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The accusation of hypocrisy is generally untenable from a moral point of view unless the discussion was about the virtues and vices of that person to start with

The accusation of hypocrisy is generally untenable from a moral point of view unless the discussion was about the virtues and vices of that person to start with. It's just one of those modern virtue-ethical fallacies. The question of whether a standpoint is morally the right standpoint is orthogonal to questions about the personal consistency of persons who defend the standpoint. A signpost does not need to walk into the direction it points at all. Another, more general fallacy is the computation that two moral wrongs can somehow make a right. They never do. These are not moral opinions, by the way. These points are codified into law and common jurisdiction. You cannot defend yourself in court by pointing out that others have broken the law, too.

waihtis 3y ago
you miss the point, the problem isn't the message in itself but signalling these from a moral high ground in a patronizing manner.
FeepingCreature 3y ago
An observation of hypocrisy does not per-se invalidate the original observation, but it does expose the speaker as acting from motivated reasoning, which may put into doubt their motivations and hence their conclusions. It does not invalidate any evidence presented, but it contextualizes it by showing it to be produced by a biased and selective process. This is particularly important in political rhetoric, where framing is usually more impactful than facts.
- jonathanstrange 3y ago
  > may put into doubt their motivations and hence their conclusions. That's literally a fallacy, too. Look, you can attempt to frame it as you like, accusing others of hypocrisy is deviating from the original argument and fallacious. It's an invalid ad hominem attack to distract from the topic. The only exception is when the accusation is that the arguer does not really mean the argument sincerely, but that's another type of argument and not under discussion here. Likewise, to re-iterate this point, two wrongs never make a right, yet in nearly all cases of blaming someone for being a hypocrite that type of fallacious argument is exactly the motivation behind the accusation. It certainly is in the above discussion.
  - FeepingCreature 3y ago
    It's only a fallacy if you're looking at the conclusion in isolation. In many cases, that a conclusion was brought to your attention implies a large amount of other conclusions that you assume to be false because they were not raised. This is the difference between "telling a technical truth" and "actually telling the truth" - when you omit observations that would contextualize a conclusion, you're using a valid argument to mislead people. So hypocrisy is not an accusation of lying by falsity but by omission. If I say "X was stealing office supplies from the breakroom" and I omit that every other employee was also stealing office supplies from the breakroom, I am lying even when X was in fact stealing. The exception implies the rule; the rule is a lie. If I speak a sentence that I know will mislead the listener, the sentence being logically true in isolation does not save me.
    - jonathanstrange 3y ago
      In the cases under discussion (like the above one), the person accusing the arguer of hypocrisy is trying to distract and is arguing in bad faith. That's why it's called whataboutism. As a typical example, Russian propaganda sources have replied to accusation of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with "The US has invaded Iraq and committed countless war crimes." This is not only fallacious, because US war crimes have no bearing on Russian war crimes, it's also hypocritical and logically inconsistent. It's hypocritical because the accusation would only work (from the perspective of the arguer) if they recognized war crimes and argued against them, but the rhetorical goal is the opposite. It's logically inconsistent because the desired inference is that what Russia does is not bad but the argument schema rests on the accusation that what the US in the past did was bad. That fallacious scheme is very common. You can observe it nearly everywhere, especially in political discussions, despite the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever on a closer look. The original example under discussion has a similar structure but also differs in an important detail. Somebody argued "what about previous tech billionaires who did some other nefarious things." The correct conclusion from this would be that previous tech billionaires (distraction topic) and current tech billionaires (real topic) did some nefarious things, if the claims are true. But that's not what the arguer had in mind. The arguer wanted to relativize the arguments against tech billionaires in the real topic. In this case, the accusation of hypocrisy against whataboutism is made in bad faith because the arguer knows that the two topics do not have anything to do with each other. Understanding the context of what previous tech billionaires did does not help you evaluating the morality of the real topic in this case. It does not provide any context needed because the contexts barely have anything in common (different times, different tech billionaires, etc.). That's in my experience another common case when people argue against pointing out whataboutism. The people who do that have rhetorical goals, of course, but they are not arguing correctly. Whataboutism is practically always a fallacy. I believe there are cases you describe where pointing out a hypocrisy can lead to a better understanding of the subject matter, but these are very rare and even then they still distract from the question under discussion. I believe the reason why you're so keen on insisting that you're right and that whataboutism is often wrong is mostly psychological. People want to set themselves apart and it's normal to come up with contrarian opinions about perceived wisdom. I have strong tendency do that myself. Sorry for the lengthy post. I just wanted to make it very clear that you did not convince me at all. The topic is important to me for various reasons, both professionally and personally.

waihtis 3y ago

you miss the point, the problem isn't the message in itself but signalling these from a moral high ground in a patronizing manner.

