Forms Of Fallacy
This section takes the form of a catalog, of sorts. It's not going to be complete and won't take a formal approach to describing the catalog in the same way that, for example, Design Patterns deals with its catalogue; a complete catalogue of fallacies would be at least as long as the rest of this book. A formal and consistent catalog would require planning.
Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
Translated, this means "After this, therefore because of this." Given two events, X and Y, the argument goes:
First X, then Y. Y was therefore caused by X.
This is a form of inductive reasoning that does not necessarily hold. Here's an absurd example:
The light turned red, and the car came to a halt. Red photons exert a strong retarding effect on cars.
In this case, there could be a causative relationship, but it is not as direct as the argument proposes.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Person P did X. Therefore, P is a moron.
This is also called correspondence bias. People often...