Fallacy Explaination Paper

Essay by t3kn04r33k September 2008

download word file, 4 pages 0.0

Downloaded 18 times

Part I:A. Explanation of the Dirty Trick / Fallacy in your own words covered in Chapter 13 of Critical thinking; Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life, pages 306 - 324:The first of three dirty tricks that will be discussed is “Dirty Trick #38, Talk in vague generalities” (Paul and Elder, 2006, p. 321). One interpretation is, a speaker who chooses to use vague terms regarding the topic they are discussing. This person will avoid being pinned down to anything specific about the subject or topic of discussion. Therefore, when talking in generalities, the audience will be led away from the main point.

B. Workplace / organizational concrete, specific, real example of the Fallacy:At work, I encountered this type of fallacy with an employee. When confronted by myself and the owner of the business, the employee was vague when reporting what work was conducted for the client.

His documentation was vague as well; it was lacking substance, making it hard to ascertain exactly what had been completed.

C. Identification & Explanation of the Source of the “Dirty Trick” (Fallacy) in terms of any of the Biases covered in Decide and conquer, Part 3: Common Biases:One possibility for the source of the “Talk in vague generalities” fallacy would be the “Never DoToday That Which You Can Do Tomorrow: The Inertia Bias” (Robbins, 2004, p. 61). Procrastination can be a cause for being vague due to lack of organization, and also lack of motivation. Therefore, people can become overloaded and overwhelmed by the tasks at hand.

D. Explanation of how the fallacy negatively impacted the organization:Having vague generalities impacted the organization in a negative way because customers would call and complain that tasks were not being completed correctly, or on time. We had to take additional time and resources...