'Either you let me go to Las Vegas for a vacation or I will be miserable for…
2023
'Either you let me go to Las Vegas for a vacation or I will be miserable for the rest of my life. I am sure you don't want to see me miserable, so you have a clear decision to allow me to go for a vacation to Las Vegas.' Which fallacy is committed in this statement?
Answer: B. False Dichotomy — ConceptA false dichotomy (false dilemma) presents only two alternatives as if they exhaust all possibilities, although other reasonable choices exist. It…
- A.
Appeal to force
- B.
False Dichotomy
- C.
False Cause
- D.
Complex Question
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept
A false dichotomy (false dilemma) presents only two alternatives as if they exhaust all possibilities, although other reasonable choices exist. It turns a wider decision space into an unjustified either-or.
Application
The speaker treats permission for a Las Vegas vacation and lifelong misery as the only outcomes. Refusing this particular trip could lead to many other outcomes, so the forced pair is not exhaustive.
Contrast
Appeal to force uses an irrelevant threat of force or an imposed penalty against the addressee; here the speaker predicts their own misery rather than threatening the listener.
False cause incorrectly treats one event as causing another without adequate support; the central flaw here is the artificially limited choice, not merely an unsupported causal link.
Complex question embeds an unproved assumption in a question so that any direct answer concedes it; this statement does not ask such a loaded question.
Result
The fallacy is false dichotomy.