To the Hypothetical Future, and Beyond!
Oct. 1st, 2006 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorI've lately become more and more aware of a rhetorical closer, the often angry dismissal of an unwinnable argument born of frustration: The Appeal to Hypothetical Authority.
I just realized that it's very similar to the Fuck You Game.
Before fond reminiscence of the FYG, let's cover the AtHA. Such an appeal attempts to end all furtherdiscussion disagreement by noting that the opponent's argument contradicts often mystical predictions from some unverifiable source. Consider a blatant bumpersticker example:
Translation; mend your ways, unbelieving sinner, or hell awaits. The only problem with this Appeal is simple, once one realizes the driver of that particular car may very well be a follower of a religion that God him/herself finds heretical. In fact, come the next life, we may all be faced with the error of our ways in this life. This little factoid resonates poorly with the AtHA crowd, however, for reasons I'll try to mention later.
These appeals need not be supernatural in nature. And let's be clear; by "supernatural," I mean literally, as in "above and beyond the natural world," undetectable by mere mortals; as opposed to the Xian version of the word used as a blanket condemnation of what established religions view as practices and beliefs in the occult -- including, sadly, any religious belief that does not match their own.
Take politics in general. It doesn't matter which political affiliation is involved, these catfights are perpetual stalemates without the AtHA. Political philosophies find basis in political theory. Theories, when executed properly, attempt to trace the cause and effect of past and present political disaster and/or success, and based on these traces formulate the Does and Don'ts of any given philosophy.
For example, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles saw the London of Dickens, a newly emerging industrial society controlled by feudal agrarian mores. It wasn't a pretty picture. Read anything by Dickens if you want a glimpse. From their observations arose The Communist Manifesto, a political attempt to codify the causes of the misery they saw around them. Off the top of my head, they put the blame for misery on class distinctions, religion that enforced these class distinctions, the perpetual struggle between the classes, and . . . what was it? Oh, yeah, any class distinctions as codified by property and the lack thereof. After all, if there are no class definitions of what it is to be a boss, bosses cannot exist to make life miserable for the workers. All other communist philosophies pretty much expand the conclusions found in the Manifesto. Oh, and it's pretty dry reading. Happily it's short.
By philosophical contrast, Ayn Rand's family lost everything in the communist takeover during the Russian Revolution. For her, collectivism is therefore evil. She preferred the absolute rule of the individual, and decried any attempt to stifle the individual expression. For a quick peek at this philosophy, I highly recommend you steer clear of doorstops like The Fountainhead and get to the meat and potatoes of her views with Anthem. It's short, which is good, because she is a very bad writer, choosing cardboard cutout characters over nuance and anything remotely interesting.
So now we have two opposing philosophies. One says, "You can't do that! It violates the collective will!" The other says, "You can't do that! It violates my will!"
How are these particular Appeals put to the argument-stopping test? One example made me laugh. I can't remember who told me the story, so beware, this may be an urban legend. A student was arguing the various merits of economics with an older, almost stereotypical professor with revolutionary communist leanings. The student was actually making rhetorical points and gaining logical ground. Who knows, maybe the prof was having an off day. Suddenly, after a few false starts and mumbling, the professor wags a finger under the student's nose and says, "Just you wait for the revolution!"
The Revolution is the ultimate AtHA because, even after the initial overthrow of the Tsarist government, the Revolution continued in Russia. There were still inequities in society, obvious to everyone. Why wasn't everyone equal and free? Because there were enemies of equality that must be fought. Until everyone on the planet agreed on the same communist philosophy, the revolution was incomplete!
I guess I should briefly touch on the difference between a legitimate appeal to authority and an AtHA. Let's say I'm having an argument about, say, how a radar works. I say the range is adjusted by varying the amplitude of the waves eminating from the magnatron. My friend Dean says it must be an adjustment in receiver sensitivity, not the transmitter's power.
Were this argument based on the unknowable, on circumstances that could be neither proven nor disproven, we would each have to find our God of Radar and invoke His Name to shut the other the fuck up. (It wasn't that heated a discussion, but let's just say.) "Reception?" would say I, shaking mine head in saddness. "Amplitude God pities the ignorance of low-powered fools like you." He would rejoin, probably with a look to the heavens, praying, "Oh, Reception God, can you not improve the resolution of the unbeliever zeitgeist?" Then the Radar Wars would rage.
