# Critical Thinking & Fallacies

Everything in the Logic track so far has been about what makes reasoning *valid*. This guide is about
the opposite - and arguably more useful - skill: recognizing reasoning that is *broken* but doesn't feel
broken. Because that's the dangerous kind. A bad argument that sounds bad fools no one. A bad argument
that sounds great is how people get talked out of their savings, their vote, and their better judgment.

A **fallacy** is exactly that: an argument that's persuasive on the surface but logically unsound
underneath. They're not rare or exotic - they're the everyday machinery of advertising, politics, and
internet fights, and they work because they exploit feelings and mental shortcuts rather than logic.
This guide gives you a name for each common one, an example so you'll recognize it in the wild, and a
practical toolkit of clear-thinking habits. Naming a manipulation is the first step to being immune to
it - and a person who can't be easily fooled can't be easily steered.

## How to read this
- **Want the catalog?** [Phase 2](02-the-fallacies-youll-meet-most.md) is the field guide to the common
  fallacies.
- **Want it to stick?** Read in order - Phase 1 explains *why* fallacies work, Phase 3 is the toolkit
  that beats them.

## The phases
1. **[What a Fallacy Is (and Why They Work)](01-what-a-fallacy-is.md)** - broken-but-convincing
   reasoning, and the psychology it exploits.
2. **[The Fallacies You'll Meet Most](02-the-fallacies-youll-meet-most.md)** - a field guide: ad
   hominem, straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope, post hoc, and more.
3. **[Thinking Clearly: A Practical Toolkit](03-thinking-clearly-a-practical-toolkit.md)** - steelmanning,
   separating claim from evidence, cognitive biases, and verifying in the age of fluent AI.

> This caps the Logic foundations. It draws on validity from
> [What Logic Actually Is](/guides/what-logic-actually-is) and the conditional errors from
> [Implication & Conditionals](/guides/implication-and-conditionals).