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The whole point of the sentence was to demonstrate how bad ambiguity can get with pronouns, and this exchange is demonstrating my point exactly. The issue might be that you're making some (very reasonable) assumptions without noticing it narrows the range of possible interpretations. The only unambiguous part of the sentence is "John told Mark", but every other he can be either John or Mark.
Edit: my apologies for any rude tone, it was not intentional. All of us necessarily make reasonable assumptions to narrow ambiguity in our day to day conversations and it can be hard to completely jettison the habit.
No, because John could be speaking about himself administering the medication. It's also possible to refuse to do something you've already acknowledged you should do, so the 3rd he could still be John regardless of who is being told what.
That's the thing, I generally present as very masculine and if anyone referred to me as 'she' I would find it more confusing than anything else. If I actually cared, maybe I'd look for what effeminate signals I gave off, but I can't imagine a scenario where I would find it offensive or get mad at the person.
Yes, and there were areas I could've gotten into in terms of how other languages rely on pronouns. One that I am most familiar with is French and its distinction between singular and plural 'you' (tu & vous), and vous also can be singular if used formally. So if anyone is translating from French, you have to make a judgment call regarding whether each vous is plural or formal singular. Some information is inevitably lost in the transfer.
My entire criticism of his luxury beliefs framework is that it is arbitrary and applied in a selective ad-hoc manner, largely for the purpose of flattering one's pre-existing political sensibilities. The very fact that you're adding all these previously unmentioned rule amendments reinforces my thesis exactly. If you think my criticism is off-base, it would be helpful if you pointed out exactly where it is contradicted. Something like "if your critique is correct then we should expect X, but instead we see Y" would be neat.
He's not asserting that the upper class rejected monogamy in a way that was widely adopted. He does say this about his classmates, but his classmates aren't the entire upper class.
He claimed that monogamy was rejected by the upper class sufficiently enough to cause divorce and single parenthood to spike, he literally says "The upper class got high on their own supply." I consider that "widely adopted", and if you disagree with my description, it helps to specify exactly why. Regarding his classmates, his favorite anecdote has been one person who says polyamory is good but doesn't practice it, so I don't know where he establishes that doing polyamory is widely adopted by his classmates.
You said that he didn't use such a story because he thinks anti-leftist examples are uniquely compelling. "It isn't bizarrely unconventional" and "it isn't even a luxury belief" are alternate explanations to "he's biased against leftists".
I can't make up and apply new criteria like "bizarrely unconventional", nor can I just accept Henderson's framework when I'm critiquing it.
And luxury beliefs should imply a more extreme elite/non-elite imbalance than just "somewhat fewer people support it".
Again, I can't just make up new criteria. My whole point has been that 'luxury beliefs' is selectively applied, and making up new requirements so that only a specific set of beliefs fit the bill is exactly what I'm critiquing.
Sure, polyamory is bizarre and unconventional, but that only further undermines Henderson's assertion that it was widely adopted (enough to have an impact) by both the upper and lower class of society circa 1960-1970s.
I didn't present the oil tycoon story as a luxury belief example, but rather as an example of a story that carried the same "saying but not doing" lesson. I did present "support for a harsh criminal justice system" as an example of a luxury belief that Henderson would contest, even though it perfectly fits his template.
By being cavalier about the danger, you signal that you are not among the lower-status people for whom following the advice is dangerous. The people for whom the behavior is dangerous are either smart enough to realize it, but they won't publicly contradict you, because that would mean drawing attention to their lower status; or are stupid and will follow your advice and will get hurt (which is what makes it a costly signal).
This is a really good reformulation of the underlying idea behind "luxury beliefs" that improves upon it and makes it much more useful.
My kingdom for a truly universal footnote format
I wanted to include very basic examples first:
For example, observing that most birds can fly, assuming that flight is a necessary trait for being classified as a bird (composition), and subsequently excluding penguins from being birds because they don’t fly (division). Or observing that mammals tend to have fur, assuming fur is a necessary trait for being a mammal, and therefore excluding dolphins as not mammals. Or observing that weapons tend to cause bleeding and therefore excluding blunt instruments like clubs and batons. The list goes on.
I am planning yet another follow-up to outline more contentious examples. Basically, almost any dispute that is based on a disguised query and hinges on specific categorization matches the fallacy. Some of the prominent examples that come to mind, with the sticker shortcut label italicized:
- Was January 6th an insurrection?
- Is Israel committing a genocide?
- Are IQ tests a form of eugenics?
