Somewhere between Science and Pseudo-Science...

20-diversion-tactics-highly-manipulative-narcissists-sociopaths-and-psychopaths-use-to-silence-you

I'm gonna slice into this one a bit.

Many people use these 'techniques' without knowing they are being manipulative... Or at least no less manipulative than their internal image of the social norm. The Gold Standard.
They represent key failures in our logical processing software, and since they are universal to our species, the patterns are picked up easily by our pattern matching software. Basically, people do what they think works best, and then store it as a working model.

My particular favorite logical fallacy is the Positive Bias, as it's the keystone of the Scientific Method. It basically says that humans have a huge tendency to never attempt to disprove a belief without external stimulus... Such as learning about Logical Fallacies.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy

Until next time, Internet Adventurers!

  -JKane