[2019-04-21] Hobby
Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 6:00 pm
I think about this one a lot. It has a developed form that I call the Inquisitor's Fallacy, that goes like this.
1. You believe A, which is false, but of no great consequence.
2. In order to support A adequately, or even to have A be meaningful, you must also believe B, C, and D.
3. B. C, and D have abominable consequences.
4. If you believe B, C, and D, you must be silenced, suppressed, and anathema, to save others from your abominable beliefs.
5. If you don't believe B, C, and D, we are going to silence, suppress, and make you anathema anyway, for doing your logic wrong, you dumb son of a bitch.
This way of thinking is so very attractive that I first diagnosed it in myself. It is an extension of effective argumentative technique, in that it looks for impossible, untrue, or unwholesome consequences of an opponent's beliefs and exposes them. Where it goes wrong is in its contempt for people who don't believe logically necessary consequences of things they do believe in. It is a feature, not a bug, that many fundamentalist Christians would intervene at danger to their own lives if they saw a crowd stoning a gay person to death. There are all kinds of things wrong with such fundamentalists, but failing to follow their beliefs out to their final consequences and then act on them no matter what is not one of them.
1. You believe A, which is false, but of no great consequence.
2. In order to support A adequately, or even to have A be meaningful, you must also believe B, C, and D.
3. B. C, and D have abominable consequences.
4. If you believe B, C, and D, you must be silenced, suppressed, and anathema, to save others from your abominable beliefs.
5. If you don't believe B, C, and D, we are going to silence, suppress, and make you anathema anyway, for doing your logic wrong, you dumb son of a bitch.
This way of thinking is so very attractive that I first diagnosed it in myself. It is an extension of effective argumentative technique, in that it looks for impossible, untrue, or unwholesome consequences of an opponent's beliefs and exposes them. Where it goes wrong is in its contempt for people who don't believe logically necessary consequences of things they do believe in. It is a feature, not a bug, that many fundamentalist Christians would intervene at danger to their own lives if they saw a crowd stoning a gay person to death. There are all kinds of things wrong with such fundamentalists, but failing to follow their beliefs out to their final consequences and then act on them no matter what is not one of them.