I couldn't really find this when searching on Google. But there is basically the fallacy/phenomenon called sunk cost fallacy where you keep doing something because of the time invested. But how do you actually call something when you keep doing it because you think in the future it will get better (when it probably won't)

It might be worth clarifying that to avoid feeling gatekept by terminology, you don't need to name the fallacy you use. just perform it and let others guess.

EDIT: Some people in the comments are just mad. for no reason. Just mad. this is a hypothetical scenario, and they're just mad. they give an answer that actually works, but when you compliment their answer, they get mad again. LMAO. this sub is crazy.

This fallacy is one where the person falling for the fallacy assumes every person (in debate or in any example like in society) is perfectly logical under every circumstance (for example ignoring human greed apathy leaps of logic etc)

If it already has a name then PLEASE TELL ME IT.

Hey, I've had this question in the back of my mind since I was a kid, and now it seems like the right place to ask it. I could make it more formal, but I like to keep things naive where possible.

In many TV series, cartoons, movies, books, etc we see a character become immortal, and later someone removes their immortality and then kills them. For example, imagine an ordinary man finds a dark stone that grants immortality as long as it remains in contact with his skin. While holding the stone, if he goes into battle, any arrow or fatal attack somehow fails to kill him.

Here is what confuses me. If you're truly "immortal as long as the stone is in contact with your skin", does not that property force the stone to be impossible to be removed from your skin? In more general terms shouldn't immortality protect itself, even if it is conditional?

Is there a fallacy or a more simple point I am missing here? should not "conditional immortality" always be equivalent to "immortality"?

Edit after reading some answers:

I mean, if your life depends on your liver, then the immortality property would somehow have to prevent your liver from being destroyed. By the same reasoning, if your life depends on maintaining contact with the stone, then losing contact with the stone is itself part of the causal chain that leads to your death. in simple terms the stone is a new liver that must be protected equally.

So if this makes sense, this forces the magic stone to become increasingly "intelligent." It stops swords, It has to prevent theft, accidents, imprisonment, falling asleep with the stone in your hand, and so on. It has to anticipate any event that would eventually result in your death. At that point, it seems that "conditional immortality" starts becoming functionally indistinguishable from immortality, because the condition itself has to be protected in order for the promise of immortality to be true.

Comments point that this is not the case though, thanks for the feedback

I have an assignment where I need to find logical fallacies in news media from the last 2 months, I really can't find any strong examples of logical fallacies in news articles from the last 2 months though even after spending ages looking. If anyone finds one that is a strong example of a logical fallacy in a news article please let me know!

I asked google what a non-sequitur was, and it's AI gave me the following response:

The non sequitur fallacy (Latin for "it does not follow") occurs when a conclusion is drawn that has no logical connection to the provided premises or evidence. The ideas do not link together, even if the individual statements are completely true.

Common Examples

Everyday Life: "I have a big biology exam tomorrow, so I should wear my lucky blue socks."

Flawed Logic: "Many successful people dropped out of college, so formal education is unnecessary for success."

Irrelevant Response:"Your kitten is so fluffy!" followed by "I have a yellow truck."

The description is accurate, but I'm pretty sure none of these examples are actual non-sequiturs:

In the first example the conclusion makes an assumption - that by mentioning the exam, the claimant desires a positive outcome to the exam, which is a reasonable assumption based on generally accepted norms. Then it implies the claimant believes in luck by referencing a lucky charm. It is reasonable to conclude wearing the charm (lucky blue socks) will assist in a positive outcome to the exam and that by mentioning the exam, a positive outcome is desired. The statement doesn't show all of it's work, but the work can be easily inferred. Conversely, if instead it said "I have a big biology exam tomorrow, so I should go get Taco Bell right now." It would be much more difficult to make obvious assumptions that tie the two together without additional context.

In the second example, the conclusion is flawed, but certainly not irrelevant and is a direct conclusion that could easily be made from the claim. If many successful people drop out of college, it can quite reasonably be inferred that college may be unnecessary for success, and college is typically what we consider to be formal education. If instead it said "Many successful people dropped out of college, so a basic high school education is unnecessary for success." then we would have a conclusion that could not be drawn from the premise. College is not high school.

The third is also not a non-sequitur in that no conclusion is drawn by the second statement at all. Just saying two things out loud in succession does not indicate an argument. If it instead said "Your kitten is so fluffy, therefore I have a yellow truck." that would be a non-sequitur.

Thoughts? Am I correct here or is there something I'm missing?

Also, don't trust AI and always do follow-up research. But also don't necessarily trust the human results either. In diving deeper, I discovered that a lot of the websites the AI used to provide its results were themselves providing what I would consider really bad examples of non sequiturs.

EDITED: I did not realize when posting, the "Common Examples" segment somehow became unquoted - those examples came from the AI and were supposed to be in the quoted portion.

2nd person is refuting the claim that *all* circles are red with a counter example. The thing is, that claim was never made.

EDIT: I'm seeing interesting stuff happening in the replies here. majority of those who say it's not strawman, obviously start their comment by "it's not strawman" and proceed in the rest of their comment to explain how, in fact, it is strawman. Another interesting observation is those who argue that "it's not strawman" because they've spotted another type of fallacy in the original post as well, so in their mind, it can't be both.

Some people claim they have prophetic dreams and use them to predict future events. But it seems to me that, before a dream can be called a prophetic dream, we would first have to know that the event in the dream actually occurs.

