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The 9 of Spades is different than previous confusion tactics. Remember that most legislative staffers handle many different issues, and often are not expert in any one of them. This tactic leverages incomplete information to promote confusion.
Here, the denialist simply does not offer information, or allows others to hold misconceptions if it benefits the denialist. In technology and consumer protection, this usually occurs where an industry can fix a problem, but does not want to, and so its advocates don't mention their capabilities or practices. |
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Would this apply to the 'gaps' arguement of most evolution deniers? It also seems to fit the "I didn't come from a monkey!" that is usually heard in the beginning of a creation/evolution (ahem) debate. Most people don't understand what evolution really implies, and hearing that we're genetically related to the apes they infer that to mean that we are 'descendants' of them instead of very distant cousins.
I had a helluva time trying to explain this to a relative, and I still don't believe he gets it.
-Berlzebub
Maybe so. I'm thinking more of the situation where you're arguing with someone who simply doesn't have the depth of knowledge that you have, and so you can manipulate them either by misrepresentation or by omission. This often happens in the regulatory arena. There will be situations where a regulator is trying to solve some problem, and the industry will just keep quiet because they have a solution, or because they don't want to lead on that they have an approach to it.
I've seen this a lot from homeopaths. They foster the ignorance or don't correct mis-statements that their worthless, magic sugar pills are herbal
I'm thinking more of the situation where you're arguing with someone who simply doesn't have the depth of knowledge that you have, and so you can manipulate them either by misrepresentation or by omission.
It's worth noting that the depth of knowledge doesn't even have to be real for this to work. A widely recognised example is in creationism debates, where the "Gish Gallop" puts out a huge number of false claims. Any opponent who doesn't deal with all of them (which means most anyone who hasn't studied specifically for debating creationists) can be accurately accused of not having answered them, and this will be convincing to many since they have no idea that the claims were false and shouldn't have been brought up in the first place. Also, the claims cover so much arcane ground that few people have the expertise to contend with them off the cuff.
It isn't restricted to creationism; I've seen the same in other forms of pseudo and fringe science, including when I critique the "aquatic ape" idea.