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The Worst Argument In The World

212 points by jmillikin 14y ago

tokenadult 14y ago
I read the interesting submitted article and its comments right after it was submitted here on Hacker News. The worst argument in the world (a general FORM of argument) is described this way in the submitted article: "I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: 'X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features. Therefore, we should judge X as if it also had those features, even though it doesn't.'" This recalls many cases on Hacker News when someone has disagreed with someone else by saying, "Your argument is an example of [name of rhetorical or logical fallacy]." Perhaps it is carrying out the worst argument in the world to identify one part of someone's statement as a logical fallacy, if the fallacy doesn't vitiate the statement, and if sound evidence is still in view to support the statement. Sometimes facts of the world are as they are even if they are mentioned by people who argue inaptly, so it would indeed be a bad argument to ignore the message because of infelicities of expression by the messenger. If we look at pg's essay "How to Disagree," http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html we see advice that a better way to disagree is "Refuting the Central Point. "The force of a refutation depends on what you refute. The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point." So I guess my central point here [smile] is that while it may be interesting to identify a general form for many particularly bad arguments, it is even better to be specific in grappling with the evidence for the core factual assertions of the person with whom you disagree. That takes abundant knowledge of the world, and a willingness to look up facts. I always appreciate people on Hacker News who can point to carefully gathered facts, analyzed by people with appropriate domain-related knowledge, as we discuss issues here.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  I think pointing out a logical fallacy is not a refutation. Rather than saying "your argument is wrong", it says "your argument is not well-formed". This is much like the difference between a program that has a bug and a program that has a parse error. To take the most glaring example: "my point is true because my point is true". Obviously, nobody actually says this seriously. But some arguments are isomorphic to this. And any argument like that is not wrong per se--it is literally meaningless. Other fallacies are more subtle and complicated, but the idea remains the same: using a fallacy does not invalidate your point but merely renders your argument meaningless. I can say that "the sky is blue because everybody says so" and I would not be wrong--given the sky is actually blue, of course--but the argument would still be a fallacy. I think to point this out is valuable even (perhaps especially) if you do not disagree with the point in question.
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    As humans, we can do better than a compiler that gives up at the first missing semicolon. We can keep reading and respond to the rest of the comment with more than a link to the wikipedia article on ad hominem.
    - tikhonj 14y ago
      That's certainly reasonable. But this does not mean you should ignore fallacies either. Usually when I see people talk about fallacies it's part of a point-by-point rebuttal against some post--you refute some of the points in order, perhaps agree with others and also point out any points that are actually fallacies. I think this is perfectly reasonable, but I can also see how solely pointing out a fallacy would usually not be terribly useful. Also, ad hominem is a special case: not only is it a complete fallacy but it is also often quite rude. Minimizing personal attacks is important in keeping discussion pleasant and civil even ignoring their logical implications. If I could only have one rule for some discussion forum, that would probably be it: no personal attacks.
    - Confusion 14y ago
      Sure, if there is a 'rest of the comment'. Usually, there isn't anything else to go by. There's just the fallacious argument. It doesn't matter whether you can think of all kinds of ways to support the point of view the other espouses: you're not in his head and you can't know whether he thought all the things you can think of in favour of his position. There's only the fallacious argument and that needs to be struck down. If someone else wants to support the position, he'll come along.
    - InclinedPlane 14y ago
      I have to take issue with this. I think it's an important and useful rhetorical tool that, while sometimes can be used in a petty way to score points, can elevate the debate. If half of your counter-argument is "compiler warnings" for your competitor's argument, I think that's valuable. I, for one, would wildly prefer a world where every debater was a nit-picking SOB when it comes to logical fallacies and the average debate "compiled cleanly without warnings". It would be like heaven compared to where we are today.
- scarmig 14y ago
  I find the most enjoyable form of argument is to listen to what your opponent is saying. Instead of poking holes in bad word choices or minor factual inaccuracies, reconstruct in your head the person's argument to be as strong and clear-headed as possible. Then refute that argument, which is probably closer anyways to what the person was thinking than what they actually wrote. Going all out against someone's point of view does have its uses, of course. But it's never good for genuine intellectual exploration (which is, honestly, often not our real goal in confronting someone).
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    There is really no point in this unless you are arguing with someone who is trying to be honest to begin with. In that situation you don't need so much artifice anyway.
    - scarmig 14y ago
      Well, I'd say there's a continuum of honesty. And intellectual generosity tends to beget intellectual generosity in the other person--and, for thoughtful undecided onlookers, makes them more amendable toward considering your side. For instance, speaking from both sides of the experience, someone who is engaged but being sniping or nasty in a political debate might well see that you're giving their point an honest go of it and in response clean up their act. And even if they're lost beyond all hope, there's only a limited amount of fun to be had in poking holes in the small without really addressing their motivating concern.
      - thebigshane 14y ago
        note: I'm not refuting your central point, I agree with it, but this line made me smile... there's only a limited amount of fun to be had in poking holes in the small without really addressing their motivating concern The internet and tv news would disagree with you that the fun is limited. It appears definitely unlimited.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  This idea pretends that all arguments turn on factual assertions - never framing or non sequiturs - and don't have any meaningful social context. For example, in a public argument, if you get too far drawn into proof that you don't STILL beat your wife, you will inadvertently establish in the minds of the audience that you used to do so; moreover, your excess of protest may actually be taken as evidence that you do beat your wife. If someone poses such framing you are really remiss not to address the framing or refuse to dignify such a malicious and dishonest line of argument with response.
- derleth 14y ago
  > The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point. Which is denied you when the person's argument is so ill-formed that it does not have a central point. At that point, you either point out the flaws or you walk away, apparently conceding the point to the pointless one. (Also: I love the word point, apparently.)
