Logical Fallicies

"Spin" is more correctly known as a logical fallacy. That's where a company's press release and other marketing material presents a positive image of itself -- and negative images of competitors -- by relying on false premeses. Because no other information is provided, they hope that you won't notice the problem.

Has put together a list of logical fallacies. The list is helpful in deconstructing spin. Here are a few in use in the CAD world:

False Dilemma -- two choices are given when in fact there are three options. For instance, many CAD vendors focus on one competitor. For example, Autodesk's Inventor vs SolidWorks matchup, and the SolidWork's AutoCAD-user-come-on-over campign.

Anonymous Authority -- the authority in question is not named. For instance, many press releases use the word "leading" but never state how leading is defined. For example, "LightWork Design, the world's leading supplier of rendering solutions for developers of advanced 3D computer graphics software..." although later provide stats to back up the leading claim: "LightWorks is embedded in over 80 software applications and used by more than 1 million users worldwide, far more than any other renderer." Although I wonder about that last phrase.

Hasty Generalization -- the sample is too small to support an inductive generalization about a population. For instance, new products have features that CAD vendors claim customers have been asking for. For example, a press release states, "Our customers will be delighted with this capability to view and markup their Autodesk Inventor 2D and 3D drawings and models from within AutoVue..." The hasty genereralization is that all customers will be delighted to switch to another viewer product. It would have been more accurate to write, "Some of our customer may be delighted..."

Boolean Logic

Computer programmers should appreciate fallacies of distraction, because of the use of Boolean operators:

False Dilemma -- misuse of the "or" operator.
Argument From Ignorance -- misuse of the "not" operator.
Slippery Slope -- misuse of the "if-then" operator.
Complex Question -- misuse of the "and" operator.

Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Just after writing this, I came across a picture of protesters holding a bedsheet reading, "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" at the getreligion site. Logical fallacies, indeed!

Comments

[Eric Darst]

Just replace the word "blog" in this cartoon with "press release"...

[Evan Yares]

Inventor vs. SolidWorks?

But what about Solid Edge, VX, IronCAD, Pro/E, MicroCADAM Helix, KeyCreator, Anvil, VariCAD, T-Flex, Visi-Series, think3, Ashlar, CSI-Concepts, CoCreate Designer... and all the others I can't remember off the top of my head?

You'd think, from the Autodesk and SolidWorks battle, that there aren't any alternatives out there. Truth is, there are a bunch of really good products -- some of which, in various areas, simply blow-away Inventor and SolidWorks.

Were I to make such a statement one-on-one, with top executives of either the Autodesk Mechanical Division, or of SolidWorks, they'd agree with me. They know their products, and believe in them -- but they also know that they're still working hard to make them better.