My read of such cases is that the implicit reasoning seems more like the first part only, ie, “these people are (implicitly) blaming some group G for an alleged problem P. I want to demonstrate that these people are wrong to blame group G”
where the reason for them wanting to demonstrate that you are wrong is something like, they know an interesting fact that demonstrates this, which they think you ought to know, or maybe just want the social status boost from showing you/the world they know said interesting fact
What makes you feel that there is usually an implicit “and therefore we no longer need to be worried about P”? I would assume that in the majority of cases if you followed up their statement by asking “Does this mean that you think P is fine actually?”, they wouldn’t say “yes”, they would say “no, I’m just saying that P isn’t G’s fault”
(edit: looking specifically at the linked WHO-related tweet, something a little different seems to be going on here, where the implicit reasoning seems like “these people are (implicitly) proposing we ought to do X to fix an alleged problem P, but P isn’t actually a problem and X would be really bad, so I’m going to push back”—which seems different. not defending the guy’s (poor) logic on the specifics here, just talking about the form of the argument)
The original assumption that some group G is being implicitly blamed may seem weird, but at least on social media, it seems like a lot of complaining about things happens with the primary goal of blaming someone, so I think it’s not crazy that some people would assume this.
The original assumption that some group G is being implicitly blamed may seem weird, but at least on social media, it seems like a lot of complaining about things happens with the primary goal of blaming someone, so I think it’s not crazy that some people would assume this.
I agree though a) often “blaming someone” (or at least a group/institution) is on the route to trying to get if fixed, especially for quite narrow asks like “your headline sucks” and b) if your problem is with slacktivism writ large I don’t think telling people they misidentified the subgroup within an institution that gets something wrong is likely to be persuasive that people should stop doing slacktivism.
Concretely, if I complain about a headline in the New York Times and tag them on Twitter, the predictable effects include a) decreasing the NYT’s status a little among my readers, b) if enough people raise a fuss/the right people see the complaints, the specific headline might get fixed, and c) optimistically, if even more people raise a fuss and the right people see such complaints with enough regularity, the NYT might change their headlines policy going forwards.
Maybe you think this is useless. But a) I think you’re empirically wrong about headlines at least sometimes, and b) I don’t think “the writers aren’t responsible for headlines” is a satisfying explanation for why it’s useless!
Similarly, writing about why a pandemic action is bad is one of the ways a journalist/quasi-public figure like Kelsey has to effect change. Maybe it’s worse than (eg) a white paper with step-by-step analysis of how each specific institution, and each team within an organization, could act differently, but I’m not sure that’s true[1]. Besides, the latter is a much higher bar!
though on reflection, I do think the second example feels something like “to fix P, we would have to do something different, therefore P is intractable”, which does seem to me like a more common fallacy and probably most appealing to people who feel that P isn’t a big deal anyway.
the third example also has a similar vibe (“to fix P, we would have to do something different (specifically, X, which would be bad) (and P isn’t a big deal anyway)”).
My read of such cases is that the implicit reasoning seems more like the first part only, ie, “these people are (implicitly) blaming some group G for an alleged problem P. I want to demonstrate that these people are wrong to blame group G”
where the reason for them wanting to demonstrate that you are wrong is something like, they know an interesting fact that demonstrates this, which they think you ought to know, or maybe just want the social status boost from showing you/the world they know said interesting fact
What makes you feel that there is usually an implicit “and therefore we no longer need to be worried about P”? I would assume that in the majority of cases if you followed up their statement by asking “Does this mean that you think P is fine actually?”, they wouldn’t say “yes”, they would say “no, I’m just saying that P isn’t G’s fault”
(edit: looking specifically at the linked WHO-related tweet, something a little different seems to be going on here, where the implicit reasoning seems like “these people are (implicitly) proposing we ought to do X to fix an alleged problem P, but P isn’t actually a problem and X would be really bad, so I’m going to push back”—which seems different. not defending the guy’s (poor) logic on the specifics here, just talking about the form of the argument)
The original assumption that some group G is being implicitly blamed may seem weird, but at least on social media, it seems like a lot of complaining about things happens with the primary goal of blaming someone, so I think it’s not crazy that some people would assume this.
I agree though a) often “blaming someone” (or at least a group/institution) is on the route to trying to get if fixed, especially for quite narrow asks like “your headline sucks” and b) if your problem is with slacktivism writ large I don’t think telling people they misidentified the subgroup within an institution that gets something wrong is likely to be persuasive that people should stop doing slacktivism.
Concretely, if I complain about a headline in the New York Times and tag them on Twitter, the predictable effects include a) decreasing the NYT’s status a little among my readers, b) if enough people raise a fuss/the right people see the complaints, the specific headline might get fixed, and c) optimistically, if even more people raise a fuss and the right people see such complaints with enough regularity, the NYT might change their headlines policy going forwards.
Maybe you think this is useless. But a) I think you’re empirically wrong about headlines at least sometimes, and b) I don’t think “the writers aren’t responsible for headlines” is a satisfying explanation for why it’s useless!
Similarly, writing about why a pandemic action is bad is one of the ways a journalist/quasi-public figure like Kelsey has to effect change. Maybe it’s worse than (eg) a white paper with step-by-step analysis of how each specific institution, and each team within an organization, could act differently, but I’m not sure that’s true[1]. Besides, the latter is a much higher bar!
From the outside, it’s easier to see how something is a problem than the specific steps necessary to fix it!
though on reflection, I do think the second example feels something like “to fix P, we would have to do something different, therefore P is intractable”, which does seem to me like a more common fallacy and probably most appealing to people who feel that P isn’t a big deal anyway.
the third example also has a similar vibe (“to fix P, we would have to do something different (specifically, X, which would be bad) (and P isn’t a big deal anyway)”).