I'm convinced internet commenters don't actually know what they're talking about and just repeat phrases they've heard elsewhere. The number of times I've seen "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" as some sort of catch all dismissal... I don't think people realize there's both a legal and a moral concept, and they aren't the same thing.
And don't get me started on "innocent until proven guilty". The world isn't a courtroom! You're allowed to ban people on balance of probabilities! I can call someone who did a shitty thing an ass even if they haven't been convicted! Ahem. Sorry. Too much reddit is bad for my blood pressure.
Right. What happens is that catch phrases and memes draw likes and retweets, while doing what one actually might do in a philosophy or debate course in college will actually draw negative feedback.
Plus, a lot of people just don't really care that much about whether things are true or not.
But the term "concern trolling" refers to _insincere_ concerns.
"If we want to beat Trump in 2020 we shouldn't nominate Joe Biden because he's too old and uninspiring" was a legitimate (though ultimately wrong!) concern. But It would have been concern _trolling_ when it was coming from someone who didn't want to beat Trump in the first place. In the latter case, it's not a good faith position. You can't debate the issue with the person because the person doesn't believe it in the first place.
Of course, people _do_ wield the term as a weapon against someone who disagrees with them, but that's not its origin.
The notion that this sort of rhetorical conduct is bad — that it is used to hijack discussions — is still valid in today's Internet. The vast majority of the time when I say, "Donald Trump did corrupt things X, Y, and Z," and someone says, "Oh yeah? What about Hillary's emails?" he isn't trying to point out that my arguments are inconsistent or even just attacking me as a hypocrite; he's trying to get me to stop talking about Donald Trump and start talking about Hillary.
I think you are confusing how you think people should use the term, with how they use it in practice.
And not only that, but even straight up concern trolling doesn't make an argument wrong. I used an example on Twitter- Democrats have said for years that Republicans should stop trying to cut Social Security. That's good political advice! Which shows, you have to evaluate things on the merits and not get hung up with the supposed motives of the people saying them.
Democrats were not pretending to be Republicans when they said that, pretending as if they were offering friendly, helpful advice for the GOP's own good. It's that dynamic that makes an argument concern trolling.
And the motives of speakers are relevant because we all have limited amounts of time that we need to allocate. It is a poor use of resources to try to reach a consensus with someone who doesn't have any interest in doing so.
Now you are adding an accusation of deception to concern trolling. But the key point is it is usually deployed without any actual evidence of deception other than the fact the speaker is pushing back against the maximalists.
Another possible point which you don't mention (at least I don't think you do) is that complexities of issues and nuance can be lost with the soundbite. or short sharp communication on social media. substack is, I think better, for nuance.
While I disagree with you on some stuff, I agree with you about analogies. That one bothers me because people simply don't grasp the concept of an analogy. (They never should have removed them from the SAT!) They don't understand that analogies compare the _relationship_ between sets of things, rather than the things themselves.
I agree about the SAT, but I'm a little more cynical about all of these things. I think people know damned well how analogies work, and even use them themselves. The "false equivalence" thing is just a cheap way of not having to actually contest what is sometimes a very strong and cutting analogy. (More generally, I think the way a lot of these Internet memes are deployed is as escape hatches to avoid having to answer legitimate arguments.)
Though it should be pointed out that pointing out supposed inconsistencies can also be a logical fallacy, “tu quoque” (you too)--an argument isn’t invalidated by the arguer’s inconsistencies. Personally, I find “whataboutism” useful for the particularly egregious tu quoque in which the inconsistency isn’t even held by the speaker but by some group they belong to, eg:
A: “What China is doing to the Uighurs is wrong.”
B: “That’s pretty rich coming from an American--your country committed genocide and slavery for centuries!”
This fails as a response because the behavior of my country in the past--behavior I had no influence over, and that for all B knows I oppose--has no bearing on whether I can criticize China now. Hence whataboutism: “what about [this totally different topic intended to deflect]?” If it’s used as good-faith inquiry to determine the extent of a principle, that isn’t whataboutism.
It's important to understand exactly why "tu quoque" is a fallacy. It's because the fact that someone else is doing the same thing doesn't invalidate the argument.
Parent: "Don't smoke! It's bad for you."
Teen: "But you smoke!"
The reason that's a fallacy is that the fact that the parent smokes doesn't mean he's wrong that smoking is bad for you. The response has nothing to do with the structure of the argument.
But that's NOT why "whataboutism" is condemned on the Internet. Rather, whataboutism an attack on any notion of consistency of principle, precisely because a lot of folks really do want to hold their opponents to one standard and their own side to another.
Your experience differs from mine--as I said, I tend to see (or at least notice) the term “whataboutism” used in response to deflections where no inconsistency is even present (another example: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is wrong”; “oh but what Israel does is okay?”). Curious to know if you’ve also come across that one, if you agree it’s a fallacy, and what you’d want to call it if so.
I think some whataboutism is useful just to point out hypocrisy not to justify eg. Russian invasion. So in that sense I don't see whataboutism as necessarily a fallacy.
But hypocrisy *in the argument* is only present if the interlocutor themselves supported the "whatabout." If the idea is "the US is claiming X is bad but they have themselves engaged in X," that's just a tu quoque, which is fallacious for the reasons Dilan gave above.
I'm convinced internet commenters don't actually know what they're talking about and just repeat phrases they've heard elsewhere. The number of times I've seen "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" as some sort of catch all dismissal... I don't think people realize there's both a legal and a moral concept, and they aren't the same thing.
And don't get me started on "innocent until proven guilty". The world isn't a courtroom! You're allowed to ban people on balance of probabilities! I can call someone who did a shitty thing an ass even if they haven't been convicted! Ahem. Sorry. Too much reddit is bad for my blood pressure.
Right. What happens is that catch phrases and memes draw likes and retweets, while doing what one actually might do in a philosophy or debate course in college will actually draw negative feedback.
Plus, a lot of people just don't really care that much about whether things are true or not.
But the term "concern trolling" refers to _insincere_ concerns.
"If we want to beat Trump in 2020 we shouldn't nominate Joe Biden because he's too old and uninspiring" was a legitimate (though ultimately wrong!) concern. But It would have been concern _trolling_ when it was coming from someone who didn't want to beat Trump in the first place. In the latter case, it's not a good faith position. You can't debate the issue with the person because the person doesn't believe it in the first place.
Of course, people _do_ wield the term as a weapon against someone who disagrees with them, but that's not its origin.
The notion that this sort of rhetorical conduct is bad — that it is used to hijack discussions — is still valid in today's Internet. The vast majority of the time when I say, "Donald Trump did corrupt things X, Y, and Z," and someone says, "Oh yeah? What about Hillary's emails?" he isn't trying to point out that my arguments are inconsistent or even just attacking me as a hypocrite; he's trying to get me to stop talking about Donald Trump and start talking about Hillary.
I think you are confusing how you think people should use the term, with how they use it in practice.
And not only that, but even straight up concern trolling doesn't make an argument wrong. I used an example on Twitter- Democrats have said for years that Republicans should stop trying to cut Social Security. That's good political advice! Which shows, you have to evaluate things on the merits and not get hung up with the supposed motives of the people saying them.
Democrats were not pretending to be Republicans when they said that, pretending as if they were offering friendly, helpful advice for the GOP's own good. It's that dynamic that makes an argument concern trolling.
And the motives of speakers are relevant because we all have limited amounts of time that we need to allocate. It is a poor use of resources to try to reach a consensus with someone who doesn't have any interest in doing so.
Now you are adding an accusation of deception to concern trolling. But the key point is it is usually deployed without any actual evidence of deception other than the fact the speaker is pushing back against the maximalists.
a thoughtful piece. good points. is the internet insidious at times?
Another possible point which you don't mention (at least I don't think you do) is that complexities of issues and nuance can be lost with the soundbite. or short sharp communication on social media. substack is, I think better, for nuance.
While I disagree with you on some stuff, I agree with you about analogies. That one bothers me because people simply don't grasp the concept of an analogy. (They never should have removed them from the SAT!) They don't understand that analogies compare the _relationship_ between sets of things, rather than the things themselves.
I agree about the SAT, but I'm a little more cynical about all of these things. I think people know damned well how analogies work, and even use them themselves. The "false equivalence" thing is just a cheap way of not having to actually contest what is sometimes a very strong and cutting analogy. (More generally, I think the way a lot of these Internet memes are deployed is as escape hatches to avoid having to answer legitimate arguments.)
Though it should be pointed out that pointing out supposed inconsistencies can also be a logical fallacy, “tu quoque” (you too)--an argument isn’t invalidated by the arguer’s inconsistencies. Personally, I find “whataboutism” useful for the particularly egregious tu quoque in which the inconsistency isn’t even held by the speaker but by some group they belong to, eg:
A: “What China is doing to the Uighurs is wrong.”
B: “That’s pretty rich coming from an American--your country committed genocide and slavery for centuries!”
This fails as a response because the behavior of my country in the past--behavior I had no influence over, and that for all B knows I oppose--has no bearing on whether I can criticize China now. Hence whataboutism: “what about [this totally different topic intended to deflect]?” If it’s used as good-faith inquiry to determine the extent of a principle, that isn’t whataboutism.
It's important to understand exactly why "tu quoque" is a fallacy. It's because the fact that someone else is doing the same thing doesn't invalidate the argument.
Parent: "Don't smoke! It's bad for you."
Teen: "But you smoke!"
The reason that's a fallacy is that the fact that the parent smokes doesn't mean he's wrong that smoking is bad for you. The response has nothing to do with the structure of the argument.
But that's NOT why "whataboutism" is condemned on the Internet. Rather, whataboutism an attack on any notion of consistency of principle, precisely because a lot of folks really do want to hold their opponents to one standard and their own side to another.
Your experience differs from mine--as I said, I tend to see (or at least notice) the term “whataboutism” used in response to deflections where no inconsistency is even present (another example: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is wrong”; “oh but what Israel does is okay?”). Curious to know if you’ve also come across that one, if you agree it’s a fallacy, and what you’d want to call it if so.
I have seen that and yes that is a fallacy.
I think some whataboutism is useful just to point out hypocrisy not to justify eg. Russian invasion. So in that sense I don't see whataboutism as necessarily a fallacy.
But hypocrisy *in the argument* is only present if the interlocutor themselves supported the "whatabout." If the idea is "the US is claiming X is bad but they have themselves engaged in X," that's just a tu quoque, which is fallacious for the reasons Dilan gave above.
but I think you missed the point I was trying to make.
Perhaps--could you give me an example of a use that would be valid?