The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:
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:
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]
I didn't downvote asabjorn's comment, although I found it weak (e.g., "critical social justice" is a rhetorical portmanteau that does not have a determinate meaning [1]: it's a term to be avoided if you want curious conversation), but I did downvote yours. If you want to support a viewpoint, actually argue for its legitimacy. Downvoting comments that you think are not good for the site is perfectly legitimate, but contentless whining is a waste of time.
A lot of people trafficking this site work in the bay area tech scene and is subject to critical social justice DEI initiatives in the workplace. The DEI doctrine is quite consistently applied across tech.
How would you classify DEI initiatives? Do you find them determinative?
I have the impression that it would take a long exchange before we could discuss this matter in a manner that doesn't annoy me, and I am not interested in a lengthy exchange. A few suggestions on 'HN-iquette' that might mean you get fewer downvotes and more constructive engagement:
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.
That you agree with critical social justice (CSJ) doctrines such as DEI should have been declared upfront instead of using the Motte-and-Bailey[1] tactic of defending her using a more moderate position than what she actually proposed.
> 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.
I'm not enthusiastic about continuing this argument, but since you have clearly thought about this before responding, I'll go on.
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.
We seem to have an inherent disagreement on how critical social justice (CSJ) activists use the Motte-and-Bailey tactic. I think we need to resolve that first, so that we are standing on solid ground.
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" .
For an example of when efforts to get people to get along are actively bad:
> 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.
Why do you think it is important where the facts are published when links to the source evidence used in my claim is linked to in the articles? How do you differentiate "far-right" from just conservative?
Let me explain. Far-right is simply anything to the right of the far-left. Facts are not facts unless and until they are approved facts, and fact-checked by the establishment press fact-checkers. Facts that are non-facts can turn into facts in time if they become useful to the establishment or, in rare cases, cannot be asserted while also asserting other, more important facts, without excessive contradiction. Also, to be facts, they must originate in mainstream institutions, preferably the DNC or any of the capture institutions of government. Technically, these facts are factitious, but they are not, in fact, lies. Lies are truths that contradict facts, so defined. It is important where facts are published because anything that doesn't originate in fact-based institutions can be dismissed without consideration of the merits. It is analogous to not having standing in a court case. In some cases, facts published in far-right outlets can also be published in centrist (i.e., far-left) outlets, if those facts can be spun to serve the controlling interests.