FeepingCreature 3y ago

An observation of hypocrisy does not per-se invalidate the original observation, but it does expose the speaker as acting from motivated reasoning, which may put into doubt their motivations and hence their conclusions. It does not invalidate any evidence presented, but it contextualizes it by showing it to be produced by a biased and selective process. This is particularly important in political rhetoric, where framing is usually more impactful than facts.

jonathanstrange 3y ago
> may put into doubt their motivations and hence their conclusions. That's literally a fallacy, too. Look, you can attempt to frame it as you like, accusing others of hypocrisy is deviating from the original argument and fallacious. It's an invalid ad hominem attack to distract from the topic. The only exception is when the accusation is that the arguer does not really mean the argument sincerely, but that's another type of argument and not under discussion here. Likewise, to re-iterate this point, two wrongs never make a right, yet in nearly all cases of blaming someone for being a hypocrite that type of fallacious argument is exactly the motivation behind the accusation. It certainly is in the above discussion.
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  It's only a fallacy if you're looking at the conclusion in isolation. In many cases, that a conclusion was brought to your attention implies a large amount of other conclusions that you assume to be false because they were not raised. This is the difference between "telling a technical truth" and "actually telling the truth" - when you omit observations that would contextualize a conclusion, you're using a valid argument to mislead people. So hypocrisy is not an accusation of lying by falsity but by omission. If I say "X was stealing office supplies from the breakroom" and I omit that every other employee was also stealing office supplies from the breakroom, I am lying even when X was in fact stealing. The exception implies the rule; the rule is a lie. If I speak a sentence that I know will mislead the listener, the sentence being logically true in isolation does not save me.
  - jonathanstrange 3y ago
    In the cases under discussion (like the above one), the person accusing the arguer of hypocrisy is trying to distract and is arguing in bad faith. That's why it's called whataboutism. As a typical example, Russian propaganda sources have replied to accusation of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with "The US has invaded Iraq and committed countless war crimes." This is not only fallacious, because US war crimes have no bearing on Russian war crimes, it's also hypocritical and logically inconsistent. It's hypocritical because the accusation would only work (from the perspective of the arguer) if they recognized war crimes and argued against them, but the rhetorical goal is the opposite. It's logically inconsistent because the desired inference is that what Russia does is not bad but the argument schema rests on the accusation that what the US in the past did was bad. That fallacious scheme is very common. You can observe it nearly everywhere, especially in political discussions, despite the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever on a closer look. The original example under discussion has a similar structure but also differs in an important detail. Somebody argued "what about previous tech billionaires who did some other nefarious things." The correct conclusion from this would be that previous tech billionaires (distraction topic) and current tech billionaires (real topic) did some nefarious things, if the claims are true. But that's not what the arguer had in mind. The arguer wanted to relativize the arguments against tech billionaires in the real topic. In this case, the accusation of hypocrisy against whataboutism is made in bad faith because the arguer knows that the two topics do not have anything to do with each other. Understanding the context of what previous tech billionaires did does not help you evaluating the morality of the real topic in this case. It does not provide any context needed because the contexts barely have anything in common (different times, different tech billionaires, etc.). That's in my experience another common case when people argue against pointing out whataboutism. The people who do that have rhetorical goals, of course, but they are not arguing correctly. Whataboutism is practically always a fallacy. I believe there are cases you describe where pointing out a hypocrisy can lead to a better understanding of the subject matter, but these are very rare and even then they still distract from the question under discussion. I believe the reason why you're so keen on insisting that you're right and that whataboutism is often wrong is mostly psychological. People want to set themselves apart and it's normal to come up with contrarian opinions about perceived wisdom. I have strong tendency do that myself. Sorry for the lengthy post. I just wanted to make it very clear that you did not convince me at all. The topic is important to me for various reasons, both professionally and personally.