An appeal to ignorance (ignorance here meaning lack of evidence) is a type of informal logical fallacy. · It asserts that something must be true because it hasn’t been proven false—or that something must be false because it has not yet been proven true. · For example, “unicorns exist because there is no evidence that they don’t.” The appeal to ignorance is also called the burden of proof fallacy.

An ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”) is a type of informal logical fallacy. Instead of arguing against a person’s position, an ad hominem argument attacks the person’s character or actions in an effort to discredit them. · This rhetorical strategy is fallacious because a person’s character, motive, education, or other personal trait is logically irrelevant to whether their argument is true or false. · Name-calling is common in ad hominem fallacy (e.g., “environmental activists are ineffective because they’re all lazy tree-huggers”).

People sometimes confuse cognitive bias and logical fallacies because they both relate to flawed thinking. However, they are not the same: · Cognitive bias is the tendency to make decisions or take action in an illogical way because of our values, memory, socialization, and other personal attributes. In other words, it refers to a fixed pattern of thinking rooted in the way our brain works. · Logical fallacies relate to how we make claims and construct our arguments in the moment. They are statements that sound convincing at first but can be disproven through logical reasoning. · In other word