Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32182236-20190721003717/@comment-32182236-20191002203156

As an addendenum, there are indeed informal fallacies that are not red herrings.

But a lot of them are.

And most of them expect you to take the hidden assumption that A, which they proved, implies B.

But they don't show that A implies B.

For instance.. Let's take the ad hominem, a case of a red herring.

"This person is [insert bad character trait here]! Therefore, we should not believe what they say! So what they say is false!"

...It doesn't matter who says what. It's the quality of the argument that matters. They proved A, and take for granted that A implies B.. When A does not imply B.

You see, informal fallacies arise when such hidden premises exist. (Red herrings are specifically when the hidden premise is that A implies the conclusion B, but other informal fallacies exist as well.)