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Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhap
by georgeorwell 14y ago
Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhaps the most galling:
https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards
e.g. the one on March 14th where she's holding a card that says, "Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale."
- girvo 14y agoI honestly didn't know Appeal To Hypocrisy was a fallacy! Probably one I'm going to continue to make; hypocrisy is the one thing that drives me insane.
- georgeorwell 14y agoYeah, it's a kind of ad hominem, because it says, "This person's arguments are not worth listening to because this person's behavior is not in line with what they are arguing for." But if arguments are rational things with inherent truth then it doesn't matter who says them. Her argument about overheard dongle jokes being sexist is weak enough as it is. The added hypocrisy just makes for sadly entertaining drama / gossip / whatever. In a way, by focusing on the hypocrisy, it lends credence to her claim of sexism, because there's the subtle implication that if she weren't a hypocrite then the sexism claim would be valid. Anyway, whatever, her reputation is kinda ruined now, I hope she makes it out of this okay.
- adekok 14y agoWell, no, it's not an ad hominem. An ad hominem would be to use insults, or baseless accusations. The accusations here are well-based. She has made offensive comments, and gotten upset when others made less offensive comments. That's textbook hypocrisy. It doesn't matter who said the offensive comments. It's true that they're all offensive. It does matter that he apologized, and she didn't. That shows a profound lack of moral judgement, or an inability to be self reflective, or a hostility for the truth.
- icebraining 14y agoNo, an Ad Hominem is an argument against the man (well, person), as its name says. It's any argument that tries to invalidate an argument by attacking the person who said it. In fact, insults are not necessarily Ad Hominem fallacies, and the accusations don't have to be baseless to be fallacies.
- jholman 14y agoI'll start by saying I think you're absolutely correct. To further refine the point (possibly what you meant in your penultimate clause), it's not ad hominem when the attack on the man in question is germane. If I say "I am a good candidate for US President", and you say "You don't even know how many US States there are", it's an attack on me ("the person", that is the arguer), but it's totally relevant, and thus not an ad hominem attack in the sense of the logical fallacy. To bring it back to the case at hand, if someone says "Adria's wrong that it's offensive, because if she says that then she's a hypocrite, because she says offensive things", that's tu quoque (and yes, ad hominem). Murderers are not incapable of identifying other murderers! But for one thing, ericb makes a good point that hypocrisy is suggestive that she might not have been genuinely offended, which plays some role in this story. Moreover, hypocrisy plays a complicated and not-entirely-fallacious role in circumstances where we disagree about acceptable behaviour. If Adria's claim is that double-entendres are inherently unprofessional behaviour, but I disagree, one basis for disagreement is to cite community standards, and Adria's own behaviour seems likely to be behaviour that she will accept as not-abhorrent. She could argue "yeah, it was repugnant of me to do that, just as it was repugnant of this man to make a dongle joke", which would mean she was a hypocrite, but the hypocrisy would not affect her argument (unless some other part of her argument required her to assert that she's a virtuous person). Or she could argue that only privileged groups can offend (as she apparently has about racism, much as this argument disgusts me), and insofar as she was persuasive about this, she might evade the accusation of hypocrisy and also the impact on her argument. I assert that it's a sign of mental laziness to hold hypocrisy as a great evil, in general. I think evildoers who think their transgression is evil are less evil than evildoers who think it's just fine and facilitate it in others. Even though the former are hypocrites and the latter are not. (And if, at some point, I accuse someone of hypocrisy, it will make the preceding statement by me no less true!)
- nateabele 14y ago> [B]ecause there's the subtle implication that if she weren't a hypocrite then the sexism claim would be valid. Waaaait a second... isn't that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent?
- georgeorwell 14y agoThanks for catching that. It's hard to reason about these things because tu quoque is already false. I mean, if you assume false is true, then you can prove anything. I guess it depends on whether there's an if or an if-and-only-if relationship between being a hypocrite (H) and there not being sexism (S): (H -> !S) -> (!H -> S) // false (this is what you mean) (H <-> !S) -> (!H -> S) // true But besides being wrong, I guess I was also hinting at something else, which is that if you accept this one fallacy (tu quoque), you are probably implicitly accepting this other fallacy (I think it might have a different name than affirming the consequent, but they're related). That wasn't clear with my use of the phrase "subtle implication" and I didn't realize this either.
- dspeyer 14y agoAnd, as usual with ad hominems, we must be careful not to throw out too much. She argues that the joke was offensive. Her evidence was that she was offended. Evidence that her concept of offendedness is flawed does argue against the offensiveness of the joke. Had she asked three people sitting near her if they were offended, and they had said yes, then she would no longer be a part of the argument and her hypocracy would not be relevant. But she didn't so it is.
- georgeorwell 14y agoLet's assume an identical situation, except that this time one of the two guys said something to her like, "Hey baby, I'd like to fork your repo, so do you wanna see my dongle?" Would her hypocrisy have any bearing on her claims of sexism? Would her personal emotional reaction have any bearing on her claims of sexism?
- dspeyer 14y agoWith that phrase, you could find others to vouch for its offensiveness, so she would be far less relevant.
- georgeorwell 14y agoSo with other people claiming sexism O, hypocritical Adria H, and sexist remarks S, you're saying !O -> (H -> !S), but O -> S. I guess I don't believe that the truth of statements depends on the number of people making them (this is what you believe, right?). I also don't see much point in the use of subjective experience as the basis of argument. She felt the way she felt, legitimately, but for a claim of sexism she'd need to demonstrate how the dongle jokes were somehow demeaning to women, as opposed to just being immature. Nobody is disputing that she got offended. Plenty of people are claiming it wasn't sexism, but it seems like it's not a large enough number of people for you to dismiss her hypocrisy as irrelevant.
- dspeyer 14y ago
- reeses 14y ago"Anyway, whatever, her reputation is kinda ruined now" I think her position, which was originally extremely weak, has been reinforced by the large misogynistic response. She's a public speaker, and once people forget about her offense, she'll roll this into five years of lunches, keynotes, corporate re-education, and books. This backlash has given her a level of credibility as an expert on gender-based harassment that she would not be able to attain on her own merits. She needs no academic background after this. She needs no list of petty "I thought of a four year old girl..." stories.
- mtoddh 14y agoAnyway, whatever, her reputation is kinda ruined now Right, like Joan of Arc's [1] was, after she got burned at the stake. [1] http://imgur.com/JnZLsju http://imgur.com/JnZLsju
- dragonwriter 14y ago> Yeah, it's a kind of ad hominem, because it says, "This person's arguments are not worth listening to because this person's behavior is not in line with what they are arguing for." But if arguments are rational things with inherent truth then it doesn't matter who says them. The inconsistency claimed here was an argument against the credibility of the claimed offense. "Offense" is not a objective conclusion of a rational argument, it is a subjective state. Inconsistency in the part of the person claiming the subjective response is a legitimate basis for challenging the claim of offense, and isn't a form of ad hominem fallacy because it isn't challenging the argument being made because of the hypocrisy of the arguer, it is challenging the fact claim in the premise of the argument, by presenting factual evidence.
- georgeorwell 14y agoIf you evaluate whether or not those guys deserved the treatment they got on the basis of anyone's emotions, then it's all up for grabs. It's incorrect in the first place to support a claim of sexism on the basis of an individual's emotions. Remember when we meet the Lion in the Wizard of Oz? Hyper-aggression and hyper-sensitivity go hand in hand. It doesn't make the hyper-sensitivity untrue in some way, but it also doesn't positively or negatively affect any arguments the Lion might have about the existence of abuse - they'll hold water on their own if they can. I mean, the whole purpose of argument is objective reasoning, right? I thought this was primarily a discussion about whether or not there was sexism involved. All we can really say subjectively is that she got offended and apparently overreacted. Whatever she claims her emotions to be, they are valid claims.
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- ecdavis 14y agoOne of my favorite discussions of hypocrisy is in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age - a novel which is well worth a read. > "That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code." You can read the full segment on hypocrisy here: http://steveedney.wordpress.com/2006/11/08/hypocrisy-relativism-and-the-diamond-age/ http://steveedney.wordpress.com/2006/11/08/hypocrisy-relativ...
