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Hypocrisy: do what I say not what I do
Savant
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Inspired by responses in the somewhat inauspicious Al Gore power consumption thread, I came to wonder how hypocrisy is viewed and what is done or not done about it.
Hypocrisy is basically professing or promoting beliefs contrary to ones actions or practices. Many systems of belief, such as religions, decry hypocrisy at least to some degree or in regards to specific examples, but their practicioners will still engage in the practice.
The question then, is how you deal with it within the context of logical thought? Or to whatever form of cogent thought you ascribe to? It is fallacious to dismiss positions outright on the sole grounds that it's proponents are hypocritical via poisoning the well. But it doesn't seem reasonable that a free pass should be granted either, and that the source of those ideas should be questionable and put under higher scrutiny.
For example, suppose you have a hypocritical environmentalist who drives around in SUVs and wastes a lot of electricity, and suppose you have a evangelical who is very religious and to some degree judgemental but skips out on the "thou shalt not commit aldutery" commandment (or any appropriate strength religious tennet of your choice). If you are a environmentalist or a evangelical yourself, is one more ok than the other because they are more alligned with your world view? What about if they start actively promoting those positions?
Is it then hypocritical to give some hypocrites a pass while decrying others? Or is it ok if the ends are justified?
Hypocrisy is basically professing or promoting beliefs contrary to ones actions or practices. Many systems of belief, such as religions, decry hypocrisy at least to some degree or in regards to specific examples, but their practicioners will still engage in the practice.
The question then, is how you deal with it within the context of logical thought? Or to whatever form of cogent thought you ascribe to? It is fallacious to dismiss positions outright on the sole grounds that it's proponents are hypocritical via poisoning the well. But it doesn't seem reasonable that a free pass should be granted either, and that the source of those ideas should be questionable and put under higher scrutiny.
For example, suppose you have a hypocritical environmentalist who drives around in SUVs and wastes a lot of electricity, and suppose you have a evangelical who is very religious and to some degree judgemental but skips out on the "thou shalt not commit aldutery" commandment (or any appropriate strength religious tennet of your choice). If you are a environmentalist or a evangelical yourself, is one more ok than the other because they are more alligned with your world view? What about if they start actively promoting those positions?
Is it then hypocritical to give some hypocrites a pass while decrying others? Or is it ok if the ends are justified?
Savant on
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"But dad, YOU put your hand on the burner, so you can't say I shouldn't!"
What if it was the Nazis?
For instance, I advocate for higher gas prices. However, I buy my gas at the cheapest gas station in town. Is that hypocrisy? No, that's rational; if gas prices were higher, people would support technologies and engage in behaviors that reduce consumption a lot more than they do now; my paying more for gas has zero effect on that.
It's the same thing with campaign finance reform. "How can you advocate for making those sorts of donations illegal when you took them?" Easy: I don't want to have to take them in order to remain competitive with the other candidates. Americans just don't want to think about it that hard, though; they'd much rather just cater to the appeal to base emotions, assume the guy's a hypocrite, and vote him out of office.
In that example the point you aren't advocating then is higher gas prices, it's support for technologies and behaviors to reduce consumption completely.
Therefore, derailed from the original intent.
You got a goddamn problem with it?
I never really am capable of fully removing the hypocrite from the message though, so it does usually taint my image of the claims. Cest la vie, I can live with not being perfect.
Stay anonymous.
It's not hypocritical if you are admitting you would rather have everyone else except you pay high gas.
Anonymity carries with it a scarlet letter. It also reduces the efficacy of the argument unless it has a hell of a lot of research behind it since there is no authority shown.
O_o
It isn't.
If you need some authority or political hemorrhaging to get your message across then clearly your message isn't mature enough to grow it's own wings.
That is frightening.
No, it's not hypocritical if he would be willing to pay more if necessary for gas. Basically, he as a rational human being will always buy the cheapest gas available...but he wants the cheapest gas available to cost more.
Best case, they are lieing to you by ommision. Worst case, they are deceiving by appeal to emotion. Good example would be "World Peace is good." Absolute truth that most people can agree on. However, tacking that on to something else, "World peace, which is good, is accomplished by racial purity," is something entirely different and rather wrong. Though, I guess that isn't exactly hypocritical (I'd say more demented). More relevant would be along the lines of, "World peace is only accomplished by ensuring only the responsible have nuclear power," and then claiming nobody else is responsible and ignoring them completely.
Then there is the whole "cheaters never win" thing. Doesn't exactly ring true when a large spotlight is being held on all the drug users of baseball and the pit crews of nascar. Who really believes the winners when they say this when they have all been shown to be cheating? Does the "message" survive in this case?
In our moments of irrationality or laziness, we dive into hypocrisy. Everyone is a hypocrit...it's a part of our character. We have the wisdom, sometimes we just choose not to follow it, don't realize we aren't following it, or go with a "feeling."
Not when the arguers are actually competent authorities on the subject.
