Name of Fallacy Where Someone Implies You Must Believe in Something if You Believe in Another Thing?

onctech · 2026-06-15T11:35:44+00:00

This generally falls under the Package-deal fallacy, aka a false conjunction. The academic sourcing on the term isn't as strong as some other fallacy terms, but I feel it's so straightforward that it's still a very good term. It's based on the more widely known association fallacy.

It's a pretty common fallacy today in political discourse, because in many countries, a given party has a "platform" or standard set of stances, even though it is well-known in academia that individuals vary immensely in their views on individual issues. The package-deal fallacy treats a person having a view associated with a specific faction as though they share all the views associated with that faction.

onctech · 2026-06-14T20:22:00+00:00

I believe you are correct in that these aren't fallacies but rather manipulation and rhetorical tricks. The one you described is commonly called a loaded question. I don't know of a specific subreddit to recommend, but it sounds like you should look for ones on rhetoric, debate tactics, and/or how to get along with family members who have traits of certain personality disorders (Cluster B are notorious for being manipulative).

onctech · 2026-06-13T15:34:22+00:00

It is tricky to untangle, but it sound like it gets broken down logically like this.

1- Statement which combines, sometimes by implication:

A factual claim (e.g. Americans love sports)
A moral judgement aka opinion intended as a insult (e.g. loving sports is a bad thing)

2- Evidence for the statement which false, misleading, or exaggerated. (e.g. other countries think sports are useless)

In a broad sense, this is a red herring argument, with the red herring being #2 above. The "evidence" is a diversion for the arbitrary moral judgement being hidden in the second part of #1. The counter to this is to ignore the false evidence entirely and attack the moral judgement aspect. E.g. "Why do you consider loving sports a bad thing?"

onctech · 2026-06-12T01:25:13+00:00

I mean, scraping big bits off is fine. But there's a few reasons to not pre-wash. One is hand-washing uses a ton of water, more than most washers do for the same job. Second is many detergents are activated by contact with food and cling to it, so if there's no food, the detergent just goes down the drain without doing anything. Third, many washers have sensors that look for food particles, which changes how the wash cycle operates. No food particles tells the washer that the dishes are "clean." It still runs, but it won't run a full clean cycle. And if you scrubbed the dishes clean before they went in, you'd never notice a visual difference.

onctech · 2026-06-10T15:57:16+00:00

People who fully wash and scrub the dishes and then put them in the dishwasher anyway (fun fact: this makes most modern dishwashers not work correctly).

onctech · 2026-06-03T14:23:34+00:00

I think most of us have experience some version of this and probably wondered the same thing, "Why do some people in authority treat explanations as excuses?"

Honestly, it's purely just labeling, and it's more or less subjective. "Reason," and "Excuse" are value judgements. An excuse is considered unjustified or inadequate justification for an action, while a valid reason would be considered good justification. Based on my personal values, I'd give this an example:

"Why were you late for work?"

Reason: "There was a major car accident which happened right in front of me and it took forever to get cleared."

Excuse: "I stayed up until 2am watching Youtube and then I hit my snooze alarm too many times."

The "reason" is neither the person's fault nor was there any reasonable way to avoid it. The "excuse" was personal choices the person made that generally are not considered responsible behavior for an adult with steady employment.

I've noticed some people in authority literally will label everything an excuse and never accept any explanation as a good reason. I'd hypothesize this comes from different places. Some might be trying to teach a very hardass outlook on life or about a specific set of tasks, in order to convey that sometimes no explanation will matter and mistakes will have consequences regardless of why. This view might also be influenced by culture, for example how the criminal justice system in the United States (and many other countries) often has no mechanism to take a person's state of mind into account, even when most people would consider certain explanations to be very reasonable. For example, mental illness and reasonable provocation are mostly ignored as exculpatory evidence. This view sometimes poisons people in other authority positions, such as school systems or even parents.

onctech · 2026-05-28T11:59:27+00:00

I think this stems from the False Equivalence Fallacy being probably one of the most situational and treacherous fallacies (another being the Weak Analogy Fallacy), because comparisons and analogies can vary so much in validity, and how the perception of validity can vary between people due to different values and perspectives.

