# politics

Ad Hominem

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

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 Tradition

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

Astroturfing

Creating the appearance of widespread grassroots support for a position when the support is manufactured, funded, or coordinated from above.

Backfire Effect

When correcting someone's false belief makes them believe it even more strongly.

Bandwagon Effect

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

Blind Spot Bias

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

Bread and Circuses

Keeping a population content through entertainment and material comfort so they don't question the systems they live under.

Capitalist Realism

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

Cognitive Dissonance

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

Collective Amnesia

How societies forget inconvenient histories, allowing harmful patterns to repeat unchallenged.

Compartmentalisation

Keeping contradictory beliefs, values, or behaviours in separate mental boxes so they never have to confront each other.

Competitive Victimhood

The tendency for groups in conflict to compete over who has suffered more, using their pain to claim moral authority and deflect accountability.

Concern Trolling

Disguising hostile opposition as caring advice to undermine a cause from within.

Cultural Hegemony

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

DARVO

A manipulation pattern where the offender denies wrongdoing, attacks the accuser, and reverses victim and offender roles.

Denial

The refusal to accept an uncomfortable truth, even when the evidence is overwhelming.

Divide and Conquer

A strategy of breaking apart alliances and turning potential allies against each other to maintain control.

Dog Whistling

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

Emergence

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

Euphemism

Softening harsh realities with gentler language - sometimes kindly, sometimes to hide the truth.

False Balance

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

False Consciousness

Supporting systems that work against your own interests because the culture has made them feel natural and inevitable.

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.

Firehose of Falsehood

Overwhelming audiences with a rapid, continuous flood of disinformation so that truth becomes impossible to defend.

Framing Effect

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

Gaslighting

Manipulating someone into doubting their own perception, memory, or sanity.

Gish Gallop

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

Groupthink

When the desire for harmony in a group overrides honest analysis, leading to poor decisions nobody individually would have made.

Hindsight Bias

The tendency to believe, after an event has occurred, that you knew it was going to happen all along.

In-Group/Out-Group Bias

The tendency to favour people in your own group and view those outside it with suspicion, distrust, or hostility.

Loaded Language

Words chosen to trigger an emotional reaction rather than communicate neutral information.

Loaded Question

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

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.

Mere Exposure Effect

The tendency to develop a preference for things simply because you've encountered them before.

Moral Hypocrisy

Judging others by a stricter moral standard than the one you apply to yourself.

Moral Hypocrisy Judgement

We punish the contradiction between someone's stated values and their behaviour more harshly than we punish the behaviour alone.

Moral Licensing

The psychological loophole where doing something good gives you permission to do something bad.

Moral Panic

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

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.

Naive Realism

The belief that you see the world as it objectively is - and that anyone who disagrees must be biased, uninformed, or irrational.

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.

Obedience to Authority

The tendency for people to comply with instructions from a perceived authority figure, even when those instructions conflict with their own conscience.

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.

Pluralistic Ignorance

When everyone privately disagrees with something but goes along with it because they assume everyone else agrees.

Psychological Projection

Attributing your own uncomfortable feelings, motives, or traits to someone else.

Rationalisation

Constructing a logical-sounding explanation for a decision or behaviour that was actually driven by emotion.

Reactance

The instinct to resist or do the opposite when you feel your freedom of choice is being threatened or taken away.

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.

Regulatory Capture

When the agencies meant to regulate an industry end up serving its interests instead.

Relative Deprivation

Feeling worse off based on who you compare yourself to, not on what you actually have.

Repetition as Persuasion

The rhetorical strategy of making a claim more believable, more familiar, and more powerful simply by saying it again and again.

Salience Bias

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

Scapegoating

Blaming a person or group for problems they didn't cause, diverting attention from the real source.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to credit your successes to skill and your failures to circumstances.

Slippery Slope

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

Spiral of Silence

The tendency for people to stay silent when they believe their opinion is in the minority, causing that opinion to seem even rarer than it is.

Mental Model

State of Nature Assumption

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

Status Quo Bias

The preference for the current state of affairs, where any change is perceived as a loss.

Straw Man

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

Streisand Effect

When attempting to suppress, censor, or hide information backfires by drawing far more attention to it than it would have received otherwise.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

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

Symbolic Racism

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

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.

Victim-Perpetrator Cycle

Groups that have suffered persecution can, once they gain power, go on to persecute others - often using their past suffering as justification.

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.