All of these questions appear to be a disguised query into asking whether X is a "really bad thing". But instead of asking this directly, they try to sneak in the connotation through the label. Similarly, the whole debate over whether transwomen are women is a hodgepodge of disguised queries that try to sneak in a preferred answer through the acceptance of labels. In each of these examples, we're better served by discussing the thing directly rather than debating over labels. Does this help clarify?
he is not only willing to have an affair, but he’s willing to break the law to hide it.
This too is another example of the fallacy I'm describing. The fact that OJ Simpson was acquitted of a double homicide doesn't change my mind that he did in fact kill two people, all it tells me is that the legal system did not find him guilty of the allegations. If someone started every conversation about OJ with "exonerated celebrity football player OJ Simpson", it's obvious what connotations they're trying to convey without having to communicate them directly.
I'm sorry, but this is exactly the fallacy I'm describing in my post. Sometimes the innocent is convicted, and sometimes the guilty is acquitted, which means the only thing that makes "convicted" true in all circumstances is "the legal system has deemed an individual guilty of the allegations". Nothing more. Now, you may certainly make very plausible Bayesian predictions about the fact that someone has been convicted, but they will always be probabilistic rather than determinative.
Consider the hypothetical where Trump's conviction gets overturned or vacated, maybe because of some procedural defect, what would change? For me, it wouldn't change the fact that Trump constructed a convoluted scheme to pay hush money to a porn star he had an affair with in an attempt to hide this fact from the voting public. The only thing that would change from the conviction getting overturned is whether "the legal system has deemed an individual guilty of the allegations".
I don't believe that anyone actually holds the syllogism you describe, because a consistent application would mean that even folks like Nelson Mandela (convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life) would be unfit to serve as president. Instead, what I gather people are doing is some combination of the composition/division fallacies:
A (being convicted of a felony) implies B (being a bad person).
B (being a bad person) implies C (being unfit to be president).
Therefore, A (being convicted of a felony) implies C (being unfit to be president).
I disagree that there is such a thing as objective "centrality", just as I disagree there is such a thing as objective definitions. All language is made-up, and it's only useful to the extent others share your (arbitrarily designated) meaning or boundaries. There are scores of real-life examples that clearly illustrate this, such as the fact that the word for 'sake' refers to all alcoholic drinks in Japanese, or how some languages make a distinction between maternal/paternal aunt/uncle, or how Russian treats light blue and dark blue as separate colors, etc.
Even setting that aside, the only insight you glean from determining whether a member is central to a category or not is...whether a member is central to a category or not. If you use category membership itself to glean any other information about a member, this is exactly the sticker shortcut fallacy I'm describing.
Statutory and other legal interpretation is exempt from my critique here, because the meaning of a word is very often explicitly spelled out in legislation (hence why legalese is so tedious to read). When the meaning is ambiguous, judges resort to specific canons of interpretations (such as legislative intent, ordinary meaning, historical meaning, rule of lenity, etc.) that are based in legal precedent.
I think this post might be a good illustration of the sticker shortcut fallacy I'm describing. Instead of directly describing the information you want to impart, you're instead relying upon the label dredging up enough 'good enough' connotations attached to it.
- I think it's non-fallacious to use language as a shorthand, the same way we say "do you want to play baseball?" rather than "do you want to play a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding?"
- What information, specifically, do you believe "Trump: convicted felon" conveys except that "a jury reviewed evidence and were convinced that Trump committed a particular offense categorized under New York state law as a felony"? I mean this question very narrowly.
- On this point, I concede your argument. To the extent anyone is operating at the "sticker" level (e.g. we don't support law-breakers) then pointing out that their preferred candidate is a law-breaker is indeed a valid rebuttal. But if it's deployed outside that narrow purpose, then it becomes fallacious.
If the problem is ad hoc application, then it doesn't matter if the archetype is "central" or not, no?
My objection to "MLK is a criminal" is that it has to make too many unannounced jumps to get to its conclusion. The principle I can glean from this type of denouncement is something along the lines of "[Criminals] should not be honored by statutes" but whether or not this is a good argument depends entirely on what definition of [criminal] we're using. If we adopt a barebones definition of the word, we'd end up with something like "[anyone who has ever broken any law] should not be honored by statues" which immediately is exposed as unconvincing, which is why they have to hide behind the connotation. That's why I argue the problem isn't whether it's "central" but rather using labels as reasoning shortcuts.
Indeed, it's the same fallacy.
Edit: for those who disagree, can you explain why? I don't believe that "Trump is a convicted felon" tells us anything new except that a court found him guilty of a felony. I'm not trying to be pedantic here, but so what? If people are actually interested in the connotation avalanche that is attached to that label (such as 'bad person', 'dishonorable', 'malicious', etc) then why not just use those direct descriptions instead?
