Sure. Accusations of hypocrisy are not helpful here. If you’re curious, a conversation could go something like this:
LW Poster: That Republican senator really sucks! He refused to consider Obama’s supreme court nominee!
RW Poster: Is this a general thing, that senators must always approve the president’s nominee? As in, you think Bork was robbed? Or is it specific, that you think Obama’s nominee is so good that anyone who disagrees sucks? Or is it something else?
LW Poster: Something else: I think judges should be given a fair hearing, and it’s legitimate to deny a judge for ideological reasons, but there should be a full debate and a vote, rather than using procedural rules to prevent the full debate or vote.
See? Now you’ve used an apparent contradiction to understand someone’s reasoning better.
Too often it goes like this:
LW Poster: That Republican senator really sucks! He refused to consider Obama’s supreme court nominee!
RW Poster: if you really believed that, you’d be angry at what happened to Bork. But you’re not: all you want is for your own favored positions to win out, and your principles mean nothing as long as that happens.
LW Poster: Okay, Kreskin, whatever.
See how when it goes to poster motives it gets ugly and stupid, but when it stays focused on the issues, it’s much more interesting?
OK, so if all you’re saying is that being needlessly provocative in accusing specific people of being hypocrites based on speculation about what they would do or may have done in other situations, then I’m with you.
There are a buttload of prepositional phrases in that conditional, and I think it’s missing a final “…is crappy.” If I’m parsing you right, that’s all I’m saying.
edit: with the caveat that I think the “needlessly” is redundant.
Provocative arguments may or may not be wrong in that they may be able to advance discussion.
On the other hand, an accusation of hypocrisy is almost invariably detrimental to discussion as it occurs on this message board. I’d much prefer a real discussion than the back-and-forth accusations we tend to see here.
Discussion of hypocrasy does in someways advance the thread. Take my example of the mayors that did x. The poster is being called out on the contradictory nature of their argument so why should I ascribe any validity to their argument but the poster could reply how the two cases are different. Instead the reply is like LHOD gives and rather than explaining the difference they go oh i guess im a hypocrite and rolleyes. What you are saying is that we cannot attack a posters argument if it contradicts earlier standards they have professed.
Lets use Bork as an example. When RW posters accused the Democrats of hypocrisy many on the board pointed out that
The Dems united against any social conservative not a blanket ANY nominee
Bork had baggage from the Saturday Night Massacre
Bork was given a hearing and voted on
Did not the accusation of hypocrisy qnd response advance the disscusion?
To clarify - JC is not identifying a new rule here. Feel free to attack each other’s arguments till the cows come home. On a case by case basis it may constitute a hijack but that would be clearly communicated if moderated.
Here’s an example in the wild of what I too often see, in a thread about the electoral college:
I’d offered several paragraphs of reasons why I hold my views. Some folks in the thread were debating those reasons, and that sort of debate is productive. I don’t hold some sort of objective proof that I’m right, all I can do is try to make coherent arguments and evaluate the claims others make.
Then this charge came in, suggesting that I don’t even believe the arguments that I’m making, that the real reason I make these arguments is that I want an advantage.
Do you really believe that sort of thing advances the thread?
(Note that SA’s post is reproduced entirely, although he was quoting just one sentence of mine).
If you had been claiming before that the electoral college were awesome since clearly Clinton would win the EVs even if Trump wins the popular vote and now it’s broken since the opposite happened then yes SA should call you out on it. However if you were consistent in your argument from the beginning or in other threads then no that doesn’t advance the thread.
I don’t actually think that “calling me out on it” is great GD or Elections behavior. It’s perfectly appropriate Pit behavior, but GD or Elections is supposed to be about ideas, not posters.
There are certain approaches that could be appropriate, e.g.,
In this case though–and in so many others that I see–that’s not what happens. What happens is that someone decides not to argue against the substantive issues raised by another poster, instead imagines a foolish fantasy hypocrite version of the other poster, describes that foolish fantasy version, and declares victory.
I’m no fan of even substantiated claims of hypocrisy in GD or Elections, but it’s the unsubstantiated ones that I find truly obnoxious.
Most of the subjects discussed on these boards ultimately come down to nothing more than opinions. Some to a lesser extent and some to a greater extent. Should the Senate use its “advice and consent” sparingly, in egregious cases of unqualified executive incompetence, or should it be more aggressive and view its role as being on equal footing on matters which require “advice and consent”? Within the Senate, should filibuster prerogatives be used commonly, rarely, or be abolished altogether? Suppose a politician is involved in some hanky-panky in his private life, how severe of a penalty should he pay in political terms? And so on and so forth, for any number of issues. There is no position that can be objectively proved to be correct, and any number of approaches can work, and they all ultimately boil down to “I think X” “well I think Y”, and nothing more. This has two applications here.
