Asking the Right Questions, A Guide to Critical Thinking, 8th Ed

What Significant Information Is Omitted? 169
Second, most of us have a very limited attention span; we get bored when
messages are too long. Thus, communicators often feel a need to get their message
across quickly. Advertisements and editorials reflect both these factors. For
example, editorials are limited to a specific number of words, and the argument
must both be interesting and make the author's point. Editorial writers, therefore,
engage in many annoying omissions. Television commentators are notorious
for making highly complicated issues sound as if they are simple. They have
very little time to provide the degree of accurate information that you will need
to form a reasonable conclusion. So our minds need to do a lot of extra work to
fill in the many gaps in what they have to say in these situations.
A third reason for the inevitability of missing information is that the
knowledge possessed by the person making the argument will always be incomplete.
A fourth reason why information may be omitted is because of an outright
attempt to deceive. Advertisers know they are omitting key bits of information. If
they were to describe all the chemicals or cheap component parts that go into
their products, you would be less likely to buy them. Experts in every field consciously
omit information when open disclosure would weaken the persuasive
effect of their advice. Such omissions are particularly tempting if those trying to
advise you see you as a "sponge."
A final important reason why omitted information is so prevalent is that
the values, beliefs, and attitudes of those trying to advise or persuade you are frequently
different from yours. You can expect, therefore, that their reasoning will
be guided by different assumptions from those you would have brought to the
same question. Critical thinkers value curiosity and reasonableness; those working
to persuade you often want to extinguish your curiosity and to encourage
you to rely on unreasonable emotional responses to shape your choices.
A particular perspective is like a pair of blinders on a horse. The blinders
improve the tendency of the horse to focus on what is directly in front of it. Yet, an
individual's perspective, like blinders on a horse, prevents that person from noting
certain information that would be important to those who reason from a different
frame of reference. Unless your perspective is identical to that of the person trying
to persuade you, important omissions of information are to be expected.
Let's review. Omitted information is inevitable for at least five reasons.
1. time and space limitations;
2. limited attention span;
3. inadequacies in human knowledge;
4. deception; and
5. existence of different perspectives.