# False equivalence

*Also called: Flattening differences*

- **Cluster:** Distraction and distortion — Moving the argument somewhere easier to win
- **Page:** https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/false-equivalence/
- **In Arabic:** https://fallacy.wiki/ar/fallacy/false-equivalence.md
- **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

## What it is

Treating two cases as comparable when they differ enormously in scale or kind.

## In the wild

> One missed a meeting, the other falsified records, both broke rules.

## How to answer it

Name the dimension that differs and by how much.

## Origin and naming

A modern label from media criticism rather than classical rhetoric. It names the habit of weighing two things on the same scale when their weight differs by orders of magnitude — often to make one side look better or calmer.

## More places it shows up

- A network gives 60 seconds to a climate scientist and 60 seconds to a blogger who denies warming, presented as 'both sides of the debate'.
- HR announces that the intern who microwaved fish and the manager who altered expense reports both 'violated workplace norms'.
- A pundit shrugs that both candidates 'played loose with facts' — one misstated a date, the other invented a riot.
- A group chat treats one member's sarcastic remark and another's leaked personal photos as equal offenses against community rules.

## How to spot it

- Notice when 'both sides' is said but only one side's specifics get described.
- Notice when two items are paired by a shared label — 'broke a rule', 'made a mistake' — that hides the size of each.
- Notice when removing one item's details would collapse the comparison entirely.

## Nearby

- [False analogy](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/false-analogy.md)
- [Middle ground](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/middle-ground.md)
- [Straw man](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/straw-man.md)

## Read more

- [Wikipedia — List of fallacies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies)
- [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/fallacy/)

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From fallacy.wiki — a bilingual field guide to 91 logical fallacies, published by phi holdings. Licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse freely with attribution to fallacy.wiki.