
Appeals to Consequences - luu
https://www.jefftk.com/p/appeals-to-consequences
======
roenxi
A culture that is consistently truthful will develop a substantial advantage
over one that isn't; over time they will have better information and make
better decisions. The example in the article is a really good example of the
problem with the fallacy - they couldn't come up with something that makes
sense. The ends are unjustifiable; money is being routed to a charity that is
ineffective at saving drowning puppies. There are presumably charities that
can save 200 puppies for $1.2 million that should be getting the money
instead. People who could save puppies for $1,000/puppy will not bother trying
because they will think they are inefficient.

The argument in the original (Jessica Taylor) argument rests heavily on the
idea that there is nobody who could do better out there. In a world of 7
billion people that is a bad assumption. And that is the problem with lies -
we have the technical capability to solve a dizzying array of problems the the
point where and the major challenge is working out what the problems are then
prioritising improving our handling of them.

There needs to be an appeal to consequences example that makes more sense for
the argument to start. The consequences of lying about capability in a world
with highly refined knowledge, research and development systems are
substantially greater than the short term consequences of this particular
example. Suppressing facts will not help save puppies, it will numb the
response.

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kerkeslager
The fundamental problem with the appeal to consequences argument is that it's
a willingness to hide or ignore the truth, or outright lie.

I've said before that I think the ends _do_ justify the means
(consequentialism), but you should be extremely skeptical of "ends justify the
means" arguments because people rarely look at the complete consequences. If
you're willing to hide or ignore the truth, or lie, then I'm extremely
skeptical that your motivations are actually prosocial, and I'm skeptical that
the results will actually be good.

~~~
MadWombat
The general problem with "ends justify the means" arguments, as I see it, is
not as much completeness of the consequences, but rather the risk analysis. A
lot of "ends justify the means" points of view involve doing certain harm now
for uncertain good in the future. Like "lets execute a few thousand class
traitors today, so we can build a socialist paradise tomorrow" or "lets lower
the taxes for the rich and in a few years the wealth will trickle down". At
this point it is kinda hard to be a consistent consequentialist. How certain
do you have to be about the paradise of tomorrow to justify an execution
today?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
But our theory says that the good outcome is certain!

/s

The problem is that true believers in the correctness of their theory are
_horrible_ at risk analysis, because they assign 100% probability to the
success of their program.

~~~
MadWombat
Consider a variation on the trolley problem. Just like always, there are two
track branches and a switch. On the main track, there are five people, on the
side track there is one person. But this time things are a tiny bit different.
The trolley driver is braking. And the five people on the main track are a few
hundred yards down the track, so maybe the trolley will be able to stop before
it runs them over. But not. But there is a chance. The one person on the side
track, on the other hand, is right here, there is no chance in hell they live
if you pull the switch. So what do you do? How do you even reason about
something like this?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
To me, it's really simple. I don't throw the switch. I trust the five people
to _get off the %^$#@ tracks_ before the trolley gets there. And I trust the
trolley driver to get on the horn to alert the five people that they'd better
start doing so without delay.

~~~
MadWombat
In the problem, the people are tied down to the tracks. Or possibly glued. Or
to make it even more horrifying, riveted :)

------
mannykannot
In which the author presents an appeal-to-consequences argument against taking
a hard line against accepting appeal-to-consequences arguments.

At least that is self-consistent, while an appeal-to-consequences argument
against accepting appeal-to-consequences arguments would not be. But what sort
of argument against accepting appeal-to-consequences arguments would be self-
consistent?

After rolling that one around for a while, I would tentatively suggest that it
is _self-serving_ appeal-to-consequences arguments that we should be most
suspicious of, while genuinely _greater-good_ ones deserve consideration.

That did not take long to 'go meta.' Maybe it is a sign that this, like many
other ethics issues, is resistant to doctrinaire solutions, which is pretty
much where the author ends up.

~~~
jefftk
The fallacy of appealing to consequences is not "you should do this thing
because it has better consequences" (that's Consequentialism) but instead the
clearly false "you should think this thing because if it were true that would
be good". Here I'm responding to Taylor's broader use of it, where she's also
including the idea that if saying X would have bad consequences you should
avoid saying X.

