Episode 21: Fallacy Watch--The False Dilemma Fallacy

In this episode, April discusses the false dilemma fallacy, in which a person attempts to persuade to you to choose between a limited number of options when there are actually more options available.

Episode 21 Show Notes:
Here's a great definition and discussion of the false dilemma fallacy:
https://examples.yourdictionary.com/false-dilemma-fallacy-examples.html

Another good explanation of this fallacy:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

I admit to taking an example or two from this very good article about this fallacy:
https://www.developgoodhabits.com/either-or-fallacy/

This article talks about Dan Price, who lowered his own salary in order to raise the salaries of his employee (thus refuting the idea that prices must be raised to pay for wage increases):
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/369908

A very detailed discussion of the ways that politicians have used the false dilemma fallacy to frame the Covid-19 debate:
https://www.boisestate.edu/bluereview/covid-19-donald-trump-and-the-false-dilemma-fallacy/

An interesting opinion piece about the dangers of the false dilemma fallacy from the Deseret News (it's a Mormon-based newspaper, so don't be surprised by the religious references) by Sharlee Glenn, a Mormon writer who founded the nonprofit Mormon Women For Ethical Government:
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2020/5/15/21258954/covid-19-pandemic-false-dichotomy-paradox-politics-equilibrium

These two journal articles show the rates of Covid in areas without mask mandates:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249891
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2781283

Transcript

Episode 21—Fallacy Watch: The False Dilemma Fallacy

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Hi everyone and welcome to Season 3 of Think It Through. I took some time off to get my classes all set up, plus I really needed to think about the direction I wanted to go this season. I’m going to focus on some of our most common fallacies and how they end up influencing the way we think about things. In fact, today’s episode looks at an extremely common fallacy that’s often used to pull people over to one side of an argument that, if they thought critically about it, they would never be persuaded to believe. This fallacy is known by many different names; it’s called the false dilemma fallacy, the false dichotomy fallacy, the fallacy of false choice, the excluded middle fallacy, the black-or-white fallacy, and “either-or” fallacy. So what is this many-named fallacy? Let’s find out.

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According to YourDictionary.com, the false dilemma fallacy is one in which someone presents a choice between two options and says that you must choose one or the other.  These choices are always mutually exclusive, which means that they can’t both occur at the same time. For instance, you can’t run forwards and backwards at the same time; a coin toss can’t result in the coin landing heads and tails at the same time; and you can’t be both pregnant and non-pregnant simultaneously. So there are plenty of events and situations for which you must choose from a specific number of things. However, for many other events in our lives, there are an infinite number of things from which we might choose. The false dilemma fallacy sets up a proposition in such a way that makes it seem like two mutually exclusive things are the ONLY possible things that could happen, and so the person being given these options can ONLY choose between those particular things. Let’s look at two examples of how this might play out in real life: Here’s one scenario, Your friend wants you to come to a party with her, but you’re hesitant. She says something like, “Come on, come with me! Or you can just sit here, do nothing and be bored all night, I guess.” She’s narrowing down your choices to 1) either come with me to the party, or 2) sit here and be bored all night. And, because the prospect of being bored all night doesn’t really sound that great, you may be inclined to agree to go with her. Here’s another example: you’re having a discussion with your friends and the topic gets around to the minimum wage, and you say that it should be raised to $15/hour. Another of your friends says that’s ridiculous, that it would have a devastating economic impact. According to him, the minimum wage cannot be raised without also raising prices for goods and services. And the way he puts it, you can see that it is indeed a dilemma—we’ve got to either keep the minimum wage where it is, or raise prices to pay for the wage hike, which would result in higher prices for everyone, even people whose wages didn’t increase.  In the face of that argument, you might back away from your original belief because his argument just seems so cut and dried.

