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The timing and delivery of Dave's "I'm a creep, I'm sorry." mea culpa now seems more logical to me. A person who has committed transgression B, which is one-le
by hitekker 9y ago
The timing and delivery of Dave's "I'm a creep, I'm sorry." mea culpa now seems more logical to me.
A person who has committed transgression B, which is one-level more reprehensible and more opaque than transgression A, will admit to A in the hopes of forestalling a deeper inquiry into B.
I don't know what to call this rhetorical tactic (fallacy?), but I imagine sex offenders must employ it regularly to mitigate public backlash.
- dsacco 9y agoI wish there was a name for that too, though I wouldn't call it a fallacy - more of a game theoretic strategy that plays out in any kind of adversarial situation. I've most commonly noticed it in lying: given two parties with imperfect information about each other, one is lying and the other is sniffing out the lie. The liar predicts, on a basic cost-benefit analysis, that "throwing away" information that satisfies a bar of suspicion will be enough indirection to quell further inquiry, because acting perfectly erudite won't "win." The liar doesn't value this information much or at all (and more importantly, knows that the other party doesn't really value that information much either), but knows that the inquiry will be dropped because the other party will think they value the information enough for it to be a confession.
- draw_down 9y agoPlus you have a bunch of people who essentially defended him with all the talk of how social settings can be confusing and we all make mistakes and we're not robots and bladiblah. I bet a lot of them will either ignore this or just double down.
- tdeck 9y agoI'd call it a kind of PR plea-bargaining.
- steve_g 9y agoIt is called a "limited hangout." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout