http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea7Gtch2tns
There’s a certain logical fallacy which, lately, I’ve been noticing more and more which no one else seems to be mentioning. I have no doubt the professional philosopher or logician has a better name for it, but for this video, I’m going to call it the Disparity Between Statement and Suggestion.
Consider for a moment, an advertisement I saw a few years ago. It had a photograph of a very lean, hard-bodied woman drawing a measuring tape around her waist. The caption below the photo read “detoxify your body.” What is suggested here?
One suggestion is that, if you are any less hard-bodied, there is something wrong with you. Another is that if you have any bodyfat at all, it is due, at least in part, to body toxicity. The third suggestion I glean here is that the product being advertised will remove these toxins and help you to be as lean as she is. But all it’s actually saying is “Detoxify your body.” If it actually has all these other effects, then why not just say so?
Another good example is a car commercial I saw some time ago. Again, I don’t remember exactly when or what car it was for, but I recall one really nice shot with the car driving very fast toward the camera, with four or five jets airborne behind it, also flying toward the camera. Now I’m paraphrasing here, but toward the end of the commercial, the announcer said something to the effect of, “When you hire aerospace engineers, they don’t design just another car.”
Hmm. I agree. A car designed by a team of aerospace engineers will no doubt be quite different from one designed by a team of automotive engineers. This is not something very far-fetched; not something difficult to believe. But does such actually describe the car in the commercial? If such is the case, then why not just say, “This car was designed by aerospace engineers.”? If, on the other hand, such is not the case, then why even mention it? Why bring up aerospace engineers at all?
The only reason I can conceive of is that the car was not actually designed by people who specialize in aircraft and spacecraft, but the marketers wanted the general public to believe it anyway. Of course, sometimes (emphasis on the sometimes), one can be taken to court for false statements in advertising, but not for false suggestions.
This, of course, raises the question, why would they want the public to believe this? Well, unfortunately, the general public tends not to give this sort of thing much thought; tends not to have this area of reasoning very explored, and so tends to be very receptive to other suggestions within this commercial.
For one, this commercial suggested that the car in question was designed by aerospace engineers. For another, this commercial made the insinuation that aerospace engineers are intrinsically more intelligent than automotive engineers. Thus, this commercial was planned to lead the public to the perception that this car is likely superior on that basis.
If you cogitate about it, though, it’s not long before other absurdities become apparent. Consider, what if you find yourself accidentally locked out of your house due to a malfunction with the lock? What do you do? You call a locksmith. If instead you call a plumber or an electrician, he or she is going to look at your situation, and ask, “Why the hell did you call me? What am I supposed to do about this?” This is not the plumber’s or the electrician’s area of expertise.
If you have a twisted ankle, do you take it to an optometrist? Of course not, for the same reason.
Odds are that the average plumber is better at plumbing than the average non-plumber. Odds are that the average neurologist is better at neurology than the average non-neurologist. Why then are we more receptive to the notion that the aerospace engineer is better at automotive engineering than the automotive engineer is? This is not only a quantitatively comparable absurdity, it’s the very same one.
So the next time you see a pitch of some kind which seems to promise incredible results, bear this in mind. Ask yourself, “Is the promise embodied in what is actually said or merely in what is suggested?” If it’s the latter case, then ask yourself why. In each case, ask yourself if the promise is really all it seems at first glance. Oh, and one more thing. The examples I cited here were each in commerce, but this is also found in Politics. The logical fallacy abounds anywhere one party is in a position to benefit from the manipulation of another.
Does anyone else know of examples of this phenomenon?
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