Comment by throw10920
10 months ago
I wonder what the name is for the fallacies committed by this comment and grandparent comment. It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed these two contradictory things, I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them".
It's like a strawman fallacy did a fusion dance with an ad-hominem. I see it all the time on HN - surely it has a name.
> It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed [...]"
No, what's disingenuous is your weird attempt to stifle an entirely on-topic discussion which has made you uncomfortable. You're suggesting that we may not criticize a stance or argument unless another Hacker News user has directly advocated for it. That's not how it works, or else we'd never be able to talk about things like the DMCA or Microsoft's forced-reboot update policy.
That said, how about we steer away from pure-meta personal attack posts to something that at least involves the original topic of markets and market-actors, starting with:
> I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them"
Your comment is saying--via sarcastic subtext--that I have "made up" items #1 and #2 and that (to substitute GP's term) "free-market ideologues" do not advance either argument about efficiency or cartel-risk.
Is that really what you believe and you'd be convinced otherwise by examples, or would you like to issue some non-sarcastic clarification?
> what's disingenuous
Incorrect. I'm pointing out logical fallacies and emotional manipulation. Nothing disingenuous here, just rationality.
> attempt to stifle an entirely on-topic discussion
Incorrect. This is "flamebait....generic tangents...internet tropes." (as the guidelines say to avoid) because, as already pointed out, nobody in this thread has made these arguments together.
> You're suggesting that we may not criticize a stance or argument unless another Hacker News user has directly advocated for it.
Also incorrect. I never suggested that. Additionally, even if I had, you're not criticizing a stance - that's a dishonest and incorrect portrayal of your comment, which was fabricating an imaginary contradiction between two distinct arguments, as a means of attacking a group you didn't like.
> That's not how it works, or else we'd never be able to talk about things like the DMCA or Microsoft's forced-reboot update policy.
Also dishonest and incorrect. Microsoft is a single organization that makes public statements that you can link to and point out inconsistencies in.
That is not what you're doing - the free-market HN users that you're emotionally attacking (because that's what it is - there's no logic here) are not a single person or entity, but a highly diverse group of individuals with wildly different opinions.
What's more, you didn't even respond to a comment that one of them made - you're fabricating the existence of one of them that has a set of contradictory opinions (that you've also invented) to try to generally attack the idea that they represent. That's very bad form and very clearly against the HN guidelines.
> That said, how about we steer away from pure-meta personal attack posts
You're violating the guidelines and engaging in dishonest and anti-intellectual emotional manipulation and ideological warfare...on a site that's designed for intellectual curiosity. It's very reasonable to call that out.
> Your comment is saying..."free-market ideologues" do not advance either argument about efficiency or cartel-risk.
That is not what my comment is saying or implying - that's you fabricating a strawman.
You are "fabricating" a person because there's no specific person that you're debating with. That clearly does not mean that there don't exist people who don't hold those beliefs individually (or even together) - but you're not referring to a person in your comment, you're referring to an imaginary archetype, and you're doing so as a way of attacking it.
I've absolutely met individuals who hold either of those positions individually. And I have definitely met people that are self-inconsistent with respect to the beliefs that they hold.
Neither of those things justify you inventing a nonexistent self-contradictory person as a way to wage ideological warfare against a group/ideology you don't like.
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I encourage readers to click on that link to all the commenting guidelines, and then carefully consider who is really breaking their spirit in this thread. Goodbye.
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> That is not what you're doing - the free-market HN users that you're emotionally attacking
Who said they were talking about HN users? AFAICR, the GP explicitly said that was not what they were talking about.
Maybe you're not arguing from bad faith; just bad reading comprehension.
What precisely do you disagree with about my comment?
I wouldn't say that HN commenters have been especially influential advocates in selling a potent brand of free-market capitalism to the United States of America. That happened long before HN began, and even the other advocacy efforts of people like Thiel are at this point a drop in a very large bucket.
Silicon Valley antitrust enforcement is especially topical because the government is apparently gunning for Google now, but if Realpage-like labor price collusion becomes common in the corporate world (inside or outside of SV) that's a substantially bigger deal.