Person 1 asserts proposition X.
Person 2 argues against a superficially similar proposition Y, falsely, as if an argument against Y were an argument against X.
This reasoning is a fallacy of relevance: it fails to address the proposition in question by misrepresenting the opposing position.
Additionally, Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.
I will note you replied to a comment accusing the whistleblower of being trans. That comment (that you replied to) was, of course, ad hominem.
For the comment in question, person 1 is the zestyping or the whistleblower, depending. Person 2 is you. Your proposition Y (flagged and hidden now) is not invalid, exactly, but "explaining" it to you is pointless given it is a fallacy diverging from the relevance of the content.
The proposition X, which is, in part, "These qualities are what really set this apart from other criticism of social media, and both are incredibly important and healthy in a world where Facebook and Twitter have normalized the opposite."
Your proposition Y, is an attack on the whistleblower and her credibility, not the the content of her own propositions, which may be viewed here:
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2021/10/protecting%20kids%20...
No mention of "banning" "hate speech" at all. Just a plea for someone to do something to remove the blocks in place by way of Facebook (as a corporation) needing to continue making profit, perhaps at the expense of collective sanity, by not addressing the dissonance their platform creates in the population.
If you had addressed those claims by her in your comment, you would avoid making strawman arguments.
In closing, I get that you and others are frustrated that certain types of posted content are targeted for removal. However, that in and of itself does not mean meaningful and opposed discourse can't occur or that anyone has a "right" to post wherever they like, saying whatever they want. It is that it (your comments) may not occur without significant work involved that we all care about. Cheap and easy discourse isn't good for anyone, harms society, and will continue to be exploited until we come up with a technical solution to solve it.
In the meantime, explanations and education are in order. Thanks for the question! Hope this helps without too much blame.
P.S. Entirely speculative at this point, but I suspect if we built an inverted index of a fallacious argument, we'd find the weights/distances between words significantly divergent from the original proposition.
She proposes a ministry for regulating tech which means there will be a permanent line between Washington and large social media companies. This is a horrible approach by any objective meassure and it would obviously also institutionalize Facebook (see "An array of possible next steps"[1]). This indicate that I am right this is not an attempt at weakening Facebook and social media in general, but an attempt to commandeer its power to censor.
Since she is proposing a political body with the power to censor all social media, why is evidence of her political motivations and potential political connections to the whistleblowing a strawman?
> In closing, I get that you and others are frustrated that certain types of posted content are targeted for removal. However, that in and of itself does not mean meaningful and opposed discourse can't occur or that anyone has a "right" to post wherever they like, saying whatever they want.
New discoveries are in the margins, and is indistinguishable from nonsense. A lack of certainty and a certain amount of curiosity is needed to go through the process of distinguishing the two, which is why tyrannical regimes do not innovate well.
Why are you so certain that you are right and is capable of knowing when dissenters are wrong? Whom do you think is capable of distinguish truth from falsity in the margins, and censor with absolute power without falling for the temptation to misuse it?
> It is that it (your comments) may not occur without significant work involved that we all care about. Cheap and easy discourse isn't good for anyone, harms society, and will continue to be exploited until we come up with a technical solution to solve it.
This accusation of dissenters not doing the work, while those in tech that censor do, is not supported by evidence.
Censorship by tech has in the last year been wrong on major important points, e.g:
- Not long ago the lab leak hypothesis was censored, delaying potential life saving measures
- Not long ago Hunters laptop was called fake and censored, affecting democratic primary outcome and election outcomes
- Not long ago early treatment solutions to covid was censored, delaying deployment of early treatment solutions similar to the one Merck just released [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2021/oct/05/face... [2] https://fortune.com/2021/10/05/everything-to-know-about-merc...
Also, dissent is being amplified with software, which itself is not conscious. Being more conscious of your points will help matters. Not being more conscious of your points will help accelerate the madness.
You've failed to acknowledge anyone's argument here, which is really the hard part to learn.
If your points explanatory power is too poor to contextualize to what it criticize its honestly just a smear. You are to my estimation going into ad hominem in lieu of a good argument in both your replies.
