10 arguments. Some are flawed, some are perfectly sound. Pick what's wrong with each one,
or say it's fine. Nothing is timed and nothing is scored against you anywhere but here.
Question 1 of 10
"You can't take her seriously on transit policy. She doesn't even own a car."
The reply is about the person, not the policy. Whether she owns a car has no bearing on whether her transit argument holds up. Attacking the arguer rather than the argument is the textbook shape of an ad hominem.
"So you want to cut the parks budget by three percent. Why do you hate children having anywhere to play?"
A three percent cut has been restated as wanting children to have nowhere to play. The responder is arguing against a much weaker position than the one that was actually taken. A straw man defeats an argument nobody made.
"Every time I wash my car it rains the next day. I've stopped washing it during harvest season so we don't get storms."
Rain followed the car wash, so the car wash gets blamed for the rain. Sequence is being mistaken for cause, with no mechanism and no comparison to the days the car went unwashed.
"The study showing the drug works was funded by the company that makes it, so we should look closely at the methodology and wait for independent replication before treating the result as settled."
This is not the genetic fallacy. The funding source is being used to calibrate how much scrutiny to apply, not to declare the conclusion false. Noting a conflict of interest and asking for replication is ordinary care, not a fallacy.
Question 5 of 10
"Either we adopt this exact security proposal, or we accept that we don't care about safety at all."
Two options are presented as the only options. In reality there are many possible security proposals, and rejecting this specific one says nothing about whether someone cares about safety. The framing hides every alternative.
"My uncle ate whatever he wanted, never exercised, and lived to ninety-four. All that advice about diet and exercise is overblown."
One person's outcome is being used to overturn a claim about populations. The uncle is real, but a single case can't tell you what happens on average, and it can't distinguish luck from causation.
"Millions of people use this app, so it must be the best one available."
Popularity is being treated as proof of quality. Lots of people use plenty of mediocre things for reasons of marketing, habit, or default installation. The user count is data about adoption, not about whether the app is good.
"A: The department missed its safety deadline three quarters running. B: What about the previous director? They missed deadlines too and nobody said a word."
The critique is about the current department's record. The reply changes the subject to a different person in a different period. The previous director's record might be worth discussing, but it doesn't answer the point that was raised.
"Nobody has ever proven that the additive is harmful, so it must be safe to use in unlimited amounts."
Absence of proof of harm is being treated as proof of safety. It may mean the additive is safe. It may also mean nobody has run the right study yet. Not knowing is not the same as knowing something is fine.
"Roughly two-thirds of the members surveyed opposed the change, across a random sample of eight hundred people, so it's fair to say the membership broadly opposes it."
The sample is large and randomly drawn, and the conclusion is scaled to what the data supports ("broadly opposes" rather than "everyone opposes"). Generalizing is legitimate when the sample can carry the claim.