The first is that one big determinant in such situations is “how have such matters traditionally been done/dealt with?” Showing that society has accepted that in such-and-such type situations the accepted approach is to do X, that has a bearing on what the accepted approach should be in the situation at hand. So if the argument is “so-and-so had an affair and should be forced to resign” and you can show that in past cases of people having affairs it’s been accepted that the guy should not be forced to resign (or even that it’s not been accepted that the guy should have to resign) then that’s productive in terms of the discussion, and IMHO adds a lot more than pious pontificating by partisans.
The second has to do with the dynamics of this particular MB. In issues which are, again, purely subjective matters of opinion, the collective weight of the majority opinion looms large. In this situation, one counter-weapon that can be employed by the minority is to puncture the weight of the majority opinion by casting doubt on whether it’s a genuine opinion or not, and/or by at least noting that the majority or members of this group have advocated for the opposite opinion on occasion. This involves what essentially boil down to accusations of hypocrisy. I alluded to this in an earlier post in saying that “some people want this board to be a safe space for hypocrites and inconsistently applied arguments” - the “some people” I was referring to are mostly in the category commonly known as “liberals”. And the reason these people oppose accusations of hypocrisy (and the keen eyed observer will notice that the vast vast majority of those complaining about hypocrisy hunting are liberals) is because of their numerical dominance of this board. Thus, the dynamic above works in their favor in discussing subjective matters of opinion. They would much prefer to let the agreement of the majority bolster their position on subjective matters of opinion without interference from pesky people pointing out that there’s less to these opinions than meets the eye.
That’s MHO, anyway. Moderators can do their thing, of course.
I don’t think your hypothetical is very different in substance that calling out a person for apparent hypocrisy. It’s more subtle for sure, but it’s basically doing the same thing.
I’m pretty close in thinking to the first application. I don’t think in terms of ‘liberals this’ or ‘conservatives that’. I think each instance has to be evaluated independently. Because of the imbalance in volume it’s easy to apply behaviors of a subset to the whole but that isn’t very productive.
In case this wasn’t clear, I was not advocating making any distinction in how to treat liberals versus conservatives. I was just saying that there’s an inherent unspoken argumentum ad populum aspect to these highly subjective discussions, and that pointing to inconsistent adherence to positions is a way of countering that. It just happens that on this particular MB liberals will generally be the beneficiaries of public opinion and thus more likely to oppose anything that might counter that. But as a practical matter you would need to evaluate each instance independently, of course.
It’s similar, for sure, but I think there’s a key difference: it allows for the possibility that the original poster isn’t a hypocrite, but sees some way that the statements can be reconciled.
In this hypothetical, for sure I made the two statements really difficult to reconcile, kind of a worst-case scenario. I do think it’s legitimate to probe apparent contradictions, because they can come from at least four places:
Flaws in a person’s argument.
A factor in their argument that you were unaware of.
A change of heart.
Hypocrisy.
Probing contradictions is therefore fine, when it’s done toward #1 or #2. But that’s different from the sort of accusation of hypocrisy that I’m talking about, which jumps straight to #4 without leaving room for anything else.
There really are two types of hypocrisy accusations. The kind that LHOD and I are discussing should be valid. You are arguing for X but earlier you argued against X. A poster should be able to say in effect, “I deny your argument as invalid since it contradicts your earlier position when you said ‘…’” then leave it up to the person to explain away the apparent contradiction or confirm it.
The real issue is when someone does something like points out that Trump is a hypocrite as demonstrated by appointing his enemies as cabinet selections and someone says Obama’s a hypocrite too because did it to by appointing Clinton as Secretary of State. That does not progress the discussion at all. But suppose in other threads I say
“Obama was such a great leader. He could appoint people who disagreed with him if they were the best person for the job.” but now I say
“Trump has proven he is a hypocrite. He has a Cabinet full of people that disagree with his views.” then someone should question why I hold those two different positions.
Another example from the wild, addressed to someone in a thread about the election:
Note the veiled threat, coupled with the complete lack of curiosity about Ravenman’s position, with an extra dose of not even checking to see if there was a change in position to begin with.
This is the sort of accusation of hypocrisy that does nobody any good.
(FWIW, the thread is full of less blatant accusations; at least most of them are aimed at an entire party instead of at an individual).
It’s a fine distinction to draw. Easy enough to interpret cases where #4 appear to be the case as if they are #1-3. Like I said, I try to interpret charitably.
Like I said, I try to interpret charitably.