One good reason to “fight the hypothetical” is that many people propose hypotheticals insincerely.
Sometimes this is obvious: “But what if having a gun was the only way to kill Hitler?” or alternatively “But what if a world ban on guns had prevented Hitler?” are clearly not sincere questions but strawman arguments offered to try to sneak you into agreement with a much more mundane and debatable choice.
But the same happens with things like the Trolley problem or Torture v. Specks. Many “irrational” answers to hypotheticals come out of reflexes that are perfectly rational under ordinary circumstances. If the hypothetical-proposer isn’t willing to allow that the underlying reflex has its uses, the hypothetical-proposer is ignorant or untrustworthy.
For example, while in principle killing by inaction is as bad as killing by action, in practice it’s much easier to harm with a nonconformist action than to help—consider how many times in a day you could kill someone if you suddenly wanted to. So a reflexive bias to have a higher standard of evidence for harmful action than harmful inaction has its uses.
So when someone is using hypotheticals to prove “people are stupid”, they’re not proving that in quite the way they think. Should we really play along with them?
But the same happens with things like the Trolley problem or Torture v. Specks. Many “irrational” answers to hypotheticals come out of reflexes that are perfectly rational under ordinary circumstances. If the hypothetical-proposer isn’t willing to allow that the underlying reflex has its uses, the hypothetical-proposer is ignorant or untrustworthy.
It depends a bit on how well the discussion is going—if it isn’t trying to reach true beliefs then that is your problem, not the appropriateness of the hypothetical.
But if the discussion is going well, then knee-jerk reactions to the hypothetical aren’t helpful. The fact that a reflex answer usually works is no evidence that it handles edge cases well. And if it doesn’t handle edge cases well, then it might not be a very coherent position after all.
if it isn’t trying to reach true beliefs then that is your problem, not the appropriateness of the hypothetical.
Yeah, that’s what I often find—otherwise smart people using an edge case to argue unreasonable but “clever” contrarian things about ordinary behavior.
“I found an inconsistency, therefore your behavior comes from social signalling” is bad thinking, even when a smart and accomplished person does it.
So if someone posts a hypothetical, my first meta-question is whether they go into it assuming that they should be curious, rather than contemptuous, about inconsistent responses. “Frustrated” I respect, and “confused” I respect, but “contemptuous”...
If you’re comfortable being contemptuous about ordinary human behavior, you have to prove a whole heck of a lot to me about your practical success in life before I play along with your theoretical construct.
Ordinary human behavior can be your opponent, but you can’t take it lightly—it’s what allowed you to exist in the first place.
One good reason to “fight the hypothetical” is that many people propose hypotheticals insincerely.
Sometimes this is obvious: “But what if having a gun was the only way to kill Hitler?” or alternatively “But what if a world ban on guns had prevented Hitler?” are clearly not sincere questions but strawman arguments offered to try to sneak you into agreement with a much more mundane and debatable choice.
But the same happens with things like the Trolley problem or Torture v. Specks. Many “irrational” answers to hypotheticals come out of reflexes that are perfectly rational under ordinary circumstances. If the hypothetical-proposer isn’t willing to allow that the underlying reflex has its uses, the hypothetical-proposer is ignorant or untrustworthy.
For example, while in principle killing by inaction is as bad as killing by action, in practice it’s much easier to harm with a nonconformist action than to help—consider how many times in a day you could kill someone if you suddenly wanted to. So a reflexive bias to have a higher standard of evidence for harmful action than harmful inaction has its uses.
So when someone is using hypotheticals to prove “people are stupid”, they’re not proving that in quite the way they think. Should we really play along with them?
It depends a bit on how well the discussion is going—if it isn’t trying to reach true beliefs then that is your problem, not the appropriateness of the hypothetical.
But if the discussion is going well, then knee-jerk reactions to the hypothetical aren’t helpful. The fact that a reflex answer usually works is no evidence that it handles edge cases well. And if it doesn’t handle edge cases well, then it might not be a very coherent position after all.
Yeah, that’s what I often find—otherwise smart people using an edge case to argue unreasonable but “clever” contrarian things about ordinary behavior.
“I found an inconsistency, therefore your behavior comes from social signalling” is bad thinking, even when a smart and accomplished person does it.
So if someone posts a hypothetical, my first meta-question is whether they go into it assuming that they should be curious, rather than contemptuous, about inconsistent responses. “Frustrated” I respect, and “confused” I respect, but “contemptuous”...
If you’re comfortable being contemptuous about ordinary human behavior, you have to prove a whole heck of a lot to me about your practical success in life before I play along with your theoretical construct.
Ordinary human behavior can be your opponent, but you can’t take it lightly—it’s what allowed you to exist in the first place.
I think you will find this post is a helpful way of approaching the issue.
Beyond that, I think it is a reasonable interpretive canon of rationality that inconsistency is bad.