In this thread, a Mod declines to discuss a hypothetical situation on the grounds that, well, I’m not really clear on Twickster’s grounds, but typically (as I say there) politicians refuse to discuss hypotheticals because IMO they’re unsure of the terrain, they feel that the situation may contain a trap to show that they are behaving hypocritically or contradictorily or something of that sort, so they claim “Let’s stick to what’s actually happened.” That’s fine, but hypotheticals exist for a reason–they allow people to discuss a principle without getting into personalities, tones, styles, histories, etc. and I love them.
I don’t want to get into why mods, like my right honorable friend Twickster, take this stand against hypotheticals so much as I’d like to discuss what you think is going on with such avoidance of a useful construct generally, as with politicians and other figures. What motives do you think people have, other than being unwilling to be pinned down to a hypothetical scenario? Does this avoidant behavior exist other than for ass-covering purposes? (“I never said that wasn’t a good principle, but in the precise situation described Person A did this, which is different from what Person B did…”) Do you consider it refreshing and honest to have someone willing to discuss a hypothetical, or do you consider hypotheticals to be a waste of time and effort in general?
Hypotheticals are fun in a class setting, but definitely a trap around places where people quote you out of context years later. Like politics and here.
I think it’s because it opens the floodgates to discuss every crackpot hypothetical anyone can dream up. Sure, addressing a first hypothetical might be very reasonable, but before long other people would be clamoring to have their hypotheticals addressed because someone else got theirs addressed.
It’s somewhat like the meme that’s been circulating the internet for the past couple of weeks asking, “Why won’t Glenn Beck deny that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? I’m not saying he did, but why hasn’t he denied it?!” As much as I dislike Glenn Beck, I don’t fault him for failing to address this. If he did, then people would be asking why he won’t deny raping and murdering a young boy, and then a puppy, etc. etc.
Hypotheticals are usually slanted or biased. Take for example the beloved “If a nuke was about to go off in New York, and the only way to stop it is to torture some guy, would you?” Many people who are against torture would say yes, but that doesn’t really show anything beyond torture is better than nuking New York. The answer would be the same as “If a nuke was about to go off in New York, and the only way to stop it is to kill a random baby, would you?”
Missed that one but seems a spin on the classic journalist gotcha, “So when did you stop beating your wife?”
That is not a hypothetical. Answering it supposes the validity of the premise, that you beat your wife. Even answering, “I have never beat my wife” seems to lend some credence to the question.
They often are and one has to be careful. However, part of the point of a hypothetical is to propose some extreme situation that (presumably) is similar to the topic being discussed. By putting it waaaay out there it helps to highlight the issues rather starkly. From there you can walk it backwards to more normal territory and see if it still holds.
But one has to be careful. Even your “kill a baby” answer many who support torture would say “yes, you should kill the child, regrettable as that may be.”
As it happens we have done the ticking time bomb nuke in New York bit here and the actual best answer, if you really want to have even a slim chance at stopping it, is to not torture the guy who knows for info. Unfortunately it takes a helluva lot of discussion to explain that to someone and most default to thinking torture is the right answer because they saw it work once on “24”.
Some hypotheticals are just bad. Or impossible to say anything about. Such as “If torture worked, would you use it?” or “If the world were entirely different in huge, significant ways, would you still do X?”. Well, torture doesn’t work and we don’t live in that world, so I would decline to discuss it.
I enjoy discussing a well-crafted hypothetical, but so many are just poorly thought out and irrelevant.
Many hypotheticals I’ve seen posted here in GD are both slanted to an absurd degree and so unlikely that they have no bearing on reality whilst, and, at the same time are taken as a serious argument by the poster.
As for politicians; they’re just extremely cautious. I can’t really blame them.
Twickster gave his reasoning in the thread you linked to:
I’m guessing he’s saying that every situation would vary at least a little and would be moderated differently (or not at all). That’s one reason for not wanting to discuss hypotheticals.
Is a hypothetical a gotcha, by definition? Some people seem to think so, but I distinguish between the two. “Have you stopped beating your wife?” is a gotcha trap, that assumes facts not in evidence, but a question phrased like this wouldn’t:
“If you had begun beating your wife three years ago, due your anger at her affair with your brother, which we’ve already establlished, and which anger you’ve already admitted, do you think you would have been satisfied with one beating, or was it the sort of anger that would have resulted in sustained, multiple beatings?”
I can imagine one’s own attorney asking this hypothetical, to establish that this man’s anger was intense but brief, and wouldn’t have permitted him by his own standards of behavior to administer a beating to his wife six months or a year after he learned of her angering behavior. IOW, it’s a hypothetical but not necessarily a hostile bit of trickery. I just don’t se what’s categorically objectionable to posing a hypothetical question that allows people to turn up their noses and say, “I don’t answer hypotheticals” the same way they might claim “I won’t digest shit.” To me, it makes as much sense as claiming “I won’t answer a question with statistics in it” or “I refuse to answer a question about historical events.” I get that you’d rather not answer any questions at all–what I don’t get is why your refusal to answer a hypothetical gets such general approval.
