DPiepgrass's Shortforms

DPiepgrass

This is a special post for quick takes by DPiepgrass. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

The Hidden-Motte-And-Bailey fallacy: belief in a Bailey inspires someone to invent a Motte and write an article about it. The opinion piece describes the Motte exclusively with no mention of the Bailey. Others read it and nod along happily because it supports their cherished Bailey, and finally they share it with others in an effort to help promote the Bailey.

Example: Christian philosopher describes new argument for the existence of a higher-order-infinity God which bears no resemblance to any Abrahamic God, and which no one before the 20th century had ever conceived of.

Maybe the Motte is strong, maybe it isn't, but it feels very strong when combined with the Gish Fallacy: the feeling of safety some people (apparently) get by collecting large numbers of claims and arguments, whether or not they routinely toss them out as Gish Gallops at anyone who disagrees. The Gish Fallacy seems to be the opposite of the mathematician's mindset, for mathematicians know that a single flaw can destroy proofs of any length. While the mathematician is satisfied by a single a short and succinct proof or disproof, the Gish mindset wishes to read a thousand different descriptions of three dozen arguments, with another thousand pithy rejections of their counterarguments, so they're thoroughly prepared to dismiss the evil arguments of the enemies of truth―or, if the enemy made a good point, there are still 999 articles supporting their view, and more where that came from!

Example: my dad

1DPiepgrass2y

TBH, a central object of interest to me is people using Dark Epistemics. People with a bad case of DE typically have "gishiness" as a central characteristic, and use all kinds of fallacies of which motte-and-bailey (hidden or not) is just one. I describe them together just because I haven't seen LW articles on them before. If I were specifically naming major DE syndromes, I might propose the "backstop of conspiracy" (a sense that whatever the evidence at hand doesn't explain is probably still explained by some kind of conspiracy) and projection (a tendency to loudly complain that one's political enemies have whatever negative characteristics you yourself, or your political heroes, are currently exhibiting). Such things seem very effective at protecting the person's beliefs from challenge. I think there's also a social element ("my friends all believe the same thing") but this is kept well-hidden. EDIT: other telltale signs include refusing to acknowledge that one got anything wrong or made any mistake, no matter how small; refusing to acknowledge that the 'opponent' is right about anything, no matter how minor; an allergy to detail (refusing to look at the details of any subtopic); and shifting the playfield repeatedly (changing the topic when one appears to be losing the argument).

5Seth Herd2y

Excellent point. I'd think the Gish mindset isn't limited to people like your dad. I'd think that rationalists are vulnerable to it as well in any complex domain. It's not like we're doing literal bayesian updates or closed form proofs for our actually important beliefs like how hard alignment is or what methods are promising. In those areas no argument is totally closed, so weighing preponderance of decent arguments is about all we can do. So I'd say we're all vulnerable to the Gish Fallacy to an important degree. And therefore the implicit Motte-And-Bailey fallacy. l

Well, yeah, it bothers me that the "bayesian" part of rationalism doesn't seem very bayesian―otherwise we'd be having a lot of discussions about where priors come from, how to best accomplish the necessary mental arithmetic, how to go about counting evidence and dealing with ambiguous counts (if my friends Alice and Bob both tell me X, it could be two pieces of evidence for X or just one depending on what generated the claims; how should I count evidence by default, and are there things I should be doing to find the underlying evidence?)

So―vulnerable in th... (read more)

DPiepgrass's Shortforms

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DPiepgrass's Shortforms

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