# critical thinking

Ad Hominem

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

Anchoring Bias

The first piece of information you encounter disproportionately shapes everything that follows.

Anthropocentrism

The assumption that human needs, perspectives, and values are the central or most important frame for understanding the world.

Apophenia

The tendency to perceive meaningful connections, patterns, or intentions in random or unrelated information.

Appeal to Common Sense

Using 'it's just common sense' as a substitute for evidence or argument, treating intuition as self-evident truth.

Appeal to Emotion

Using feelings rather than evidence to persuade - bypassing the argument and going straight for the heart.

Appeal to False Authority

Using an expert's opinion as evidence when they have no relevant expertise - fame and credentials aren't the same thing.

Appeal to Nature

Arguing that something is good because it's natural, or bad because it's artificial - as though nature is always benign.

Appeal to Tradition

The assumption that something is better, correct, or preferable simply because it's the way things have always been done.

Attentional Bias

The tendency for your perception to be shaped by what you're already thinking about, worrying about, or primed to notice.

Authority Bias

We give disproportionate weight to the opinions of people we perceive as authorities - even outside their expertise.

Availability Heuristic

We judge how likely something is based on how easily we can think of an example - not on how often it actually happens.

Aversive Racism

When people who genuinely believe they are not prejudiced still harbour unconscious biases that shape their behaviour in subtle ways.

Bandwagon Effect

The tendency to adopt beliefs, behaviours, or trends because other people are doing so.

Base Rate Fallacy

Ignoring general statistical information in favour of specific but less reliable details about an individual case.

Ben Franklin Effect

We grow to like people we've done favours for, not just people who've done favours for us.

Blind Spot Bias

The tendency to recognise cognitive biases in others while failing to see them in yourself.

Burden of Proof

The obligation to provide evidence rests with the person making the claim - not with the person questioning it.

Capitalist Realism

The pervasive sense that capitalism is the only viable system - not because it's the best, but because alternatives have become unthinkable.

Circle of Competence

Knowing the boundaries of what you genuinely understand - and having the discipline to stay inside them when it matters.

Circular Reasoning

An argument that uses its own conclusion as one of its premises - going round in circles without proving anything.

Clustering Illusion

The tendency to see meaningful patterns in small clusters of random data, when the clusters are exactly what randomness looks like.

Cognitive Dissonance

The uncomfortable tension we feel when holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time.

Commodification

The process of turning things that aren't naturally products - ideas, identity, relationships, rest - into things that can be bought and sold.

Complexity Bias

The tendency to prefer complex explanations over simple ones, and to mistrust simple solutions to problems that feel complicated.

Conceptual Gentrification

When ideas are stripped of their challenging, uncomfortable, or radical parts and repackaged for comfortable mainstream consumption.

Confirmation Bias

We seek out information that supports what we already believe, and ignore what doesn't.

Cultural Hegemony

When the dominant group's ideas become everyone's 'common sense' - accepted as natural rather than constructed.

Dog Whistling

Using coded language that sounds innocent to most people but carries a hidden message to a specific audience.

Dunning-Kruger Effect

The less you know about something, the more confident you're likely to feel about it.

Effort Justification

The harder we work for something, the more we convince ourselves it was worth it - regardless of whether it was.

Emergence

Complex behaviours arising from simple rules, with no central plan or control.

False Balance

Presenting two sides as equally valid when the evidence overwhelmingly supports one.

False Consensus Effect

We tend to assume that most people think the way we do - and we're usually wrong.

False Dilemma

Presenting only two options when more exist - forcing a choice between extremes and ignoring everything in between.

False Equivalence

Treating two things as equally valid or important when they clearly aren't.

Feedback Loops

When the output of a system feeds back in as input, either amplifying or dampening the original effect.

First Principles Thinking

Breaking a problem down to its most basic truths and building up from there, rather than reasoning by analogy.

Framing Effect

The way information is presented changes how we respond to it - even when the underlying facts are identical.

Functional Fixedness

The tendency to see objects, tools, and ideas only in terms of their conventional use, making it harder to find creative solutions.

Gish Gallop

Overwhelming an opponent with a rapid flood of arguments, regardless of accuracy, so that none can be adequately addressed.

Halo Effect

One positive trait colours your entire perception of a person, product, or idea.

Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance, carelessness, or incompetence.

Hasty Generalisation

Drawing a broad conclusion from too few examples - treating a small sample as though it represents the whole picture.

Illusory Correlation

Perceiving a relationship between two things when no meaningful connection exists - or when the connection is far weaker than it appears.

Illusory Truth Effect

Repeat something often enough and people start to believe it - not because it's true, but because it's familiar.

Implicit Association

The automatic, unconscious mental connections between concepts, groups, and attributes that shape perception and behaviour without conscious awareness.

Independent Evaluation

Forming your own judgement about an idea or claim before looking at what everyone else thinks.