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    That's a good, uhhhh, point. There are many people who form their arguments so poorly that it can be hard to refute them because they'll just move the goal posts or completely change the playing field.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  If one part of your argument is refuted, but the others stand, you should simply acknowledge your mistake and point out the remainder of it is still valid. Pointing out flaws in your argument is not "the worst argument in the world". It's logically valid, whereas the worst argument in the world is not.
- makmanalp 14y ago
  Yup, this is also known as the argument from fallacy or the fallacy fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy Which is the false notion that when you refute a single false point, the opponent's whole argument is false.
yafujifide 14y ago
I experience this argument all the time for being both an atheist and a libertarian, except replace "archetype" with "stereotype". People assume all atheists fit into some stereotype they saw on TV, and therefore I must be exactly like that. Likewise, they assume all libertarians are like the stereotype they saw on TV, and I must be exactly like that. Since I'm not like the stereotypes, it's frustrating.
- purplelobster 14y ago
  I don't think his post is about generalizations of people. I thought it was at first, and perhaps they're included in the general idea, but every single example he gave was not of that kind.
- masterzora 14y ago
  I'd reckon that most people experience this argument all the time with regards to their religious and political preferences or lack thereof. Christian. Muslim. Jewish. Buddhist. Hindu. Republican. Democrat. Moderate. Independent. Odds are most people who read the above section had some sort of archetypal or stereotypical vision of most or all of those and all of us can identify some of the associated types. And most of us can also realise that not all Christians are fundies (or even vocal), that Jews are greedy with roughly equal proportion of more general populations, that not all moderates have weak political views, etc. But we all get to live with these, though admittedly some are worse than others.
ojbyrne 14y ago
Slighty more reasonable, but perhaps more insidious is the "slippery slope" argument. So the first example, about Martin Luther King being a criminal - could be more subtly argued by saying something like "well obviously he doesn't count, but where do we draw the line between 'good' criminals and 'bad' criminals, and invoking slippery slopes. Then the argument ends up basically being the same, but seems on the surface to be less dogmatic.
- scarmig 14y ago
  Certainly some slippery slope arguments are good, though! For instance, suppose a terrorist starts demanding a large sum of money not to blow up a plane. Suppose also that the direct risk-corrected value of the plane, even excluding passenger lives, also exceeds the price the terrorist is asking for. We still make it policy not to negotiate with the terrorist, because doing so would create a positive feedback loop that pushes us down a slippery slope. When you think about it, it's a fairly insidious argument to say that slippery slope arguments should be rejected because they fall into a category of arguments that are subtle and hard to refute because they are so insidious. An amusing implied prior of the slippery slope fallacy is that once we start accepting valid slippery slope arguments, what's to stop us from accepting the really terrible ones that take the same structure?
  - masterzora 14y ago
    The internet seems to be a fan of being overreaching in proclaiming fallacies in my experience. Sometimes it feels like you can find at least one misuse of "ad hominem" on every comment thread on reasonably popular sites. Similarly, many people like to dismiss arguments by just saying "slippery slope" and moving on. As you mentioned, slippery slopes are not inherently invalid. In fact, the real fallacious use of a slippery slope is hardly related to it being a slippery slope at all! Assume a slope A->B->...->Z. Further, assume that each step of this chain is known to be true with 100% accuracy. That is to say that we can perfectly predict that if A happens then B will happen and if Q happens R will happen. Thus, simple transitivity shows that if A will happen Z will definitely happen. If Z is complete destruction of the Earth you probably won't find many people saying that it will be perfectly okay if we do A because slippery slopes are invalid. However, slippery slope arguments often have a much smaller probability of occurring at each step of the chain. You often get things like "if we don't have a death penalty then people won't be afraid of killing people so murder rates will go up so you'll get pregnant and die". Clearly there is no part of this chain that occurs with probability 1 (except, as Mean Girls tells us, getting pregnant->death). In fact, most of the chain is fairly low probability and composing them as such makes it even smaller. To make this a bit clearer again, let's take our A->B->...->Z chain and make each step of the chain have a .9 probability. If A happens, B will occur with .75 chance and if Q happens, R will occur with .75 chance. Since there are 25 hops on this we can see that the probability of Z occurring given A is actually .75^25 = .00075 (ish). Even if each individual step seems reasonable (I mean, hey, it will happen 3 out of 4 times!) the full composition is just laughably unlikely. However, it seems that GP was actually talking about a continuum fallacy rather than a slippery slope as we've discussed.
leh0n 14y ago
I've found that most people believe x thing is true because other people also believe x thing is true. They won't say that's the reason but deep down it provides emotional support for their belief. So I've found it's best to not try to "rationally" argue with people and just change the subject.
deleted 14y ago
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001sky 14y ago
This is a logic shortcut (heuristic), with its origins in decisionmaking under incomplete information and time constraint. Yes, in the context of manipulative pre-meditation (and perfect information) it takes on a new character. Edit: Clarification/simplify
- child_nihilist 14y ago
  But when such a heuristic is challenged it should be reformed into a proper argument.
breckinloggins 14y ago
The article could use some more neutral and left-leaning "Worst argument in the world (TWAITW)" examples. I'm fairly neutral politically, and the piece sounded left-biased to me. Note that I'm not stating my opinion here; the author even apologizes for it in the article. Perhaps he is simply at a loss for examples? We could help. Here's a neutral one (from the comments): - "George Washington was a traitor!" (should probably be used BEFORE the Martin Luther King argument; in extremely conservative circles, even mentioning Dr. King's name rings the "ding! ding! liberal!" bells) Here are some left-leaning "argumentoids" that you sometimes hear and that have elements of TWAITW: - "But guns kill people!" I realized shortly after reading the article that this is not only an instance of TWAITW, but shows the logic behind the retort "Guns don't kill people, people kill people". This might be rephrased as saying "yes, guns kill people, but not in the way that murderers kill people, which is to say, with malicious intent. That requires a person, so let's concentrate on whether removing guns from the economy will prevent those with malicious intent from obtaining them." - "Evolution is a fact!" Yes, but maybe not in the "totality of the truth is plain for all to see" perspective. It is true that PARTS of evolution are plain fact, but the creationist has a point that some of the more fantastic parts of evolution are harder to directly observe in the same way as, say, gravity. - "Reproductive freedom is a choice!" Perhaps, but you can't just dismiss the argument at that point. Choice can mean "choosy moms choose Jiff" or it can mean "the difference between life and death". Saying it is a choice ignores the fact that not all personal "choices" are accepted by society (i.e. it is your choice and you can make one, but sometimes there are consequences). - "Tax breaks for the rich are unfair!" Perhaps, but there are many levels of unfair. You must argue why tax breaks for the rich are at the same level of unfair as, say, separate water fountains for whites and blacks and not unfair as in "it's unfair that I always have to pull the cookie jar from the top shelf just because I happen to be the tall one." Note that all of these lean more toward "equivocation" than the author's technical definition of TWAITW. But then, perhaps that's what TWAITW boils down to. Also, I note in all of these that they are all caricature arguments. They are all cliched. The arguments in the article have a similar nature. This leads to a disturbing point: it is helpful to have TWAITW as an analytical tool when having a serious debate, but if you are "debating" with a person who shouts soundbites like these in your face, do you really think they are going to understand or care if you try to explain to them that they are using TWAITW? Seems like more preaching to the choir, unfortunately.
scarmig 14y ago
I recall a good pg opinion somewhere that reflects a sort of inverse of this point. We should reject abstract categories for our identities because once we do define ourselves by them, we start reconstructing our thoughts and beliefs to actually fit the stereotype for that abstract category. Much better to focus on the actual specific beliefs without committing to a tribal identity, both for your sake and so that other people are less likely to commit the submitted article's fallacy against you.
barbs 14y ago
So basically, this is saying "don't generalise". Or am I just generalising?
- roryokane 14y ago
  No, the point is more specific than that. A better summary would be “don’t generalise the opposing position to a category where it’s an outlier”. Admit all important ways in which your generalisation unfairly “taints” the subject with negative connotations. Feel free, on the other hand, to generalise positions accurately, in a category which the position generally represents.
codehotter 14y ago
Thanks to this article, I can finally put into words what bothers me about "Copyright infringement is theft"! Yes copyright infringement share some of the properties of theft, but they are sufficiently different that we shouldn't apply our intuitions about theft to copyright infringement, just like we shouldn't apply our intuitions about theft to taxation.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  When someone says that piracy or taxation are theft, they are not necessarily appealing to intuitions about theft. They may literally hold and mean to state that they share with carjacking whatever makes carjacking theft, WITHOUT sharing other properties of carjacking... in effect, this is a thesis statement rather than a knock-down argument. Of course, it is also possible that it is not even an honest appeal to intuition, rather just an emotional tarring which will never be substantiated. This is usually what is irritating about hearing those arguments.
adrianbravo 14y ago
If someone points out someone else I admire is a criminal, I would approach it a different way. It has less to do with what I want to call archetypal and more to do with the historically observable fact that what is legal is not always what is moral. Murder, torture, slavery, etc. These have all been legal in some past (or present) context. The possibility that someone who is acknowledged as a decent person could be a "criminal" is no surprise to me, and I'd rather argue to that point than dismiss the whole argument. And even if I support abortion rights, the act is technically killing. A 'life' is terminated. Regardless, I'd point out that murder holds a different connotation that implies hatred or ill-will (or "malice aforethought") toward the victim. Same with euthanasia. Why not take these as opportunities to explore the meanings and limits of a word? One person's definition of what is the archetypal murderer or thief or racist may easily differ from yours depending on their own experiences.
Xcelerate 14y ago
I wonder if there's some sort of way to definitively defeat someone's argument in issues other than math and science. I doubt it -- I suspect all arguments essentially boil down to moral relativism based upon gut feelings (environmental or genetic factors). I guess a more optimistic question is whether there's a statistically significant process to convince* your opponent that your argument is correct. I would actually be more interested in knowing this. *By process, I mean a general purpose algorithm that someone could follow that's more effective than alternative algorithms at making your opponent say "you know what, you're right". EDIT: While I'm at it, I would really like to see more articles/analyses on the nature of arguing. It seems like argument could be a study in its own right, though I doubt there exist any strong efforts in the field. EDIT 2: You know what, if someone got really good at analyzing the way people argue, they could optimize their own argument strategy to become a very powerful/dangerous person. I suspect this happens naturally (political leaders) but I think there's a huge potential if someone were to go about this consciously and objectively.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  This is an ancient field and its name is rhetoric.
  - Xcelerate 14y ago
    And as far as I can tell, it's never been objective. Where's the studies comparing multiple styles of argument and determining which had the highest percentages of "wins"?
    - slurgfest 14y ago
      How do you objectively pin down the concept of "win"?
      - lutusp 14y ago
        By having a panel of judges and a formal debate, with strict rules. The panel then decides who is the "winner".
Xcelerate 14y ago
I have to disagree with his first example. He says "X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features". The first example is "Abortion is murder". He then says, "If you define murder as 'killing another human being', then abortion is technically murder." The problem is that in this case, his "if" applies to roughly 56% of the US population, as they define murder that way. In other words, he needs to select a category that has a unanimous agreement about its features instead of selecting a category that has a myriad of definitions and then choosing his own favorite definition and its corresponding archetypes.
- alexchamberlain 14y ago
  How else do you define murder?
  - qxcv 14y ago
    Murder (n) - The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. Nobody is debating the definition of murder, the debate is over the definition of "human". When does an unborn child get the rights of a human? Is it at conception? At 3 months? At birth?
sakai 14y ago
I hate to say this, but I found this article absolutely terrible. All of these "Martin Luther King IS ...", "George Washington WAS ...", etc. statements (form: Noun TO BE Adj.), really remind me of the arguments in favor of E-Prime and its associated benefits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime. The author likely intended this, of course, but reinforces exactly the same kind of thinking and tone in nearly every other sentence! (Do a quick scan for the verb to be) Some might call E-Prime a fairly extreme philosophy / didactic tool, to be sure ;), but one shouldn't overlook that this article undermined its very own core point ("don't make a certain class of categorical / binary Aristotelian statements") through its very language (e.g., the phrase 'Now, because most arguments are rapid-fire debate-club style, sometimes it's still useful to say "Affirmative action isn't racist!"').
- child_nihilist 14y ago
  How do you indicate category membership in E-Prime? What if I want to say "A dog is an animal"?
losethos 14y ago
You get what you pray for. God says, "Kill the niggers, India-niggers first."
mseebach 14y ago
This seems disingenuous to me. Already by calling what's essentially rhetoric "arguments", he's building a huge strawman. Take abortion - according to opponents a fetus is a living human being, and actively and purposefully killing a living human being is murder in the Charles Manson style. The argument for abortion isn't that it's somehow OK to kill really young human, it's that fetuses aren't independent human beings, they're an extension of the mothers body. It's really not a relevant metric for wether murder is murder if there are grieving friends and family, or if people live in fear - it seems every other crime show deals with the murder of a miserable, lonely homeless guy or a prostitute. According to this argument, that's not murder at all. The eugenics example is even worse. In the 1930s, people were absolutely certain eugenics was the best thing since sliced bread, then Hitler showed the world how bad that could go. To deny "Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it" as a guiding principle seems rather hubristic to me. "Evolutionary psychology is sexist!" is a different beast: some people have decided, not through science, but though politics, that material differences between men and women (or the races for that matter) doesn't exist. Thus science finding otherwise is unacceptable. Of course it's a bad argument to reject science because it doesn't fit your political agenda.
- derleth 14y ago
  > "Those who don't learn history is doomed to repeat it" Even when they have learned from history? We understand more now about exactly why the Nazi eugenics was wrong than we've ever known. Comparing the quest for a mythical Aryan Superman (Super-Duper-Superman!) to the hunt for a method to eliminate Tay-Sachs is useful how?
  - mseebach 14y ago
    Well, for starters, because to properly eliminate genetical diseases, you will eventually need to forbid carriers of undesirable genes to procreate. That gets nasty. So you have a voluntary regime, and the rich and well-educated (generally) make sure their children are free of genetical disorders, while the lower classes (generally) don't. Two generations later, you have "clean" people and "dirty" people. Why should the "clean" people, who did as they were encouraged to by the Department of Health, pay high insurance premiums/health tax to subsidize the totally preventable diseases of the "dirty" people?
alexchamberlain 14y ago
I must point out that from a logical point of view "Because you don't like criminals, and Martin Luther King is a criminal, you should stop liking Martin Luther King." is correct. Let us assume you like Martin Luther King. Then one of the 2 premises must be wrong. Is it "you don't like criminals" or is it "Martin Luther King is a criminal"? I'm sorry to say that Martin Luther King was a criminal, and let us assume that means he still is in the strictest sense. Therefore, "you don't like criminals" cannot be correct. However, "You don't like people who you consider to be a criminal" could still be correct, since you would probably accept that you don't consider Martin Luther King to be a criminal. Sometimes you just need to teach people a little bit of logic.
jessedhillon 14y ago
This is great, but who does this appeal to? The small minority who actually takes the time to reflect on their own assumptions, is open to refactoring their own thinking and possesses the maturity to accept the wrongness of their own arguments? Almost all public "debates", on topics of any importance, are merely shouting matches where two or more sides reiterate rationalizations for their already-held notions of the world. Rarely is anyone ever convinced to change their mind, and the philosopher who crafts valid and cogent arguments almost always has circles run about them by someone who can distill compelling emotional appeals into clever soundbites.
- gjm11 14y ago
  > The small minority who actually takes the time to reflect on their own assumptions, is open to refactoring their own thinking and possesses the maturity to accept the wrongness of their own arguments? Well, yes, that would be exactly the target audience of Less Wrong. Do you have a problem with that? (Of course (1) posting this isn't going to make bad arguments disappear from the world and (2) someone whose goal is influence rather than accuracy or integrity may well prefer to go on saying things that, when considered as rational arguments, are very wrong; but so what?)
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
xo 14y ago
thanks for posting the article. was interesting, though long-winded. for all the rest of you, shut up. you're making the internet worse. go away.
jrajav 14y ago
When I reached "Taxation is theft!" I was moved to come here and comment on it. It only took about a second for me to stop myself and laugh. Apparently others here weren't quite so levelheaded.
- alttab 14y ago
  I'm not sure what your comment is trying to imply, but this is also where I stopped reading. "Taxation keeps the first disadvantage, but arguably subverts the second disadvantage if you believe being able to fund a government has greater social value than leaving money in the hands of those who earned it." Using this argument, at least with the US Government, taxation is most certainly theft.
  - jrajav 14y ago
    Yeah, my comment was a lot clearer in my head. I meant that I was about to launch into a minirant about fair taxation in the US. I did a double take and realized that I had hit an emotional trigger very similar to the kind the article is calling out. I think it's very valuable to examine our emotional attachments to words, and I think that's the best thing to take away from the article.
gizzlon 14y ago
Great point! But stop reading when you come to the examples, they just derail the whole thing and everyone forgets what the original point was. "..the urge is to respond "Martin Luther King? A criminal? No he wasn't! You take that back!" This is why the Worst Argument In The World is so successful. As soon as you do that you've fallen into their trap. Your argument is no longer about whether you should build a statue, it's about whether King was a criminal. Since he was, you have now lost the argument"
1123581321 14y ago
I suggest amending the argument: "X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features. Therefore, we should judge the past behaviors of X as if it also had those features, even though it doesn't; or assign future behaviors to X even though it cannot develop those features." That said, I disagree this is a worse argument than its ideological opposite, A is not A.
Bjartr 14y ago
This game seems very appropriate http://www.argumentchampion.com/ http://www.argumentchampion.com/
skizm 14y ago
Unrelated (but related to lesswrong.com) If you haven't heard of "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" I highly recommend it (hpmor.com). It is written by Less Wrong author Eliezer Yudkowsky. I am about half way through and it is a great read. It is a fan fiction about the Harry Potter world except Harry Potter is a boy genius and a trained scientist. Each chapter is a new lesson in some method of rationality and it is an amazingly easy read and especially enjoyable if you liked the Harry Potter series to begin with. It is a work in progress and new chapters get added every once in a while. Definitely check it out if you like lesswrong.com and/or Harry Potter.
eswangren 14y ago
I always thought the worst argument ever was "nuh-uh".
pfedor 14y ago
I disagree that it is the worst argument in the world, or even that it is a bad argument in most cases. There is something to be said for the simplicity of rules we adopt. If we say, "X is never allowed", then it is less likely that someone who wants to do X for their twisted purposes will be able to get away with it, than if we said, "X is not allowed, except when it does more good than harm."

212 points by jmillikin 14y ago

I read the interesting submitted article and its comments right after it was submitted here on Hacker News. The worst argument in the world (a general FORM of argument) is described this way in the submitted article: "I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: 'X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features. Therefore, we should judge X as if it also had those features, even though it doesn't.'" This recalls many cases on Hacker News when someone has disagreed with someone else by saying, "Your argument is an example of [name of rhetorical or logical fallacy]." Perhaps it is carrying out the worst argument in the world to identify one part of someone's statement as a logical fallacy, if the fallacy doesn't vitiate the statement, and if sound evidence is still in view to support the statement. Sometimes facts of the world are as they are even if they are mentioned by people who argue inaptly, so it would indeed be a bad argument to ignore the message because of infelicities of expression by the messenger. If we look at pg's essay "How to Disagree," http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html we see advice that a better way to disagree is "Refuting the Central Point. "The force of a refutation depends on what you refute. The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point." So I guess my central point here [smile] is that while it may be interesting to identify a general form for many particularly bad arguments, it is even better to be specific in grappling with the evidence for the core factual assertions of the person with whom you disagree. That takes abundant knowledge of the world, and a willingness to look up facts. I always appreciate people on Hacker News who can point to carefully gathered facts, analyzed by people with appropriate domain-related knowledge, as we discuss issues here.

tikhonj 14y ago
I think pointing out a logical fallacy is not a refutation. Rather than saying "your argument is wrong", it says "your argument is not well-formed". This is much like the difference between a program that has a bug and a program that has a parse error. To take the most glaring example: "my point is true because my point is true". Obviously, nobody actually says this seriously. But some arguments are isomorphic to this. And any argument like that is not wrong per se--it is literally meaningless. Other fallacies are more subtle and complicated, but the idea remains the same: using a fallacy does not invalidate your point but merely renders your argument meaningless. I can say that "the sky is blue because everybody says so" and I would not be wrong--given the sky is actually blue, of course--but the argument would still be a fallacy. I think to point this out is valuable even (perhaps especially) if you do not disagree with the point in question.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  As humans, we can do better than a compiler that gives up at the first missing semicolon. We can keep reading and respond to the rest of the comment with more than a link to the wikipedia article on ad hominem.
  - tikhonj 14y ago
    That's certainly reasonable. But this does not mean you should ignore fallacies either. Usually when I see people talk about fallacies it's part of a point-by-point rebuttal against some post--you refute some of the points in order, perhaps agree with others and also point out any points that are actually fallacies. I think this is perfectly reasonable, but I can also see how solely pointing out a fallacy would usually not be terribly useful. Also, ad hominem is a special case: not only is it a complete fallacy but it is also often quite rude. Minimizing personal attacks is important in keeping discussion pleasant and civil even ignoring their logical implications. If I could only have one rule for some discussion forum, that would probably be it: no personal attacks.
  - Confusion 14y ago
    Sure, if there is a 'rest of the comment'. Usually, there isn't anything else to go by. There's just the fallacious argument. It doesn't matter whether you can think of all kinds of ways to support the point of view the other espouses: you're not in his head and you can't know whether he thought all the things you can think of in favour of his position. There's only the fallacious argument and that needs to be struck down. If someone else wants to support the position, he'll come along.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    I have to take issue with this. I think it's an important and useful rhetorical tool that, while sometimes can be used in a petty way to score points, can elevate the debate. If half of your counter-argument is "compiler warnings" for your competitor's argument, I think that's valuable. I, for one, would wildly prefer a world where every debater was a nit-picking SOB when it comes to logical fallacies and the average debate "compiled cleanly without warnings". It would be like heaven compared to where we are today.
scarmig 14y ago
I find the most enjoyable form of argument is to listen to what your opponent is saying. Instead of poking holes in bad word choices or minor factual inaccuracies, reconstruct in your head the person's argument to be as strong and clear-headed as possible. Then refute that argument, which is probably closer anyways to what the person was thinking than what they actually wrote. Going all out against someone's point of view does have its uses, of course. But it's never good for genuine intellectual exploration (which is, honestly, often not our real goal in confronting someone).
- slurgfest 14y ago
  There is really no point in this unless you are arguing with someone who is trying to be honest to begin with. In that situation you don't need so much artifice anyway.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    Well, I'd say there's a continuum of honesty. And intellectual generosity tends to beget intellectual generosity in the other person--and, for thoughtful undecided onlookers, makes them more amendable toward considering your side. For instance, speaking from both sides of the experience, someone who is engaged but being sniping or nasty in a political debate might well see that you're giving their point an honest go of it and in response clean up their act. And even if they're lost beyond all hope, there's only a limited amount of fun to be had in poking holes in the small without really addressing their motivating concern.
    - thebigshane 14y ago
      note: I'm not refuting your central point, I agree with it, but this line made me smile... there's only a limited amount of fun to be had in poking holes in the small without really addressing their motivating concern The internet and tv news would disagree with you that the fun is limited. It appears definitely unlimited.
slurgfest 14y ago
This idea pretends that all arguments turn on factual assertions - never framing or non sequiturs - and don't have any meaningful social context. For example, in a public argument, if you get too far drawn into proof that you don't STILL beat your wife, you will inadvertently establish in the minds of the audience that you used to do so; moreover, your excess of protest may actually be taken as evidence that you do beat your wife. If someone poses such framing you are really remiss not to address the framing or refuse to dignify such a malicious and dishonest line of argument with response.
derleth 14y ago
> The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point. Which is denied you when the person's argument is so ill-formed that it does not have a central point. At that point, you either point out the flaws or you walk away, apparently conceding the point to the pointless one. (Also: I love the word point, apparently.)
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  That's a good, uhhhh, point. There are many people who form their arguments so poorly that it can be hard to refute them because they'll just move the goal posts or completely change the playing field.
yummyfajitas 14y ago
If one part of your argument is refuted, but the others stand, you should simply acknowledge your mistake and point out the remainder of it is still valid. Pointing out flaws in your argument is not "the worst argument in the world". It's logically valid, whereas the worst argument in the world is not.
makmanalp 14y ago
Yup, this is also known as the argument from fallacy or the fallacy fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy Which is the false notion that when you refute a single false point, the opponent's whole argument is false.

