“These pages provide information about a variety of informal fallacies.
Put roughly, a fallacy is a mistake in reasoning.”.
(Michael C. LaBossiere)
For example:

Appeal to Common Practice

“If what is moral is determined by what is commonly practiced, then this argument:

• Most people do X.
• Therefore X is morally correct.

would not be a fallacy. This would however entail some odd results.

For example, imagine that there are only 100 people on earth.
60 of them do not steal or cheat and 40 do.
At this time, stealing and cheating would be wrong.

The next day, a natural disaster kills 30 of the 60 people who do not cheat or steal.
Now it is morally correct to cheat and steal.

Thus, it would be possible to change the moral order of the world to one’s view simply by eliminating those who disagree.”.

Reasoning: Fallacies, by Michael C. LaBossiere, from Opifex Phoenix.

Extract reproduced under ©Dr. Michael C. LaBossiere.

“Since at the beginning of an attraction that will become limerent, you feel both free and happy
(you walk on air), it is hard to resist once it starts.”.
“….And although it resembles a disease in some ways, I see it as a normal adaptation, an instinctual reaction, if you will, that through the course of evolutionary history proved valuable to species endurance.”.
(Dorothy Tennov, Q and A on Limerence)

Limerence:

“an involuntary cognitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person.”.
(from Wikipedia)

“In the summer of 1969, when I was 11, I bought a stereo system at the local hi-fi shop.

It cost all of the $100 I had earned weeding neighbor’s gardens that spring at 75 cents an hour.
My father made me a proposition: he would buy me a pair of headphones if I would promise to use them when he was home.

Those headphones changed the way I listened to music forever.”.

This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession , by Daniel J. Levitin.

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“The only thing that exists is myself.”.
(Bomb #20 in Dark Star; John Carpenter, 1974)

Dark Star: A Science Fiction Adventure.
A screenplay by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon.

“What is artificial intelligence, anyway?”
From Cybercinema, “An interactive site devoted to the history of computers and artificial intelligence in film”: Bomb #20 learns little phenomenology.

“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.

Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”.

The Perils of Obedience, adapted from Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram (1974).