The fallacy of constructing a logical argument (syllogism, deduction) that is formally valid but begins with premises that are themselves cherry-picked, biased, or arbitrarily defined to force a desired conclusion. It's the illusion of sound reasoning built on rigged foundations. You follow the rules of logic perfectly, but you started the game with a stacked deck of premises. The argument is valid, but not sound.
Logical Picking *Example: Premise 1 (Cherry-picked): Major cities run by Party X have high crime rates. Premise 2 (Arbitrary): High crime is the only metric of governance. Conclusion (Logically picked): Therefore, Party X is inherently bad at governance. The logic is flawless, but the premises ignore cities' unique contexts and all other governance metrics, like education or infrastructure.*
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 4, 2026
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