Whom do you think you can convince that I am wrong without contextualizing your claim?
I find it hilarious that you accuse me of using a strawman by arguing that because I don't have a critical consciousness [1] I am not conscious of what I think and how it relates to the reality we live in. You are literally arguing that because I don't agree with (in your term "have") the gnostic knowledge of critical social justice activists I am essentially an unthinking program.
I am sorry to break your bubble, but you can both be thinking and principally disagree with critical social justice (CSJ). Arguably the inherently group-based CSJ doctrine suppress individual thought in favor of group based identity.
> Also, dissent is being amplified with software, which itself is not conscious. Being more conscious of your points will help matters. Not being more conscious of your points will help accelerate the madness.
The parent is clearly accusing me of not being conscious of my opinions, and this person doesn't know me so this is an assertion (s)he can not principally make. So how do you interpret what he/she refers to with conscious if it is not ideologically driven by critical social justice (CSJ)?
My impression is that this person is an adherent of CSJ. In general adherents to CSJ tend to drop essential qualifiers, so that they can use the Motte-and-Bailey [1] rhetorical trick of arguing a more radical position (Bailey) and then when challenged defend a more moderate position(Motte).
The CSJ adherents liberal individual Motte is not compatible with their group-based Bailey, it is purely a lie to provide cover until resistance has abated, and in general accusing someone of not being conscious simply because they agree with you is completely 100% unacceptable behavior. Especially if your viewpoints could have been spewed by a bot programmed to believe in CSJ. ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy#:~:te...
Seriously, you wrote the above just after I wrote the following:
> To be clear, the problem kordlessagain is referring to is that if you make the effort to make explicit what the X and Y are, the response will rarely include the slightest explicit acknowledgement of any incoherence.
> Generally, if a fallacy is found in one's arguments and one values intellectual honesty, the best response is to apologise for the error first and only then attempt to restart the argument. If you don't do this, but try to act as if there was no error, you do avoid loss of face in the eyes of the unthinking that comes from admitting error, but you lose the respect of readers who understood the error and saw the evasion.
> It is a sad fact that today most people have little awareness of this risk of losing respect in heated arguments, let alone place high importance to it.
Do you (or the parent) believe that "people are not defined by group identity" and that "redistributing resources and position based upon group identity is wrong"?
A way to show that I am in error about the whistleblower proposing Critical Social Justice activism would be to show that the links I provided showing the whistleblower calling for censoring "hate speech", her call for a ministry of truth, her association with CSJ, and the suspicious political ties of her whistleblowing being wrong. These are not moderate positions.
You draw attention to what you regard as logical errors in the arguments of others, but you do not observe the formalities that norms of logical argument require when problems are pointed out with your arguments.
If you do not accept the requirement that your own arguments be coherent, then the more that you learn about logic, the less rational you will become.
Do you believe or not believe that "people are not defined by group identity" and that "redistributing resources and position based upon group identity is wrong"?
If you do not want to answer that is fine, but treating people differently based upon unchosen identities is not “making sure everyone is treated equally”.
With respect to the second, I think far too little effort is made to resolve the lasting wounds of historical injustices, but I don't think that the attempt to tackle these wounds primarily through redistribution is politically wise. In fact, the attempt to tacle something like the aftermath of slavery in this way is certain to create massive political counterreation and is quite likely to result in new injustices.
Do you understand what the problem is with your approach to argument that I have criticised you for repeatedly?
Sounds a bit unfair and unequal to redistribute someone’s assets and resources due to an equity group identity marker that makes no sense.
> Do you understand what the problem is with your approach to argument that I have criticised you for repeatedly?
I can definitely be less complex in my explanations and less verbose. The line of thought here seem more effective, I’ll probably repeat that in the future to get past the critical social justice habit of using a Motte and Bailey tactic deceptively.
I don’t know if you did it consciously or in error, but the Motte is supposed to be compatible with the Bailey and not something entirely different.
I think you fell into the trap of CSJ apologists to rely on redefined common terms that sound more moderate to non-believers, but isn’t. If I redefine “apple” to mean “lemon” that doesn’t make it any less bitter.
