Fallacy List 1. FAULTY CAUSE: (post hoc ergo propter hoc) mistakes correlation or association for causation, by assuming that because one thing follows another it was caused by the other. example: A black cat crossed Babbs' path yesterday and, sure enough, she was involved in an automobile accident later that same afternoon. example: The introduction of sex education courses at the high school level has resulted in increased promiscuity among teens. A recent study revealed that the number of reported cases of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) was significantly higher for high schools that offered courses in sex education than for high schools that did not. 2. SWEEPING GENERALIZATION: (dicto simpliciter) assumes that what is true of the whole will also be true of the part, or that what is true in most instances will be true in all instances. example: Muffin must be rich or have rich parents, because she belongs to ZXQ, and ZXQ is the richest sorority on campus. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
[ wu :: riddles(hard) ] There are three puzzlers in the puzzle forum: A Newbie, a Senior Riddler, and an Uberpuzzler. All three are honest, but can only give answers to the best of their knowledge. Newbies are confused creatures. Until their fifteenth posts, they are only able to make random responses!* Senior Riddlers have great powers of perception, but are not yet infallible. Uberpuzzlers are omniscient beings who are your greatest allies in the Puzzle Forum!!! The Uberpuzzler can exert Influence arbitrarily often. Furthermore, an Uberpuzzler only uses his power of Influence in a very specific way. (Thus, he employs a strategy defined as a mapping f : S3 x {(T|F)*} -> {0,1}, which can be interpreted as follows: for each ordering of the puzzlers "sigma" (a permutation in S3, e.g. Note that this is different from saying that the puzzler chooses when the Uberpuzzler applies Influence! Determine with proof the minimum number of questions which will allow you to identify which puzzler is which.
Ace of Death Patrick Nance (r-66y@ript.net) writes: This is a card game I invented awhile back and it has become wonderful fun when you have a bunch of friends together. The name is Ace of Death. A variation we come up with was a tournament match. It's a stupid game, but if you play it, it really does become wildly entertaining.