It's interesting hearing about your background. One of my approaches when I negotiate cases with prosecutors is that I openly admit the strengths of the government's case. I've recently had a factually innocent client who was charged as an accessory to burglary, but it seemed obvious to me she had no idea what the other people were up to. When I talked to the prosecutor, I fully acknowledged "This aspect does indeed look bad for my client, but..." and I've always wondered whether this approach has any effect. In this particular instance I did get the case dismissed (and many others like it), but I'm curious if it's a lesson I can continue extrapolating.
I think I recognize the power I wield in these circumstances. However, it only exists because I work to ensure my credibility doesn't get diluted too often.
I think they fully know they're lying about the facts. Where I'm more inclined to believe they've achieved self-deception is within the realm of positive thinking and unshakeable confidence about their anticipated results. Many of my clients seem to earnestly believe that their antics will get their case dismissed or somehow overturned on appeal, but that seems to be a coping strategy necessary to cope with the unimaginable torture of the upcoming years in prison.
The American Bar Association writes the Model Rules of Professional Conduct which are not governing but intended to serve as a template for attorney bars to adopt. Right off the bat that's at least 50 different jurisdictions (plus DC, plus Puerto Rico, plus federal judicial districts, plus many more) that may or may not adopt the RPCs with or without any modifications. Sometimes the modifications are done to comport with state constitution, a judicial committee, a piece of legislation, new case law, or whatever else. So very often, I don't even know that I don't know of a caveat. But even if I did, adding a disclaimer would render anything I write about the law nigh-incomprehensible. Just consider how many libraries have been filled with exceptions and caveats from this one sentence: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
You would think that the revolving door would help repeat offenders wisen up through experience, but the overriding effect is that they're repeat offenders precisely because they lack the capacity to wisen up.
What happened with 11 magic words is too arcane and unpredictable to "game". It mystified even me, and I've had the experience of going through criminal proceedings magnitudes more times than even my most decorated clients. I've commented here to a similar question but gaining my sympathy through lying is 1) not likely to be consequential and 2) very likely to backfire.
Correct, there are indeed potential advantages to lying to your attorney under very specific and narrow circumstances. You also have to consider the risky gamble this presents because you can't predict every aspect of the machinery. Maybe the jury never would've paid attention to the alibi aspect of the case, but if the alibi witnesses get exposed as liars by the prosecution, that alone could swing jurors from acquittal and towards conviction.
If a client tells me they know for sure that their alibi witness will be lying in their favor, then I'm not allowed to elicit the false testimony from that witness. If they admit to me to robbing the store but (truthfully and without omissions) say they were wearing a mask and functional gloves, then that lets me know what facets to focus on and what to avoid. If they're sure enough they left no fingerprints, then I can comfortably ask the investigating detectives if any fingerprints were found. If the circumstances allow it, then I may even get my own expert to dust the entire scene for fingerprints with the aim of presenting their absence as exculpatory evidence to the jury. Keep in mind that my job is not to help the government prosecute my client.
And yes, there are plenty of cases where the perpetrator might be obvious from a common-sense perspective, but it would be legally difficult to prove in court.
Not that exact line, but that notion is communicated all the time. You can imagine that it's not very convincing.
That's interesting, I was not aware of this dynamic. Were there any particular posts that served as a good summary or lodestar for people's stances on this topic?
As a relative outsider and with the job I have (and also fully acknowledging the self-serving aspect of what I'm about to say) this strikes me as a naive and self-destructive position to hold. People in the real world lie, cheat, manipulate, and exploit others, and it seems patently obvious to me that we need mechanisms to discourage that behavior. A culture of disdain towards that conduct is only one aspect of that fight.
Baby, I'm the only one you need.
The closest author I found would be the The Secret Barrister from the UK.
FWIW when I was having these conversations with my clients, I was explicitly thinking of the exact same ideas presented in the Sequences. I do think that overall, LW would benefit from a higher appreciation of deception and how it can manifest in the real world. The scenarios I outlined are almost cartoonish, but they're very real, and I thought it useful to demonstrate how I used very basic rationalist tools to uncover lies.
I get that a lot of people are concerned about this post due to the unabashedly displayed contempt for the clients
I hope it was crystal clear that if I had any contempt, it was strictly reserved to the clients who feebly but blatantly lied to me. Even then, being lied to happens so often that it only bothers me when it's persistent and pervasive past the point of it being funny.