Do you see this problem in the argument you have been making?
You have not answered my question.
I doubt it is possible, but I don't discourage people who understand the problems facing a democratic redistribution-intense solution that goes along ethnic lines. However, a requirement for success in a healthy democracy is the acquiescence of the group who lose out. The attempt to end slavery resulted in a war, and Reconstruction gave many blacks a system that was actually worse than what they had before. (Another injustice caused by a political elite too keen to achieve peace).
Generally, as I understood Bernie Sanders pointed out, the attempt to rectify racial injustices by redistribution risks creating racial hatred and new injustices. I am, as I said before, against attempts to impose this kind of solution top-down.
However, something like a wealth tax is far simpler and as it happens, quite a bit of old wealth does derive from slavery and, for instance, if the US were to improve and expand its social programs for the poor to, say, the level here in Germany, that would make a massive difference for the poor communities that have least been able to recover from the effects of slavery.
Such a form of redistribution could be formulated in colour-blind, wealth-based terms. It's still difficult to impose top-down, it's not enough to heal the wounds of slavery, but this measure is much less socially divisive than what you, ignoring things I have previously told you, wrongly guessed I had in mind.
> I think you fell into the trap of CSJ apologists to rely on redefined common terms that sound more moderate to non-believers, but isn’t.
I didn't manage to come up with a plausible guess as to what you might have meant by the motte and bailey in the paragraph before the sentence I highlighted, but I wonder if you still believe that sentence after reading what I wrote above.
My general impression is that you are a devoted foot soldier in the culture wars and have no intention of looking inside yourself and becoming more honest. A shame, since you seem to be not dumb and have a certain persistence. You've learned a few argumentative techniques that have a good chance of improving your effectiveness in the fights you choose to pick, which will do it's bit to make the culture wars even less rational. I think this state of affairs is actually a threat to democracy. However, while I did not enjoy our exchange and have low expectations of what you will go on to do, I do have a certain hope in the redemptive power of logic, and I do not regret the effort I have put into this conversation.
You did express support in another comment for the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and inclusion) identity-based redistribution initiatives that are currently deployed.
Why did you do this when you think "distribution risks creating racial hatred and new injustices"? Why do you support having corporations enforce top-down DEI initiatives when you are "against attempts to impose this kind of solution top-down"?
>I doubt it is possible, but I don't discourage people who understand the problems facing a democratic redistribution-intense solution that goes along ethnic lines. However, a requirement for success in a healthy democracy is the acquiescence of the group who lose out. The attempt to end slavery resulted in a war, and Reconstruction gave many blacks a system that was actually worse than what they had before. (Another injustice caused by a political elite too keen to achieve peace). > However, something like a wealth tax is far simpler and as it happens, quite a bit of old wealth does derive from slavery and, for instance, if the US were to improve and expand its social programs for the poor to, say, the level here in Germany, that would make a massive difference for the poor communities that have least been able to recover from the effects of slavery.
We already established that you do not agree with critical social justice that identity groups such as race has salience, so that means it is not just to punish an individual for identity group sins, but if I get you correctly you support using slavery as a justification to redistribute wealth.
Is it correct that you believe in that an individual having wealth in the US is a good signifier for an individual acquiring it through the family history of slavery? If not, how can redistribution of wealth because of slavery be right?
I agree that huge landowning wealth in labor intensive unpleasant farming, such as cotton and tobacco primarily, often relied on slaves and indentured servants (numerous Irish and English came to the US like this). However, as far as I know the more numerous industrial fortunes were not build upon slaves.
Most landowning Americans, those were the voting citizens, owned small dirt farm and struggled to make ends meet using their own family's labor. After Europe decimated itself in WWII a larger amount of Americans from all backgrounds gained a modicum of assets through factory work. Critical social justice and Bernie Sanders activism also seek to redistribute both of these groups wealth.
> My general impression is that you are a devoted foot soldier in the culture wars and have no intention of looking inside yourself and becoming more honest.