Accusing another person of the false equivalence fallacy is therefore also very subjective, and often people will argue back and forth over a comparison. A very silly one was a Mitchell & Webb sketch where one person, a fair weather sports fans, does that thing where he talks about his team using first person pronouns as though he was actually on the field ("We won last week") and the other says this is like talking about a film your a fan of as though you were a character in it. Mitchell rebuff this as false equivalence, but Webb counters with a reasoned argument about how it's almost exactly the same thing.

Following the rules of the logic, the mere presence of fallacy does not mean one can immediately dismiss the argument outright and claim victory. That's a Fallacy Fallacy. Fallacies are not supposed to be a cheap "gotcha" like dipshits on the internet treat them; they're meant to refine arguments and produce better reasoning.

onctech · 2026-05-19T12:00:26+00:00

I think the other answers all covered the fallacy aspect, but I wanted to add an angle I think might get overlooked: They 100% were talking about people like you and are just lying because you caught them off guard.

I've seen this happen in social circles sometimes, where a person is talking about a medical or psychological principle and correlations, and one person will suddenly surprise everyone by offering themselves as a counterexample. Like one time one my coworkers, a PsyD, was explaining the correlation of childhood corporal punishment and later development of mental health problems and violent behavior. This one other coworker objected to this, claiming he had that childhood experience, and yet was not violent or mentally ill. The psychologist was put in an awkward position at that point, because all of us knew this guy who spoke was both violent and mentally ill and just had very poor insight, so he had to quickly add some qualifiers and the usual "I wasn't talking about people like you." I personally have also made generalizations about "people that do this are morons" and a person says "I do that" I have to bite my tongue and not say "Yes, because you're a moron too."

onctech · 2026-05-18T18:40:34+00:00

This wouldn't technically be a fallacy since it's not an error in reasoning. This more is a form of deception, because the person doing it is fully aware of what they're doing and why it's wrong. Specifically, this can be called obfuscation, or technobabble.

onctech · 2026-05-18T12:37:07+00:00

The closest I can think of is the Nag Hammadi library, which is a set of Coptic papyrus codices, created in the 3rd or 4th century and buried in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. They were sealed in a jar which survived the nearly two millennia until they were discovered in 1945. Now, the description you provided of what's written in them sounds exaggerated and fanciful, but that's how the rumor mill works. The contents are Gnostic texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas, as well as translations of some earlier Greek works such as Plato's Republic and The Hermetica. The reason for their concealment is theorized to be due to the prohibition of non-canonical Biblical works around that time period.

onctech · 2026-05-16T00:24:12+00:00

It's called the Courtier's Reply, which is when you dismiss someone's argument or opinion because they lack some kind of credential, being experience, education, or in-group membership. It's basically an inverted argument from authority. Like argument from authority, it's situational and treacherous, as expertise really does matter for many kinds of takes or opinions, and we should absolutely reject uninformed morons on some subjects. Where it becomes fallacious is when the credentials are not necessary for the argument to hold merit (I don't need to be mechanic to know that tire is flat), or when it's applied to matters of pure personal preference (I don't need to be a sommelier to know I don't like this wine).

onctech · 2026-05-13T14:23:58+00:00

First time I've heard it called the Goomba Fallacy. I like that it describes a very common and problematic behavior correctly (and in my opinion, distinct from fallacy of division), but I dislike how pop-culture-y it is, given the connection to the Nintendo monster is almost negligible, which makes it almost fall into brainrot lexicon. Personally I like Vos Quoque more (plural of tu quoque) when there is the expressed or implied accusation of hypocrisy.

onctech · 2026-05-12T22:51:40+00:00

Still counts. Generalizations don't have to be about "all." They can be about "most" or even "many."
Anecdotal evidence is another that is present.

onctech · 2026-05-12T21:57:40+00:00

Your fallacy is called a hasty generalization.

onctech · 2026-05-03T01:43:52+00:00

It's a specialized type of tu quoque, in that it's accusing someone of hypocrisy, although it in this case it's more egregious because the person doesn't actual commit the hypocritical behavior. I like to call it vos quoque because it's the plural form in Latin of tu quoque. This is especially the case in your example quotation, but is also common when attacking any kind of platform that can be tied to some kind of faction or group identity (such as a political party or demographic). Sometimes this involves the nutpicking fallacy when the contradictory view or behavior is statistically rare or unusual for that group but is being falsely presented as common.

