Beliefs, after all, are for true things, and if you lose sight of that you will lose your epistemics. If you think only of what gives you an advantage in a debate, of what sounds nice, of what wins you the admiration of your peers, of what is politically correct, or of what you would prefer to be true, you will not be able to actually believe true things.
Paul Graham wrote about this in Persuade xor Discover:
The danger of the [version of an argument intended to persuade] is not merely that it's longer. It's that you start to lie to yourself. The ideas start to get mixed together with the spin you've
Yeah, that was a good point about changing the means but not the mission. It would be costly to change the name of the entire foundation every time you changed your tactic.
In the examples you give, it would be somewhat misleading to describe both motive and method - "weight-loss program" doesn't specify mechanism because it applies to a lot of different mechanisms.
We should probably do that when we are not experts. A doctor may safely call something a sleeping pill, but a novice at the gym should probably say "I'm doing crunches for weight-loss" and not "I'm on a weight-loss program".
Use more words, actually put effort into understanding rather than just assuming
I agree that it can be hard to describe a detailed activity in a short phrase, especially to a layman who might care more that it is a weight-loss program than that it involves kettlebell swings. I don't have a great solution for that.
Why not minimize the manipulation by describing both the intent and the means, as in "Mosquito Nets to Fight Malaria" instead of "Against Malaria" (pure intent) or "Mosquito Net Distribution" (pure means)? As you say, we might lead people astray if we don't check the means against the intent, so I think we should avert that by specifying the means and letting the listener check it for us.
Thanks for the comment.
I guess you're saying we allow for the possibility of failure when somebody says "I'm on a weight-loss program". I agree. We are not completely gullible in the face of such descriptions.
I'm claiming that we seem to be visibly more skeptical when we see the features than when we see just the intended result. For example, "weight-loss program" vs using the telemarketed ab machine for 15 minutes. Similarly with "clean air law" vs raising the fuel tax rate, or "cost-cutting measure" vs switching to online advertising.
Would you agree with that claim? Thanks for your feedback.
Suppose your friend tells you he's on a weight-loss program. What do you think will happen in three months if he keeps on the weight-loss program? Will he lose weight?
If you're like me, you're thinking, "Of course. He is on a weight-loss program, isn't he? So, ipso facto, he is likely to lose weight."
Does there seem to be anything fishy about that chain of reasoning?
We usually describe the current features of a thing and predict something about the future. For example, we might say "I'm running for half an hour each day" and predict that we will lose a certain number of pounds by the end of the month. But your... (read 3227 more words →)
All three of your examples involve using a phrase as a shorthand for a track record. You call something a pollution-reducing law, a vehicle-producer, or a fit athlete after observing consistent pollution reduction, vehicles, or field records. That's like the doctor calling something a "sleeping pill", which is ok because he's doing that after observing its track record.
The problem is when there is no track record. For example, when someone proposes a new "environmental protection" law that has not really been tested, others who hear that name may be less skeptical than if they hear "subsidies for Teslas". In the latter case, they may ask whether this would really help the environment... (read more)