Happily, the question could be answered by going to a radar repair shop and asking an actual authority. It turns out we were both wrong. Range is adjusted by changing the wavelength. The shorter the waves, the finer the resolution and closer the range on the screen. Well, duh.
But this appeal to authority can only work if a) the arguing participants can discover an authority, and b) they also take the time and trouble to look stuff up, to do research, an act which takes time and effort and could conceivably reveal information that proves the looker to be -- gasp! -- wrong.
Seriously, I think the current Xian war on the sciences is an attempt by certain intractable believers to not be proven wrong.
But I digress.
So, Appeals to Hypothetical Authorities. When you can't argue based on the facts, either because you have no facts at hand to argue or realize there are no relevant facts available on this earth at this time, you end the frustrating argument. You shut down your opponent by invoking aninviolable unprovable source.
Or you can take a rhetorically identical route by telling him or her to Fuck Off.
This second closing strategy is called by my friends Terry and Michelle the Fuck You Game. Essentially, the first person to issue the words "Fuck You" or a variation thereon (fuck off, fuck right off, go take a flying fuck on a rolling donut, FY and the horse in on which you rode -- you get the idea) concedes defeat. The person being told FY therefore has the right to say "I win!" and do an elaborate victory dance if he or she so chooses. Knowing Terry and Michelle, I can imagine the gloating glee of some of those dances.
(BTW, just to shamelessly drop names, Terry used to brew at Portland's Widmer Brewing, where he concocted the recipes for both Winternacht and Widberry. A little tidbit for you Northwesterners.)
Here's a question: Why would anyone invoke either the AtHA or concede defeat in the FYG?
A better question to ask: At one point or another, why do we all do these things?
Because we are human. Because we like to believe that the things we believe are true. Because people nagging us with arguments showing us that the things we believe may not be true really irritates us. It irritates us because change can be painful, and for some proves impossible.
Invoking either expletives or authorities impossible to verify or disprove marks the loser to any argument. I truly believe that. Sadly, it marks the loser as someone who ends the argument for the wrong reason; not because he or she wants to avoid the specter of defeat (though that is an issue to consider), but because he or she doesn't want to learn anything more about this reality than they think they already know.
Addendum, January 3, 2007: I changed the original "Appeal to Higher Authority" to ". . . Hypothetical. . ." This was originally written in a screaming hurry. I had not stopped to consider that there are plenty of higher authorities, like radar techies, but no hypothetical ones that matter.
Sorry.
I just realized that it's very similar to the Fuck You Game.
Before fond reminiscence of the FYG, let's cover the AtHA. Such an appeal attempts to end all further
Eternity: Smoking or Non-Smoking?
Translation; mend your ways, unbelieving sinner, or hell awaits. The only problem with this Appeal is simple, once one realizes the driver of that particular car may very well be a follower of a religion that God him/herself finds heretical. In fact, come the next life, we may all be faced with the error of our ways in this life. This little factoid resonates poorly with the AtHA crowd, however, for reasons I'll try to mention later.
These appeals need not be supernatural in nature. And let's be clear; by "supernatural," I mean literally, as in "above and beyond the natural world," undetectable by mere mortals; as opposed to the Xian version of the word used as a blanket condemnation of what established religions view as practices and beliefs in the occult -- including, sadly, any religious belief that does not match their own.
Take politics in general. It doesn't matter which political affiliation is involved, these catfights are perpetual stalemates without the AtHA. Political philosophies find basis in political theory. Theories, when executed properly, attempt to trace the cause and effect of past and present political disaster and/or success, and based on these traces formulate the Does and Don'ts of any given philosophy.
For example, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles saw the London of Dickens, a newly emerging industrial society controlled by feudal agrarian mores. It wasn't a pretty picture. Read anything by Dickens if you want a glimpse. From their observations arose The Communist Manifesto, a political attempt to codify the causes of the misery they saw around them. Off the top of my head, they put the blame for misery on class distinctions, religion that enforced these class distinctions, the perpetual struggle between the classes, and . . . what was it? Oh, yeah, any class distinctions as codified by property and the lack thereof. After all, if there are no class definitions of what it is to be a boss, bosses cannot exist to make life miserable for the workers. All other communist philosophies pretty much expand the conclusions found in the Manifesto. Oh, and it's pretty dry reading. Happily it's short.By philosophical contrast, Ayn Rand's family lost everything in the communist takeover during the Russian Revolution. For her, collectivism is therefore evil. She preferred the absolute rule of the individual, and decried any attempt to stifle the individual expression. For a quick peek at this philosophy, I highly recommend you steer clear of doorstops like The Fountainhead and get to the meat and potatoes of her views with Anthem. It's short, which is good, because she is a very bad writer, choosing cardboard cutout characters over nuance and anything remotely interesting.So now we have two opposing philosophies. One says, "You can't do that! It violates the collective will!" The other says, "You can't do that! It violates my will!"