- martinced 14y ago"hypocrisy is the one thing that drives me insane" Me too because hypocrisy is clearly a form of intellectual dishonesty in itself and I don't want to lose time with intellectually dishonest people. As simple as that. If someone I know is a torturer and doesn't know I know it and tells me: "torturing people is bad", I'm not going to argue with him. I'm not going to think: "his point may be wrong because he's intellectually dishonest so torturing may actually be acceptable". No, actually I'd disrespect this person even more: a first time because he's a torturer and a second time because of his hypocrisy. I've got zero things to learn from such person, no matter how true or wrong their poisonous words are. There are way enough knowledgable and honest people out there to learn things from. Please do continue to use it. F^ck hypocrites.
- erichocean 14y ago> Me too because hypocrisy is clearly a form of intellectual dishonesty in itself and I don't want to lose time with intellectually dishonest people. As simple as that. I think I understand where you are coming from, but personally, by your definition, I don't know anyone who's not a hypocrite. It's just a simple fact that the conscious mind is not in 100% control of an individual for every minute of their life, and furthermore, that even if it was in control, that it would never make a decision that was contrary to some position they've espoused in the past. Point is, maybe ease up on people a little. Hypocrisy should be limited to people who espouse one thing publicly, and espouse the opposite thing privately. Not merely laps in the application of an honestly held belief.
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- ericb 14y agoThis goes beyond Tu quoque. She claims to have been offended, enough to publicly name and shame these people over their private conversation, but she has publicly made jokes that were far raunchier days before. It isn't about hypocrisy in this case, it is about whether she was really offended. https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 I have trouble seeing her shaming behavior as anything more than self-serving drama.
- georgeorwell 14y agoI agree that it looks like she was exaggerating her offense. Hypocritical people often lie to manipulate situations to their advantage, or rather they choose truths to suit them according to the situation. So I guess what I am saying is that there are two questions here, are her hypocritical actions deplorable (yes), and was it sexism (no), but that the answers to the questions don't have any bearing on each other, which is why it's tu quoque to connect them. Anyway, in the end, yes, painful drama.
- Eliezer 14y agoHypocrisy usually isn't conscious. Why would it be?
- georgeorwell 14y agoGuilty pleasure?
- rdl 14y agohttp://instagram.com/p/W3htw7gaR5/ http://instagram.com/p/W3htw7gaR5/ ?
- georgeorwell 14y agoYeah, that one. There are more pictures of it on her Facebook page along with plenty of nasty comments. Basically the game is based on politically incorrect 'humor' and they were playing it in public spaces at PyCon. Although I probably wouldn't have reported it, I still find it more offensive than puerile dick jokes.
- rdl 14y agoI'm wary of heading too far down this line because I've certainly done things (hosted X-rated parties, etc.) at conferences in the past, which I certainly wouldn't do as official conference events under a company name with random people, but which seem fine in a social setting. And gotten drunk on stage, etc. But at a "hacker" thing (DC7-13, etc.), not at a developer conference or professional event. There probably is some evolving standard of conduct now that things which were formerly mostly underground are now essentially big business.
- eridius 14y agoDid she go find random attendees and drag them over to her game and force them to hear her read out her cards? No? Oh, I guess it isn't the same thing at all then.
- georgeorwell 14y agoShe was playing it in the hallway, at the conference, by the washrooms, posting about it on her public Facebook page, and tagging it #PyCon. Nobody dragged Adria anywhere and forced her to listen to the penis jokes. She just overheard them behind her. The chances of me overhearing that group of people on my way to the bathroom are comparable to the chances of me overhearing the penis jokes. It might be even more likely that I'd overhear the Cards Against Humanity game. Although her hypocrisy has no bearing on the sexism question, it doesn't stop it from being hypocrisy. Granted, her name probably doesn't need any more smearing, but boy did she keep asking for it - ass clowns? Really?
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- 001sky 14y agoNote: Things are only "a fallacy" when they are applied falsely. It may not be your favorite flavour of argument, but the true fallacy is making sweeping judgements outside of context.