Most of the time I've tried to get clarity on your opinion, because you said that you did not believe critical social justice was determinative while still being apologetic about its major doctrines and supporting it's equity initiatives.
I am pretty honest about my position. Although I believe we need more group aspects in our life to have a good human life, I don't believe the solutions pushed are good solutions. I think critical social justice is pushing something equivalent to the Chinese model, a merge of communist and fascist principles, and I am not interested in living through that. I've studied up on most of it's major literature, and understand the rhetorical tactics used for apologetics for its doctrines.
Which must have been frustrating for you, seeing as I was resisting being pinned down on what I regarded as overspecific details not related to the reasons for my original intervention in these HN subthreads.
To be clear, my original concern was to avoid a lowering in the standard of discourse here on HN, and I did not intervene to criticise you directly, only to criticise what I took to be a complaint of criticisms of you that I took to be entirely without merit. I don't like what I have seen of the New Discourses content (one of the links you provided I particularly disliked), but I actually value the fact that HN is a place that people who agree with Lindsay and Pluckrose can argue. For this to work well, though, standards of argument need to be maintained.
This is rather stronger than what I wrote. I don't think that race is coherent in the sense that there is the relationship between observable hereditable traits and the psychology and morality of the individual that racist intellectuals require. However, if you drop the dodgy biology, clearly ethnicity matters a great deal to how people find their way into or find themselves excluded from groups, what ethnicities we take there to be and what we make of them has been profoundly influenced by the debunked race theories of yesteryear.
In short, race does matter, unfortunately.
I think you will find that if you check what I wrote before, you have got me wrong, again. I think there are successful DEI exercises, but my general impression of them is equivocal. Some do good, some do evil.
This is normal honesty: you say what you think, and your feelings are in harmony with your thoughts. It is good enough for normal life, but it is not what I mean by intellectual honesty, and it has led you astray in arguing here on HN with people who demand that special kind of honesty.
I think redistribution of wealth from the rentier class to those whose communities face upheaval, exploitation and decimation because of the creative destruction of capitalism that benefits rentiers at the expense of commodity labour, is and of itself just. If it happens to hurt those who today have profited from slavery, well, that's a class of misfortune that I might regard as just deserts. I think trying to actually target these beneficiaries in a precise manner is, for the kind of reason you gave.
Generally, if a fallacy is found in one's arguments and one values intellectual honesty, the best response is to apologise for the error first and only then attempt to restart the argument. If you don't do this, but try to act as if there was no error, you do avoid loss of face in the eyes of the unthinking that comes from admitting error, but you lose the respect of readers who understood the error and saw the evasion.
It is a sad fact that today most people have little awareness of this risk of losing respect in heated arguments, let alone place high importance to it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
How would you classify DEI initiatives? Do you find them determinative?
1. You tend to couch your opinions using IDW political jargon. I've done that right now: IDW is itself political/cultural jargon; jargon is useful in making your points briefly and accessibly when the reader shares your terms of reference. But these terms are very imprecise and ask a lot of the reader if they don't share them and set up the following discussion for motte-and-bailey arguments (more jargon [1])
2. Instead you should throw away your jargon and share why you reach your conclusions in an accessible manner. This is bad for winning arguments, but it is good for the curious conversation that dang is trying to encourage with his moderation [2].
3. Links are good for two purposes: first, pointers to more information for the interested, but very many sites have a much worse browsing experience than HN; and second, checking claims but most readers want to know enough about the quality of evidence for your claims without actually clicking on them. If you are going to link to any sources that are notorious for clickbait and/or culture war, I advise you to summarise the content so that readers don't simply assume the worst about all of your sources.
With regards to your question, you lump a whole lot of things together. DEI initiatives might be put together by people who are very concerned about the risks that online outrage mobs pose to a healthy culture. I don't know what you mean by "determinative"; DEI initiatives might involve a wise attempt to balance freedom of speech with solving problems of underrepresentation that are sensitive to an organisation's culture, or they might be a poorly constructed exercise in risk-aversion that put people in intolerable situations.