yafujifide 14y ago

I experience this argument all the time for being both an atheist and a libertarian, except replace "archetype" with "stereotype". People assume all atheists fit into some stereotype they saw on TV, and therefore I must be exactly like that. Likewise, they assume all libertarians are like the stereotype they saw on TV, and I must be exactly like that. Since I'm not like the stereotypes, it's frustrating.

purplelobster 14y ago
I don't think his post is about generalizations of people. I thought it was at first, and perhaps they're included in the general idea, but every single example he gave was not of that kind.
masterzora 14y ago
I'd reckon that most people experience this argument all the time with regards to their religious and political preferences or lack thereof. Christian. Muslim. Jewish. Buddhist. Hindu. Republican. Democrat. Moderate. Independent. Odds are most people who read the above section had some sort of archetypal or stereotypical vision of most or all of those and all of us can identify some of the associated types. And most of us can also realise that not all Christians are fundies (or even vocal), that Jews are greedy with roughly equal proportion of more general populations, that not all moderates have weak political views, etc. But we all get to live with these, though admittedly some are worse than others.

ojbyrne 14y ago

Slighty more reasonable, but perhaps more insidious is the "slippery slope" argument. So the first example, about Martin Luther King being a criminal - could be more subtly argued by saying something like "well obviously he doesn't count, but where do we draw the line between 'good' criminals and 'bad' criminals, and invoking slippery slopes. Then the argument ends up basically being the same, but seems on the surface to be less dogmatic.

scarmig 14y ago
Certainly some slippery slope arguments are good, though! For instance, suppose a terrorist starts demanding a large sum of money not to blow up a plane. Suppose also that the direct risk-corrected value of the plane, even excluding passenger lives, also exceeds the price the terrorist is asking for. We still make it policy not to negotiate with the terrorist, because doing so would create a positive feedback loop that pushes us down a slippery slope. When you think about it, it's a fairly insidious argument to say that slippery slope arguments should be rejected because they fall into a category of arguments that are subtle and hard to refute because they are so insidious. An amusing implied prior of the slippery slope fallacy is that once we start accepting valid slippery slope arguments, what's to stop us from accepting the really terrible ones that take the same structure?
- masterzora 14y ago
  The internet seems to be a fan of being overreaching in proclaiming fallacies in my experience. Sometimes it feels like you can find at least one misuse of "ad hominem" on every comment thread on reasonably popular sites. Similarly, many people like to dismiss arguments by just saying "slippery slope" and moving on. As you mentioned, slippery slopes are not inherently invalid. In fact, the real fallacious use of a slippery slope is hardly related to it being a slippery slope at all! Assume a slope A->B->...->Z. Further, assume that each step of this chain is known to be true with 100% accuracy. That is to say that we can perfectly predict that if A happens then B will happen and if Q happens R will happen. Thus, simple transitivity shows that if A will happen Z will definitely happen. If Z is complete destruction of the Earth you probably won't find many people saying that it will be perfectly okay if we do A because slippery slopes are invalid. However, slippery slope arguments often have a much smaller probability of occurring at each step of the chain. You often get things like "if we don't have a death penalty then people won't be afraid of killing people so murder rates will go up so you'll get pregnant and die". Clearly there is no part of this chain that occurs with probability 1 (except, as Mean Girls tells us, getting pregnant->death). In fact, most of the chain is fairly low probability and composing them as such makes it even smaller. To make this a bit clearer again, let's take our A->B->...->Z chain and make each step of the chain have a .9 probability. If A happens, B will occur with .75 chance and if Q happens, R will occur with .75 chance. Since there are 25 hops on this we can see that the probability of Z occurring given A is actually .75^25 = .00075 (ish). Even if each individual step seems reasonable (I mean, hey, it will happen 3 out of 4 times!) the full composition is just laughably unlikely. However, it seems that GP was actually talking about a continuum fallacy rather than a slippery slope as we've discussed.

leh0n 14y ago

I've found that most people believe x thing is true because other people also believe x thing is true. They won't say that's the reason but deep down it provides emotional support for their belief. So I've found it's best to not try to "rationally" argue with people and just change the subject.

deleted 14y ago

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001sky 14y ago

This is a logic shortcut (heuristic), with its origins in decisionmaking under incomplete information and time constraint. Yes, in the context of manipulative pre-meditation (and perfect information) it takes on a new character. Edit: Clarification/simplify

child_nihilist 14y ago
But when such a heuristic is challenged it should be reformed into a proper argument.

breckinloggins 14y ago

The article could use some more neutral and left-leaning "Worst argument in the world (TWAITW)" examples. I'm fairly neutral politically, and the piece sounded left-biased to me. Note that I'm not stating my opinion here; the author even apologizes for it in the article. Perhaps he is simply at a loss for examples? We could help. Here's a neutral one (from the comments): - "George Washington was a traitor!" (should probably be used BEFORE the Martin Luther King argument; in extremely conservative circles, even mentioning Dr. King's name rings the "ding! ding! liberal!" bells) Here are some left-leaning "argumentoids" that you sometimes hear and that have elements of TWAITW: - "But guns kill people!" I realized shortly after reading the article that this is not only an instance of TWAITW, but shows the logic behind the retort "Guns don't kill people, people kill people". This might be rephrased as saying "yes, guns kill people, but not in the way that murderers kill people, which is to say, with malicious intent. That requires a person, so let's concentrate on whether removing guns from the economy will prevent those with malicious intent from obtaining them." - "Evolution is a fact!" Yes, but maybe not in the "totality of the truth is plain for all to see" perspective. It is true that PARTS of evolution are plain fact, but the creationist has a point that some of the more fantastic parts of evolution are harder to directly observe in the same way as, say, gravity. - "Reproductive freedom is a choice!" Perhaps, but you can't just dismiss the argument at that point. Choice can mean "choosy moms choose Jiff" or it can mean "the difference between life and death". Saying it is a choice ignores the fact that not all personal "choices" are accepted by society (i.e. it is your choice and you can make one, but sometimes there are consequences). - "Tax breaks for the rich are unfair!" Perhaps, but there are many levels of unfair. You must argue why tax breaks for the rich are at the same level of unfair as, say, separate water fountains for whites and blacks and not unfair as in "it's unfair that I always have to pull the cookie jar from the top shelf just because I happen to be the tall one." Note that all of these lean more toward "equivocation" than the author's technical definition of TWAITW. But then, perhaps that's what TWAITW boils down to. Also, I note in all of these that they are all caricature arguments. They are all cliched. The arguments in the article have a similar nature. This leads to a disturbing point: it is helpful to have TWAITW as an analytical tool when having a serious debate, but if you are "debating" with a person who shouts soundbites like these in your face, do you really think they are going to understand or care if you try to explain to them that they are using TWAITW? Seems like more preaching to the choir, unfortunately.

