal to novelty
Occurs when something is treated as better mainly because it is new, cutting-edge, or marketed as the future.
PerspectivalEvidentialEmotional
Intermediate
High school
Category
Perspectival
Errors caused by the wrong vantage point, historical standpoint, or interpretive frame.
Appeal to tradition
Occurs when a claim or practice is defended mainly because it has a long history, customary status, or familiar place in a community.
PerspectivalEvidentialEmotional
Intermediate
High school
Chronological snobbery
Occurs when an idea is dismissed mainly because it is old, premodern, or associated with a period that also held many false beliefs.
EvidentialPerspectival
Intermediate
High school
False balance
Occurs when a dispute is presented as if the competing sides were roughly equal in credibility or evidential support even though the evidence is not remotely balanced.
PerspectivalEvidential
Intermediate
High school
Historian's fallacy
Occurs when people in the past are judged as if they had the same information, background assumptions, and hindsight available to later observers.
Perspectival
Intermediate
High school
Homunculus fallacy
Occurs when a mind-like inner observer is smuggled in to explain mind-like abilities, thereby postponing rather than solving the explanation.
ConceptualPerspectival
Intermediate
High school
Human standard fallacy
Occurs when a human classification, rule, or label is treated as if it automatically determined the underlying fact or moral status.
ConceptualPerspectival
Intermediate
High school
Intentional fallacy
Occurs when the creator's intended meaning is treated as irrelevant in contexts where that intention is actually important to understanding the work or statement.
PerspectivalLinguistic
Intermediate
High school
Pathetic fallacy
Occurs when human feelings, intentions, or judgments are projected onto impersonal things and then treated as if the projection explained reality.
ConceptualPerspectival
Advanced
Intro college
Psychologist's fallacy
Occurs when someone projects their own motives, fears, or mental structure onto others and treats that projection as insight into those other people.
Perspectival
Intermediate
High school
Reification
Occurs when an abstraction is spoken of as if it were a concrete agent or thing in a way that misleads rather than merely using harmless metaphor.
ConceptualLinguisticPerspectival
Intermediate
High school
Retrospective determinism
Occurs when, after an outcome happens, people claim it was inevitable or obvious all along even though the uncertainty beforehand was real.
CausalPerspectival
Intermediate
High school
Spotlight fallacy
Occurs when the most visible or most covered cases in a category are treated as if they represent the category as a whole.
Perspectival
Intermediate
High school