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The term for this is whataboutism. Despite your protestations to the contrary, this is about unleashed animals in the park. It's not about trees, it's not abo

The term for this is whataboutism. Despite your protestations to the contrary, this is about unleashed animals in the park. It's not about trees, it's not about weapons (although most parks also have prohibitions against weapons), or teenagers. It's about dogs and why people want them to be leashed. Joel Spoelsky coined a term years ago, architecture astronaut. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect... > When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all. > These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts. It's kind of like those people who didn't believe covid existed until their family members started dying of it. It's really easy to hold such views when the idea of a dog attacking is an abstract idea. When there isn't a real understanding of the level of danger an attacking dog has. What I'm saying is that you're holding this opinion due to your ignorance.

mjburgess 3y ago
I have elsewhere defended 'whataboutism' as just another way of asking a person to answer for moral hypocrisy. Some people clearly want to walk their dogs without leashes. Some people want all dogs leashed. Now, what's the moral standard at work? How do you determine the level of danger? If you want to constrain people, limit their ability to lives their lives as they wish, you need to have an answer you can defend without bias or prejudice. That you don't like unleashed dogs cannot be grounds for limiting another; there has to be more than your mere preference. To separate out people disguising their irrational fear from a genuine moral position, one needs to establish that moral position. 'Whatabout' here applies exactly, in moral philosophy its called casuistry: arguing from cases. So if your moral position is that at a certain level of risk, one must put up signs and start socially policing people -- then ok, let's hear it: what level of risk? what's the principle at work here? (Or does your mind leap to imagined danger in one case, but not another: are you a bigot?). My view is that I want to live in a society much more tolerant to risk for the sake of avoiding social policing. I dont want to go to parks where people are 'watching out for rule breakers'. You, presumably, want to live in that society? This is the question. If you do, so be it. I am not taking a stand against leash laws one way or another. I'm taking issue with a particular mechanism of enforcement of social rules by which emotional busy-bodies go around clutching their pearls and calling the police. The issue of dog leashes is just one trivial example of this general phenomenon -- and it is this that I am talking about. I have no care whatsoever about what the law should be in the matters of dog leashing. I gather people in this thread are unable or unwilling to engage in the argument I am making which is at one level of abstraction above the issue around dog leads.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_t... > Was babysitting a family members Pit Bull mix. Her family believes the fatal attack occurred while attempting to stop a fight between the Pit Bull and her 2 Chihuahuas. ... > Bitten by the family dog while playing outside with adult supervision, later died in hospital. ... > Was at home to check on his daughters dogs when they attacked him. ... > A 6-year-old boy was killed by the family dog, a pit bull mix; the boy was severely injured and died in hospital the next day. --- this isn't abstract or theoretical, this is reality. These are dogs that killed _family members_ in 2023, the list of dogs that injured _people_ is much larger. The signs aren't abstract and the people who put them up aren't doing them for abstract reasons, but for some reason you want this to be an abstract debate while at the same time complaining that the signs were put up. That's not how it works.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    If you think that's a reply to me, you havent understood my point. I am well aware of such situations. The question is whether a particular person, in a particular park, on a particular day, with a particular dog is causing that situation. It is an absurd level of paranoia to suppose they are. Dogs kill people. People kill people. Everything is harmful to someone at somepoint. The question is whether we should go around replaying 6olds dying by dogs in our heads when we're wandering around in a park. I think we shouldnt. And it is a moral and psychological sickness to do so. That you're still only able to evaluate my position in terms of the saftey of dogs tells me you have not understood it and are making no efforts to. It seems like you're arguing in bad faith, perhaps because you usually deal with people you can brow-beat into losing arguments by appealing to extreme cases. You can point to all the murdered children you want; that isn't going to work with me. I'm not an idiot.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      One wonders if you also rail at the authoritarian nature of stoplights. At that on one particular 4-way with that one particular car with that one particular driver, they successfully ran a red light without causing an accident, therefore, we should all just ignore stop lights because they're an authoritarian construct designed to cow us into submission. Or perhaps it's those authoritarian posters telling young people to use condoms. Because in that one particular bed in that one particular house with that one particular young couple they had unprotected sex without transmitting any STDs or getting pregnant, therefore we can conclude that signage telling people to use condoms is purely a social construct with no long term real world consequences. But by all means Don Quixote, you keep fighting the good fight.

