Encyclopedia > Misleading vividness

  Article Content

Misleading vividness

The logical fallacy of Misleading vividness involves describing some occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem. Though misleading vividness does nothing to support an argument logically, it can have a very strong psychological effect.

Examples:

  1. Anne: "I am giving up extreme sports now I have children. I think I will take up golf". Bill: "I wouldn't do that. Do you remember Charles. He was playing golf when he got hit by a golf-cart. It broke his leg, and he fell over giving himself concussion. He was in hospital for a week and still walks with a limp. I would stick to paragliding!"
  2. Bill: "Police marksmen should use tasers instated of guns when its safe to do so". Anne: "Can you imagine what would happen if those darts from the taser went into your eyes, piercing your eye-balls, then they sent the high voltage through your eyes and brain! It would probably kill you and be worse than being shot."



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Islandia, New York

... have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 3.04 and the average family size is 3.49. In the village the population is spread ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 33.1 ms