How not to move the goalposts

Both A and B are unpleasant statements that decent, rational people should probably disagree with

*cringe*

Good choice of topic, but ...

Unfortunately, most of the arguments I could choose for this discussion are either highly trivial or highly controversial. I'll choose one that I hope won't cause too much trouble.

I think it may be the worst possible choice. First, for suggesting that the question of compensation for engineers should be approached as a moral issue. Second, for failing to make the point that differences (between the sexes) in engineering aptitude in the general population says nothing about differences in engineering skill among people who have already been hired as engineers. Third, because gender differences between groups say little about differences between individuals. Fourth, because gender is a problematic subject in this forum, even when you do everything right.

I also second Nesov's cringe at the implicit conflation of unpleasant and suitable-to-be-disagreed-with.

This whole post treats arguments as soldiers. It's as though you're saying, "Don't focus all of your attention on just one enemy soldier. Otherwise, the other soldiers might get through! You must attack all enemy soldiers simultaneously."

And (seconding Vladimir Nesov's cringe):

Both A and B are unpleasant statements that decent, rational people should probably disagree with ...

At this point, the "rational arguer" ought immediately to think of the Litany of Tarski: If A and B are true, then I want to believe that A and B are true.

The main point of the article might make sense, but the example is awful. What you present as "logical inference" involves statements that are formulated so imprecisely that no accurate logical operations with them are possible at all. You also seem to operate with a puzzling notion of "equal work" performed by people whose skills differ, as well as an altogether inadequate model of how wages are determined in practice.

Also, of all charged and controversial topics, gender-related ones cause by far the most problems on LW in the sense of people being unable to handle them calmly and rationally, so you have actually chosen the very worst sort of example. (This is an interesting phenomenon, considering that other even more charged topics are usually discussed in a commendably rational way here.) Obviously, this is excusable for a new participant, considering that this warning isn't really spelled out anywhere, but you should be aware of it for the future.

I don't understand your post. Why does RA move on to claim B? If RA was convinced of claim A by WA's stack of research papers, then RA should update instead of arguing further. If RA thinks WA was being a "clever arguer" about claim A, then RA should continue arguing about claim A.

Having layered defenses against unwelcome conclusions is a bad sign (though not necessarily wrong). As the joke goes, "I didn't borrow the iron, and it was fine when I returned it, and it was already broken when I borrowed it". As another joke goes, "It wasn't me, and I won't do it again". When I find myself having a layered defense against something, I pick the strongest point of that defense and focus the argument on that. When/if the other person successfully convinces me that the strongest reason for my belief is invalid, I try to force myself to update instead of moving on to the next reason.

Like most things, it's a matter of trade-offs. In order to raise all of my objections simultaneously, I'd have to think of all the objections before I communicate any of them. Perhaps my opponent could use the time I spend thinking up the second objection to ponder the first one? Maybe he would be quickly convinced by the first objection so that I don't have to keep thinking? (I do think the post does a valuable service of pointing out a strategy that can be applied on a situational basis.)

It also seems worth pointing out that two rationalists debating with each other should perhaps avoid accusing each other of "moving the goalpost" in order to not impose the cost of having to think up all objections before communicating them.

I think that the author here is bending over backwards and trying not to offend people. They weren't exactly successful at this, but I think that people should be charitable in interpreting this. They're new and apparently ended up over-qualifying some statements in an effort to be more agreeable.

The underlying point is actually one of the best I have read here in some time; if this retains few upvotes, I may write something closely related to this topic, if doing so is not inappropriate. There are a lot of rather significant political issues that would have been far better resolved by pointing out, "The moral framework you are applying those facts to is abhorrent" rather than, "those facts are wrong." This is precisely because focusing on the latter causes people to not want to believe the truth. Rejecting an argument on all proper grounds is a useful practice; this is particularly true when it relies on an appealing but deeply flawed moral premise.

Bad choice of example, but I think I agree with your main point - it's a common mistake to focus on one component of an argument when it isn't your main objection, where that fact being true or false will not change your final conclusion much.

However, I'm not a big fan of the general argumentation/"arguments as soldier" context. In such a situation, I would not try to find the argument that best demolishes the other person's argument, I would try to work out on what exactly we agree and on what exactly we disagree. For example, if someone says "Fact F is true, therefore we should support Policy P" and I disagree, I would wonder whether that person would support policy P in a world where F was not true, I would wonder whether I would support P in a world where F was true, I would wonder whether we have different evidence for F, etc.

