About

The Reasoning Guide is a reference for the logical fallacies andcognitive biases that derail discussions — online and off. Each entry gets one short, linkable page: what it is, what it looks like in the wild, why it happens or fails, and how to respond without escalating.

Method

Every entry follows the same template and is reviewed for accuracy against standard treatments of informal logic (such as the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Definitions aim for plain language over technical completeness; where a fallacy has a traditional Latin name, it's listed as an alias.

Biases are empirical claims about minds, so they carry a stricter evidence bar: an entry is included only if it is standard textbook materialand not the subject of credible scientific dispute — backed by meta-analyses or large-scale replications, not just famous experiments. Well-known effects that fail that bar (the Dunning–Kruger effect among them) are deliberately absent. The per-entry sources and exclusion reasoning are published in thesources record.

A note on using these pages

Naming a fallacy doesn't win an argument — seethe fallacy fallacy. These pages work best as a shared vocabulary for talking about how a discussion went wrong, not as a scorecard.

Corrections & contact

Spotted an error, or think an entry could be clearer? Open an issue onGitHub — corrections are welcome. Content is licensedCC BY-SA 4.0.