Guess those civil rights activists back in the 60's should have just shut their pieholes then.
A lot of times in reality it isn't quite that simple though. The messanger will become intwined with the message, if for no other reason than they act as a salesman for that message. It is also hard for arguments for things which aren't covered or are only partially covered by reason, such as matters of core beliefs and moral valuations. Those are analogous to axioms in pure logic which cannot be nontrivially proved or disproved. Like it or not, the global warming issue has Al Gore's face on it.
As for the gas example, that is a bit more subtle and not really a good example of pure hypocrisy. You are likely promoting higher gas prices for the end of reducing consumption of fossil fuels, but want to minimize your own costs and weigh the realities of your situational needs with your end goals of reducing consumption. It is possible to have a consistent position where you believe that everyone should pay more for gas, but you don't believe you should pay more until the system is changed so the price is higher on the whole.
"I am a military commander. Everything is going fine."
*Bomb explodes in the background*
"Fine!"
I don't think he realizes that appeals to authority are not always fallacious.
In the case of Al Gore, he has done a shitload of stuff to encourage environmental regulation, and governments and companies to do things with regards to reducing emissions. He himself, in spite of his rather large home, probably leaves less of a carbon footprint than most of us, because he can afford to make up for it in other ways. Yet people would rather just look at the surface, say "hypocrite," and be done with it.
"He's a physicist, and he says there's no global warming, so there must not be any!"
Not an appeal to authority:
"The world's scientists have come together and said that global warming is almost certainly caused in large part by humans' effect on the planet, so it is likely true."
Well, saying something is true simply because someone in authority says it is falacious. But realistically and probabilistically, you have a better chance of getting a more well founded position on a subject from an authority on it than some random guy off the street. For example, it is probably a good idea to ask a scientist about science rather than asking a cab driver. And given that people only have a limited amount of time and intellegence to educate themselves on matters, a lot of time they have to go for the authority heuristic.
Also, assuming that something is wrong or even less likely because an authority said it is using a fallacy in the attempt to counter another fallacy.
You raise an interesting subject about the sin of ommission, which is related to hypocrisy. That is one of the big things that raises my ire, but I will resist derailing to go into it.
Honestly, while it is of course best to argue things with every variable well known to every party, we generally have to argue about things that are unknown or ambiguous to us. If I myself were given a picture of, say, drilled samples from the South Pole, I wouldn't know what the heck it meant; I'd need to trust some scientist about it, and that's where hypocrisy is important to look for. For instance, if the scientist says it indicates global warming is bull, but then I see that scientist is moving to Alaska and stocking themselves with lots of canned food and guns, their hypocrisy does affect how I judge their argument.
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
(Of course, there is a big difference in that the more appropriate authorities that one can cite the likelier it is to be so, but it seems like the former is the identical kind of argument as the latter, just with much better evidence)
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
Right now, I am pretty goddamn fucking sure the Earth is in orbit around the sun. However, if I were presented with enough evidence to the contrary, I could certainly be convinced that that is not the case. That is not likely, though. I have been presented with such a mountain of evidence that this is, in fact, the case that I presume it to be correct, until shown otherwise.
This is what science is based on. You are shown evidence, and based on that evidence, you figure out what is likely going on. You can never really say, for sure, that anything is true. You make educated assumptions based on the evidence in front of you. You can never really do anything better than that.
Just because a scientist says that global warming isn't true doesn't make it right, just like just because that crazy schizophrenic homeless guy on the street corner who's been saying the world will end tomorrow for 30 years saying that the sky is blue doesn't make it wrong. Really, the worst kind of appeal to authority is saying that something is wrong because of who it is coming from. You should never assume that something is wrong because of the source; much of the time, information is worth totally disregarding because of the source, but not saying that it's wrong because of the source.
Borderlands 2 PA Xbox Metatag - Bazillion Guns
Ex.
Ted Haggard. An evangelist that was outed by a male prostitute that he had sex with. This is especially ironic because ol' Ted was rallying support agaisnt a gay marriage amendment in his state. Now it could be argued that rallying agaisnt same sex marriage is not mutually exclusive to believing that homosexuality it a-ok, so let's rail on Ted for hatin' on the gays. Ted has been quoted for believing that his dude on dude urges were rather sinful and evil.
Now it's nothing new that the pious are plagued with evil desires, but Ted admited that these desires were with him for his entire life. Why would god make one his messengers morally tainted from birth? To me Ted's hypocrisy destroys his message of 'gays are bad, gayness is a choice.' He if himself was cursed with a gayness that he did not chose, so isn't his hatred of homosexuality a lie?
Mark Fucking Foley.
Just change "tainted" to "challenged" and he can view himself as a failure rather than a hypocrite. He could still view it as a choice, and simply say he made the wrong choice. He succombed to the evil, dude on dude urges. Also, it's possible to be openly gay and oppose gay marriage, just really stupid.
Simply because hypocrisy is coming from one's political enemy doesn't make it any more problematic. But it's treated as if it does, all the time.
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