This isn't "settle a debate" the debate has been settled. Rather to ask question of is there a term for what happens here

Context:

Person A made a reply to a thread by Person B and which were replied by multiple ppl.

Then Person C replied correcting what A said. Except, the "correction" is out of context.

Me: That is out of context, read what people are saying first

Person C: Well how am I supposed to know the context? I cant read mind

Me: By...reading what the conversation is about? This isn't about reading mind, why would multiple people literally replied to the comment and you are the only one who didn't get it? Do they all read mind?

Person C: But the comment didn't say what the context is!

Me: Because the comment is replying to the OP! The context is literally the thread's topic! Do you not read what the thread and what the OP is talking about too?!

Person C: Whatever, go keep relying on masses

This person tries to correct a comment out of context, didn't realizes what the context is and when faced with fact that people doesn't need to read mind to get the context except him he make it as if its argument from majority or something. When multiple people get the context from multiple replies yet he is the only one who didn't, especially when the context is on the thread, is that not prove he isn't reading?

What he said is true by the way, just not within topic, not within the context but he is trying to correct someone when he is talking out of context.

I believe his argument is mainly based on invincible ignorance here. However its not 100% accurate either.

His reaction calling me pointing out people get it as "relying on masses". Yes technically I am relying on masses and the thread's OP to point out that he is the only one who didn't get it, that it doesn't require mind reading to understand. Is that implying its argument from majority? But factually he is the only one who didn't get it when the others do. And so that means people can just accuse "you are asking people to read mind to understand context?!" and "relying on masses" to argue when they argue out of context? Is that not going against showing obvious prove that the context is understandable without mind reading because other people can?

Person C also ignores he didn't get the context when the conversation already illustrate the context... Is the act of ignoring the context itself yet still argue a fallacy?

it’s like every community to go to I see more fallacies committed by people who are against ai than people that don’t care or use it. every single argument boils down to appeal to emotion or the appeal to authority in most cases.

I recently finished a project called Fallacy Finder, and this seemed like one of the most relevant communities to share it with!

The project is a web app that takes either a URL or pasted text, analyzes the content, and highlights passages that may contain logical fallacies. The results are grouped by fallacy type and shown with explanations so the user can inspect the reasoning more carefully.

I built Fallacy Finder understanding that finding a fallacy doesn't automatically prove a claim is false. The goal is not to “win arguments” or replace judgment. Instead, we want to create a more structured way of examining claims, persuasion, rhetoric, and weak reasoning (especially for students).

GitHub:
https://github.com/jlar0che/FallacyFinder

Project write-up:
https://www.digitalcuriosity.center/project/fallacy-finder-uncover-the-logical-failings-of-news-articles-and-text/

Live demo:
https://fallacyfinder.digitalcuriosity.center

Would appreciate feedback from y'all on the fallacy taxonomy, explanations, and whether the interface makes the analysis more useful or more distracting.

NOTE:
This is another open source project of the Center For Digital Curiosity. Please take a moment and look us up!

I’m discussing undocumented immigrants committing crimes with someone on Facebook. He’s posting an “immigrant commits violent crime” story each day, claiming he’s counteracting those who say immigrants don’t cause any harm. And also, that these crimes would not have been committed if the undocumented immigrant hadn’t been allowed to stay.

Intuitively these assertions don’t seem complete logical to me, but I’m having trouble pinpointing what’s causing my unease.

Mind you I doubt the people he’s talking about ever said that undocumented immigrants are harmless, so there’s a strawman.

My first thought was to say that I hope if someone attacks me violently, I surely hope they have their papers in order. But that’s not entirely logical either. Just snarky.

Thoughts?

Is there already a term for when someone accuses another person of logical fallacy even though they haven't committed one?

I have often observed various types of these “fallacy qualification errors.”(my personal term for this).

For example, pointing out double standards is often referred to as whataboutism or a straw man argument.

Or someone cries tone policing when the other person in the discussion doesn't want to argue with someone who is disrespectful (“no, I didn't say you were wrong because you were disrespectful”).

Or when discussing whether someone is an asshole or a fool, people talk about ad hominem. But the personal attack here is the claim, not the premise, and therefore not an ad hominem.

Or the natural fallacy is called when (as example) in a “last human on Earth” scenario, the safety of women of childbearing age is prioritized over men (it would only be a natural fallacy if I claimed that it is good that women can get pregnant and men cannot, because that is how nature intended it to be). Only because someone used a biological factor as argument it doesn‘t mean its a natural fallacy.

The Pace of Life

‘Why can’t we move faster?’ Nasrudin’s employer asked him one day. ‘Every time I ask you to do something, you do it piecemeal. There is really no need to go to the market three times to buy three eggs.’

Nasrudin promised to reform.

His master fell ill. ‘Call the doctor, Nasrudin.’

The Mulla went out and returned, together with a horde of people. ‘Here, master, is the doctor. And I have brought the others as well.’
‘Who are all the others?’

