These considerations are not opposed. Both are good ideas: not fighting hypotheticals, and making better hypotheticals. Fallibility shouldn’t be perceived as an egalitarian right: one person’s flaw doesn’t make another person’s flaw OK.
In this case, it’s a ‘meet in the middle’ thing. This hypothetical is asking us to completely ignore something not on the grounds of ‘ceteris paribus’ or some other conventional hypothetical framing device, but to ignore the dominant effect in the system.
Please don’t fight the hypothetical.
Then make better hypotheticals?
These considerations are not opposed. Both are good ideas: not fighting hypotheticals, and making better hypotheticals. Fallibility shouldn’t be perceived as an egalitarian right: one person’s flaw doesn’t make another person’s flaw OK.
Yes, that’s true as a general rule.
In this case, it’s a ‘meet in the middle’ thing. This hypothetical is asking us to completely ignore something not on the grounds of ‘ceteris paribus’ or some other conventional hypothetical framing device, but to ignore the dominant effect in the system.