Twickster’s a woman, I promise you. And it’s not a reason at all. You could claim that almost any question might result in a further series of questions, but the time to withdraw is when the questions become oppressively numerous, not when you THINK they have that sort of potential.
Yes, you want the kill a baby response to be yes. Given the choice between allowing New York to be nuked, and killing a baby, I would hope that most would kill the baby, barring any train track/lever shenanigans (I’m referring to the hypothetical where you are on a train that’s about to hit 5 people, should you pull the derail lever which would cause the train to hit 1 person. Some argue you shouldn’t pull the lever, because then you are killing the one guy yourself, as opposed to the “lesser” crime of not saving people).
What the baby killing hypothetical demonstrates is the problem with the torture hypothetical. It has all the same problems, but those problems are more obvious. At first, they will probably fight the hypothetical, and ask what baby killing has to do with saving New York. Which is quite similar to one objection many have to torture. If you get them to grudgingly admit that they would kill the baby, they will probably contend that they don’t support baby killing in any realistic scenario. Again, pointing out a similar problem with the torture scenario.
So what? The point is that in some cases hypotheticals don’t resolve anything because little nuances change how things would be done. That’s different than not wanting to answer any questions at all. It seems to me that’s the case with Twickster’s refusal to answer to them. She probably foresaw the inevitable “But if you would do x in that case, why wouldn’t you do y when…” Can you see why someone might not want to get caught up in that game and follow up with:
She’s willing to discuss exact situations and not hypotheitacal situations that may not be properly analogous.
I don’t want to discuss Twickster’s reluctance to discuss hypotheticals here, for precisely the reason I find hypotheticals useful. I like Twickster, believe her to to be a sincere, well-meaning, and utterly delightful person, and don’t want any of what I’m saying to reflect negatively on her personally. That said, I think it’s a cowardly and contemptible policy that evades dealing with certain principles honestly, and allows its users to avoid taking a stance on a particular issue.
See how that works? By discussing a hypothetical person, who evades responsibility for taking a clear position, rather than by discussing Twickster’sspecific response in that thread, I’m able to deal with the issue rather than personalities–IOW, there is a good and germane reason for dealing in hypotheticals sometimes, and a blanket policy of “I don’t deal in any hypotheticals” compels people to become personal and specific and irrelevant to the broader issue. It also distracts them from the principle involved.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I do want to know the reasoning that arrives at that conclusion. (Not in order to argue against it. I just want to know it.)
Fantome nailed it – I see no reason to start discussing hypotheticals knowing to a near-certainty that any answer I gave would be countered with an “okay, but what about this permuation?” response. Anyone who reads ATMB regularly – as you (prr) and I both do – is aware that virtually any answer from a mod is greeted by a “yeah but” response from not only the person posing the original question but from another half dozen people as well.
I’m not unwilling to discuss moderator decisions and decision making, but prefer to do so in terms of specifics.
Speaking personally, whether I would respond to a hypothetical question depends on the question and the situation. In the post that mentioned in the OP, I (in fact) answered the hypothetical. I felt compelled to qualify my answer, however.
As several have noted in this forum, there are some hypotheticals that (by their very nature) have no answer, the situation is too much of a “gotcha.” There are others where there are just too many unknowns not included in the question.* On t’other hand, there are plenty of hypothetical questions that can be answered, and produce interesting discussion or clarification.
On the Message Boards in particular, when hypothetical questions are being posed about “what would the mods do if…” We tend to be naturally suspicious. Sometimes, the question isn’t an honest one, but a hidden “gotcha.” Sometimes, the person posing the question has a hidden agenda. Sometimes, we just don’t have enough additional information. And, frankly, we have enough trouble moderating actual situations, we don’t necessarily want to waste brain cells thinking about hypotheticals.
Amazingly, a lot of these come in the mail to Cecil. “Could Batman defeat Superman?” “Who would win in a fight between a gorilla and an alligator?” Such questions would be answered by “it depends on the situation.” If Batman has kryptonite… If the fight is held in the river…
In arguments, hypothetical situations or questions are usually a lazy way of making a point. If you see something a certain way and your opponent doesn’t, there’s almost always a better way to express your point of view than with some theoretically analogous hypothetical situation. Either people fail to grasp the supposed analogy between the real and the hypothetical or they disagree what the nature or extent of the relationship is. Or maybe they don’t think there’s any conclusion to be drawn from your hypothetical at all and then where are you? Best case scenario is that you’re dealing with another lazy thinker who accepts your hypothetical situation as legitimately related to the real topic, but that’s still no guarantee there’s any reasonableness to it.
Of course it’s also possible to think of a hypothetical question with no intended relation to the real world whatsoever. These are, in my experience as a pre-pubescent boy, great fun late at night at sleepovers.