[1]: Cf. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey although I don't regard it as being a determinate fallacy, rather a bad pattern that happens in argument when there is not a shared understanding of the imprecision of the terminology.
[2]: Your reputation is high enough that I guess you are generally aware of dang's approach, but you might not be familiar with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415
> With regards to your question, you lump a whole lot of things together. DEI initiatives might be put together by people who are very concerned about the risks that online outrage mobs pose to a healthy culture.
Awareness of CSJ is now so high that most people don't believe in this kind of defensive Motte argument to the radical Bailey of censoring "hate speech" that the whistleblower proposed. She asked for censorship of "hate speech" using a ministry of truth, literally.
Let me take your point and explain the link[1] fully. Since you claimed CSJ is not determinative I sought your thoughts on the radical DEI agenda from CSJ. The Bailey of DEI activists is to seek Diversity (hiring activists of all identities - a black conservative is not diverse), inclusion (censorship of people resisting CSJ DEI initiatives), and Equity (redistribution of outcomes based upon identities and adherence to CSJ).
Instead of addressing the Bailey of DEI you withdrew to the more moderate Motte of DEI activists, arguing that we should make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally. This is not what DEI does, because DEI argues for asymmetrically enforcing rules based upon identity (group based equity) which is in conflict with symmetrically making sure every individual is treated equally (liberal individuality).
It is the Bailey argument of both the whistleblowers and DEI activists arguments I have an issue with, not the Motte. The Bailey argument in both cases exclude the Mottes individualistic model.
> I don't know what you mean by "determinative"; DEI initiatives might involve a wise attempt to balance freedom of speech with solving problems of underrepresentation that are sensitive to an organisation's culture, or they might be a poorly constructed exercise in risk-aversion that put people in intolerable situations.
The claim that CSJ was not determinative was your claim, which is why I contextualized your claim to the DEI doctrine that most people are familiar with.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy#:~:te....
You seem to think there is some sort of incoherence in what I've been saying, but none of your attempts at diagnosis are clear.
First, I don't think it's necessary to declare beliefs in an argument. On the contrary, doing so generally means the argument is more stilted, since people generally don't like to concede that they were wrong. If you want to know lots and lots about the kind of arguments I've made outside of HN, you can read https://twitter.com/txtpf/with_replies
Second, you are attributing claims to me that I did not make:
1. Commitment to "CSJ" (your bailey). First, some clarifications:
- (a) I understand DEI to be a class of activities taken to achieve policy ends, not a doctrine. I believe that DEI exists, because it is a fact that organisations engage in it.
- (b) I believe that underrepresentation, the phenomenon that some people lack the ability to get their opinions heard and interests valued for no good reason, is commonplace in most hierarchies, and I've seen DEI initiatives that I thinked helped reduce problems in their organisations. I also think that worsening economic inequality is a major problem in many countries. However, I'm suspicious of the politically convenient top-down silver bullets that periodically appear to tackle these problems, and many DEI initiatives have caused more harm than good, especially around freedom of speech. I'm not a manager or a social scientist; I don't pretend to know how to balance the good against the bad in practice, but I am interested in the ethical problems raised and thinking more deeply how to solve these problems.
- (c) I don't recall that I've defended anything Haugen has said. I'm aware that there's a big story going on, I'm pleased by the idea that Facebook might lose its game of plausible deniability, but I've not made the effort to follow the details. My involvement here was more along the lines of getting a feel for what general opinions are held than getting to grips with the story.
- (d) I'm quite willing to "attack my own side" in arguments, when people who I broadly agree with make bad points. While I think there are urgent political issues, I'm generally more interested in the long term, and on my view this means raising consciousness is important and neglected.
Now, I do have beliefs about the relationship between, say, racial identity and underrepresentation that no doubt many self-styled opponents of CSJ would call CSJ, but they are quite complex, I revise them quite often, and they are the kind of thing I am often willing to set aside for the sake of argument if I find the argument interesting. I've attempted to cross swords with Lindsay on Twitter before, but not on anything I think he would call CSJ. I do not understand your position well enough to be confident that you would have considered my views to be CSJ if you if you had encountered them in a context other than the one you did.
