Ever done a too many people in the boat type of hypothetical situation? The kind where you’re with a group of people, and then you have to pretend that you’re in a lifeboat. Then comes the catch: There’s not enough room for everyone in the lifeboat! Who to dump out?

Kids come up with the most creative answers. I remember having an idea to have people take turns on the outside. There is almost never enough limiting factors, so you just have to end up pretending that there are no other options for the hypothetical situation to work.

This way of thinking is incorrect. We should encourage the creative answers to save everyone. The hypothetical situation is ridiculous.

Here’s another one: You’re in your home. You have a gun. A thief is in your house, and it’s either his life or yours.

Logical fallacy: False dilemma

Just as with the lifeboat situation, you are not allowed to come up with creative answers. But if you were placed in that situation, why would the choice be to kill? The situation kills a myriad of other factors. A thief does not come to kill you. A thief comes to thieve. Often, they do not want to be involved in killing. It’s much messier to cover up. And, you with the gun, you don’t necessarily have to shoot to kill.

Ah, but what if the person intends to kill you. The water is freezing cold so you can’t have people swimming outside the lifeboat. Well, maybe if there were more lifeboats, we wouldn’t be in this situation! And maybe if you or others hadn’t chosen certain actions, you wouldn’t be in that situation, either! A hypothetical situation often disregards the past in order to create its false dilemmas.

In real, non-hypothetical, life, there are always other choices. Perhaps you don’t have the time, or training, to think of them, but they are out there. Maybe if you had taken the time to figure out the other choices, the situation wouldn’t feel so pathetically, and paradoxically… hypothetical.