Not gonna lie, I admire Saul Goodman and his (non-illegal) courtroom antics. The first season of Better Call Saul was also a highly authentic vignette into public defender life.
I could have been more precise with my wording, but I never meant to imply that there are no innocent defendants.
Agreed. Almost all the advice in the link is too useless or too attenuated to consider.
It depends on the jurisdiction. Some states only recognize "marital communications" privilege which means whatever is going to be barred has to be something that was disclosed within the sanctity of wedded communications. States also differ on whether the privilege must be raised by the witness or by the defendant.
L A Y E R S of happy little accidents
It sounds like with "factual lies" you're saying that certain lies are about something that can easily be verified, and thus you're unlikely to convince other people that you're being truthful.
Not necessarily, I was referring to lies about the case itself, and those always have the potential to be exposed by either my investigations or the prosecutor.
Why do you say that sympathy lies are not very consequential (assuming they are successful)? My model is that defendants have a pretty large range for how hard they could work on the case, working harder increases the odds of of winning by a good amount, and how hard they work depends a good amount on how sympathetic they are towards the defendant.
Forgive me for answering with literal walls of text but this essay might explain things better: Eleven Magic Words. Bottom line is that I'm generally useless and any contributions I may bring to the table are almost entirely fungible. This other one of mine also gets into the inherent limitations of my job: Death of a Client.
I appreciate the feedback but it's a tension with no obvious answer. Writing simply is a much higher priority for my argumentative writing, where clarity takes precedence. Simplicity takes a backseat for my story-telling prose because the aim is painting an aesthetic collage with my words as much as it is conveying information. There are small poetic touches that I treasure and I would think others would also appreciate. I could have used puppet instead of marionette, but it makes me picture something out of Sesame Street where the puppeteer is below the puppet, in contrast with a puppeteer hovering above a marionette. The word was also a nod to Pinocchio, everyone's favorite fictional liar. Similar with chicanery, which in the original 17th century French meant "quibbling on minor points of law brought up to complicate a judicial case". I didn't actually know this at the time but the word had the right "cloak and dagger" type of vibe I was looking for.
And I also have to admit there is definitely a self-serving dimension as well. English is my third language and one I didn't fully learn until I moved to the US at the age of 10, so I get a kick from showing off my vocabulary.
I appreciate this systemic approach to analyzing lying! The Pros/Cons depend heavily on the type of lie, and you can split it roughly between "factual lies" and "sympathy lies". Factual lies are about whether or not this thing did or did not happen, while sympathy lies are used to generate sympathy from others (e.g. "if I get convicted I'll lose everything").
Sympathy lies are more likely to be successful, but they're also not very consequential. It's possible that it could have an effect at the slimmest of margins, but the risks give it an expected payoff close to zero. The only way I can see this work is if it's done by the truly sociopathic compulsive liars who can manage to successfully con dozens of people.
Factual lies are meaningless. The evidence either corroborates their claims or it doesn't. If there's no corroboration except their word, then they open themselves up to potentially brutal cross-examination. Many many (guilty) defendants have confidently believed they can talk their way out of a situation and failed spectacularly (SBF comes to mind).
And yes, absolutely my job relies heavily on building trust and rapport with my clients. It occupies at least around 80% of my initial conversations with a client.
They did go through with it! And yeah they were already dating so she was cool with it. At first he was beaming because he thought his case would get thrown out soon enough, but I had to explain to him that spousal privilege does not apply retroactively, but even if it did it would only have protected communications made between each other and not events either would have independently witnessed. He looked earnestly surprised and crushed, and of course he didn't tell me his scheme beforehand because he know I would have told him it was idiotic.
This is also true
Interesting! I wasn't aware of this exception. Writing about the law is hard because there are always a million different caveats, some of which will be obsolete by the next year.
It's perfectly reasonable for any client to be suspicious of my motivations and alignment, I'm after all paid directly by the same government that is gunning to throw them behind bars! The clients that are most honest with me are overwhelmingly either newbies to the criminal justice system or factually innocent. The ones who lie to me the most are frequent flyers whose guilt is not in doubt (non-legally speaking). Everyone wants to be let out of jail, the problem is that the latter group has no viable recourse available to make that happen, and their typical temperament drifts them towards pathetic dishonesty.
As a prolific criminal defense attorney, I cannot endorse that advice on those grounds. You should always hope that your attacker survives because killing someone (even if ultimately justified) exposes you to more serious legal jeopardy. Grosskreutz's testimony was disastrous not because he was a criminal who was bad at testifying, but because he told the truth and the truth happened to be on Rittenhouse's side. An attacker getting killed doesn't mean one cannot draw inferences based on the circumstances.
