It's a fairly common issue, and one that doesn't just pertain to programming. It's a common issue in politics, and presumably any topic with charged views. I don't know the name of the fallacy,...
It's a fairly common issue, and one that doesn't just pertain to programming. It's a common issue in politics, and presumably any topic with charged views.
I don't know the name of the fallacy, but the closest expression which applies is "missing the forest for the trees". Something might be 100% correct, and yet utterly misleading.
There actually already is a specific term for what you and the article describe; Half-truth. And the "See also" section of that wiki article even has a bunch of specific logical fallacies and...
There actually already is a specific term for what you and the article describe; Half-truth. And the "See also" section of that wiki article even has a bunch of specific logical fallacies and misdirection techniques that are often used to accomplish it. E.g. Fallacy of the single cause
I think the fallacy fallacy, and the corollary "fallacy argument" are the most important two to remember: The fallacy fallacy is itself a fallacy where someone assumes that a fallacious argument...
I think the fallacy fallacy, and the corollary "fallacy argument" are the most important two to remember:
The fallacy fallacy is itself a fallacy where someone assumes that a fallacious argument leading to a conclusion invalidates the conclusion.
This is a typical strategy in online discourse regarding contentious issues many follow: Show fallacy, conclusion invalidated, assume you've converted people to your alternate conclusion and move on from the "won" argument.
The corollary "fallacy argument" is even more prevalent and more dangerous. People get so invested in the epistemology and rationality of arguments that they forget that a discussion is all about the exchange of ideas and weighting the argumentation behind those ideas, not about a formal debate.
There are other motivations than rational ones, and a lot of value-based opinions can't ever be engaged by rational arguments alone. Flattening discourse to ways of arguing will always leave the actual issue as a secondary concern.
There's a subtlety here around the word "invalidate." If you believe something for reason X and X is false, this means you should be less certain about X because you have less evidence supporting...
There's a subtlety here around the word "invalidate." If you believe something for reason X and X is false, this means you should be less certain about X because you have less evidence supporting it than you thought you had. You might still have enough other evidence to think it's likely, though.
Much of the confusion comes from not being wary of false binaries. "Invalidate" itself implies a false binary. We aren't doing logic and statements in English often aren't easily classified as either valid or not.
Sometimes I find myself reading through a back and forth argument, before realizing, I am lost in the weeds. I don't think I have ever once got to the end of a long thread and thought, "that was...
Sometimes I find myself reading through a back and forth argument, before realizing, I am lost in the weeds.
I don't think I have ever once got to the end of a long thread and thought, "that was well worth my time."
Maybe it's also a lack of social skills to not immediately work with your opponent's obvious agenda and draw the discussion there? I've been following the garbage collection wars that popped up...
Maybe it's also a lack of social skills to not immediately work with your opponent's obvious agenda and draw the discussion there?
I've been following the garbage collection wars that popped up recently because I find them refreshing. It's a call for a return to low level efficiency, i.e. not always relying on Moore's Law to fix your underlying mess. Garbage collection is just a symptom, it's symbolic. It's really an argument over higher level programming ignoring the massive drop in software performance per clock cycle in recent years and the absurdities (say, a React app taking 10 seconds to load 3 text boxes) that creates. So yea, faster development speed and less memory errors are incredibly attractive tools but this is an argument over whether they're worth sacrificing massive performance opportunities for. It's an argument made in the context of everyone on hackernews ignoring there being an issue in the first place.
This sentence in the article is ironic:
While true, that single sentence ignores all of the larger context of the issue
The true "context", here, is that higher level programming is not immune to criticism, which the author ignores just as passionately as the accused.
The context was: comments of one kind are often parried with responses that forcibly take it into a different context, one not set by the initial comment. While making these ripostes are not...
