A logical fallacy is a really fancy way of saying, "That's a bad argument." Nerds like to call them "errors in reasoning" but they're really just arguments that sound convincing. When you take a closer look, you find that the reasoning is either flawed, misleading, or just not the full picture.

A classic example is the Slippery Slope fallacy.

"If you eat one Tim Tam, you'll eat the whole tray and get sick."

The claim is that eating one chocolate biscuit will inevitably lead to eating the whole tray. It jumps from a small step to a huge, unlikely result - ignoring everything in between. That leap is what makes it a fallacy.

Click here to learn more about these critters...

Here's the truth. You're being manipulated right now.

Not by us. But by someone. An advertiser. A politician. A friend. A work mate. Maybe even yourself.

It's not always bad. Most of us don't even know we're doing it. But whether we know it or not, the result is the same - you end up believing something, buying something, or doing something based on reasoning that doesn't actually hold up.

That's why you should learn them.

Knowing how to spot fallacies is one of the most important life skills. If you can spot a bad argument, you're much more likely to avoid falling into someone's trap. You can say, "Hey, that argument doesn't make sense. Can you give me a proper reason?" That's not being difficult. That's thinking for yourself.

Read more about why you should learn fallacies here.

Here's the bad news. There are dozens of logical fallacies - some say even over a hundred!

Here's the good news. You don't need to know all of them. You just need to know the ones that show up again and again in everyday life - the ones being used on you right now, whether you know it or not.

These are the ones worth knowing.

Click here to see a full list of the most common logical fallacies.

Easily - as long as you don't do it the school way.

Not the way where you break fallacies down into "formal" and "informal" categories. Not the way where you memorise Latin names and write diagrams to map out their structure. Blah, blah, blah. Nobody wants that.

And yet, whenever you look fallacies up online or pick up a fallacy book - even the kid-friendly versions - they make you want to hit the snooze button before you've finished the first page.

That's not how we do fallacies.

Click here to find out how the earlier you start, the better!

Around ten is the sweet spot. That's when people start seriously questioning things - and once that switch flips, it never flips back. Worth encouraging.

Click here to learn why starting young is the smart move.

Yes, there are plenty of games and activities for learning logical fallacies - but most are either too academic to be fun, or too gamified to be genuinely useful.

(We may be slightly biased, but we made one that's neither. It's called What's That Fallacy? and you can see all 24 cards here - the boxed edition is coming soon.)

Click here to find a list of logical fallacy games, including really fun ones!

It's super easy to confuse logical fallacies with cognitive biases because they can sometimes overlap, such as the anecdotal fallacy sounds similar to the anecdotal bias.

What's the Difference? 

A good way to distinguish each one is:

• A logical fallacy is a flaw in something we say
• A cognitive bias influences how we see things (not really a flaw - more a lens)

Click here to dive deeper into the differences between the logical fallacy and the cognitive bias.

Yes. The moment you strip away all the academic stuff that made fallacies only appeal to nerds.

Because that's what happened. The nerds got hold of fallacies and wrapped them in Latin terms, formal logic and textbooks so dry they could sand timber. They made us think fallacies were some incredibly difficult concept that us normies could never wrap our heads around.

Click here to learn how fallacies can be really fun, which was a shock to even us!

Yes - and this is the most interesting and often overlooked thing about fallacies.

Spotting a fallacy in someone's argument doesn't mean their conclusion is wrong. It means their argument hasn't proven it yet. Those are two very different things.

Click here to learn why just because your argument contains a fallacy, it doesn't always mean you're wrong.