The Genetic Fallacy

Post Reply New Topic

When does who you are negate what you say?
Should a logical well thought out argument made by a avowed racist be weighed the same
as one by a person who is free from the taint of bigotry.
Now there are Heuristics one can use like
"if it is in the Washington times or Pravda it is prolly propaganda"
or
"A person that works for a tobacco company prolly will not tell the truth about tobacco"
etc.
But does [x] is a registered democrat, republican or BNP mean they are lying about facts?
we assume they have predictable opinions
but do opinions on one subject negate honesty on another?
Do we have to weigh each source equally ? Weighing Drudge the same as Nytimes?
so the question is when is the genetic fallacy not a fallacy?
can fresh water and sewage come from the same fountain?

I think one "considers the source" as a means of quickly determining the liklihood that a piece of information is credible.
It would be nice if we all had the time to do our own fact-checking, but that's not feasible.
Instead, we try to find media sources that are ethical and accurate, so that we may safely assume the news they report is factual.

Truth is truth, regardless of whether a person who is a compulsive liar speaks it or whether it's parroted by a robot.

Is the political bias of a source more important then their reputation for honesty?

If a person is biased and yet admits they're biased, I would be more willing to lend them credence than people who think or act as if they are objective by default.

I tend to think motive mongering is its own tainted game and it comes from the practice of partisans attacking partisans. If you know that someone is lets say very well tied into big oil and they have a very strong opinion on deep-water drilling and new regulations, you know why they have that opinion but also you can realize that, particularly if they're working for someone like Halliburton or BP, they see it all day every day, so they have quite a wealth of insight into their own sliver of reality - just like a big four CPA would know SAS rulings PCAOB pronouncements quite well - and obviously people will have the debate over just how well their sliver of reality sows itself into everyone else's broader awareness.

I think you'll always have to watch for natural skews that people have in their image of the world based on their environments. Occassionally you may have very deliberate intellectual dishonesty but I'm pretty certain from my own experience that when people try so hard to find deliberate intellectual dishonesty everywhere or try to make cases for blanket rules like 'genetic fallacy' - they want to understand life, don't want to do the work, and sweeping generalities like these are the big red Staples EASY button. Obviously shoddy half-fast research and due diligence leads to shoddy half-fast understanding.

I think being Andrew Breitbart should negate at least 9/10ths of what you say, since he has already explicitly stated his intentions and methods.

He was right on weinergate, but he's been wrong on so much else that we should probably just ignore him.

agreed


I weigh a good argument from a racist equally with a good argument from someone from NYT, WSJ, The Nation, or National Review.

a good argument is a good argument, even if the sum totality of the person's making the points arguments are not good.

Agreed. But what if we replace the word "Racist" with Propagandist.
Is a seemingly good argument made in a NSM party newspaper equivalent to one made in WSJ.?

I was once severely chastised for agreeing with a true proposition advanced by the enemy.

Bei mir, Truth is and must be. By certain others, some of whom I could name, the wrong source falsifies truth.

Right, but you would hold skepticism towards a compulsive liar claims, because of his nature, if you don't know wether his claims are factual or not, and if you have to make a decision based on that, your skepticism would be stronger towards a person like that, than someone who is known to be honest. This isn't to say that X, who is a compulsiva liar claims P, therefore P is false.

I believe that there is a word for the thing you're asking about.
Attacking the message by ignoring the message itsself and attacking the messenger is called an "ad hominem" attack.

It listed as a logical fallacy. But it isnt always a fallacy. Sometimes who the messenger is is relevent.

It all depends.

A statement that "all people who have eyebrows that meet in the middle are innately superior to all other humans" coming from someone who's eyebrows meet in the middle is asinine.
You dont have to apologize for ignoring them, nor indeed for laughing at them regardless of how many statistics and graphs they throw at you.

But if an actual scientists in the appropriate field with innately seperate eyebrows( doesnt pluck with tweezers but was born such), and is not on the payroll of the "Single eyebrow defense league of America", says that there is evidence that people who's eyebrows meet in the middle "have higher IQ's" then you might listen to them.

Stopped clocks are right twice a day. And self serving propagandists might be also be right once in a while but we all dont have to time to fact check everything. So its safe to ignore a statement that "smoking cigarettes is as safe as drinking mothers milk" coming from the Tobacco Association.

ad hom and the genetic fallacy are both logical fallacies.
they have a synergistic relationship with each other
i.e.

one can use ad hom to say that the source of the argument is tainted and thus the argument is wrong.
most ad homs have a implied Genetic fallacy.
The idea of taint comes up a lot in fringe politics
an Idea is bad because it is Jewish, bourgeoisie, socialist or liberal without any explanation.

I think we'd be idiots to just take certain people/sources at face value. Some have shown themselves to be quite consistently wrong. Whether outright lying to give people the wrong idea, or simply being ignorant of the facts, a person's track record can and should be considered in many cases.

It's a fallacy to say, "this is being said by so and so, therefore, it is false." It is just common sense to say, "this article on climate science found in a right wing propaganda outlet, citing a lawyer from a global warming denying think tank funded by oil companies, is inherently dubious and we should treat it with great suspicion."

If the piece goes on to fail the laugh test, we are completely justified in mocking the wingnut that posted it. And future posts of his should be handled with great skepticism.

The genetic fallacy deals with the truth value of what they are saying. However, warrant for belief is a seperate matter. You cant conclude that a liar is wrong, but you certainly don't have grounds for believing what they say. The genetic fallacy mostly exists to stop people equivocating between these two issues.

I separate facets of an individual.
A reaction to an Adolph Hitler painting I had on my desktop once says this is not a common means of thinking.