Against accusing people of motte and bailey

If different people in the group make sensible and crazy interpretations, and you're arguing with someone who claims to be making only the sensible interpretation, I'd expect that that person would at least be willing to

1) admit that other members of the group are saying things that are crazy. They don't have to preemptively say it ahead of time, but they could at least say it when they are challenged on it.

2) treat known crazy-talking people as crazy-talking people, rather than glossing over their craziness in the interests of group solidarity.

I'm also very suspicious when the person with the reasonable interpretation benefits too much from the existence of (and the failure to challenge) the person with the crazy interpretation. His refusal to condemn the other guy then looks suspicious. The term for this is "good cop, bad cop", and the fact that we have already have a term for it should hint that it actually happens.

And finally, sometimes as a practical matter, it's necessary to go against the bad cops. If the motte is some kind of reasonable objection to James Damore, and the bailey is "Damore said (list of things he didn't actually say)" and the bailey is all over the media and Internet and is used to attack engineers, that bailey is the one to be concerned about and the one to focus most of my effort against. It's not just argument, it's argument in service of a goal, in this case, not to be stomped on by people using baileys.

I found this illuminating, and agree that the use of the motte-and-bailey concept you describe isn't fair or helpful. But I'm not convinced the real problem here is with the appeal to the motte-and-bailey fallacy.

I find the motte-and-bailey concept quite helpful, but you can only legitimately pick out a motte-and-bailey if the self-same person is guilty of shifting between the two within the same work (or within multiple works intended to be consistent with one another). It's extremely common for individual people to personally motte-and-bailey within the space of a conversation (or 5-page paper), and having a concept to describe that is quite helpful.

So it seems to me that the real problem is not with the concept of motte-and-bailey arguments at all. All the actual problems are located around the tendency to hold every individual who calls themselves an X accountable for (simultaneously) all the opinions ever propounded under the label of X. The tendency to charge adherents of X with a motte-and-bailey fallacy even if they've not personally committed one yet is just one of many instances of this general tendency. The concept of a motte-and-bailey fallacy is no more at fault than the concept of an inconsistency is.

I think this post beautifully (though indirectly) illustrates a few things:

• the importance of debating only those "in front of you"
• the importance of separating personal ideas from group ideas
• the relative futility of debating against or on behalf of a group

In the first example you give, the error in pointing out a motte-and-bailey is that a motte-and-bailey hasn't actually occurred in the context of the conversation. If we bring up the bailey before it has actually been presented as an argument, we imply that we expect the other person to use it, and by extension, that they will argue in bad faith. The appropriate defense then (assuming you're telling the truth) is: "There may be some people who make that argument, but I haven't and I'm not going to, because I don't agree with it. Let's focus on the arguments each of us is actually making, okay?"

Similarly, if we make the argument "You belong to this group, and members of this group often use that statement as a motte, but they assert corresponding bailey X when they think they can get away with it", then we are assuming that the other person's beliefs are perfectly in line with our perception of their group's beliefs. This is also incorrect, and on two levels this time: we don't know that this person believes everything the group believes unless they say so, and we don't know if we have an accurate understanding of what their group believes if we are not part of it (or sometimes even if we are!).

We can take this even farther! Suppose the other person belongs to Group X, whose leadership or designated representative (or group of representatives) maintains a publicly-available platform, manifesto, or statement of purpose that clearly lays out what the group as a whole believes. In that case, we might be able to say we understand what the group believes, but we still can't say for sure what the group member in front of us believes, because they still don't necessarily need to agree with everything the group says (though such incongruity can sometimes open up other avenues of debate). In both of the preceding examples, the appropriate defense would be: "I may be a member of Group X [and Group X might as a whole support argument Y], but there are places where Group X and I disagree, including argument Y. Let's focus on the arguments we each make personally, okay?"

It's also important not to get baited into arguing against something we don't personally believe. Unless we're acting in an official capacity as a member of Group X, I think it's totally okay to refuse to engage when someone brings up the group's platform by saying something like "As a member of Group X, I do have an understanding of why some members use Argument Y, but I don't agree with Argument Y, so I'm not going to defend it."

In other words, I think it's fine to point out a motte-and-bailey, but only when someone has actually used it. It seems like the real issue is people pointing it out when it hasn't happened, as Davide_Zagami has already pointed out.

Another thought on ways it can be unhelpful to cry motte and Bailey. I don't know what's the split between, "People who exhibit motte and bailey behavior and do so as a tactic", vs "those who accidentally exhibit motte and bailey behavior", but I find myself accidentally internally doing motte and baileys far more often than is comfortable. I'm getting better at noticing when there's the switch, when my brain starts using a seperate model, but it's a very faint feeling. If I someone was actually and accidentally doing a motte and bailey, they might really not notice the switch, and shouting "Aha, motte and Bailey!" feels like an easy way to get them on the defensive and not actually think about if they switched models.

(Example, I've been reading Consciousness Explained, and I'm onboard with the idea that there's no Cartesian theater, but I definitely haven't completely "worked it out of my system" and you could totally catch me doing a motte and bailey on that topic)

I agree with this. (My view of 'motte and bailey': 1, 2, 3.)

My first thought was "what's with all these recent LW posts complaining about online discussion peeves outside of LW"? Toward the end, you tie it back to useful advice with

But I do suggest that you should be very cautious about using that accusation, because you may be placing yourself in a situation where you will never change your mind.

The accusation of "motte-and-bailey" got a lot more popular recently, but it's really no different from accusing (when done to me) or pointing out (when I do it to you) much older terms of X bias, bait-and-switch, deceptive-sales-tactics, etc.

In most cases, there are two different problems you're reacting to:

• you're (trying to) lower my status by pointing out problems in a group I align with.
• you're (intentionally or accidentally) being imprecise with your proposition.

The second should probably just get to double-crux as quickly as you can. The first should usually be addressed separately from the nominal debate (but it will be very ideosyncratic in exactly how).

When it comes to LW rationality, it's not easy to be clear about what it happens to be.

If you have people say "well, because X happens I updated my probability that my date is likely to show up from Y to Z" it's easy for an outsider to get the impression that there's overvaluing of numbers going on. Even if you then defend yourself by saying: "We have this Internal Double Crux things, that totally focuses on using intuition", that just gets weirder for the other person.

But suppose that we were discussing something of which there were both sensible and crazy interpretations - held by different people. So:

group A consistently makes and defends sensible claim A1

group B consistently makes and defends crazy claim B1

and maybe even:

group C consistently makes crazy claim B1, but when challenged on it, consistently retreats to defending A1

I may be missing something but it seems to me that:

• if C is accused of motte-and-bailey fallacy there is no problem;
• if B is accused of motte-and-bailey fallacy there is a problem because they never defended claim A1;
• if A is accused of motte-and-bailey fallacy there is a problem because they never defended claim B1.

I hope I'm not being silly: would it be fair to say that you are pointing to the existence of the "accuse people who are not making a motte-and-bailey fallacy of making a motte-and-bailey fallacy" fallacy? Could we call it "straw-motte-and-bailey fallacy" or something?