Fried rice or Ricin?

Whipped or whipped cream? 

Galantine or Guillotine? 

Croissants or crucifixion? 

Water melon or waterboarding? 

A false dichotomy is a fallacy based on an “either-or” type of argument. Two choices are presented, when more might exist – or one is acceptable and the other is not.

Very often, false dichotomies are used in questionnaires, or surveys, and even sometimes politically, to force people into choices they don’t want to make. A housing developer once surveyed our local area asking: where do you think it would be better to place the new road? To the east side of the development or to the west? False dichotomies are clever ways of manipulating us. They make us choose between things we shouldn’t have to choose between. A better way of phrasing today’s prompt is not dogs or cats? but, pets or no pets?