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I’m really surprised that it’s okay to shout fire in a crowded theater but not okay to hit the fire alarm. I also don’t understand why the author of parent lin

I’m really surprised that it’s okay to shout fire in a crowded theater but not okay to hit the fire alarm. I also don’t understand why the author of parent link calls it “appeal to authority”. It’s one of the most concise, self-explanatory examples of free speech crossing the line between stating opinion and being an action.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
People like to say strawman and appeal-to-authority but often don't notice its not the right situation. Very common on this website. Disagreeing here is often called strawmanning.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Often people deny something is an appeal to authority if it is an appeal to an authority they accept.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
    The thing is we dont know eachothers identities here. If the thread is about the right way to do something in gamedev and you tell me you used to work at Big Game Company, and the information you provide seems sound, it is truly evidence in favor of the value of your information. It need not be claimed explicitly "and they work on this there, therefore I also have valid experience there, and as such have experience in the domain" because we assume thats understood already. People throw around appeal to authority as if relationship or prior experience with any institution or association with any well known name could not be causal evidence. And just throw the term out if they see a title, like it erases the strength of a position by mere utterance. If somebody told me John Carmack said to use such and such spatial indexing structure for this case, it is good information. There is a sincere practicality here. Not just manipulation or weak rhetoric. A good place to use it would be when someone with illegitimate authority is called upon, or the surrounding information is so weak or even untrue that it contradicts the association with said qualified authority.
    - akerl_ 3y ago
      Saying “you should do this because John Carmack did it” would absolutely be an appeal to authority. The fact that sometimes you really should do that thing doesn’t somehow negate the fact that the rhetorical strategy being used is ~”you should do this because an authority on the matter did it”. The rhetorical strategy “appeal to authority” doesn’t have the conditions you’re implying about the proposed hypothesis being weak, or about the authority being illegitimate.
      - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
        It doesnt? Well in that case its even more useless than i thought! I'm not concerned with the clothing of someones rhetoric im concerned with truth, and utility.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  I mean appeal to authority in particular is a fallacy in structured, formal debate, where your argument is supposed to stand on its own because all that's being evaluated is the participants' ability to reason and skill in rhetoric. It doesn't apply nearly as well to standard discussion. Unless it's narrower than I think of it. If "Appeal to authority" is supposed to only refer to authorities that aren't subject matter experts, and "appeal to expertise" wouldn't fall under the fallacy then I suppose it's a reasonable shorthand for "Oprah doesn't actually have much more credibility on Mad Cow Disease than, say, I do"
  - akerl_ 3y ago
    I think the gap here, in standard discussion, is that something involving a rhetorical fallacy doesn’t make it _wrong_. At any number of points in my career, I’ve argued in favor of using a technology because the majority of the industry is using it. On one hand, that’s a bandwagon fallacy. But it’s also often the right answer: there are actual benefits in technology of using something with an active userbase, where new hires are likely to have familiarity, etc. Likewise, appeals to authority are not fatal to a suggestion. If we’re debating two courses of action and I say “well $smart_engineer generally recommends option A”, that’s meaningful. But it’s still an appeal to authority. In a good discussion, the follow-up question would be “why do they generally recommend that?”, which is how you determine if the authority’s wisdom applies to your situation.
    - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
      its not a bandwagon fallacy then... the fallacy part only applies if it has no causal influence on the point. In the case of software, popularity causally equals tools. So it is not a fallacy. Someone deciding to make their railroad the same guage as everyone else is not a fallacy. The fallacy would be if everyone in the town said "we should make it different" and you ask why, and people respond "because thats what everyone else thinks, and the mayor"
akerl_ 3y ago
Except it’s not. Shouting “fire” isn’t an action. And the metaphor was used to explain something (handing out anti-war pamphlets) which is clearly protected speech. It’s described as an appeal to authority because generally, the quote is invoked to imply ~”well a Supreme Court justice said there are limits on free speech, so clearly we can limit this speech we’re discussing”. There are well-defined exceptions to free speech in the US, with well established tests for assessing them. A rough overview can be found here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex...
- Kbelicius 3y ago
  > Shouting “fire” isn’t an action. What definition of action are you using? I couldn't find any that would exclude shouting.
  - akerl_ 3y ago
    I was commenting in the context of this comment thread, where the person I was replying to referred to “shouting fire” as a clear example of the distinction “between stating opinion and being an action.” 1st Amendment jurisprudence is pretty clear that shouting is speech/expression, and is subject to the finite and well defined set of exceptions to 1st amendment protection.
tycho-newman 3y ago
You are not allowed to falsely shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater. That famous line from Schenck is often misquoted to drop the "falsely". Schenck is no longer good law, but this metaphor captures how some classes of speech fall outside the First Amendment. Specifically, false speech.
- akerl_ 3y ago
  False speech generally opens you for civil liability. If I shout fire in the theater, everyone rushes out, and I get sued by somebody who was injured, that seems clearly within the free speech exceptions to me. But if I shout fire in the theater and nobody does anything… what crime have I committed / what liability do I potentially have?
  - tycho-newman 3y ago
    The fire in a crowded theater metaphor is about false speech. The line is often misquoted to drop the "falsely." For the second part, I would ask your attorney. But in general terms, attempts that fail can be just as bad as the crime itself.
    - akerl_ 3y ago
      I think you’re misunderstanding the metaphor. Holmes was comparing “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater” not to an example of false speech, but an example of inflammatory speech. Schenck wasn’t making false statements, he was encouraging resistance to the draft during wartime.
- tux1968 3y ago
  Christopher Hitchens yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater... https://youtu.be/zDap-K6GmL0 https://youtu.be/zDap-K6GmL0