At least like that the argument can focus on something more specific that we actually disagree on, such as "in a hypothetical world where F was true, would policy P be a good thing?" or "Is F actually true?" - or we may even realize that we don't disagree at all, that we were just using terms a bit differently (For example "Male engineers should get higher pay than female engineers" was being interpreted as "Companies should give extra money to engineers who happen to be male" by one party and "The fact that the average salary of male engineers is higher than the average salaries of female engineers is not in itself evidence of discrimination" by the other).

Since there are lots of negative comments out here, I should say that I liked this post and upvoted it. Yes, I agree that the example was poorly chosen, but that doesn't change the fact that the main message is useful.

There are actually two things being conflated into (C) "Men should be paid more than women for the same work in technical fields such as engineering." This statement could either mean that we shouldn't worry that there's something wrong if we observe that men are being paid more, or it could mean that we should consider sex when determining a candidate's salary. The first statement is true, but the second statement is wrong, because even if it were true that men have greater technical skill on average, hiring processes are supposed to measure technical skill directly. Directly measuring technical skill screens off any salary-relevant information that sex (or any other demographic information) would provide.

Excellent post, I will keep these ideas in mind in future arguments.

Pro tip: A and B should be completely false in the first place.

While I, too, am of the opinion that indeed A is horribly false, B doesn't sound so-very-false to me, just a bit ill. Surely claiming that women should be paid less for the same work is a kind of negative applause light, but continue reading. The argument B is stated above as:

B: If members of one group, on average, are better at a task than members of another group, then members of that first group should be paid more than members of the second group for performing the same work.

This is certainly not something desirable, but how about this one:

B': If members of one group, on average, are better at a task than members of another group, then members of that first group should, on average, be paid more than members of the second group for performing the same work.

This transforms a bad argument into a different, not-so bad one. Now, C only states that men should, on average, be paid more for one hour of engineering. We might as well re-formulate B':

B'': Everyone should get paid for a task according to his abilities, for what he actually gets done.

This seems much better, and while I think this is more true (although not taking into account other arguments that will probably shift this position more to a more social point of view, but I don't have the time for that right here), it also avoids shooting beyond the goal by falsely coming to the conclusion that "Everyone should get paid the same for the same task!". The good: you did not do this here; The bad: I saw other people do this, especially to disprove RA's position (or whatever the argument is about). The ugly: It worked.

I'd conclude that it's often best to take a middle path, the wisdom of others is not random, and while it's not true, it's most certainly not completely false. In real life, however, I rarely see people doing this, because it's not a good way to "win" arguments.

Or did I miss something here?

This makes me think of Steven Pinker's argument in the blank slate. Don't argue against racism/sexism/etc by claiming that that all races/sexes/etc are identical. They could turn out not to be identical, yet racism/sexism/etc would still be wrong.

I don't think that RA actually moved the goalposts. The goal is exactly the same: "Men have better technical abilities than women, so they should get paid more for the same engineering jobs."

The point that WA actually changed was from "Men and women are just as well suited to technical careers as each other!", which he conceded, to "If men really are better, they'll get raises and promotions on their own merit, not merely by virtue of being male."... But these points aren't located in the goal. They are points in the middle of the field, parts of a discussion. Losing one of those points shouldn't mean losing the whole discussion.

An example of actual goalpost-moving should be from "Men have better technical abilities than women, so they should get paid more for the same engineering jobs." to "People who have better technical abilities should get paid more for the same engineering jobs".

I've been thinking of this question lately, and while I agree with the main thrust of your article, I don't think that giving all possible objections is always possible (it can get really long, and sometimes there are thematic issues). Which is why I think multiple people responding tends to be a good thing.

But more to the point, I don't think I agree that RA is moving the goalposts. Because really, every position has many arguments pro or con where even if just one is demolished the position can survive off the others. I think the arguing technique that really is problematic is abandoning position A to go to position B while still taking A as true, thus continuing to make arguments based on A or going back to asserting A once B doesn't work out.

I think that if someone explicitly concedes A before going on to B, and doesn't go back to A afterwards (unless they've got new arguments of course) they aren't doing anything wrong.

RA really has moved the goalposts on WA, which is one of those Dark Arts that we're not supposed to employ, even unintentionally.

It would certainly be annoying and a bit questionable to bring up your points of disagreement one at a time like RA did, but as long as he stops to update after receiving the information from WA, I don't know if I'd call this moving the goalposts.

Much of what you say is important - perhaps even obvious - but I'd like to stand up for RA here, at least with respect to this particular example. A is a factual claim and B a moral one. If your experience is that you can change people's beliefs about the world through argumentation but not their basic values, it makes sense to only dispute the former.

Probably RA should note the moral difference upfront, though.