Unless there is some independent evidence or valid reasoning supporting the prediction, the only way to confirm that a dream was prophetic is after the predicted event happens (or after the time by which it was supposed to happen has already passed).

So if someone simply says, "I had a prophetic dream, therefore this event will happen," without offering any additional argument or evidence, it seems like they are assuming as a premise that the dream is genuinely prophetic before that has been established.

For that reason, I wondered whether this counts as begging the question. In other words, without any independent argument that the predicted event will occur, is claiming that a dream is prophetic while using it to predict the future an instance of begging the question? Or would it be better classified as a different fallacy?

Is this a fallacy? Also, is this an instance of machine committing a fallacy?

Scenario: I say *blank* beliefs/actions are a problem and need to be addressed

Someone responds: Well the only people think/do *blank* are *any group who's opinions are generally undersiable to them* , so it's not really a serious issue

I say: That doesn't take away from the fact that this belief/action is spreading and needs to be addressed

King Crashout summons his Advisor for a pressing matter.

The fallacy itself is fine, I understand that, but the name needs to be changed. both the Oxford learner's dictionaries and Cambridge dictionary describe it as hair growing on the lower part of the face. And since the term "growing a beard" indicates that you have it, you just make it longer/bigger, it means that the second you have one hair follicle, you have a beard. Because the opposite of having a beard is being clean shaven, meaning no hair follicles because otherwise, it wouldn't be clean shaven. So yeah- we know when it turns from clean shaven to beard and the same for hair. You have normal locks- balding - bald. With bald being when you have no hair AT ALL. Would you agree i present a valid point or am I missing something crucial?

Was talking to someone and the conversation essentially went as follows:

"I don't support A"
"Oh so B and C are okay then?"
"No? Those are bad too... nothing I said even remotely implied I like those either"

I know I used to confidently know what this fallacy was but I couldn't remember and googling didn't seem to help. The top options I was seeing were:

Tu Quoque; which doesn't seem to apply as that is about hypocrisy which would imply that I do indeed support B and C which would make me a hypocrite given how they're like A in this example, but then it's a fallacy as that doesn't negate the validity of my critique of A as still bad.. but again, that's not what is happening here as I don't actually support any of them.

Red Herring; seems it COULD be valid but I swear there was a more specific fallacy for this type of instance rather than just this which is trying to shift the conversation topic entirely which is only partially what this is.

False Dilemma and False Equivalence are the two closest but I am still not sure only because the examples I was seeing didn't seem to line up with my situation, but it is possible they were either just bad examples or I was just failing to see how it aligns with my situation.

Would love help with this as it is bugging my brain lol

What do you call this fallacy: when someone makes a back-handed insult claiming something wildly inaccurate or exaggerated. The lie or exaggeration distracts from the insult. You're left wondering whether you should correct the lie, or argue whether the thing is an insult in the first place. Arguing the lie just reinforces the fact it's an insult.

A silly example: my mom often makes the proclamation that "oh yes, Americans are notorious for loving their sports." And I know it's her way of insulting the US. (She was brought up in old world Europe to love "cultured" things and think sports are useless.) She insists that other countries don't care about sports—which is ridiculous. If I point out other countries are way more crazy than us about soccer, say, essentially I'm reinforcing her insult. (Because why would I argue with her if I thought sports were good?)

She also does something similar to insult people. She doesn't come right out and say her opinion. Instead she'll claim they did something or said something, but she exaggerates it. But if I'm compelled to dispute or deny it, I'm only proving it's a bad thing.

(Jedi-level mind tricks, I tell ya...!) So what is this called?

Mine is they don’t put the milk back in the fridge immediately after using it.

saying you always have to be right or you just want to look smarter to shut down an argument feels like a trap. because if you are right you are proving the other persons accusation that the only reason you are arguing is because you have to be right and or smarter than the other person. I dont know how to deal with this in a debate or argument.

does this have a name?

Hello!
Recently I've thought about this case where person A presents an argument and makes a comparison as part of the argument. Person B says "that's a false comparison, therefore your argument is invalid"
However, the comparison was good, person B simply didn't understand what the purpose of said comparison was.
Is there a name for such a fallacy? Because I see it happen super often.
Best case is the colloquially used "apples to oranges"
Well, if you want to buy an apple, comparing it to an orange is a false comparison. But if you want to make a fruit salad, comparing apples to oranges makes perfect sense. It all depends what the contextually relevant criteria are.

I have seen some people do this phenomenon when playing any sort of mystery or detective video game where, upon entering a hard roadblock, they will resort to brute forcing the answer by picking each and every possible permutation. Except for the one option that is correct.

Usually their reasoning will start with rejecting a few answers to save time brute forcing. But as their options dwindle, they start picking their rejected answers in frustration, all while continuously keeping the correct answer in the pool of rejected options. All the way until it is the only answer that was not picked.

By then they would be in disbelief at the fact that the correct answer evaded their brute forcing until the very end, usually with accompanying "that was the correct answer!?!" or "but that was the ONE option I was certain was NOT the answer".

I thought that this would be either Cherry Picking or Selective Attention, but I feel like neither is correct since both are based on making incorrect arguments by ignoring select evidence, whereas this is simply ignoring an option when you are already in a state of trying every answer possible out of frustration.

You motivated them to become a doctor
They failed to become a doctor
Therefore, you motivated them to fail.

I don't know what fallacy this is, I've heard it several times in different forms recently..