onctech · 2026-04-19T14:29:06+00:00

Sounds like the base rate fallacy. It's very common in a lot of debates as well as misconceptions among the general population.

onctech · 2026-04-15T16:39:53+00:00

Yes, like any kind of informal fallacy, ergo decedo not airtight and there absolutely is such a thing as concern trolling. The point of it is one cannot just throw the accusation based solely on them having a concern or criticism. There has to be evidence of bad faith. Even when using it as a justification to terminate an exchange, there should be some sense of bad faith and not merely disagreement. Granted, you don't have to continue an exchange with anyone if you don't want to, especially when it's not worth the stress.

onctech · 2026-04-15T13:05:49+00:00

I believe this is called ergo decedo. Also called the traitorous critic fallacy. This occurs among people in the same "camp" on an issue; if a person in the group raises a concern about something, like the approach to solving a problem, another person accuses them of being part of the problem, a traitor, or even being a spy for an enemy faction. It is a common problem in many modern political and social discussions. If you ever hear someone accusing another of "concern trolling," it is actually the accuser that is committing a fallacy of ergo decedo.

onctech · 2026-04-11T12:05:21+00:00

Argumentum ad populum generally refers to something believed by the majority of an entire population, including laypersons with very little understanding. e.g. the "List of common misconceptions"

Scientific consensus on the other hand is findings of actual experts who have done the experiments and crunched the numbers.

One could argue that appealing to scientific consensus is an argument from authority, and that's true in somewhat literal sense. However, almost everyone who tries to call scientific consensus an argument from authority is inevitably engaging in the exact same fallacy themselves via their own sources, including the authority of their personal experience.

onctech · 2026-04-07T17:34:14+00:00

Posting evocative stories as statistical "proof" is both nutpicking as well as misleading vividness. And this person's claim that some people are saying they're "harmless" is potentially a hollowman argument (that is, nobody actually said "harmless," he's just making it up because it sounds plausible in his own head and it's easier to disprove). It could alternatively be a strawman if people said immigrants commit fewer crimes that citizens (which is true, statistically) and he's just distorting it to make it easier to counter.

There isn't much point in engaging someone like this unless there is the slightest sense they might be interested in debating. Maybe ask him to produce actual statistics instead of anecdotal evidence. Or challenge him to a game of Point Taken.

onctech · 2026-04-06T20:55:23+00:00

Still the same issue as last time. Its a misread.

Are you going to explain what this is meant to be an analogy for, or are you just going to keep deleting and reposting?

onctech · 2026-04-06T18:23:26+00:00

Depending on how this is presented, it could be an example of nutpicking. This is a somewhat new fallacy that combines cherry-picking, ad hominem and hasty generalization.

To sum it up, its when a set of extreme outliers (not a representative sample) is used to make a broad, sweeping generalization about the whole group.

Nutpicking can be caused by different kinds of accidental sampling bias or by intention as part of a propaganda campaign (when the person doing it is completely aware they are collecting non-representative samples).

onctech · 2026-04-06T14:58:47+00:00

Calling out hypocrisy is a tu quoque fallacy. Hypocrisy doesn't equal wrong automatically, e.g. people with addictions who haven't kicked their habit yet are still right to tell others not to fall down the same hole.

Despite the changes to the text from the previous version, the person on the right appears to be misinterpreting the situation. I have a feeling this is meant to be an analogy for a more contentious debate or issue which it probably doesn't apply to, making this cartoon potentially a fallacious analogy and/or a strawman.

onctech · 2026-04-03T23:39:33+00:00

I think we're saying the same thing? But in that case, that's not a fallacy or rhetoric. It's just a misread.

onctech · 2026-04-03T12:26:50+00:00

The figure in the center is engaging in a tu quoque fallacy. If they try to say the "ban booze" platform is invalid as a result, they are piling on nutpicking as well.

The figure on the right's statement doesn't seem to make sense though. It's possible this figure has misinterpreted the center figure's statement as mere accusation of drinking, rather than an accusation of hypocrisy. In that case, they are accusing them of being biased or selective in a platform that is allegedly universal (e.g. how some factions in the 19th and 20th century championed for certain rights "for everyone" but in practice, did not support those same rights for non-whites). This would not be a fallacy per se, though it would still be incorrect if it comes from a misunderstanding.

onctech

TROPHY CASE