The true "context", here, is that higher level programming is not immune to criticism
The context was: comments of one kind are often parried with responses that forcibly take it into a different context, one not set by the initial comment. While making these ripostes are not invalid per se – they're valid in as much as they may be truthful – shifting the context, unless prompted by the need for a deeper discussion on the same matter, would hurt the discussion more than enhance it.
Immunity of criticism is outside the context of the blog post.
IMO the "context" is always what's in the commenter's mind both when he read the original comment and when he made his own. And that's often (subconsciously) an emotional and irrational context...
IMO the "context" is always what's in the commenter's mind both when he read the original comment and when he made his own. And that's often (subconsciously) an emotional and irrational context because human beings are emotional and irrational. The "technical correctness" is just cultural sugarcoating, maybe even just good manners, since technical correctness is a high ideal (and often minimum requirement for respect) in technical circles.
"You're technically right but contextually wrong" is just such a programmer thing to say. That's not "discussing it wrong" that's just requiring you to read between the lines and realize this is no longer a discussion about technicalities but about the context (which likely isn't "wrong" but merely different).
Even "contextually", the only thing wrong with the reply in the article was the "No!" part, since it implies that the flaws outweigh the gains. It's rather obvious that the responder knows that there are arguments for why people do not think that is the case (the mere existence of garbage collection proves that). So that passionate "no!" is probably coming from elsewhere. Is it anger over software performance? Is it fear of trying something new? Is it a sunk-cost fallacy? Is it mere contrarianism? In any case, if you want to start a discussion with "Garbage collectors are nice and save a lot of work", it doesn't strike me as off-topic. Do you want to discuss garbage collectors or merely celebrate them?
It just annoys me that the examples given are presented as downright breaking discussion when they could easily be picked up and, in fact, actually represent the reality of what people think.
That provides no real security, if the NSA want your data they will break into your apartment and get it.
Yea, but every step towards making the establishment of a total surveillance state harder is worth it, even if not providing 100% security.
You can achieve the exact same thing in C, you just have to be careful.
The "be careful" part is the problem, making mistakes is inevitable.
Python is a complete joke, it will fail hard when you need to process ten million files a second on an embedded microcontroller using at most 2 k of RAM.
If you need to do that, yea, but most people only process a few small files and for that it's perfect.
Done. No need to call doom on discussion culture over comments that are actually technically true. In fact, most discussions end in a sea of yea-sayers congratulating each other (which doesn't need to be a bad thing, there's things we all can agree on). And if you do not want discussion or do not think it's worthy... don't bring it up.
...this is the second day on Tildes when it feels like I'm on radiowaves and the other person is communicating with shades of yellow. "Don't take this outside of context" "But why shouldn't we be...
...this is the second day on Tildes when it feels like I'm on radiowaves and the other person is communicating with shades of yellow.
"Don't take this outside of context"
"But why shouldn't we be talking about this thing outside of context?"
"You're taking this out of context"
"Isn't that just more context?"
"More extraneous context is a source of unproductive discussions"
"Yeah, but the thing is..."
It just isn't occurring to me why can't we be keeping the discussion to the ostensible, readily-appreciatable context.
What's the "context" of "Garbage collectors are nice and save a lot of work"? Is it "yes, they are nice and save a lot of work"? Because that's the only interpretation in which "I believe there...
What's the "context" of "Garbage collectors are nice and save a lot of work"? Is it "yes, they are nice and save a lot of work"? Because that's the only interpretation in which "I believe there are cases where that's not true" is "out of context". The whole article is anchored by the author being pissed at the "No!" part, which is simply an emotional slip-up and not "twisting context".
Many of the examples given are actually reductio ad absurdam, which includes arguments from extremes. They're not precisely irrelevant, but rather arguments attempting to show that the rule or...
Many of the examples given are actually reductio ad absurdam, which includes arguments from extremes.
They're not precisely irrelevant, but rather arguments attempting to show that the rule or principal argument proposed is broken because it doesn't address the most unlikely (but possible) edge cases.
A generous interpretation is that obstinate arguers are striving for perfect laws when they simply don't exist in a complex world. In reality (particularly in software engineering), most principal arguments aren't being offered on the grand scale of laws of physical science, where an true outlier example may invalidate a previously solid hypothesis. They offer approximate rules-of-thumb that cover common situations, and leave working out the unpredictable, imperfectly understood edge cases as a given professional necessity.
This is true in law, politics, economics, engineering, and just about any discipline where you can't achieve complete measurement and control of all the variables well enough to derive highly accurate predictions for every given intervention.
The headline itself shows an unfortunate pattern of argument. When there is an opportunity to agree with your opponent, you should take it, and not immediately undercut it by dismissing it as...
The headline itself shows an unfortunate pattern of argument. When there is an opportunity to agree with your opponent, you should take it, and not immediately undercut it by dismissing it as irrelevant. It would be better to say "yes I agree with that, but..." and then talk about what's important to you.
It's a fairly common issue, and one that doesn't just pertain to programming. It's a common issue in politics, and presumably any topic with charged views.
I don't know the name of the fallacy, but the closest expression which applies is "missing the forest for the trees". Something might be 100% correct, and yet utterly misleading.
There actually already is a specific term for what you and the article describe; Half-truth. And the "See also" section of that wiki article even has a bunch of specific logical fallacies and misdirection techniques that are often used to accomplish it. E.g. Fallacy of the single cause
p.s. If reading about fallacies interests you, Rational wiki has a pretty comprehensive list:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
I think the fallacy fallacy, and the corollary "fallacy argument" are the most important two to remember:
The fallacy fallacy is itself a fallacy where someone assumes that a fallacious argument leading to a conclusion invalidates the conclusion.
This is a typical strategy in online discourse regarding contentious issues many follow: Show fallacy, conclusion invalidated, assume you've converted people to your alternate conclusion and move on from the "won" argument.
The corollary "fallacy argument" is even more prevalent and more dangerous. People get so invested in the epistemology and rationality of arguments that they forget that a discussion is all about the exchange of ideas and weighting the argumentation behind those ideas, not about a formal debate.
There are other motivations than rational ones, and a lot of value-based opinions can't ever be engaged by rational arguments alone. Flattening discourse to ways of arguing will always leave the actual issue as a secondary concern.
It’s important to notice that the fallacy fallacy applies to itself.
There's a subtlety here around the word "invalidate." If you believe something for reason X and X is false, this means you should be less certain about X because you have less evidence supporting it than you thought you had. You might still have enough other evidence to think it's likely, though.
Much of the confusion comes from not being wary of false binaries. "Invalidate" itself implies a false binary. We aren't doing logic and statements in English often aren't easily classified as either valid or not.
Sometimes I find myself reading through a back and forth argument, before realizing, I am lost in the weeds.
I don't think I have ever once got to the end of a long thread and thought, "that was well worth my time."
Maybe it's also a lack of social skills to not immediately work with your opponent's obvious agenda and draw the discussion there?
I've been following the garbage collection wars that popped up recently because I find them refreshing. It's a call for a return to low level efficiency, i.e. not always relying on Moore's Law to fix your underlying mess. Garbage collection is just a symptom, it's symbolic. It's really an argument over higher level programming ignoring the massive drop in software performance per clock cycle in recent years and the absurdities (say, a React app taking 10 seconds to load 3 text boxes) that creates. So yea, faster development speed and less memory errors are incredibly attractive tools but this is an argument over whether they're worth sacrificing massive performance opportunities for. It's an argument made in the context of everyone on hackernews ignoring there being an issue in the first place.
This sentence in the article is ironic:
The true "context", here, is that higher level programming is not immune to criticism, which the author ignores just as passionately as the accused.
I fear you may have gone the exact route the blog post warns against.
Adding context? Because oh boy, that discussion was not about memory errors!
The context was: comments of one kind are often parried with responses that forcibly take it into a different context, one not set by the initial comment. While making these ripostes are not invalid per se – they're valid in as much as they may be truthful – shifting the context, unless prompted by the need for a deeper discussion on the same matter, would hurt the discussion more than enhance it.
Immunity of criticism is outside the context of the blog post.
IMO the "context" is always what's in the commenter's mind both when he read the original comment and when he made his own. And that's often (subconsciously) an emotional and irrational context because human beings are emotional and irrational. The "technical correctness" is just cultural sugarcoating, maybe even just good manners, since technical correctness is a high ideal (and often minimum requirement for respect) in technical circles.
"You're technically right but contextually wrong" is just such a programmer thing to say. That's not "discussing it wrong" that's just requiring you to read between the lines and realize this is no longer a discussion about technicalities but about the context (which likely isn't "wrong" but merely different).
Even "contextually", the only thing wrong with the reply in the article was the "No!" part, since it implies that the flaws outweigh the gains. It's rather obvious that the responder knows that there are arguments for why people do not think that is the case (the mere existence of garbage collection proves that). So that passionate "no!" is probably coming from elsewhere. Is it anger over software performance? Is it fear of trying something new? Is it a sunk-cost fallacy? Is it mere contrarianism? In any case, if you want to start a discussion with "Garbage collectors are nice and save a lot of work", it doesn't strike me as off-topic. Do you want to discuss garbage collectors or merely celebrate them?
It just annoys me that the examples given are presented as downright breaking discussion when they could easily be picked up and, in fact, actually represent the reality of what people think.
Yea, but every step towards making the establishment of a total surveillance state harder is worth it, even if not providing 100% security.
The "be careful" part is the problem, making mistakes is inevitable.
If you need to do that, yea, but most people only process a few small files and for that it's perfect.
Done. No need to call doom on discussion culture over comments that are actually technically true. In fact, most discussions end in a sea of yea-sayers congratulating each other (which doesn't need to be a bad thing, there's things we all can agree on). And if you do not want discussion or do not think it's worthy... don't bring it up.
...this is the second day on Tildes when it feels like I'm on radiowaves and the other person is communicating with shades of yellow.
"Don't take this outside of context"
"But why shouldn't we be talking about this thing outside of context?"
"You're taking this out of context"
"Isn't that just more context?"
"More extraneous context is a source of unproductive discussions"
"Yeah, but the thing is..."
It just isn't occurring to me why can't we be keeping the discussion to the ostensible, readily-appreciatable context.
What's the "context" of "Garbage collectors are nice and save a lot of work"? Is it "yes, they are nice and save a lot of work"? Because that's the only interpretation in which "I believe there are cases where that's not true" is "out of context". The whole article is anchored by the author being pissed at the "No!" part, which is simply an emotional slip-up and not "twisting context".
I'm struggling to understand why you think this, and not the title of the post, is the core message and the context.
Many of the examples given are actually reductio ad absurdam, which includes arguments from extremes.
They're not precisely irrelevant, but rather arguments attempting to show that the rule or principal argument proposed is broken because it doesn't address the most unlikely (but possible) edge cases.
A generous interpretation is that obstinate arguers are striving for perfect laws when they simply don't exist in a complex world. In reality (particularly in software engineering), most principal arguments aren't being offered on the grand scale of laws of physical science, where an true outlier example may invalidate a previously solid hypothesis. They offer approximate rules-of-thumb that cover common situations, and leave working out the unpredictable, imperfectly understood edge cases as a given professional necessity.
This is true in law, politics, economics, engineering, and just about any discipline where you can't achieve complete measurement and control of all the variables well enough to derive highly accurate predictions for every given intervention.
The headline itself shows an unfortunate pattern of argument. When there is an opportunity to agree with your opponent, you should take it, and not immediately undercut it by dismissing it as irrelevant. It would be better to say "yes I agree with that, but..." and then talk about what's important to you.
Floating point?
Or a Walter?
"You're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole!"