Comment author: Yvain 30 August 2012 02:48:19AM 8 points [-]

I don't think it's precisely about mindless repetition. For example:

A: I think eating meat is morally okay, because animals have simple nervous systems and can't feel pain.

B: But meat is murder!

Here even though A spoke first and there is no repetition involved, I still think B's response is inadequate, because B is accusing A of double standards after A has explained the double standard away. The reason why this is more dangerous than (if not worse than) "If the glove won't fit, you must acquit" is that B looks like she is making a novel and nontrivial point and it's not immediately obvious that this is a non-argument already addressed by A's statement (whereas hopefully no one takes the glove argument seriously as an argument)

Comment author: SisterY 30 August 2012 06:28:30PM 7 points [-]

Again, the objection seems to be more about the particular USE of the argument than the nature of the argument itself (what I call above "non-responsiveness"). I would genuinely like to understand why analogies of the kind you call the Worst Argument in the World are so harmful (and I appreciate your engaging on it). Is it your claim that people are particularly likely to take analogies seriously as arguments, more than other arguments? Is it their very power that makes them so bad?

Rhyming and other poetic tricks, like showing a picture, make statements feel more true to hearers; are those tricks less dangerous than analogy because we (think we) are immune to them? I can kind of intuitively understand what you mean by something being a real argument or not ("as an argument"), but I'm not sure why things taken seriously as arguments are more dangerous than sneaky, non-argument cues that make things seem true.

I wonder if what you really want to destroy are "things effectively masquerading as arguments that aren't really arguments." That class is not exhausted by inexact analogies (which is to say all analogies), nor are all inexact analogies members of that class.

I think metonymy (association, like eugenics --> Hitler) is a much more harmful cognitive sin than metaphor (which at least requires a theory of why things are similar).

Comment author: Yvain 27 August 2012 11:33:49PM 20 points [-]

I agree. I'm not saying that this form can't be used as a means of examining our intuitions. For example, "meat is murder" is a snappier way of asking "Why, given that we're so worried about harming humans, are we so callous about harming animals?"

But then once the other person answers you with something like "It's because animals have no natural rights" or "Because animals don't have sophisticated enough nervous systems to suffer" or whatever it is they say, the debate has to shift to whether or not that objection is valid. So "but meat is murder!" shouldn't be used as a counterargument to "Animals don't have sophisticated enough nervous systems to suffer", because this latter statement is already answering the question the former was intended to ask.

Comment author: SisterY 29 August 2012 04:28:48AM 5 points [-]

From that example, it sounds like mindless repetition (non-responsiveness) is the worst argument in the world, whether or not it contains an analogy. What is the special harm of analogy that makes it worse than other kinds of mindless repetition? (Worse than, say, other kinds of seductive, poetic language like rhyming words, a la "if it doesn't fit you must acquit.") And is an analogy still "the worst argument in the world" if it's NOT mindlessly repeated?

Comment author: TGM 27 August 2012 08:41:53PM 6 points [-]

If I wanted to do that, I would phrase things differently, to avoid the connotation issues (of, for example, Taxation is Theft!):

"We think burglary is bad, but tax is good, yet they have some similarities. Are we right to judge them differently?" or even "I think the things that make burglary bad are X Y and Z, but X is shared by taxation, and Y is partly shared by taxation. I conclude that taxation is not as bad as burglary, but still a bit bad"

Comment author: SisterY 27 August 2012 09:53:56PM 10 points [-]

Great, clear statement of the position. Wouldn't the "worst argument in the world" taboo apply just as strongly to any use of figurative language in the context of an argument? Instead of making an analogy, for instance (e.g., "X is the mindkiller"), why not just use literal language? No danger of connotative contamination, then. Instead of making a joke, why not just explain what you mean, rather than requiring your audience to grasp for the insight it contains? (Apparently hyperbole is allowed, as it's incorporated into the NAME of the argument - why is hyperbole okay, but not metaphor?)

I understand the ideal here. But I think cutting off our own linguistic balls, so to speak, gives us only the illusion of cognitive cleanness - and much is lost. We are not motivated by pure logic to engage logically with an idea. We are motivated by "epistemic emotions" like curiosity and confusion. A title like "Should Trees Have Standing?" is emotional and poetic and could be literally replaced with "Should our legal system treat inanimate objects as ends in themselves for social reasons not entailed by property rights?" But I don't think the former is cheating, and I don't think the latter would have been as successful in motivating cognition on the topic.

I would even defend good old "Meat is Murder!" as a compact little ethical puzzle for beginners, rather than the Worst Argument in the World!

Comment author: SisterY 27 August 2012 07:07:14PM 15 points [-]

Since we think largely in words, pointing out similarities between Thing We Think Is Bad and Thing We Think Is Good requires us to examine the connotations of the words we use. We should be doing that all the time. Just as this alleged "worst argument in the world" can be used to sneak in connotations, it can also be used to force examination of connotations that have previously been sneaked in.

In response to comment by [deleted] on On "Friendly" Immortality
Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 06 December 2011 01:02:08AM *  2 points [-]

Suicide is already effectively illegal. Many easy, painless methods are outlawed or not given to the mentally ill (drugs, guns, assisted suicide). Suicide-attempters are force-treated. There is tremendous social pressure to not commit suicide, including inflicted guilt. (For detailed arguments, just read Sister Y's linked blog.)

Even if suicide is discouraged, no-one is likely to compel unhappy people to extend their lives. Most people think life extension is immoral; they won't object to anyone turning it down.

Comment author: SisterY 06 December 2011 07:04:31PM 8 points [-]

Feeding tubes are life extension technology and we force those on people all the time. It ends up being really hard to enforce battery causes of action against forced medical care when you'd die without the intervention.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 04 November 2011 02:06:13PM 1 point [-]

Not a fan of rhetorical questions? How about meta-jokes?

Comment author: SisterY 04 November 2011 07:47:41PM 2 points [-]

Making a point to show that a point is not a point is not as good as making a nonpoint to show that a point is not a point.

-Chuang-tzu

Comment author: thomblake 01 November 2011 10:33:30PM 8 points [-]

A propos:

Thales of Miletus was a philosopher - so committed was he to thinking carefully that once he was walking along contemplating deeply and thus fell into a well. The locals made fun of him, commenting that philosophers were so busy attending to the stars that they could not see what is in front of them.

Since coins were recently invented (or recently brought to Asia Minor), Thales was involved in a discussion over the power of money. His interlocutors didn't believe that a philosopher could become rich, but he insisted that the power of the mind was paramount. To prove the power of having a reasoning mind, he devised a way of predicting weather patterns. He used this knowledge to buy up everyone's olive presses when the weather was bad and managed to corner the market, becoming quite wealthy when a very good season followed soon after.

Comment author: SisterY 03 November 2011 11:21:50PM *  6 points [-]

In "Self-poisoning of the mind" Jon Elster uses the Thales olive incident as an example of a perverse cognitive bias:

In his retelling of the [Thales olive] story, de Montaigne (1991, p. 153) explicitly asserts that when he condemned money-making, Thales ‘was accused of sour grapes like the fox’. Although Thales wanted to ‘show the world’ that the accusation was unfounded, one could also imagine that he had made a fortune in order to demonstrate to himself that his philosophy was not the product of sour grapes. Not content with thinking that he could have acquired riches had he wanted to, he might have decided to actually acquire them to deflect self-suspicion. [Emphasis in original.]

What Elster is pushing is that, since we are aware we edit reality to suit our self-images, we constantly suspect ourselves of doing so, and perversely believe the worst of ourselves on very flimsy evidence.

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