How are these particular Appeals put to the argument-stopping test? One example made me laugh. I can't remember who told me the story, so beware, this may be an urban legend. A student was arguing the various merits of economics with an older, almost stereotypical professor with revolutionary communist leanings. The student was actually making rhetorical points and gaining logical ground. Who knows, maybe the prof was having an off day. Suddenly, after a few false starts and mumbling, the professor wags a finger under the student's nose and says, "Just you wait for the revolution!"
The Revolution is the ultimate AtHA because, even after the initial overthrow of the Tsarist government, the Revolution continued in Russia. There were still inequities in society, obvious to everyone. Why wasn't everyone equal and free? Because there were enemies of equality that must be fought. Until everyone on the planet agreed on the same communist philosophy, the revolution was incomplete!
I guess I should briefly touch on the difference between a legitimate appeal to authority and an AtHA. Let's say I'm having an argument about, say, how a radar works. I say the range is adjusted by varying the amplitude of the waves eminating from the magnatron. My friend Dean says it must be an adjustment in receiver sensitivity, not the transmitter's power.
Were this argument based on the unknowable, on circumstances that could be neither proven nor disproven, we would each have to find our God of Radar and invoke His Name to shut the other the fuck up. (It wasn't that heated a discussion, but let's just say.) "Reception?" would say I, shaking mine head in saddness. "Amplitude God pities the ignorance of low-powered fools like you." He would rejoin, probably with a look to the heavens, praying, "Oh, Reception God, can you not improve the resolution of the unbeliever zeitgeist?" Then the Radar Wars would rage.
Happily, the question could be answered by going to a radar repair shop and asking an actual authority. It turns out we were both wrong. Range is adjusted by changing the wavelength. The shorter the waves, the finer the resolution and closer the range on the screen. Well, duh.
But this appeal to authority can only work if a) the arguing participants can discover an authority, and b) they also take the time and trouble to look stuff up, to do research, an act which takes time and effort and could conceivably reveal information that proves the looker to be -- gasp! -- wrong.
Seriously, I think the current Xian war on the sciences is an attempt by certain intractable believers to not be proven wrong.
But I digress.
So, Appeals to Hypothetical Authorities. When you can't argue based on the facts, either because you have no facts at hand to argue or realize there are no relevant facts available on this earth at this time, you end the frustrating argument. You shut down your opponent by invoking an
Or you can take a rhetorically identical route by telling him or her to Fuck Off.
This second closing strategy is called by my friends Terry and Michelle the Fuck You Game. Essentially, the first person to issue the words "Fuck You" or a variation thereon (fuck off, fuck right off, go take a flying fuck on a rolling donut, FY and the horse in on which you rode -- you get the idea) concedes defeat. The person being told FY therefore has the right to say "I win!" and do an elaborate victory dance if he or she so chooses. Knowing Terry and Michelle, I can imagine the gloating glee of some of those dances.
(BTW, just to shamelessly drop names, Terry used to brew at Portland's Widmer Brewing, where he concocted the recipes for both Winternacht and Widberry. A little tidbit for you Northwesterners.)
Here's a question: Why would anyone invoke either the AtHA or concede defeat in the FYG?
A better question to ask: At one point or another, why do we all do these things?
Because we are human. Because we like to believe that the things we believe are true. Because people nagging us with arguments showing us that the things we believe may not be true really irritates us. It irritates us because change can be painful, and for some proves impossible.
Invoking either expletives or authorities impossible to verify or disprove marks the loser to any argument. I truly believe that. Sadly, it marks the loser as someone who ends the argument for the wrong reason; not because he or she wants to avoid the specter of defeat (though that is an issue to consider), but because he or she doesn't want to learn anything more about this reality than they think they already know.
Addendum, January 3, 2007: I changed the original "Appeal to Higher Authority" to ". . . Hypothetical. . ." This was originally written in a screaming hurry. I had not stopped to consider that there are plenty of higher authorities, like radar techies, but no hypothetical ones that matter.
Sorry.