scarmig 14y ago

I recall a good pg opinion somewhere that reflects a sort of inverse of this point. We should reject abstract categories for our identities because once we do define ourselves by them, we start reconstructing our thoughts and beliefs to actually fit the stereotype for that abstract category. Much better to focus on the actual specific beliefs without committing to a tribal identity, both for your sake and so that other people are less likely to commit the submitted article's fallacy against you.

barbs 14y ago

So basically, this is saying "don't generalise". Or am I just generalising?

roryokane 14y ago
No, the point is more specific than that. A better summary would be “don’t generalise the opposing position to a category where it’s an outlier”. Admit all important ways in which your generalisation unfairly “taints” the subject with negative connotations. Feel free, on the other hand, to generalise positions accurately, in a category which the position generally represents.

codehotter 14y ago

Thanks to this article, I can finally put into words what bothers me about "Copyright infringement is theft"! Yes copyright infringement share some of the properties of theft, but they are sufficiently different that we shouldn't apply our intuitions about theft to copyright infringement, just like we shouldn't apply our intuitions about theft to taxation.

slurgfest 14y ago
When someone says that piracy or taxation are theft, they are not necessarily appealing to intuitions about theft. They may literally hold and mean to state that they share with carjacking whatever makes carjacking theft, WITHOUT sharing other properties of carjacking... in effect, this is a thesis statement rather than a knock-down argument. Of course, it is also possible that it is not even an honest appeal to intuition, rather just an emotional tarring which will never be substantiated. This is usually what is irritating about hearing those arguments.

adrianbravo 14y ago

If someone points out someone else I admire is a criminal, I would approach it a different way. It has less to do with what I want to call archetypal and more to do with the historically observable fact that what is legal is not always what is moral. Murder, torture, slavery, etc. These have all been legal in some past (or present) context. The possibility that someone who is acknowledged as a decent person could be a "criminal" is no surprise to me, and I'd rather argue to that point than dismiss the whole argument. And even if I support abortion rights, the act is technically killing. A 'life' is terminated. Regardless, I'd point out that murder holds a different connotation that implies hatred or ill-will (or "malice aforethought") toward the victim. Same with euthanasia. Why not take these as opportunities to explore the meanings and limits of a word? One person's definition of what is the archetypal murderer or thief or racist may easily differ from yours depending on their own experiences.

Xcelerate 14y ago

I wonder if there's some sort of way to definitively defeat someone's argument in issues other than math and science. I doubt it -- I suspect all arguments essentially boil down to moral relativism based upon gut feelings (environmental or genetic factors). I guess a more optimistic question is whether there's a statistically significant process to convince* your opponent that your argument is correct. I would actually be more interested in knowing this. *By process, I mean a general purpose algorithm that someone could follow that's more effective than alternative algorithms at making your opponent say "you know what, you're right". EDIT: While I'm at it, I would really like to see more articles/analyses on the nature of arguing. It seems like argument could be a study in its own right, though I doubt there exist any strong efforts in the field. EDIT 2: You know what, if someone got really good at analyzing the way people argue, they could optimize their own argument strategy to become a very powerful/dangerous person. I suspect this happens naturally (political leaders) but I think there's a huge potential if someone were to go about this consciously and objectively.

slurgfest 14y ago
This is an ancient field and its name is rhetoric.
- Xcelerate 14y ago
  And as far as I can tell, it's never been objective. Where's the studies comparing multiple styles of argument and determining which had the highest percentages of "wins"?
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    How do you objectively pin down the concept of "win"?
    - lutusp 14y ago
      By having a panel of judges and a formal debate, with strict rules. The panel then decides who is the "winner".

Xcelerate 14y ago

I have to disagree with his first example. He says "X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features". The first example is "Abortion is murder". He then says, "If you define murder as 'killing another human being', then abortion is technically murder." The problem is that in this case, his "if" applies to roughly 56% of the US population, as they define murder that way. In other words, he needs to select a category that has a unanimous agreement about its features instead of selecting a category that has a myriad of definitions and then choosing his own favorite definition and its corresponding archetypes.

alexchamberlain 14y ago
How else do you define murder?
- qxcv 14y ago
  Murder (n) - The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. Nobody is debating the definition of murder, the debate is over the definition of "human". When does an unborn child get the rights of a human? Is it at conception? At 3 months? At birth?

sakai 14y ago

I hate to say this, but I found this article absolutely terrible. All of these "Martin Luther King IS ...", "George Washington WAS ...", etc. statements (form: Noun TO BE Adj.), really remind me of the arguments in favor of E-Prime and its associated benefits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime. The author likely intended this, of course, but reinforces exactly the same kind of thinking and tone in nearly every other sentence! (Do a quick scan for the verb to be) Some might call E-Prime a fairly extreme philosophy / didactic tool, to be sure ;), but one shouldn't overlook that this article undermined its very own core point ("don't make a certain class of categorical / binary Aristotelian statements") through its very language (e.g., the phrase 'Now, because most arguments are rapid-fire debate-club style, sometimes it's still useful to say "Affirmative action isn't racist!"').

child_nihilist 14y ago
How do you indicate category membership in E-Prime? What if I want to say "A dog is an animal"?

losethos 14y ago

You get what you pray for. God says, "Kill the niggers, India-niggers first."