But is it really? In both of those scenarios, the person trying to persuade sets their argument up in a way that only gives two possible choices, and one of those choices seems to be much better than the other one, and isn’t it interesting that the obviously better choice is the one they want you to select? Let’s look deeper at each of these examples.

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In the first instance, your friend wants you to come with her, so she pits THAT choice against you staying home, which she couches in language to make it obvious that it isn’t a good idea to stay home and be bored, doing nothing. But here’s the thing—are those your only two choices? The ONLY other thing you could do besides go to a party with her is sit at home and do nothing? You couldn’t, for example, go frankly anywhere else besides to a party with her? Or stay home, but take a nice long bath, have a glass of wine and read a good book (which is the opposite of doing “nothing”)? Of course you could, your options are only limited by your imagination and I guess your bank account. But she doesn’t want you to consider ANY other options besides the ones she’s given you, and using this fallacy is an attempt to force you into a particular choice! Here’s the thing—she may not realize that she’s doing this; it’s a very common fallacy and we’ve all done it from time to time. She just wants a particular outcome and is using a tactic that has worked for her before, whether it’s intentional or not.  

In the other scenario, your friend’s argument is that the minimum wage should not be raised because it would require higher prices for goods and services in order to pay for it. And he seems very adamant that that is what would happen, and it would be a bad thing. But, first of all, this issue is far more complicated than he’s making it out to be, but he doesn’t want you to think about that, only about this one potential problem. I mean really, is raising the price of goods and services the only way to pay for a wage hike? No, there are a number of things that could be done: for instance, profit margins and wages for upper-level employees could be reduced and that money used to pay lower-level employees more. Or the federal government could step in and provide money to help employers with the higher wages, using increased tax revenues from corporations or those with very high incomes. Yes, I know that there are arguments both for and against those other options, but to act like they don’t exist and focus only on one thing is fallacious. You may have heard of Dan Price, the CEO of Seattle-based Gravity Payments, who reduced his own salary to 70,000 per year in order to raise the salary of ALL his employees to 70,000/year. Not only did he not have to raise his prices to do that, but in the years since that change, the company’s revenues have tripled. But during such a lively discussion, in the heat of the moment, would you have the wherewithal to even THINK about any of these rebuttals to his argument? It’s possible, but many of us might just back down and say “hmm, good point” or something like that, and wonder why our friend always seems to win these kinds of arguments. Again, this person might not even recognize what he’s doing, he just knows that it works and that he’s, once again, right. Even though he’s really not.

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So what is the psychology behind the effectiveness of this fallacy? It’s used in all kinds of persuasive situations, including in advertising and especially in politics. We use it because it works, so why does it work? The main reason it works is because it simplifies an issue or a choice, and our brains prefer simple to complicated. When alternatives, differences, and complexities are all reduced, we just automatically tend to choose from whatever’s left without thinking too deeply about it. It’s a mental shortcut that works to the advantage of the person or entity trying to persuade us.

Now, to be honest, there are a few situations when you might need to narrow down options. Here’s one—you give your three-year old a choice of bologna sandwich or peanut butter sandwich for lunch. Yes there are other options out there, but do you have to give her all of those options? No, you just want to make her a sandwich, and don’t have time to go over the entire panoply of lunch possibilities. Same thing applies with movie or other entertainment choices, if you and your friends are trying to decide what to do this weekend, you might need to narrow the options down simply to make the decision easier. These are perfectly acceptable strategies, but as far as kids are concerned, limiting their options is necessary until they have the knowledge, experience, and frankly until their brains are mature enough to make good choices. And as far as your friends are concerned, they are very likely already aware of all the entertainment options out there and realize that it would take far too long to go over every possible choice, so narrowing it down to a handful of options is a good and practical thing to do. In these cases, you’re really not guilty of a fallacy.

The fallacy comes into play, however, when we attempt to nudge someone’s thought process only in the direction WE want it to go by ignoring all the possible options and focusing only on what we want to happen and compare it with one other choice that we make sound really unattractive. And we may be successful at persuading them, but we are doing that other person a disservice. And when it’s done to us, we may end up thinking or doing something that is not in our best interests, and may even be seriously wrong and potentially dangerous. 