2. Agreeing with the "more moderate Motte of DEI activists": I do not think "we" should make sure everyone gets along, nor do I think everybody should treat everyone else equally. It's an incoherent notion of liberalism that large organisations or the wider world should be made uniform in a way that even the happiest of families aren't. Calls for ends to conflicts whose causes are unresolved and the doctrine of equality are not successful in politics because they are a road to paradise, but because they're dead simple and that matters in democratic decision-making where there is little agreement about facts and justice.
Third, I don't consider the presence of shifts in an argument to be evidence of that something has gone wrong. It absolutely can be a danger sign if the same shifts keep happening, but arguments between people are usually informal and conducted in natural language, so people's position will shift their position. I think it's good to have a term for the retreat from a desired but hard to defend claim to something both sides can agree on is good, and it's valuable to be aware that it's happening, but the pattern can be healthy (a process of negotiation, where two people are finding common ground) or unhealthy (the dishonest strategem that people think of when they call Motte-and-Bailey a fallacy). The whole reason I linked to the (RW version of) Motte-and-Bailey is that I saw that this argument was taking place on territory in which these shifts are particularly likely to take place. It takes a level of confidence in one's rhetorical skill far above mine to notify one's victim of a fallacy in the same post one carries it out and still think one can gaslight them.
> The claim that CSJ was not determinative was your claim, which is why I contextualized your claim to the DEI doctrine that most people are familiar with.
I now understand. I had not encountered this use of the word "determinative" before: I actually wrote "determinate meaning". Yes, I think that moving from talk of CSJ to talk of DEI was a good idea on your part, but again the cultural divide struck: my understanding of the term was a little different to yours. If I understnd correctly, you characterised me as moving from claims about CSJ to claims about DEI in a Motte-and-Bailey fashion, but to me they are simply different sets of claims: related, yes, but the only thing I said about CSJ is that it is unfit for curious conversation, and if my DEI claims sounded "moderate", it is not because I had any problems with what I had said before.
I'll restate what I believe is your position: The moderate Motte of DEI, let's make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally, is compatible with the equity-based Bailey of the more radical DEI activists. It is just a matter of level of moderation.
How do you reconcile the liberal individualistic Motte with the CSJ radical group-based equity-model Bailey?
This is the problem I see with your position:
My opinion is that the CSJ adherents withdraw to the symmetric enforcement mechanism of a liberal individual Motte to defend the asymmetric radically group equity-based model of the Bailey. Because the asymmetric model is incompatible with the symmetric model this makes it effectively a lie covering up for their true radical position, a lie that provide cover until high resistance has abated.
Once the Motte lie has served its purpose to weather the high resistance, the true position of the Bailey is used to affect change.
--- examples in context --
Here are this claim put into context, annotated with the enforcement mechanism.
DEI:
- (group asymmetric enforcement) Radical Bailey of DEI is to seek Diversity (hiring activists of all identities - a black conservative is not diverse), inclusion (censorship of people resisting CSJ DEI initiatives), and Equity (redistribution of outcomes based upon identities and adherence to CSJ).
- (individual symmetric enforcement) The Motte lie is to claim it is just trying to "make sure everyone gets along and are treated equally".
Whistleblower claim:
- (group asymmetric enforcement) radical Bailey of whistleblower censoring "hate speech" not compliant with CSJ using a ministry of truth
- (individual symmetric enforcement) Motte lie is to claim it is just trying to "make sure we all get along and behave well" .
> It's hard to beat the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for the engineering of the profoundly undemocratic Oslo peace accords, that led one of the recipients to start the Second Intifada (i.e. a revolution against the deal that he himself had negotiated) and the assassination of the other and the rise of the deeply unsavoury Netanyahu. It's set back meaningful peace in the region by at least a generation.
They awarded the price many times for purely political purposes to warmongerers that went on to commit war-atrocities at scale, like Carter with his track record or Obama that had no track record.
If the argument is that this is a way to try to encourage good behavior then the committee also need to withdraw the prize when the recipient don't.