Fallacies Online

This has been my main project for the past couple of years now: a website that attempts to document, categorise and explain as clearly as possible all forms of fallacies, misconceptions and misguided approaches such as “anti-patterns”.

Although a considerable number of articles have already been published, the project is far from complete. Entire subject areas have barely begun, if at all.

In fact, the only subject area that is even slightly sketched out is that of logic.

The most important development in the last few years has been the shift in scope, from a wiki on logical and especially rhetorical fallacies (hence the original name “ad.hominem.info”) to that of erroneous reasoning. Hence the move to a new site under “fallacies.online” and a re-categorisation of numerous general fallacies into a new category system. This has not yet been finalised and will probably take quite a while, but at least it shows where the journey is heading.

This is also a good platform to try out a few other ideas. To make understanding the syllogisms easier, I have developed a web app that identifies the correct syllogism form from any combination of premises and conclusion – or in most cases: points out which fallacies the selection commits.

This app can also be installed on your smartphone as a web app. Perfect for settling disputes during faculty night-outs in the pub

Syllogismus-Finder App

Also the wiki system in use offers amble opportunity for little procrastination projects, when I don’t feel like working on the wiki itself. Over time, this has led to a specialised template (that you can also see here on this site) and several plugins that could also be useful for others. More about this on a separate page.