mseebach 14y ago

This seems disingenuous to me. Already by calling what's essentially rhetoric "arguments", he's building a huge strawman. Take abortion - according to opponents a fetus is a living human being, and actively and purposefully killing a living human being is murder in the Charles Manson style. The argument for abortion isn't that it's somehow OK to kill really young human, it's that fetuses aren't independent human beings, they're an extension of the mothers body. It's really not a relevant metric for wether murder is murder if there are grieving friends and family, or if people live in fear - it seems every other crime show deals with the murder of a miserable, lonely homeless guy or a prostitute. According to this argument, that's not murder at all. The eugenics example is even worse. In the 1930s, people were absolutely certain eugenics was the best thing since sliced bread, then Hitler showed the world how bad that could go. To deny "Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it" as a guiding principle seems rather hubristic to me. "Evolutionary psychology is sexist!" is a different beast: some people have decided, not through science, but though politics, that material differences between men and women (or the races for that matter) doesn't exist. Thus science finding otherwise is unacceptable. Of course it's a bad argument to reject science because it doesn't fit your political agenda.

derleth 14y ago
> "Those who don't learn history is doomed to repeat it" Even when they have learned from history? We understand more now about exactly why the Nazi eugenics was wrong than we've ever known. Comparing the quest for a mythical Aryan Superman (Super-Duper-Superman!) to the hunt for a method to eliminate Tay-Sachs is useful how?
- mseebach 14y ago
  Well, for starters, because to properly eliminate genetical diseases, you will eventually need to forbid carriers of undesirable genes to procreate. That gets nasty. So you have a voluntary regime, and the rich and well-educated (generally) make sure their children are free of genetical disorders, while the lower classes (generally) don't. Two generations later, you have "clean" people and "dirty" people. Why should the "clean" people, who did as they were encouraged to by the Department of Health, pay high insurance premiums/health tax to subsidize the totally preventable diseases of the "dirty" people?

alexchamberlain 14y ago

I must point out that from a logical point of view "Because you don't like criminals, and Martin Luther King is a criminal, you should stop liking Martin Luther King." is correct. Let us assume you like Martin Luther King. Then one of the 2 premises must be wrong. Is it "you don't like criminals" or is it "Martin Luther King is a criminal"? I'm sorry to say that Martin Luther King was a criminal, and let us assume that means he still is in the strictest sense. Therefore, "you don't like criminals" cannot be correct. However, "You don't like people who you consider to be a criminal" could still be correct, since you would probably accept that you don't consider Martin Luther King to be a criminal. Sometimes you just need to teach people a little bit of logic.

jessedhillon 14y ago

This is great, but who does this appeal to? The small minority who actually takes the time to reflect on their own assumptions, is open to refactoring their own thinking and possesses the maturity to accept the wrongness of their own arguments? Almost all public "debates", on topics of any importance, are merely shouting matches where two or more sides reiterate rationalizations for their already-held notions of the world. Rarely is anyone ever convinced to change their mind, and the philosopher who crafts valid and cogent arguments almost always has circles run about them by someone who can distill compelling emotional appeals into clever soundbites.

gjm11 14y ago
> The small minority who actually takes the time to reflect on their own assumptions, is open to refactoring their own thinking and possesses the maturity to accept the wrongness of their own arguments? Well, yes, that would be exactly the target audience of Less Wrong. Do you have a problem with that? (Of course (1) posting this isn't going to make bad arguments disappear from the world and (2) someone whose goal is influence rather than accuracy or integrity may well prefer to go on saying things that, when considered as rational arguments, are very wrong; but so what?)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

xo 14y ago

thanks for posting the article. was interesting, though long-winded. for all the rest of you, shut up. you're making the internet worse. go away.

jrajav 14y ago

When I reached "Taxation is theft!" I was moved to come here and comment on it. It only took about a second for me to stop myself and laugh. Apparently others here weren't quite so levelheaded.

alttab 14y ago
I'm not sure what your comment is trying to imply, but this is also where I stopped reading. "Taxation keeps the first disadvantage, but arguably subverts the second disadvantage if you believe being able to fund a government has greater social value than leaving money in the hands of those who earned it." Using this argument, at least with the US Government, taxation is most certainly theft.
- jrajav 14y ago
  Yeah, my comment was a lot clearer in my head. I meant that I was about to launch into a minirant about fair taxation in the US. I did a double take and realized that I had hit an emotional trigger very similar to the kind the article is calling out. I think it's very valuable to examine our emotional attachments to words, and I think that's the best thing to take away from the article.

gizzlon 14y ago

Great point! But stop reading when you come to the examples, they just derail the whole thing and everyone forgets what the original point was. "..the urge is to respond "Martin Luther King? A criminal? No he wasn't! You take that back!" This is why the Worst Argument In The World is so successful. As soon as you do that you've fallen into their trap. Your argument is no longer about whether you should build a statue, it's about whether King was a criminal. Since he was, you have now lost the argument"

1123581321 14y ago

I suggest amending the argument: "X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features. Therefore, we should judge the past behaviors of X as if it also had those features, even though it doesn't; or assign future behaviors to X even though it cannot develop those features." That said, I disagree this is a worse argument than its ideological opposite, A is not A.

Bjartr 14y ago

This game seems very appropriate http://www.argumentchampion.com/ http://www.argumentchampion.com/

skizm 14y ago

Unrelated (but related to lesswrong.com) If you haven't heard of "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" I highly recommend it (hpmor.com). It is written by Less Wrong author Eliezer Yudkowsky. I am about half way through and it is a great read. It is a fan fiction about the Harry Potter world except Harry Potter is a boy genius and a trained scientist. Each chapter is a new lesson in some method of rationality and it is an amazingly easy read and especially enjoyable if you liked the Harry Potter series to begin with. It is a work in progress and new chapters get added every once in a while. Definitely check it out if you like lesswrong.com and/or Harry Potter.

eswangren 14y ago

I always thought the worst argument ever was "nuh-uh".

pfedor 14y ago

I disagree that it is the worst argument in the world, or even that it is a bad argument in most cases. There is something to be said for the simplicity of rules we adopt. If we say, "X is never allowed", then it is less likely that someone who wants to do X for their twisted purposes will be able to get away with it, than if we said, "X is not allowed, except when it does more good than harm."