= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
orthonormal comments on Please Don't Fight the Hypothetical - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (65)
Sadly, we don't live in a world where all hypotheticals are actually neutral excercises in deductive logic. In real debates it's quite common to see people constructing hypotheticals that implicitly assume their position on some issue is the correct one. If you accept one of these hypotheticals you've already lost the argument, regardless of the actual merits of the case. Thus, when you find yourself confronted with a hypothetical based on an incoherent ontology, corrupt definitions, or other examples of confused or dishonest thinking often the only viable response is to challenge the validity of the hypothetical itself.
In other words, 'don't fight the hypothetical' is generally equivalent to 'let your opponent define the terms of the debate however he pleases' - rarely good advice, especially outside of a classroom setting.
Is there a way to tell the difference between helpful hypotheticals that illustrate confusing topics in stark terms (like Newcomb's Dilemma) and malicious ones that try and frame a political argument for rhetorical purposes (I can think of some examples, I'm sure you can as well, but let's try to avoid particulars)?
As I pointed out on the thread about noticing when you're rationalizing
If the hypothetical is structured so as to eliminate most courses of action, it has probably been purposely framed that way. Hypotheticals are intended to illuminate potential choices, if all but one choice has been eliminated, it is a biased alternative (loaded question).
Note that this is one reason I like considering fiction in ethical (and political theory, which is basically ethics writ large) reasoning - the scenarios are much simpler and more explicit than real world ones, but richer and less likely to be biased pbilosophically than scenarios designed for that purpose.