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So how should you respond to a false dilemma fallacy? Obviously you first need to recognize that you are being presented with one, which can be difficult in the heat of the moment. There are words that can clue you in to this particular fallacy. The reason one of its names is the “either-or” fallacy is because it’s entirely possible those words will be used in the argument. When you hear things like:

“America—love it or leave it.”

“You’re either with us or against us.”

“Either you support this new law or you’re on the criminals’ side.”

 You should realize that there might be a false dilemma in that person’s argument.

However, those word “either-or” may not necessarily be a part of the fallacious argument, as in this statement by Congressman Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN), who described reopening the economy during Covid as the lesser of two evils back in 2020. When asked about it, he said, “In the choice between the loss of our way of life . . . and the loss of life, we have to always choose the latter.” You can tell it’s a false dilemma because he only gives two choices, and also by rephrasing it as an either-or; “Either we totally open up the economy and accept a large loss of life in the pandemic or we watch our way of life be destroyed by keeping the economy shut down.” 

Science communicator Itamar Shatz, who hosts the philosophy website Effectiviology, says that there are several ways to respond to false dilemma fallacies. For instance:

·      You can refute the premise of mutual exclusivity. Remember, the two options being presented must be mutually exclusive. But maybe they could happen simultaneously. Like the overused patriotic sounding phrase, “America—love it or leave it.” You could certainly both love America and leave it—maybe for employment or relationship purposes. You could certainly have mixed feelings about America; you love many things about it, but others might make you feel you would do better somewhere else. Either way, it’s obvious that those two options are not mutually exclusive.

·      Another thing you can do is to refute the premise of collective exhaustivity. That’s a fancy name for pointing out some of the other options that the arguer has failed to mention. So pointing out to your friend who wants you to go to a party with her that you could stay home and do something interesting or relaxing and you would NOT be bored pretty much knocks the wind out of her argument. She might actually concede that your idea sounds better! 

·      Or how about the fallacy, “Either you support this new law or you’re on the criminal’s side.” There are different ways to respond to that, depending on your stance. Maybe you need to explain that you generally support the law, but you can also see that there are things about it that need to be fixed, and wanting changes to it does not equate to being a cheerleader for criminal behavior. Or maybe you don’t support the law because you think it will do more harm than good, and there is another way to get the job done that would be better, and preferring that solution also does not mean you support criminal behavior. What you’re doing here is refuting their idea that only two options are possible.

I’ll link to Shatz’s blog post on this topic because he has other recommendations for recognizing and dealing with this fallacy.

To sum it all up, while there are certainly times when we need to pick one of a very limited number of choices, it’s far, far more likely that there are many more options from which to select in any given situation. Life is complicated, humans are complicated, situations are complicated; rarely is anything black or white, either-or. It’s inaccurate at best to say it is, and at worst it can be deadly. Look at how many people bought into Congressman Hollingsworth’s fallacious statement that we would have to accept a large loss of life due to covid to keep our “way of life” aka the economy, intact. States in which politicians ended their shutdowns early and refused to mandate mask wearing because of the idea that it’s either let people die or let the economy die have been the places where the rate of infection continues to be high. And yes, there is data to back that up, it’s in the show notes.

So be on the lookout for either-or arguments. When you are confronted with one, take a moment to consider—“are these options being presented to me the only ones available? Is there some other possibility out there that this person hasn’t mentioned?” And if there is, then, mention it—it’s entirely possible that person wasn’t aware of that option. Or maybe they are aware, and they try to downplay or ignore that option and move you back to the choice they want YOU to make. Nope, don’t fall for it. 

And that’s all for this episode. I hope you use your new-found knowledge of this fallacy in your everyday life to help you think it through.