The human tendency to choose more fully defined ideas
Manipulation of others using the human tendency to choose more fully defined ideas
Persuaders who commit ambiguity effect fallacies present several choices to us but try to direct our choice through a mind trick. They get us to pick certain choices by giving a more detailed description of those choices and giving ambiguous descriptions of other choices. The choice that’s more fully defined seems more real. The persuader controls our minds by leaving out information about all of the choices except the favored choice. We see this tactic used to propagandize in TV, entertainment, education, magazines, news, novels, and every means of communication.
Examples:
Well, let’s take it back around to the question at hand: does Ken Ham’s Creation model hold up? Is it viable? We’re here in Kentucky on layer upon layer upon layer of limestone. I stopped at the side of the road today and picked up this piece of limestone that has a fossil right there. Now, in these many, many layers in this vicinity of Kentucky there are coral animals, fossils, zooxanthellae, and when you look at it closely, you can see that they lived their entire lives, they lived typically 20 years, sometimes more than that if the water conditions were correct, and so we are standing on millions of layers of ancient life. How could those animals have lived their entire life and formed these layers in just 4,000 years? There isn’t enough time for this limestone we’re standing on to have come into existence. ~ Bill Nye
Bill Nye used the logical fallacy of misleading vividness, adding many pieces of unnecessary information for the choice he was selling, which was “billions of years.” However, Bill hardly mentioned and poorly defined the alternative, which is the Genesis Flood laying down the layers of sediment and coral animals. Bill’s ambiguity effect fallacy worked to make gullible people think that there was substance to what Bill claimed because he gave many details. The details triggered the ambiguity effect fallacy. Bill gave a vague definition of the other choice to make us think there was more evidence to support his case. The tactic convinces some people even though the premises and conclusion are false.
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