Misleading Vividness
(Duco vividness)
What is it?
It’s a logical fallacy where large amounts of detail are used to describe something to get someone to see it as a problem and possibly change their mind. Usually these details point towards more the negative side. They can also be a small amount of particular events that seem bad enough when all put together that they outweigh the statistical evidence.
Why is it fallacious?
This fallacy can be bad because someone can easily find bad facts about something and cover up the truth with them due to the strong impressions that these examples can leave on the human mind. Someone will learn that car accidents are scary better if they experience it first hand, rather then from statistics or videos. Just because a particular event is dramatic and has happened once, doesn’t mean it is more likely to occur, especially when compared to statistics.
How is it good?
This fallacy can be good as it can prevent one from doing something that is dangerous. If one plans to go diving with sharks, but has heard stories before about people being eaten alive then they will get the impression that this activity is dangerous. However, when they compare it to statistics, which say that only 1 in 1000 get injured in this activity they will rely more on the stories they heard and think the worse and decide not to go, thus saving them from what could be a very dramatic situation.
Syllogism
- Dramatic/Vivid event (known as ‘X’) occurs
- Therefore, more events like event ‘X’ are likely to occur
Examples
- 1) Alberto is talking to Jerno and tells him that he plans to visit Alaska in a week. Jerno tells him about the time he went down there and how he was kidnapped when he was ice skating. He told him that the people raped him, shanked him in the right and left thigh, kicked his gonads repeatedly for 2 hours, slapped him around, lit his hair on fire and then proceeded to kill his entire family in front of him. Alberto cannot believe that this has happened to his friend and decides to never step foot in Alaska, ever.
- 2) Yurko is visiting Best Buy and is asking for help on buying a computer. He asks the sales associate if Toshiba is a good brand to buy the computer from. The sales associate says he heard a story where there was a malfunction with a Toshiba computer and a CD was sent shooting out of the tray where it proceeded to decapitate someone. Yurko knows that even though this happened, it’s very unlikely to happen again. The sales associate told Yurko that he has never bought anything from Toshiba ever since that has happened.
Example from the Media
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