The “halo defence” is not, I think, an attempt to actually state that factually the outcome is less likely or has not happened.
It is, rather, that X is not important enough to warrant focus/punishment because of the positive effects of Y.
It is socially costly (basically, negative EV) to be publically seen to claim that X is somehow not a problem, hence the deflection.
To use an absurd example—imagine that my neighbour is a unique person in the world with some sort of superhuman ability to cure cancer or do incredible research that no-one else can do with really high expected value for society. He also may or may not have murdered a few people.
It is less costly socially to argue, even if everyone knows that this isn’t really true, that he probably didn’t do the murders, because he’s such a good guy in other areas, as opposed to arguing the utilitarian “well yeah, he’s a murderer, but he’s saved 5000 people from cancer so like, whatever”.
The “halo defence” is not, I think, an attempt to actually state that factually the outcome is less likely or has not happened.
It is, rather, that X is not important enough to warrant focus/punishment because of the positive effects of Y.
It is socially costly (basically, negative EV) to be publically seen to claim that X is somehow not a problem, hence the deflection.
To use an absurd example—imagine that my neighbour is a unique person in the world with some sort of superhuman ability to cure cancer or do incredible research that no-one else can do with really high expected value for society. He also may or may not have murdered a few people.
It is less costly socially to argue, even if everyone knows that this isn’t really true, that he probably didn’t do the murders, because he’s such a good guy in other areas, as opposed to arguing the utilitarian “well yeah, he’s a murderer, but he’s saved 5000 people from cancer so like, whatever”.