Bulverism

This doesn't protect someone (or a whole society) from bad actors who know how to exploit the assumption of positive intent. This might work for arguing with Aunt Tillie at Thanksgiving dinner, but it's a loophole actively exploited by people in power whose motives run counter to what's good, in general, for society as a whole. See: tobacco executives, climate change deniers, those who profit off anti-vaxx sentiment, televangelists, etc.

ISL5• 6 years ago

Engaging people and meeting them where they are, with honest discussion, can sometimes turn an ardent detractor of something positive into an ardent supporter of something positive.

Can't win if you don't try. :).

hertzrat2• 6 years ago

The main thing is that people do this because it works fairly well. Nobody ever says how to counter them. Arguably, not even professional persuaders like politicians haven’t figured it out, because the most common response during elections or debates is to just counter attack with similar tactics

ma2rten2• 6 years ago

I think the best response depends on whether you can want to persuade the person you are talking to or bystanders. Either you could call out the tactic or you could use something like non-violent communication.

hertzrat2• 6 years ago

I think most of the time this sort of tactic is used with an audience in mind, so presumably we would want to convince the audience. Does calling out “that’s just a bulverism fallacy!” really work?

ahelwer3• 6 years ago

At this point I basically view preoccupation with fallacies, presenting arguments in formal format (premise, premise, conclusion), etc. as a proxy for immaturity. That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded. It also isn't how people have ever been able to access any sort of truth. Western philosophy has been incredibly effective at tearing apart everything that exists, but utterly ineffective in building anything back up from the ashes.

It's only after you've tried, many times over, in futility, to build a coherent & effective belief system from first principles that you'll realize this approach is a dead end. All we have are beliefs, and our brains retroactively make up stories about why we think they are true. In this framework it is actually very useful to illustrate how your ideological opponent came to their beliefs. Then people can determine whether they find that story relatable.

mulmen• 6 years ago

Perhaps the value in philosophy is destruction. As you say our brains already build up beliefs, why do we need a formal system for that? What we don't do naturally is re-evaluate those beliefs in the presence of new information.

smitty1e3• 6 years ago

Popper was onto something with putting everything under criticism.

And yet, as every piece of computer hardware needs an OS to be more than a brick, one yearns for an explanation of what "is" as badly as "what is not".

smitty1e3• 6 years ago

Maybe a more conversational approach where

- trust is established,

- a relationship built, and

- questions are asked in a sincere effort to trigger reflection

could produce better results. Takes more patience and effort than we typically invest these days.

XorNot• 6 years ago

How do you really propose to establish trust though? Based on what?

Trust requires the initial establishment of some reason to believe the other person, and we're mid discussing why we don't.

bitexploder• 6 years ago

This is why I love Greek philosophy so much. They were keen observers of the human condition, but they didn’t bind it all up in (formal) logic. Their philosophies were aimed at being practical life philosophies. How to live a good life (according to the philosophers). I find much in stoicism to be of particular use in modern life. CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, has many similarities with and could even be viewed as strongly influenced by stoicism. CBT really works for a lot of people and is one of the most successful therapeutic approaches in modern psychology at improving people’s outlook and fighting depression.

hans1729• 6 years ago

The solution, I think, lays in systems thinking. “Premise, premise, conclusion” can be rightfully used to represent (better: project) a perspective of a frame of a system.

Simple causality doesn’t do the intricate complexity of existence and the patterns that govern it justice, but you can surely map systemic obervations, much like you can project a timestamp of a 3D-room on a lower-dimensional surface. Just don’t act like that’s the whole truth, because it isn’t, and it won’t be.

taeric3• 6 years ago

The point of the fallacies is inline with your point. These are arguments we believe, even though they are not logically sound.

That is, learning them will help you identify your own beliefs that are worth questioning. And, in this case, what behavior you may use that makes it hard to engage with others on their beliefs.

heavenlyblue2• 6 years ago

Fallacies are your failure to apply scientific method. The fact that you are aware of them doesn’t change the fact that you don’t know how to use it.

It’s like a blind person learning this something isn’t red. They’ll continue guessing until they came up with the right colour.

notahacker3• 6 years ago

That is, learning them will help you identify your own beliefs that are worth questioning.

But the OP's point is that they're actually not a particularly good way of identifying that (particularly the rhetorical fallacies). Many if not most things people believe which are incorrect do not involve any logical fallacy. Conversely, if I wanted to identify which of my current beliefs are probably incorrect, beliefs I hold largely because of the appeal of authorities supporting them, for example, would probably be a very bad place to focus my doubts.

m94710• 6 years ago

That’s ironic because haven’t you presented your argument in a formal format here? And attempted to build something for a coherent and effective belief system? And passed on sharing the relatable story that would allow others to understand how you’ve come to believe what you’ve outlined?

Just because you haven’t been able to access any truth through philosophizing doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

yters• 6 years ago

Well, I for one encounter this fallacy constantly and discussion would be a net boost if all participants recognized and avoided said fallacy.

anthony_romeo• 6 years ago

I've read an interesting opinion on this in the past, something like: trying to improve one's argumentative skill by studying fallacies is like trying to improve one's mastery of the violin by studying examples of poor technique.

There's value to it, but its not a way to reach true greatness in a field.

steve_g• 6 years ago

It's probably not the path to greatness. I'd say it's more a way to have a basic foundation for thinking.

The thing about fallacies is that they can be persuasive. But if you recognize them for what they are, you can defend against the error.

To extend your metaphor, very few people will be masters of the violin. But it's pretty cool to play it it anyway.

Bayart• 6 years ago

That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded.

Why would anybody have to be persuaded ? The point of thinking isn't just to manipulate people.

quickthrower2• 6 years ago

The original article is about a manipulation technique, hence the focus on that aspect

ahelwer3• 6 years ago

This comment reminds me of a tweet I saw years ago, that roughly said "programmers read posts like a compiler: stopping immediately & printing an error when they see something they disagree with"

Read the very next couple of sentences in my original comment.

hitekker• 6 years ago

The point is to persuade yourself. Or rather, to satisfy the collection of niggling doubts[1] we call the "inner critic". That voice constantly questioning us in our own heads, poking holes in our logic, and ensuring we're actually thinking and not pretending to think.

The problem with fallacies, as I see it, is they're often employed to fool that inner critic. They can dress up any emotional, thoughtless reaction in the guise of reason.

"I thought that person was rude" becomes "I believe this person is engaging in an ad-hominen attack." Or "they have a belief I don't like" becomes "Clearly, the other person has a case of confirmation bias."

I think our inner critic will detect us taking such mental shortcuts; it won't be quieted so easily. I also think that's why fallacy-first thinkers will spam their views across threads. Unable to persuade themselves, let alone others, they resort to rhetoric to silence their own creeping doubts.

[1] http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html

baby• 6 years ago

The limit of your vocabulary is the limit of your world. If you don’t know about fallacies then you don’t truly understand their existence.

Buldak• 6 years ago

For what it's worth, I don't identify preoccupation with identifying fallacies, or with rhetorical classifications like "bulverism" or "steelmanning" with philosophy. At least, if you take a degree in philosophy I think you'll find that it's very much not like this. In my experience, this approach is much more characteristic of online forum argumentation, and subcultures like new atheism and rationalism. (Case in point: I mean "rationalism" in the LessWrong sense, not the Cartesian sense!) I agree with you that the style is irritating and superficial.

imgabe3• 6 years ago

I don't understand, so you just pick beliefs and ignore that the reasoning behind them may be fallacious? A fallacy might not point you towards the truth, but it can identify when something is not the truth.

Lammy• 6 years ago

Striving for a single “The Truth” seems like a fundamentally losing battle when I’d have to convince 8+ billion other humans to agree with me in every aspect of how I see the world, but an entire world that could fit in my single viewport would be a very narrow world indeed.

BurritoAlPastor• 6 years ago

A fallacy can not identify when something is not the truth. A fallacious statement is not a necessary result of the argument that led to it, but it can still be completely true.

