• asserting that if we allow A to happen, then Z will consequently happen too, therefore A should not happen.

• example- we cannot unlock our child from the closet bc she will run around the house, then to the yard and someone will take her in a van for a sex trafficking slave.

reduction to the absurd

black and white or either or fallacy;

• where two alternative states are presented as the only possibilities, when in fact more possibilities exist

• example- you are either for us or against us

false cause 

• (aka “post hoc ergo propter hoc” or “questionable cause”), presuming that a real or perceived relationship between things means that one is the cause of the other.

• saying that bc an authority thinks something, therefore it must be true.

• appealing to popularity or the fact that many people do something as an attempted form of validation

• example- how could you not believe in santa claus, nearly 2 billion people believe in him, so why don’t you?

• an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue

• (aka appeal to emotion)

• someone who tries to win support for an argument or idea by exploiting his or her opponent’s feelings of pity or guilt

• (aka “causal reductionism”)

• multiple causes are reduced to just one or few

• the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with

• an argument where force, coercion, or the threat of force, is given as a justification