The slippery slope fallacy is an argument that claims an initial event or action will trigger a series of other events and lead to an extreme or undesirable outcome. The slippery slope fallacy anticipates this chain of events without offering any evidence to substantiate the claim.
Slippery slope fallacy examplePerson A: “I think we should lower the legal drinking age.”
Person B: “No, if we do that, we’ll have ten-year-olds getting drunk in bars!”
As a result, the slippery slope fallacy can be misleading both in our own internal reasoning process and in public debates.
Straw man argument is the distortion of someone else’s argument to make it easier to attack or refute. Instead of addressing the actual argument of the opponent, one may present a somewhat similar but not equal argument.
By placing it in the opponent’s mouth and then attacking that version of the argument, one is essentially refuting an argument that is different from the one under discussion.
Straw man argument examplePerson 1: I think we should increase benefits for unemployed single mothers during the first year after childbirth because they need sufficient money to provide medical care for their children.
Person 2: So you believe we should give incentives to women to become single mothers and get a free ride from the tax money of hard-working citizens. This is just going to hurt our economy and our society in the long run.
The straw man argument can be used to distract from relevant arguments in different contexts, such as in political debates, in the media, as well as in everyday discussions. It is also known as the straw man fallacy.
The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency for people to continue an endeavour or course of action even when abandoning it would be more beneficial. Because we have invested our time, energy, or other resources, we feel that it would all have been for nothing if we quit.
Sunk cost fallacy exampleYou are watching a movie, and after 30 minutes you realise it’s not what you expected. Instead of finding another movie, you convince yourself to continue. You think to yourself that you have already invested half an hour and the whole movie is just an hour and a half. If you quit now, you will have wasted your time, so you decide to stick it out.
As a result, we make irrational or suboptimal decisions. The sunk cost fallacy can be observed in various contexts, such as business, relationships, and day-to-day decisions.
A red herring fallacy is an attempt to redirect a conversation away from its original topic. A red herring is used by introducing an irrelevant piece of information that distracts the reader or listener. This can be intentional or unintentional.
As a result, one can divert others’ attention away from the original discussion topic or avoid answering a difficult question.
Red herring fallacy exampleA police officer pulls a car over for speeding. The driver complains, saying that they shouldn’t pay a fine since there are so many dangerous criminals out there and the police should be chasing them instead.
Although worse criminals do exist, this is a separate issue. The real issue is that the driver exceeded the speed limit, and this is punishable.
An ecological fallacy is a logical error that occurs when the characteristics of a group are attributed to an individual. In other words, ecological fallacies assume what is true for a population is true for the individual members of that population.
Example: Ecological fallacyYou are reading a news story about the wealthiest states in the country. Assuming that wealthier states contain more wealthy people is an ecological fallacy. Indeed, it could be due to the fact that they contain a small number of extremely rich individuals.
Ecological fallacy can be problematic for any research study that uses group data to make inferences about individuals. It has implications in fields such as criminology, epidemiology, and economics.