Inversion

Instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure - then avoid those things.

Just-World Fallacy

The belief that people get what they deserve - that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.

Law of the Instrument

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail - the tendency to over-rely on a familiar tool or approach for every problem.

Loaded Question

A question that contains a built-in assumption, making it impossible to answer without appearing to accept that assumption.

Loss Aversion

Losses feel roughly twice as painful as equivalent gains feel good.

Lump of Labour Fallacy

The mistaken belief that there is a fixed amount of work available in an economy, so one group's gain must be another's loss.

Manufactured Consent

When media systems produce public agreement with elite interests - not through censorship, but through structure.

Map is Not the Territory

Every model, theory, or description of reality is a simplification - useful, but never the whole picture.

Microaggressions

Small, everyday slights and indignities - often unintentional - that communicate hostility or prejudice toward members of marginalised groups.

Moral Panic

Intense public fear about a perceived threat, amplified by media, disproportionate to the actual danger.

Psychological Defence

Motivated Reasoning

When we use reasoning not to find the truth, but to defend what we already believe.

Motte-and-Bailey

Defending a controversial claim by retreating to an uncontroversial one, then acting as if they are the same thing.

Moving the Goalposts

Changing the criteria for proof or success after they've been met - ensuring that no evidence is ever good enough.

No True Scotsman

When someone redefines a group to exclude counterexamples rather than accepting that the counterexamples disprove their claim.

Normalisation

The gradual process by which the previously unthinkable becomes acceptable, then expected, then invisible - the slow drift of what a culture treats as normal.

Occam's Razor

When you have competing explanations for the same thing, the simplest one - the one with the fewest assumptions - is usually right.

Omission Bias

The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions, even when doing nothing causes more damage.

Opportunity Cost

Every choice has a hidden price tag: the value of the next-best thing you gave up by choosing this one.

Overton Window

The range of ideas the public considers acceptable at any given time - and how that range can be deliberately shifted.

Paradox of Tolerance

A tolerant society that tolerates intolerance will eventually be destroyed by it.

Pareidolia

The tendency to see recognisable shapes - especially faces - in random patterns, clouds, textures, and noise.

Post Hoc

Assuming that because one thing happened after another, the first thing caused the second - confusing sequence with causation.

Probabilistic Thinking

Thinking in terms of likelihoods and ranges of outcomes rather than certainties, so you make better decisions under uncertainty.

Recuperation

When radical ideas are absorbed by the system they opposed and sold back as products - neutralising dissent by turning it into commerce.

Red Herring

Introducing an irrelevant topic to divert attention from the original issue.

Salience Bias

The tendency to give disproportionate weight to prominent, vivid, or emotionally striking information while overlooking quieter details.

Second-Order Thinking

Thinking beyond the immediate consequences of a decision to consider what happens next - and what happens after that.

Slippery Slope

Arguing that one small step will inevitably lead to a chain of increasingly extreme consequences, without evidence that the chain is likely.

Social Proof

We look at what other people are doing to decide what we should do - especially when we're uncertain.

Source Laundering

Passing unreliable information through a chain of increasingly credible-looking sources until it appears legitimate.

State of Nature Assumption

The unconscious belief about whether people are fundamentally selfish or fundamentally cooperative - and how that shapes everything else you think.

Steel Manning

The practice of engaging with the strongest possible version of someone's argument, rather than the weakest - the opposite of a straw man.

Straw Man

Misrepresenting someone's argument to make it easier to attack.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Continuing to invest in something because of what you've already put in, not because of what you'll get out.

Survivorship Bias

Focusing on the people or things that succeeded while overlooking those that didn't - and drawing false conclusions from the incomplete picture.

Symbolic Racism

When prejudice hides behind the language of fairness - opposing policies that help marginalised groups while insisting the opposition isn't racial.

The Attention Economy

A system in which human attention is treated as a scarce resource to be harvested, bought, sold, and competed for - reshaping culture around it.

Thought-Terminating Cliche

A commonly used phrase that shuts down critical thinking by making further discussion feel unnecessary.

Tone Policing

Dismissing someone's argument by criticising how they expressed it rather than engaging with what they said.

Tragedy of the Commons

When individuals acting in their own rational interest collectively destroy a shared resource.

Unintended Consequences

Actions in complex systems produce outcomes nobody planned for - sometimes worse than the original problem.

Weaponised Hopelessness

When despair is deliberately cultivated to stop people from acting - because people who believe nothing can change won't try to change anything.

Weasel Words

Vague qualifiers that create the impression of a meaningful claim while committing to nothing.

Whataboutism

Responding to a criticism by pointing to someone else's wrongdoing instead of addressing the original point.

Woozle Effect

When a claim gets cited so often that people assume it's been proven - even though the evidence behind it is thin or nonexistent.