# Glossary

This section contains short articles on topics that are *related to* the fallacies listed on this site, but are not themselves fallacies.

For this reason they also don’t appear in the [index of fallacies](https://ad.hominem.info/check//index.md) but are only listed here:

- **[Cargo cult](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/cargo_cult.md)** – Ritualized practices that imitate other practices only in their superficial form, without understanding their inner function or meaning.

- **[Causality](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/causality.md)** – A cause-effect relationship between two events or phenomena, in which one is brought about by the other.

- **[Echo chamber](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/echo_chamber.md)** – A situation in which an existing opinion is further solidified through feedback effects.

- **[Equivocation](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/equivocation/index.md)** – The use of a term (word, phrase, or logical connective) in two or more different meanings within the same argument or chain of reasoning.
  - **[Amphiboly](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/equivocation/amphiboly.md)** – An ambiguity in a statement caused by its grammatical or syntactic structure rather than by the meaning of individual words.
  - **[Metonymy](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/equivocation/metonymy.md)** – One term is used as a substitute for another, based on an implied relationship between them.

- **[Extension](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/extension.md)** – The totality of all objects that a term refers to.

- **[Jargon](https://ad.hominem.info/check//glossary/jargon.md)** – The use of difficult technical terms in order to confuse and/or to self-elevate by presenting yourself as particularly well-educated.

- **[Intension](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/intension.md)** – The set of associated meanings, connotations, and contextual information that come with *how* a term refers to its extension.

- **[Goodhart’s law](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/goodharts_law.md)** – A reminder that statistical measures lose their value as measures once they become targets that people optimize for.

- **[Groupthink](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/groupthink.md)** – A situation in which opinions have become so much entrenched within a group that they are no longer questioned or checked against reality.

- **[Reification](https://ad.hominem.info/check//glossary/reification.md)** – turning something (abstraction, idea, human being, etc.) into a "thing".

- **[Simulacrum](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/simulacrum.md)** – A replica or simulation that reproduces the appearance of the original but is disconnected from its inner function or meaning.

- **[Tautology](https://ad.hominem.info/check/glossary/tautology.md)** – A proposition that is necessarily true in all possible circumstances, independent of external facts.