mjburgess 3y ago

I have elsewhere defended 'whataboutism' as just another way of asking a person to answer for moral hypocrisy. Some people clearly want to walk their dogs without leashes. Some people want all dogs leashed. Now, what's the moral standard at work? How do you determine the level of danger? If you want to constrain people, limit their ability to lives their lives as they wish, you need to have an answer you can defend without bias or prejudice. That you don't like unleashed dogs cannot be grounds for limiting another; there has to be more than your mere preference. To separate out people disguising their irrational fear from a genuine moral position, one needs to establish that moral position. 'Whatabout' here applies exactly, in moral philosophy its called casuistry: arguing from cases. So if your moral position is that at a certain level of risk, one must put up signs and start socially policing people -- then ok, let's hear it: what level of risk? what's the principle at work here? (Or does your mind leap to imagined danger in one case, but not another: are you a bigot?). My view is that I want to live in a society much more tolerant to risk for the sake of avoiding social policing. I dont want to go to parks where people are 'watching out for rule breakers'. You, presumably, want to live in that society? This is the question. If you do, so be it. I am not taking a stand against leash laws one way or another. I'm taking issue with a particular mechanism of enforcement of social rules by which emotional busy-bodies go around clutching their pearls and calling the police. The issue of dog leashes is just one trivial example of this general phenomenon -- and it is this that I am talking about. I have no care whatsoever about what the law should be in the matters of dog leashing. I gather people in this thread are unable or unwilling to engage in the argument I am making which is at one level of abstraction above the issue around dog leads.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_t... > Was babysitting a family members Pit Bull mix. Her family believes the fatal attack occurred while attempting to stop a fight between the Pit Bull and her 2 Chihuahuas. ... > Bitten by the family dog while playing outside with adult supervision, later died in hospital. ... > Was at home to check on his daughters dogs when they attacked him. ... > A 6-year-old boy was killed by the family dog, a pit bull mix; the boy was severely injured and died in hospital the next day. --- this isn't abstract or theoretical, this is reality. These are dogs that killed _family members_ in 2023, the list of dogs that injured _people_ is much larger. The signs aren't abstract and the people who put them up aren't doing them for abstract reasons, but for some reason you want this to be an abstract debate while at the same time complaining that the signs were put up. That's not how it works.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  If you think that's a reply to me, you havent understood my point. I am well aware of such situations. The question is whether a particular person, in a particular park, on a particular day, with a particular dog is causing that situation. It is an absurd level of paranoia to suppose they are. Dogs kill people. People kill people. Everything is harmful to someone at somepoint. The question is whether we should go around replaying 6olds dying by dogs in our heads when we're wandering around in a park. I think we shouldnt. And it is a moral and psychological sickness to do so. That you're still only able to evaluate my position in terms of the saftey of dogs tells me you have not understood it and are making no efforts to. It seems like you're arguing in bad faith, perhaps because you usually deal with people you can brow-beat into losing arguments by appealing to extreme cases. You can point to all the murdered children you want; that isn't going to work with me. I'm not an idiot.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    One wonders if you also rail at the authoritarian nature of stoplights. At that on one particular 4-way with that one particular car with that one particular driver, they successfully ran a red light without causing an accident, therefore, we should all just ignore stop lights because they're an authoritarian construct designed to cow us into submission. Or perhaps it's those authoritarian posters telling young people to use condoms. Because in that one particular bed in that one particular house with that one particular young couple they had unprotected sex without transmitting any STDs or getting pregnant, therefore we can conclude that signage telling people to use condoms is purely a social construct with no long term real world consequences. But by all means Don Quixote, you keep fighting the good fight.