You will be able to recognise three fallacies that change the subject away from the evidence.
Farhan, a product manager at a fintech firm in one-north, suggests in the team chat that the app's sign-up form should drop two optional fields. Within ten minutes he has three replies. One says, "Farhan's never worked on compliance, so he wouldn't know." Another says, "So we just stop collecting data altogether? That's reckless." A third says, "Either we keep the form as it is or we fail the next audit." Nobody has said a word about the two fields.
Each reply is a fallacy. A fallacy is a pattern of reasoning that feels persuasive but does not support its conclusion. This lesson covers three that come up constantly at work and online, and all three do the same thing: they move the discussion away from the evidence.
The first reply is ad hominem, Latin for "to the person". It responds to an argument by attacking the person making it: their experience, motives, age, background or past mistakes, instead of what they said.
Whether Farhan has worked on compliance tells you nothing about whether those two fields are needed. If they are legally required, that can be shown by pointing to the requirement. If they are not, his lack of compliance experience does not make them required. The argument stands or falls on its own.
Ad hominem comes in quieter forms too. "Of course the sales team wants a lower price, they get commission" might be true about motives, but the sales team could still be right about the price. "He's new, give him a few months" dismisses an idea without looking at it. In a multicultural office it can turn ugly fast, when a view gets brushed off because of where someone studied, how they speak, or which generation they belong to.
There is a fair version worth separating out. Asking whether a source has a conflict of interest, as lesson 1.2, Not all evidence weighs the same, suggested, is reasonable. It tells you to check their evidence more carefully. The fallacy is skipping the check and treating the motive as the answer.
The second reply, "So we just stop collecting data altogether?", is a straw man. It restates someone's position in a weaker or more extreme form, then knocks that version down. Farhan proposed removing two optional fields. The reply argues against removing all data collection, which nobody suggested, and it wins easily because the position it attacks is weak.
Straw men are common because they are easy to build by accident. When you disagree with someone, you tend to hear the most extreme version of what they said. Under time pressure in a chat thread, "fewer fields" turns into "no data" in one step.
The test is simple: would the other person agree with your summary of their view? If Farhan would read "so we stop collecting data" and say "that's not what I said", it is a straw man. Lesson 2.4, Respond without winning on technicalities, will make this test a habit, by restating the other side fairly before you answer it.
The third reply is a false dilemma: "Either we keep the form as it is or we fail the next audit." It presents two options as if they were the only ones. In reality there are several. The team could remove the fields and check with compliance first. They could remove one field and keep the other. They could make the fields appear only for certain users. They could run the change past the auditors.
False dilemmas are persuasive because two options are easier to think about than five. When one of the two is clearly bad, the other wins by default. Politicians use them, and so do managers under pressure: "Either we hit the launch date or we lose the client." Sometimes that is true. More often there is a third path, such as a partial launch or an honest conversation with the client about a new date.
The question that breaks a false dilemma is "what else could we do?" Lesson 6.3, Widen your options before you choose, turns that question into a method for your own decisions.
All three share a trick. They swap the real question, which is hard, for an easier one. Whether two specific fields are needed for compliance is a narrow, technical question that requires checking. Whether Farhan knows about compliance, whether we should stop collecting data, or whether we want to fail an audit are easy questions. Most people can answer them instantly, and the answer feels like an answer to the original question.
That is also why you fall for them yourself. Judging a person is quicker than judging their argument. Defeating an extreme position is more satisfying than engaging with a moderate one. Choosing between two options is less tiring than generating more.
When you spot one, the most useful move is to steer the discussion back. To the ad hominem: "Fair point that I'm not a compliance specialist. Can we check whether those two fields are required?" To the straw man: "I'm only proposing the two optional fields, not anything else." To the false choice: "Are there options between those two?" None of these replies names a fallacy or scores a point. They return to the question that matters.
You will find these three almost everywhere once you start looking. Comment sections, office group chats and forwarded messages are full of them, and most of the people using them do not realise they are doing it. In the activity below you will collect one example of each and rewrite the point as a fair argument.
Find one example of each fallacy in a news comment section, a work thread or a group chat, and rewrite the point fairly.
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