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

People like to say strawman and appeal-to-authority but often don't notice its not the right situation. Very common on this website. Disagreeing here is often called strawmanning.

pessimizer 3y ago
Often people deny something is an appeal to authority if it is an appeal to an authority they accept.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  The thing is we dont know eachothers identities here. If the thread is about the right way to do something in gamedev and you tell me you used to work at Big Game Company, and the information you provide seems sound, it is truly evidence in favor of the value of your information. It need not be claimed explicitly "and they work on this there, therefore I also have valid experience there, and as such have experience in the domain" because we assume thats understood already. People throw around appeal to authority as if relationship or prior experience with any institution or association with any well known name could not be causal evidence. And just throw the term out if they see a title, like it erases the strength of a position by mere utterance. If somebody told me John Carmack said to use such and such spatial indexing structure for this case, it is good information. There is a sincere practicality here. Not just manipulation or weak rhetoric. A good place to use it would be when someone with illegitimate authority is called upon, or the surrounding information is so weak or even untrue that it contradicts the association with said qualified authority.
  - akerl_ 3y ago
    Saying “you should do this because John Carmack did it” would absolutely be an appeal to authority. The fact that sometimes you really should do that thing doesn’t somehow negate the fact that the rhetorical strategy being used is ~”you should do this because an authority on the matter did it”. The rhetorical strategy “appeal to authority” doesn’t have the conditions you’re implying about the proposed hypothesis being weak, or about the authority being illegitimate.
    - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
      It doesnt? Well in that case its even more useless than i thought! I'm not concerned with the clothing of someones rhetoric im concerned with truth, and utility.
BobaFloutist 3y ago
I mean appeal to authority in particular is a fallacy in structured, formal debate, where your argument is supposed to stand on its own because all that's being evaluated is the participants' ability to reason and skill in rhetoric. It doesn't apply nearly as well to standard discussion. Unless it's narrower than I think of it. If "Appeal to authority" is supposed to only refer to authorities that aren't subject matter experts, and "appeal to expertise" wouldn't fall under the fallacy then I suppose it's a reasonable shorthand for "Oprah doesn't actually have much more credibility on Mad Cow Disease than, say, I do"
- akerl_ 3y ago
  I think the gap here, in standard discussion, is that something involving a rhetorical fallacy doesn’t make it _wrong_. At any number of points in my career, I’ve argued in favor of using a technology because the majority of the industry is using it. On one hand, that’s a bandwagon fallacy. But it’s also often the right answer: there are actual benefits in technology of using something with an active userbase, where new hires are likely to have familiarity, etc. Likewise, appeals to authority are not fatal to a suggestion. If we’re debating two courses of action and I say “well $smart_engineer generally recommends option A”, that’s meaningful. But it’s still an appeal to authority. In a good discussion, the follow-up question would be “why do they generally recommend that?”, which is how you determine if the authority’s wisdom applies to your situation.
  - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
    its not a bandwagon fallacy then... the fallacy part only applies if it has no causal influence on the point. In the case of software, popularity causally equals tools. So it is not a fallacy. Someone deciding to make their railroad the same guage as everyone else is not a fallacy. The fallacy would be if everyone in the town said "we should make it different" and you ask why, and people respond "because thats what everyone else thinks, and the mayor"

akerl_ 3y ago

Except it’s not. Shouting “fire” isn’t an action. And the metaphor was used to explain something (handing out anti-war pamphlets) which is clearly protected speech. It’s described as an appeal to authority because generally, the quote is invoked to imply ~”well a Supreme Court justice said there are limits on free speech, so clearly we can limit this speech we’re discussing”. There are well-defined exceptions to free speech in the US, with well established tests for assessing them. A rough overview can be found here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex...

Kbelicius 3y ago
> Shouting “fire” isn’t an action. What definition of action are you using? I couldn't find any that would exclude shouting.
- akerl_ 3y ago
  I was commenting in the context of this comment thread, where the person I was replying to referred to “shouting fire” as a clear example of the distinction “between stating opinion and being an action.” 1st Amendment jurisprudence is pretty clear that shouting is speech/expression, and is subject to the finite and well defined set of exceptions to 1st amendment protection.

tycho-newman 3y ago

You are not allowed to falsely shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater. That famous line from Schenck is often misquoted to drop the "falsely". Schenck is no longer good law, but this metaphor captures how some classes of speech fall outside the First Amendment. Specifically, false speech.

akerl_ 3y ago
False speech generally opens you for civil liability. If I shout fire in the theater, everyone rushes out, and I get sued by somebody who was injured, that seems clearly within the free speech exceptions to me. But if I shout fire in the theater and nobody does anything… what crime have I committed / what liability do I potentially have?
- tycho-newman 3y ago
  The fire in a crowded theater metaphor is about false speech. The line is often misquoted to drop the "falsely." For the second part, I would ask your attorney. But in general terms, attempts that fail can be just as bad as the crime itself.
  - akerl_ 3y ago
    I think you’re misunderstanding the metaphor. Holmes was comparing “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater” not to an example of false speech, but an example of inflammatory speech. Schenck wasn’t making false statements, he was encouraging resistance to the draft during wartime.
tux1968 3y ago
Christopher Hitchens yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater... https://youtu.be/zDap-K6GmL0 https://youtu.be/zDap-K6GmL0