Fallacies—notes Purdue’s Writing Lab—“are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others.” Purdue’s website then highlights a number of the mental traps that students often fall into—for example, the slippery slope, begging the claim, circular arguments, the red herring, and more. But if you want a rapid-fire introduction to many more logical fallacies, look no further than the video above. In 11 minutes, you will come across ones you may not have known about before—from the No True Scotsman and the Texas Sharpshooter, to the Tu QuoQue and the Ignoratio Elenchi. But it also has some timeless ones we see every day. Indeed who among us hasn’t experienced the Sunk Cost Fallacy at work, or the Ad Hominem attack on TV?

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