Question

Consider this argument: "stock today closed slightly lower on moderate trading. this was after an announcement last night that middle eastern oil producers were planning to increase the price of a barrel of oil by 1.5% over the next 18 months. the slide in the market was probably reacting to that announcement. don't you agree?" that argument is an example of ________.

Answer 1

This is called the "post-hoc fallacy" Imeaning after the fact and therefore because of the fact). It suggests that because something happened after a particular event, it must have been caused by that event. This is faulty logic unless a cause-and-effect relationship has been demonstrated to exist.