Learn to spot the trick.

A field guide to the fallacies, rhetorical tricks, and cognitive biases behind arguments that sound right but aren't.

Today's spotlight

The classic broken-logic moves.

Debate tactics that dodge the actual argument.

The mental shortcuts that fool us without anyone arguing at all.

Attack the person making the argument instead of the argument itself.

Treat a claim as true mainly because someone with status said it, not because of the evidence.

Present two things as morally or logically equal when their scale is very different.

Fire off so many weak claims so fast that no one has time to rebut them properly.

Let the first number you see shape every judgement that follows, even when it's arbitrary.

Judge how common or risky something is by how easily an example comes to mind, not by the actual rate.