Examples:

* Consequentialism: we should evaluate vaccines based on the effect they have on people

* Appeal to Consequences: it would be horrible if vaccines were actually net-negative, so they can't be

* Taylor's extended Appeal to Consequences: see the post

~~~
prostheticvamp
It seems that the “extended” appeals to consequences, per the post, -is-
consequentialism.

Consequentialism: evaluate X based on its consequences

Extended: evaluate X, where X is the verb “to speak”, based on its
consequences

Appeal to Consequences: evaluate X based on desired consequences rather than
predicted consequences

Am I misunderstanding?

~~~
jefftk
You're not misunderstanding. Taylor is arguing, from a consequentialist
perspective, that trying to evaluate the consequences of speaking
counterintuitively leads to bad outcomes and so we shouldn't do it. This is a
consequentialist argument, but a bit of an ironic one!

My post is responding by saying that it's important to have some situations
where you can speak fully freely, but there are also times when you really do
need to consider what might happen in response to your words.

------
barrkel
Consequences are at the foundation of why we have ethics at all. All normative
arguments are appeals to consequences when you look closely enough. The
practical differences emerge from where and how far into the future you look
for the consequences.

(The discussion seems ill-founded to me, without a lot more qualification on
exactly which consequences one is looking to.)

~~~
jefftk
You're describing Consequentialism
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism)),
which is a popular view, especially among technically minded people, but there
are also other widely held views that work differently:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics)

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I think the parent poster's claim (if I may put words in their mouth) is that,
despite the protestations of these other schools of thought, the only reason
their rulesets/virtues exist are because of the general case consequences of
those rulesets and virtues. They may not explicitly denote their appeal to
consequences, but those ethical systems would not exist in their given forms
of the actions they proscribe actions did not have consequences.

For example, a virtue ethicist might claim that honesty is a virtue, and thus
we should try to be honest. But why is honesty a virtue? I'm not familiar with
how virtue ethics deals with infinite regress. However, whatever the
philosopher might claim, the real answer is because we evolved in a context
where dishonesty was punished. This punishment shaped our sociological and
neural landscapes such that we have a dim view of dishonesty in others. The
virtue ethicist dresses that up one way, the deontologist might dress it up
another, but the actual fact is that the human view of honesty arose from the
consequences.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
At least one virtue ethics system can answer the "why" without infinite
regress - the Judeo-Christian one. Honesty is a virtue because God is not a
liar. That is, the virtues are virtues because they correspond to the
character of God.

Now, you could try to turn that into an infinite regress by asking where God's
character comes from. But within that system, God is self-existent - he
doesn't come from anywhere, he has no cause. (You can disagree with the
system, but within the logic of the system, the problem doesn't exist.)

And one nit: Honesty is a virtue because _dis_ honesty so often rewards the
dishonest at the expense of everyone else. I don't think it's because
dishonesty was punished, it's that _others_ suffered when someone was
dishonest. Those others got the idea that dishonesty was a bad thing, because
they were on the receiving end of the consequences.

~~~
barrkel
Because of damnation, eh? Appeals to a higher power usually come with an
afterlife, for consequences.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Yes, you can make a consequentialist argument within that system. But you can
_also_ make a recursion-free virtue-based argument.

------
friendlybus
'Appeals to consequences' as used by Quinn are a fallacy because the decisions
rest on the desirability and emotional judgement of the consequence. That's an
obvious fallacy we can agree in the context of business.

There are more ways to evaluate consequences than their emotional viability.
Taking a teological stance or a protection from death stance can lead to
nailing the puppy charity to the wall on exactly how much of a lie is
necessary to prevent death of puppies, the truth, people's bank accounts and
the charity itself.

Using the appeal to consequences fallacy to disregard an entire category of
philosophical thought is a bit silly.

------
umvi
> How do we leave open the possibility of the first two outcomes while
> avoiding the third?

It seems to me if the first outcome is true, then the third outcome is
unavoidable

~~~
DougBTX
You seem to be demonstrating how miscommunication is very easy in the example
shown!

In the example, the idea is that there is one new drug that was shown to be
unsafe, but that there is a risk that the results will be misinterpreted to
suggest that lots of other drugs are unsafe too. If the communication is
handled well, then use of the new drug will never start, and people can
continue to use other drugs which are safe.

> then the third outcome is unavoidable

Alternatively, if you mean that incorrect and misleading headlines are
unavoidable... then yes, that is a persistent problem, agreed.

~~~
umvi
If you develop a new vaccine, and if you confirm through repeated tests that
it causes elevated levels of autism, then yes, you can now say "vaccines can
cause autism."

Or rather, in order to now claim that vaccines don't cause autism you will
need to say "rigorously tested vaccines don't cause autism"