There’s even a fallacy about it! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

ahelwer3• 6 years ago

This isn't me saying how people should pick their beliefs. This is me saying how people do pick their beliefs. It's an exhortation to know thyself, and to let go of the delusion that you're different. If you're stuck in the illusion that your beliefs all follow logically from some carefully-chosen first principles, you have a muddier view of the world (and yourself) than someone who hasn't put the least thought whatsoever into choosing their beliefs.

courtf• 6 years ago

They're all just buzzword shortcuts for rapidly dismissing people and arguments we don't like. If we're going to hold arguments up to the standards of pure logic during any mildly subjective debate, one can only conclude that both opponents are wrong and always will be. All that's left after that is the political game of winning over the audience, which is almost certainly the reason the debate has held in the first place.

drewcoo• 6 years ago

The intent is something more like studying the chess tricks and traps books[1]. Humans learn new things by exploring the boundaries of those things. This is as true for secondhand stories of explorations as it is for firsthand experiences. I think it's just humans a-human-ing. Nothing immature about learning.

[1] There are a bunch of them. Here's more on one: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8051867-the-greatest-eve...

dragonwriter5• 6 years ago

At this point I basically view preoccupation with fallacies, presenting arguments in formal format (premise, premise, conclusion), etc. as a proxy for immaturity. That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded.

Escaping the rhetorical tricks that facilitate persuasion independent of the merits of a position is actually the point; the approach you are attacking is a tool for doing this for abstract systems of ideas, empirical science provides the same thing for fact claims.

Western philosophy has been incredibly effective at tearing apart everything that exists, but utterly ineffective in building anything back up from the ashes.

The practical knowledge and technology built on the back of empirical science, a system itself built on the back of Western philosophy—and specifically an outgrowth of the exact aspect of Western philosophy you are attacking—is, more than a little “anything” that Western philosophy has provided the tools to build up from the ashes of self-delusion that it years down.

konjin• 6 years ago

Looks like you're looking for the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

That is to say people assume that logical equivalence is the same as logical entailment.

jadell3• 6 years ago

Picking apart someone's belief through explaining their logical fallacies presupposes that they got to their belief through a logical process.

"Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired." -- Jonathan Swift, 1721.

To rephrase in a more modern way: You can't use reason or logic to get to someone to stop believing something they didn't use reason or logic to start believing.

cortesoft• 6 years ago

I always like the short version: "you can't reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into"

gedy• 6 years ago

"Some arguments are valid and some conclusions true, regardless of the identity and motives of the one who argues them."

Yes I know, "both sides", but this has been the biggest challenge I've had speaking with progressive friends. Unless I agree that someone's beliefs/opinions/arguments are totally invalid because who they are or who they voted for, I'm also part of the problem..

bsder3• 6 years ago

Unless I agree that someone's beliefs/opinions/arguments are totally invalid because who they are or who they voted for, I'm also part of the problem..

Look, we've got a bunch of people attacking the foundations of our democracy.

If you voted with them, yeah, you've got a pretty steep climb to convince me that you're not part of the problem.

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."--Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

ithkuil3• 6 years ago

Somebody can be part of the problem and also be right about something.

Call it "accidentally right" if you need to deprive them from the merit of being right. But let's not turn facts and logic into collateral damage of a fight that happens at a different level.

emerged• 6 years ago

There isn’t a hill for people to climb, there’s a fortress you’re standing on top of with an assault rifle firing at them before they can say a word. The rise of this closed-off-to-discussion approach is legitimately dangerous.

justin66• 6 years ago

It sounds less like a dispute about the objective validity or soundness of arguments, and more like a dispute about which side you’ve chosen in a conflict.

dukeofdoom• 6 years ago

Watching Rudy Giuliani's common sense right now, making a case for why Trump won. Despite his chances of actually winning now are something like less than 1% on betting markets. No court case has gotten to the stage that allowed significant evidence to be presented (They've rejected for standing or other reasons). The media has all but inaugurated Biden. And it looks like the Republican party will turn against Trump too now. Trump is really a populist politician that somehow won the Republican party nomination. But he doesn't have backing in the institutions of government, especially the courts. Allowed most of his closest political allies to be prosecuted, and removed or taken out or he fired them. And his support in republican party is also shaky. They would love to get rid of him.

