Post by Radrook Admin on Sept 23, 2019 7:50:55 GMT -5
Card-Stacking Fallacy
Card-stacking or cherry picking, is a way of giving the impression that most or everything is OK or else wrong with the merchandise, plan, person, or whatever it is that you are trying to sell, or promote or visa versa by only mentioning its good or bad points.
You know, as when the wheeler-dealer guy sells you a car because it is a piece of junk but describes only its good points. Or when a father wants his daughter married to a rich suitor and describes only her endearing qualities but leaves out the monstrous aspects of her personality. Or when someone wants you to take on an assignment and mentions only your advantages but leaves out the mortal dangers that are involved. That is card stacking.
Needless to say, the car-buyer soon finds out that he's bought a Lemon when it suddenly dismantles itself, or just quits in the middle of the street in maybe a dangerous hood at twelve at night.
The suitor who marries the supposedly perfect wife soon finds out that she is a veritable Dr. Jeckle and Mrs Hyde prone to multiple personalities-all which are bad.
The guy who goes out on that beautiful assignment, soon finds himself maybe wading through crocodile-infested waters somewhere in the Amazon jungle with pygmy-like Native American headhunters shooting poisoned darts at him from the river bank.
Or a dentist is recommended and described in gloriously positive terms, yet his very numerous malpractice suites are kept hush hush. Only after he has planed down several of your perfectly healthy molars to the gum-line while smiling benignly, do you realize that he is a sadistic quack.
Such negative experiences based on gullibility are the reason why the Caveat emptor, or Buyer Beware- warning became popular.
You know, as when the wheeler-dealer guy sells you a car because it is a piece of junk but describes only its good points. Or when a father wants his daughter married to a rich suitor and describes only her endearing qualities but leaves out the monstrous aspects of her personality. Or when someone wants you to take on an assignment and mentions only your advantages but leaves out the mortal dangers that are involved. That is card stacking.
Needless to say, the car-buyer soon finds out that he's bought a Lemon when it suddenly dismantles itself, or just quits in the middle of the street in maybe a dangerous hood at twelve at night.
The suitor who marries the supposedly perfect wife soon finds out that she is a veritable Dr. Jeckle and Mrs Hyde prone to multiple personalities-all which are bad.
The guy who goes out on that beautiful assignment, soon finds himself maybe wading through crocodile-infested waters somewhere in the Amazon jungle with pygmy-like Native American headhunters shooting poisoned darts at him from the river bank.
Or a dentist is recommended and described in gloriously positive terms, yet his very numerous malpractice suites are kept hush hush. Only after he has planed down several of your perfectly healthy molars to the gum-line while smiling benignly, do you realize that he is a sadistic quack.
Such negative experiences based on gullibility are the reason why the Caveat emptor, or Buyer Beware- warning became popular.
Here is how WIKI describes it:
Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally. This fallacy is a major problem in public debate.
The term is based on the perceived process of harvesting fruit, such as cherries. The picker would be expected to only select the ripest and healthiest fruits. An observer who only sees the selected fruit may thus wrongly conclude that most, or even all, of the tree's fruit is in a likewise good condition. This can also give a false impression of the quality of the fruit (since it is only a sample and is not a representative sample).
Cherry picking has a negative connotation as the practice neglects, overlooks or directly suppresses evidence that could lead to a complete picture.
A concept sometimes confused with cherry picking is the idea of gathering only the fruit that is easy to harvest, while ignoring other fruit that is higher up on the tree and thus more difficult to obtain (see low-hanging fruit).
Cherry picking can be found in many logical fallacies. For example, the "fallacy of anecdotal evidence" tends to overlook large amounts of data in favor of that known personally, "selective use of evidence" rejects material unfavorable to an argument, while a false dichotomy picks only two options when more are available. Cherry picking can refer to the selection of data or data sets so a study or survey will give desired, predictable results which may be misleading or even completely contrary to reality.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking