Both A and B are unpleasant statements that decent, rational people should probably disagree with
*cringe*
Good choice of topic, but ...
Unfortunately, most of the arguments I could choose for this discussion are either highly trivial or highly controversial. I'll choose one that I hope won't cause too much trouble.
I think it may be the worst possible choice. First, for suggesting that the question of compensation for engineers should be approached as a moral issue. Second, for failing to make the point that differences (between the sexes) in engineering aptitude in the general population says nothing about differences in engineering skill among people who have already been hired as engineers. Third, because gender differences between groups say little about differences between individuals. Fourth, because gender is a problematic subject in this forum, even when you do everything right.
I also second Nesov's cringe at the implicit conflation of unpleasant and suitable-to-be-disagreed-with.
differences (between the sexes) in engineering aptitude in the general population says nothing about differences in engineering skill among people who have already been hired as engineers
I think Bayes would disagree a little :-) If your prior says blue weasels are generally better at C++ than red weasels, then a red weasel's high test score is more likely to be a random fluke than a blue weasel's equally high score.
ETA: it seems Robin made a similar point a while ago and got crucified for it because he didn't use weasels!
The problem seems even worse than that. Suppose I can somehow magically determine the actual C++ ability of any weasel, and hire the first ten I come across that is above some threshold, then someone who doesn't have my magical ability would still (rationally) expect that the average skill among red weasels that I hire is lower than the average skill among blue weasels that I hire. (And I would expect this myself before I started the hiring process.) Similarly if decide to gather some fixed number of candidates and hire the top 10%.
One way Perplexed could be right is if I have the magical ability (or a near perfect test), and I decide to hire only weasels whose C++ ability is exactly X (no higher and no lower), but that seems rather unrealistic. What other situations could produce the result that Perplexed claimed?
But if you then additionally learn the color, you can make further conclusions which the test failed to deliver because of the color blindness.
This whole post treats arguments as soldiers. It's as though you're saying, "Don't focus all of your attention on just one enemy soldier. Otherwise, the other soldiers might get through! You must attack all enemy soldiers simultaneously."
And (seconding Vladimir Nesov's cringe):
Both A and B are unpleasant statements that decent, rational people should probably disagree with ...
At this point, the "rational arguer" ought immediately to think of the Litany of Tarski: If A and B are true, then I want to believe that A and B are true.
The main point of the article might make sense, but the example is awful. What you present as "logical inference" involves statements that are formulated so imprecisely that no accurate logical operations with them are possible at all. You also seem to operate with a puzzling notion of "equal work" performed by people whose skills differ, as well as an altogether inadequate model of how wages are determined in practice.
Also, of all charged and controversial topics, gender-related ones cause by far the most problems on LW in the sense of people being unable to handle them calmly and rationally, so you have actually chosen the very worst sort of example. (This is an interesting phenomenon, considering that other even more charged topics are usually discussed in a commendably rational way here.) Obviously, this is excusable for a new participant, considering that this warning isn't really spelled out anywhere, but you should be aware of it for the future.
I don't understand your post. Why does RA move on to claim B? If RA was convinced of claim A by WA's stack of research papers, then RA should update instead of arguing further. If RA thinks WA was being a "clever arguer" about claim A, then RA should continue arguing about claim A.
Having layered defenses against unwelcome conclusions is a bad sign (though not necessarily wrong). As the joke goes, "I didn't borrow the iron, and it was fine when I returned it, and it was already broken when I borrowed it". As another joke goes, "It wasn't me, and I won't do it again". When I find myself having a layered defense against something, I pick the strongest point of that defense and focus the argument on that. When/if the other person successfully convinces me that the strongest reason for my belief is invalid, I try to force myself to update instead of moving on to the next reason.
Like most things, it's a matter of trade-offs. In order to raise all of my objections simultaneously, I'd have to think of all the objections before I communicate any of them. Perhaps my opponent could use the time I spend thinking up the second objection to ponder the first one? Maybe he would be quickly convinced by the first objection so that I don't have to keep thinking? (I do think the post does a valuable service of pointing out a strategy that can be applied on a situational basis.)
It also seems worth pointing out that two rationalists debating with each other should perhaps avoid accusing each other of "moving the goalpost" in order to not impose the cost of having to think up all objections before communicating them.
I think that the author here is bending over backwards and trying not to offend people. They weren't exactly successful at this, but I think that people should be charitable in interpreting this. They're new and apparently ended up over-qualifying some statements in an effort to be more agreeable.
The underlying point is actually one of the best I have read here in some time; if this retains few upvotes, I may write something closely related to this topic, if doing so is not inappropriate. There are a lot of rather significant political issues that would ha...
Bad choice of example, but I think I agree with your main point - it's a common mistake to focus on one component of an argument when it isn't your main objection, where that fact being true or false will not change your final conclusion much.
However, I'm not a big fan of the general argumentation/"arguments as soldier" context. In such a situation, I would not try to find the argument that best demolishes the other person's argument, I would try to work out on what exactly we agree and on what exactly we disagree. For example, if someone says &q...
Since there are lots of negative comments out here, I should say that I liked this post and upvoted it. Yes, I agree that the example was poorly chosen, but that doesn't change the fact that the main message is useful.
Abstract arguments need to be grounded in examples. This is obviously true and yet we all tend to leave off the vital examples. Why?
This post offers a nice example of the problem. HopeFox has a point he wants to make. If you are evaluating an argument in the form of a conjunction and you think that neither leg is true, it is tempting to pick just one leg and refute that. If the argument bogs down, returning to the other leg, which is also doubtful, looks shifty. Worse, while disputing one leg one might accidently wander into an unconscious acceptance of the other leg, even though it never looked plausible.
HopeFox attempts to provide an example. That is the right thing to do. It turns out that it is also a tricky thing to do. Are commenters rushing to provide better examples of their own? No. The are rushing to criticize the example provided by HopeFox. That is quite revealling. Although the underlying point is simple and true, finding a good clean example is still hard.
There are two morals I could draw for my own writing
1) Examples are more trouble than they are worth, I shouldn't bother, nobody else does anyway.
2) Examples are hard, and the bigger the enemy the greater the honour. I should strive to find good examples because they will make my writing stand out as being done properly.
I chose 2 and reject 1.
There are actually two things being conflated into (C) "Men should be paid more than women for the same work in technical fields such as engineering." This statement could either mean that we shouldn't worry that there's something wrong if we observe that men are being paid more, or it could mean that we should consider sex when determining a candidate's salary. The first statement is true, but the second statement is wrong, because even if it were true that men have greater technical skill on average, hiring processes are supposed to measure technical skill directly. Directly measuring technical skill screens off any salary-relevant information that sex (or any other demographic information) would provide.
Pro tip: A and B should be completely false in the first place.
While I, too, am of the opinion that indeed A is horribly false, B doesn't sound so-very-false to me, just a bit ill. Surely claiming that women should be paid less for the same work is a kind of negative applause light, but continue reading. The argument B is stated above as:
B: If members of one group, on average, are better at a task than members of another group, then members of that first group should be paid more than members of the second group for performing the same work.
This is cer...
This makes me think of Steven Pinker's argument in the blank slate. Don't argue against racism/sexism/etc by claiming that that all races/sexes/etc are identical. They could turn out not to be identical, yet racism/sexism/etc would still be wrong.
I don't think that RA actually moved the goalposts. The goal is exactly the same: "Men have better technical abilities than women, so they should get paid more for the same engineering jobs."
The point that WA actually changed was from "Men and women are just as well suited to technical careers as each other!", which he conceded, to "If men really are better, they'll get raises and promotions on their own merit, not merely by virtue of being male."... But these points aren't located in the goal. They are points in the middle o...
I've been thinking of this question lately, and while I agree with the main thrust of your article, I don't think that giving all possible objections is always possible (it can get really long, and sometimes there are thematic issues). Which is why I think multiple people responding tends to be a good thing.
But more to the point, I don't think I agree that RA is moving the goalposts. Because really, every position has many arguments pro or con where even if just one is demolished the position can survive off the others. I think the arguing technique that r...
RA really has moved the goalposts on WA, which is one of those Dark Arts that we're not supposed to employ, even unintentionally.
It would certainly be annoying and a bit questionable to bring up your points of disagreement one at a time like RA did, but as long as he stops to update after receiving the information from WA, I don't know if I'd call this moving the goalposts.
Much of what you say is important - perhaps even obvious - but I'd like to stand up for RA here, at least with respect to this particular example. A is a factual claim and B a moral one. If your experience is that you can change people's beliefs about the world through argumentation but not their basic values, it makes sense to only dispute the former.
Probably RA should note the moral difference upfront, though.
There are a lot of bad arguments out there. Fortunately, there are also plenty of people who stand up against these arguments, which is good.
However, there is a pattern I observe quite often in such counter-arguments, which, while strictly logically valid, can become problematic later. It involves fixing all of one's counter-arguments on countering one, and only one, of the original arguer's points. I suspect that this tendency can, at best, weaken one's argument, and, at worst, allow oneself to believe things one has no intention of believing.
Let's assume, without much loss of generality, that the Wrong Argument can be expressed in the following form:
A: Some statement.
B: Some other statement.
A & B -> C: A logical inference, which, from the way B is constructed, is a fairly obvious tautology.
C: The conclusion.
Unfortunately, most of the arguments I could choose for this discussion are either highly trivial or highly controversial. I'll choose one that I hope won't cause too much trouble. Bear in mind that this is the Wrong Argument, the thing that the counter-arguer, the person presenting the good, rational refutation, is trying to demonstrate to be false. Let's designate this rational arguer as RA. The person presenting the Wrong Argument will be designated WA (Wrong Arguer).
WA: "Men have better technical abilities than women, so they should get paid more for the same engineering jobs."
WA relates a terrible sentiment, yet a pervasive one. I don't know anyone who actually espouses it in my workplace, but it was certainly commonplace not so long ago (musical evidence). Let's hope that RA has something persuasive to say against it.
Based on what I've seen of gender discussions on other forums, here's the most likely response I'd expect from RA:
RA: Don't be ridiculous! Men and women are just as well suited to technical careers as each other!
... and that's usually as far as it goes. Now, RA is right, as far as anyone knows (IANAPsychologist, though).
However, WA's argument can be broken down into the following steps:
A: Men, on average, have better technical skills than women.
B: If members of one group, on average, are better at a task than members of another group, then members of that first group should be paid more than members of the second group for performing the same work.
C: Men should be paid more than women for the same work in technical fields such as engineering.
Trivially, A & B -> C. Thus RA only needs to disprove A or B in order to break the argument. (Yes, ~A doesn't imply ~C, but WA will have a hard time proving C without A.) Both A and B are unpleasant statements that decent, rational people should probably disagree with, and C is definitely problematic.
So RA sets about attacking A. He starts by simply stating that men and women have equal potential for technical talent, on average. If WA doesn't believe that, then RA presents anecdotal evidence, then starts digging up psychological studies. Every rational discourse weapon at RA's disposal may be deployed to show that A is false. Maybe WA will be convinced, maybe he won't.
But what about B? RA has ignored B entirely in his attack on A. Now, from a strictly logical point of view, RA doesn't need to do anything with B - if he disproves A, then he disproves A & B. Attacking A doesn't mean that he accepts B as true...
... except that it kind of does.
What if WA manages to win the argument over A, by whatever means? What if WA turns out to be an evolutionary psychology clever arguer, with several papers worth of "evidence" that "proves" that men have better technical skills than women? RA might simply not have the skills or resources to refute WA's points, leading to the following exchange:
WA: Men are better engineers than women, and should be paid more!
RA: That's ridiculous. Men and women have identical potentials for technical skill!
WA: No they don't! Here are ten volumes' worth of papers proving me right!
RA: Well, gee, who am I to argue with psychology journals? I guess you're right.
WA: Glad we agree. I'll go talk to the CTO about Wanda's pay cut, shall I?
RA: Hang on a minute! Even if men are better engineers than women, that's no reason for pay inequity! Equal work for equal pay is the only fair way. If men really are better, they'll get raises and promotions on their own merit, not merely by virtue of being male.
WA: What? I spent hours getting those references together, and now you've moved the goalposts on me! I thought you weren't meant to do that!
RA: But... it's true...
WA: I think you've just taken your conclusion, "Men and women should get equal pay for the same work", and figured out a line of reasoning that gets you there. What are you, some kind of clever arguer for female engineers? Wait, isn't your mother an engineer too?
Nobody wants to be in this situation. RA really has moved the goalposts on WA, which is one of those Dark Arts that we're not supposed to employ, even unintentionally.
The problem goes deeper than simply violating good debating etiquette, though. If this debate is happening in public, then onlookers might get the impression that RA supports B. It will then be more difficult for RA to argue against B in later arguments, especially ones of the form D & B, where D is actually true. (For example, D might be "Old engineers have better technical skills than younger engineers", which is true-ish because of the benefits of long experience in an industry, but it still shouldn't mean that old engineers automatically deserve higher pay for the same work.)
Furthermore, and again IANAP, but it seems possible to me that if RA keeps arguing against A and ignoring B, he might actually start believing B. Alternatively, he might not specifically believe B, but he might stop thinking about B at all, and start ignoring the B step in his own reasoning and other people's.
So, the way to avoid all of this, is to raise all of your objections simultaneously, thusly:
WA: Men are better engineers than women, and should be paid more!
RA: Woah. Okay, first? There's no evidence to suggest that that's actually true. But secondly, even pretending for the moment that it were true, that would be no excuse for paying women less for the same work.
WA: Oh. Um. I'm pretty confident about that first point, but I never actually thought I'd have to defend the other bit. I'll go away now.
That's a best-case scenario, but it does avoid the problems above.
This post has already turned out longer than I intended, so I'll end it here. The last point I wanted to raise, though, is that an awful lot of Wrong Arguments (or good arguments, for that matter) take a form where A is an assertion of fact ("men are better engineers than women"), and B is an expression of morality ("... and therefore they should get paid more"). There are some important implications to this, for which I have a number of examples to present if people are interested.
To summarise: If someone says "A and B are true!", don't just say "A isn't true!". Say "A isn't true, and even if it were, B isn't true either!". Otherwise people might think you believe B, and they might even be right.