Joseph Stalin said some version of "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes."

Its interesting listen Rudy to make his points and argue his case, how the votes should be counted.

He's a skilled orator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAzCECx8XeE&t=547s

etamponi• 6 years ago

Pieces like this make me want to find the original books and read them, I wonder how many more insights I could find there. C.S. Lewis seems to resonate particularly well with me and with how I reason (same holds for Chesterton).

I think Lewis is right in blaming Bulverism. So I asked myself: can I identify a way in which Bulverism originates? How can I avoid it and how can I suggest other people to avoid it? Sorry for the excursus, but I hope someone will find it useful :D

It's very interesting, to me at least, to notice that getting "completely" rid of bulverism seems very difficult - perhaps impossible? Perhaps because it's part of how humans start the process of knowledge.

Let me explain...

Reasoning can go, a priori, in several different directions. Which one to pick? From a practical point of view, you pick the one that stimulates you the most: and this way, someone becomes a mathematician, someone else an engineer, someone else a poet, a doctor, and so on.

This movement has both some bulverism and some anti-bulverism: you hear someone speak, and a-priori, you feel like he's right (is there a name for this fallacy too?).

And I think that starting the process of knowledge with some pre-conception is unavoidable and also what makes diversity possible. So when does a safe practice become a threat?

I think it's when we lose faith in the positiveness of reality, that is: in the possibility of knowing what's true and that this knowledge is what really makes us more humans.

Bulverism is saying that I value more what I think than what's true, or that I value more to blame you than to affirm the truth.

It's interesting to see in how many way reasoning can go wrong once you exclude that reasoning has its natural end in the knowledge of what's true.

GistNoesis• 6 years ago

The funny thing is that this article is attacking Bulverism by describing it as a fallacy, thereby proving that Bulverism is a useful mode of thinking.

I quite enjoy the Bulverism mindset. It's close to the bug seeker or pen-tester mindset. If the code seems complex you have to assume there is a mistake somewhere. You put yourself in the shoes of the one who write the code and try to imagine where some complex interactions could be badly anticipated. To exploit, you have to understand what went wrong.

Seeking the truth probably can't be done in absolute. It's probably a better idea to hold a variety of beliefs and Bayes updating them with the information you gather, but at the same time keeping in mind that other people may have received different information.

timwaagh2• 6 years ago

Where you went wrong is by wanting a way to quickly and easily disqualify your opponents objections, so you took out this concept of bulverism instead of looking at whether there may be some thruth to it.

drdeca2• 6 years ago

"You" meaning the person who submitted the link? Huh?

timwaagh2• 6 years ago

Its an ironic comment bulverizing the idea of bulverism. Who 'you' is doesn't matter so much. Might be the inventor of bulverism or the link poster.

dragonwriter5• 6 years ago

The description there gets into assumed motive which is really irrelevant to the fallacy. The fallacy isn't in the assumption of error, but rather in attacking a characterization of the process by which the opponent arrived at their argument rather than the argument itself. That one might infer from someone engaging in that fallacy that they have also assumed the opponent wrong and sought an explanation is, well, a reasonable conclusion but to highlight that as the fundamental issue is, ironically, making the same mistake that is at issue with Bulverism: focussing on the process by which one gets to the argument rather than the flaws in the argument.

tpoacher• 6 years ago

If you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend an old book by (Robert?) Thouless called: "Straight and crooked thinking", which identifies the form of several common disingenuous argumentation techniques, brings out the fallacy or dishonest rhetorical device employed, and suggestions on how to counter them (or at least spot them more easily).

ochronus• 6 years ago

I think the original problem with all of this is that we see arguments as fights that we need to win. This is wrong. We should argue to understand each other better and to come up with better ideas than we separately could. I've written a longer piece on how fallacies affect how we argue: https://ochronus.online/how-to-stop-winning-arguments/

Bulverism

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