They're in a bind with severely limited options. I've never had a client focus on a single avenue towards acquittal, they'll take whatever they can get. They'll switch focus from witness credibility, wrong first name on traffic ticket, filing deadlines missed by prosecutor, constitutional law argument they found on youtube, pretending to have a mental illness, or MARRYING a witness while in jail under the theory that spousal privilege somehow would prevent them from testifying (this happened!), etc.
Whether or not they seem me as 'trustworthy' is a question with multiple dimensions. If they don't trust me to work hard on their case, I can prove otherwise by actually taking their Dick Bottoms leads seriously but that's generally the opposite of what they want. I can also prove otherwise by researching legal remedies but they get pissed if I don't reach the "right" answer. What it tends to boil down to is that they don't trust me to be their criminal co-conspirator, like with clients who (coyly) ask me to threaten witnesses on their behalf or otherwise tamper with evidence somehow.
Generally I'm a fungible component of the system and the sociopathic bunch have no reason to care about what happens to me specifically (I don't fault them for that) which is why I describe this as pure manipulation attempts.
No, the lying doesn't come from a lack of trust but rather a manipulation attempt. Their overriding goal is to get off the charges no matter what it takes, so they're willing to flip through and latch onto whatever narrative helps them get there. They basically want me to be a ventriloquist and use me to launder their talking points because it's more believable coming from me. Of course as I pointed out, they don't really think the plan all the way through.
This is an excellent breakdown of what I tried to articulate regarding "filling in assumptions in a hypothetical"
I've only been married two months, so I can't stake any longevity experience. As I wrote here in response to a further comment, it's really difficult to imagine how exactly I would react when a hypothetical scenario requires me to fill in so many assumption gaps. For one, I would find it alarming if my non-drinking wife got that intoxicated. I was previously in a relationship with someone who had a history of severe manic episodes, and it was deeply unsettling to always have to scrutinize her behavior through the lens of "does she really want this or is this a sign of burgeoning mania?"
I think this is correct. A parallel scenario could be agreeing to go vegetarian but then asking for an upper limit for how much meat you can eat second-hand from your friends (since they were going to throw it away anyways). You would be revealing a frequency graph that is similarly increasing up to the policy line, indicating serious reluctance to be a vegetarian. There's nothing wrong with this necessarily, but if someone is screening you for how much you really care about being vegetarian, it's reasonable for them to harbor suspicion.
I have a desire to be super rich, but it's either unlikely to happen or not worth pursuing. I have a desire to be an elite athlete, but it's either unlikely to happen or not worth pursuing. I have a desire to fuck an endless parade of super models, but it's either unlikely to happen or not worth pursuing. It's very possible that I would feel differently about pursuing multiple relationships if the chase was either much more effortless or more rewarding. Yet the number of sexual partners I've had already easily puts me in the top <1% of males on that metric. So if I'm expressing reluctance despite that relative advantage, I'm very skeptical how much my preferences would change much in response to greater opportunity.
Extreme hypotheticals can be useful in exploring the outer fringes of our positions, but they do a very poor job of informing our day to day conduct. I'm not averse to engaging with your "drunk wife meets sexiest person in the world" scenario, but for me to give any semblance of an answer requires me to fill in a multitude of assumptions that are too numerous to fully catalog (ex. how did my non-drinking wife get drunk? is she a materially different person when severely intoxicated? whether I went with her to the house party or not, how did my introverted wife find herself alone with the world's sexiest stranger? did I abandon her? etc etc.). Unless I'm specifying each and every assumption I'm relying upon, it's virtually guaranteed that you'll hold a different assumption, which would necessarily change how you interpret my answer. I don't understand what you find enlightening about this hypothetical.
It seems far more relevant to me to think about far more common scenarios, but I don't know if probability is the best way to contemplate this though. I can certainly imagine scenarios where my wife is smitten by a friend/co-worker/barista/whoever and if that happens then we can end our relationship because I wouldn't want to get in her way. I don't think about this scenario prospectively because there's no reason for me to care about it if it hasn't happened. Whether the risk of this scenario happening is 1% or 99% in the future bears little relevance to what I do in the present; I'll continue my relationship so long as it is satisfying.
Pascal's Wager is a good comparison here.
I said "my partner could be smitten by a particularly motivated sexiest person in the world" but you translated that as "she has a high probability of yielding to temptation in that scenario". I also did not say anything about what the scenario would reveal about her character (I'm not even sure what that means) but rather what it would reveal about her preferences. If you have a point I believe you can make it without mischaracterizing my statements.