Blog Post #7

As I was looking through different fallacies in the book to choose which one to talk about I saw that I have a hard time seeing them in real life. This made me think if maybe I'm getting fooled more than I think by these fallacies. I think I'm a fairly smart person who would be able to see through these fallacies but now I'm not so sure. But the one I'm choosing for this post is false dilemma because it's one I use a ton in my job. False dilemma is when you present two options so they don't even think of any others. I use this at my job at LDS Philanthropies. I'm supposed to call BYU Alumni and ask for donations. They push us hard to get the donations on a credit or debit card rather than sending out a pledge form because it's instant money instead of waiting for them to send in the donation. So usually after they say they'll give $100 or whatever I say "I can take any major credit or debit card. What would you prefer to use?" I realized that this is false dilemma because I'm not even giving them the option to send it in through a check. But it works well! And hopefully since I've been doing it I'll be able to see if people are doing it to me in the future. I can't think of a time when I've been fooled or not fooled by false dilemma. My parents have probably done that to me, similar to the example in the book. "Do you want to do homework or practice the piano first?" It's a really good trick that I'm probably gonna use on my kids.