4 ms·
Can you give a concrete example where being an hypocrite would be the right thing to do?
by jfabre 9y ago
Can you give a concrete example where being an hypocrite would be the right thing to do?
- dllthomas 9y agoWell, let's say I'm a doctor, I'm well convinced that smoking is quite harmful, but I find myself too addicted to manage to quit. Certainly, my nonetheless quitting is the best outcome. But telling people to quit despite not doing so myself is preferable to telling people not to quit, isn't it?
- ionised 9y agoThat is not a case of hypocrisy being the right thing, but rather the doctor doing the right thing in spite of the hypocrisy, not due to it.
- dllthomas 9y agoSure, I don't think you can find a case where hypocrisy is the right thing to do for the sake of hypocrisy. That's not really an interesting observation when clearly no one places a positive first-order moral value on hypocrisy.
- Clubber 9y agoThe US is quite hypocritical about interfering with the political process of other countries and now that it's happened to us, we're going nuts. It's a good thing because if some countries went down a political path, it would be very adverse to our self interests and the interests of the world at large (Iran 1979, Cuba 1959, Germany 1939, etc). Also, "the right thing to do," is a very relative term.
- NickM 9y agoSuppose I want to fight climate change, and I decide to make a documentary to raise awareness. The logistics of making a documentary is certainly going to result in some amount of additional carbon emissions being produced. I might be called a hypocrite for creating all these CO2 emissions to make a movie that tells people to emit less CO2. But does that mean it was wrong of me to create this documentary? Not necessarily. If people watch my film and take action to reduce worldwide emissions, it's likely to cancel out the carbon cost of making the film in the first place.
- danaris 9y agoI think that there has been a rise in America lately (and possibly the West in general) in the notion that in order to not be a hypocrite—in order to be taken seriously in any position—you must be ideologically pure. You can't, for instance, advocate for environmentalism if you have a nonzero carbon footprint, or advocate for the poor if you don't live a life of simple humility. This is absurd in any practical sense, but it's being used to dismiss all kinds of people's arguments simply because they have to actually live in the real world, rather than some ideological fantasy land.