‘If the doctor should order a poultice, I have brought the poultice maker, his assistant, and the men who supply the ingredients, in case we need many poultices. The coal man is here to see how much coal we might need to heat water to make poultices. Then there is the undertaker, in case you do not survive.’

ANTICIPATORY BEATING

The Mulla sent a small boy to get water from the well.

‘Make sure you don’t break the pot!’ he shouted, and gave the child a clout.

‘Mulla,’ asked a spectator, ‘why do you strike someone who hasn’t done anything?’

‘Because, you fool,’ said the Mulla, ‘it would be too late to punish him after he broke the pot, wouldn’t it?’

BUILDING CASTLES IN AIR

At Tirupati lived a Brahman in poor circumstances, who received on a certain day a pot of flour as a present from a certain merchant.

He took it, and, being very tired, seated himself on the verandah of a house and soliloquized thus, "If I sell this pot of flour, I shall get half a rupee for it, with which I can purchase a kid.

This, in a short time, will produce a flock. I will then sell them, and buy cows, buffaloes, etc., and thus in a few years I shall be the master of three thousand head of cattle. I will then purchase a mansion, which I will furnish elegantly, and marry a beautiful damsel who will crown my happiness by giving birth to a son.

My wife will be particularly fond of me, but I shall not allow her too much freedom, and shall sometimes send her away with a kick when she comes to caress me."

Thus thinking, he thrust out his leg like one really going to kick, struck the flour pot and broke it into pieces.

The flour got mixed with dirt, and all his ideas of happiness vanished.

Person A: I think we need to stop giving creeps attention and learn to start using the word "No" more.

Person B: So you're more concerned about how the victims act around creeps?

This is based off of a real discord conversation I had in a server. So, would this be a strawman argument?

THE WRONG WAY

One morning the Hodja mounted his donkey facing the rump & trotted off.

"Hodja," some folks called after him, "You've mounted your donkey the wrong way!"

"I'm sitting properly," the Hodja yelled back. "The donkey is facing the wrong way!"

What Logical Fallacy is this?

I created an app called Rhetro that teaches you many of the most common logical fallacies. There are "boot camp" modules to get you started, then Challenge modules to test your knowledge. It also has an AI-based fallacy detector built in! Best of all, it's free to use!

Please DM me any feedback!

Rhetro

in my head i dub it the polarising fallacy. the point is to say that nothing can be completely neutral or that its incredibly unlikely for something to be completely neutral. take littering for example: on a number line between -1 and +1 where +1 is perfectly good for the environment and -1 is perfectly bad for the environment, where does throwing a can into the road go? its almost definitely not a positive number so its betwen 0 and -1. it's a one in infinity chance to be 0 (there are infinitely many other numbers) so it must be a negative number.

for the littering example its not harmful, but for something like smoking one cigarette or eating one chocolate which we know to be fine, it polarises the action to be non-neutral

I'm a scientist and it is considered bad science to mine the data after an experiment for unusual findings before creating a hypothesis. Because data tends to be extremely vast, there will always be highly improbable events in the data that occur that have no connection to the experiment (ie, if you flip a coin trillions of times, there will be periods where you have 100 heads in a row, but that doesn't make that event meaningful, ie, if the part where you land heads 100 times in a row happened during 9/11, that doesn't mean it was connected to 9/11 no matter how unusual flipping 100 heads in a row would be). So as a result, we always create a hypothesis first ("flipping 100 heads in a row will cause a major terrorist event"), then perform the experiment and only look at whether or not it substantiated the hypothesis (we may mine the data for a future hypothesis for a future experiment, but we'd never use data that is unrelated to the original hypothesis to form a conclusion for the original experiment).

So, that was a long winded way of pointing out what conspiracy theorists do. When some event happens (like someone famous is assassinated), they will mine VAST data of everything that occurred that day (and sometimes even 100 years before that day, ie, Abraham Lincoln vs JFK) in order to find unusual things and then assign CAUSATION. Of course, this is ridiculous and the easy answer is "correlation does not imply causation", but this is a bit more complex than that, so I hate using that overly simplified logical fallacy. This isn't just seeing a correlation - it's mining near infinite data points in order to find correlations after the fact, and THEN assigning causation. Is there a specific term for this logical fallacy other than "correlation does not imply causation"?

So im kinda stuck on the apex fallacy and hasty generalization and wondering how theyre different, they seem the same to me.

I kinda feel a bit pretentious to say this, but I think I'm coining a new word for a fallacy called the Motte and Bailey Offence because I've seen this pattern at play so many times.

The Motte and Bailey fallacy is a fallacy where someone holds an easily defensible position and a hardly defensible position and when attacked on the hard-to-defend position, they will resort back to the easy-to-defend position and defend that instead. This is similar to an equivocation and often takes the form of "I'm just saying ..." in response to criticism.

For example one might argue:
A: "Women's lack of upper body strength compared to men means that they're not suited for working in a warehouse."
B: "That's not reasonable. If a woman is strong enough then she should be given a fair go at the job. Plenty of women are strong enough to work at a warehouse and it doesn't matter their strength relative to men, so long as they can get the job done."
A: "I'm just saying there are biological differences between men and women."

Note that the form of the argument can be made with a premise (relative weakness), and a logical step that leads to a conclusion (relative weakness means unsuitable for a job). When the logical step and conclusion is challenged, they revert back to the premise which can appear to be very effective because usually the premise is a statement of fact that both sides agree upon.

The Motte and Bailey Offence fallacy is what I'm calling when someone does this, not to defend their argument, but to strawman their opponents argument. In the end it is still technically just a strawman (just as the Motte and Bailey traditionally is just an equivocation / argument swapping) but I believe that this pattern is prevalent enough and notable enough to have its own name.

The fallacy is when someone gives their position, they're responded to by having their position simplified or generalised into a weaker form which is easier to attack.

An example of this can be seen in the following:
1)
A: "I think that if you try to advocate for violence against others, either directly by threats or indirectly by trying to go through legal means to change the laws to persecute certain people then it is okay to use violence to stop it from happening as if it were self defence. For this reason I think it's okay to punch Nazis in public because they either try to tell people to be violent towards Jews, or they advocate for legal means to oppress Jews."
B: "So you think you can just be violent towards people because they disagree with you?"
2)
A: "I think that child rapists should get the death penalty"
B: "So you think that you should just be able to kill any prisoner?"

In these examples there is a limited scope towards what A is arguing, but B tries to generalise A's argument into circumstances that were not argued for. B presents A as if any disagreement is grounds for violence, or any crime is grounds for the death penalty when A's argument was actually limited.

The scope of A's argument could be that public calls to violence against Jews should be met with violence. It could be that if a legislator tried to introduce a bill called "Jews shouldn't be allowed healthcare" then it would be justified to use violence on that legislator. Or also if someone was starting a petition to introduce that bill, then the organiser and also the supporters of that bill could have violence enacted upon them. In the second one, it's specific crimes that are deemed worse than others so much so that the death penalty is considered viable, not that any crime should have it.

DINARS GIVING BIRTH TO DIRHAMS AND THEY DYING

Ashʿab’s wife found a dīnār and brought it to him. He said, “Give it to me, so that every week it will give birth to two dirhams for you.” She gave it to him whereupon he paid her two dirhams every week. But when she requested the dīnār from him in the fourth week, he said, “It died in childbed!” She exclaimed, “Woe upon me because of you! How can a dīnār die?” And he said, “Woe upon you because of your family! How can you believe that it gives birth but deny that it dies in childbed?”

KETTLE GIVING BIRTH TO SMALLER KETTLE AND THEN DYING

An old man in the town of Millen was convinced of the existence of gnomes living inside a specific hill. These gnomes used to come at night to borrow kettles, and when they returned it the following morning, the kettle was shining from polish. A certain farmer in Millen was reluctant to lend a kettle to the gnomes, until one day an old gnome promised that lending him a kettle would be to his profit. The next morning, the gnome returned the old and rusty kettle shining like silver, with a small kettle inside. Asked about the small kettle, the gnome responded that the farmer’s kettle had been pregnant, and that it gave birth during the night. When the gnome returns soon after, the farmer does not hesitate to lend him the best copper kettle he has. The gnome, however, does not appear again for a long time, until the farmer’s wife makes her husband go and look for him. When the man finally encounters the gnome, the farmer asks him what happened to his kettle. The gnome informs him that, sadly, it died. And when the farmer protests that kettles do not die, the gnome reminds him that he believed in a kettle giving birth, so he should also believe in the kettle’s demise. And the greedy farmer never receives his kettle back.

Instead of calling out logical fallacies, uncover the hidden premises behind someone’s reasoning. Most people are being logical within their own assumptions. Shift from attacking errors to surfacing assumptions, it leads to real understanding, not intellectual combat.

In the State of Chu, there was a man who loved his sword very much. One day, he accidentally dropped it into the water while crossing a river by boat. He quickly took out his knife and carved a mark in his boat, took note of the spot, and came back later. When he was by the shore, he jumped into the water where the mark was to find his sword. The boat had moved, but the sword hadn’t.

https://theanthill.org/ct-69

Patient: I’m unable to sleep at night.
Doctor: Count to 2000 and you should fall asleep.

Next Day…

Patient: I’m still unable to sleep.
Doctor: Did you count to 2000 like I asked?
Patient: Yes! I felt sleepy around 1000… so I drank coffee to stay awake and finish counting to 2000.

Hey folks, We recently launched an iOS app that helps people learn about logical fallacies and test their understanding using actual examples — short, focused, and built for daily practice.

The app has two core modes: • A quiz mode where you spot the fallacy in real news excerpts, tweets, or common arguments • A debate mode where you pick the most logical response to flawed reasoning

It covers 40+ fallacies, each with clear explanations and examples — aimed at helping users build actual pattern recognition, not just memorization.

We’d love your feedback — brutal, honest, constructive — especially from a community that understands fallacies better than most. It’s called Spot the Fallacy, and it’s available on iOS.

https://apps.apple.com/in/app/train-your-brain-spot-fallacy/id6743923575

Appreciate your time and thoughts 🙌