The Four Dog Defense (2011) | Hacker News Reader

The Four Dog Defense (2011)

acronymrequired.com

69 pointsweinzierl39 comments

The author seems to be entirely ignorant about the reasons why this style of argumentation is required in court cases — it's because, by presenting all the arguments at the beginning, we can prevent legal cases from dragging on over decades or centuries, resolving them in mere years, or even less in some cases. As several commenters have pointed out, if you do not raise an argument when you are initially presenting your arguments, you cannot then introduce it when the judge or jury rules against you, essentially necessitating a new trial.

Also, they seem to want to take not just trichloroethylene but also formaldehyde and styrene off the market entirely, because they are toxic. Formaldehyde, aside from its direct uses for things like glues and tissue preservation, is one of the most basic chemicals in the chemical industry, and although it's undeniably toxic, its lethal dose is around 100 mg/kg, so you need several grams of it to kill someone. If we outlawed the sale of all substances with this level of toxicity (or greater), not only would we no longer have a chemical or drug industry, we would also be outlawing most spices.

In view of the catastrophic effects their favored policies would have, the dangerous level of ignorance behind this article should be a call to attention for us. How can we ensure that the voices of people like this are excluded completely from the process of policymaking? Clearly it would be disastrous for this person to have any influence over regulatory regimes that affect other people, and indeed they may even be a danger to themself — like the woman who decided to surgically remove her own silicone breast implants.

In these cases, all of the arguments were false, the defendants knew they were false, and they were able to significantly delay justice by employing all of them. Furthermore, each successive claim denies the premises of all those that precede it, and in a purely rational world, it would be reasonable to say that only one could be presented. I am not advocating that the law should be changed in this regard, as I am pretty certain that there would be cases in which such a change would be used to prevent valid defenses being made, but there is certainly nothing wrong with pointing out that this is happening.

> like the woman who decided to surgically remove her own silicone breast implants.

As red a herring as I have seen lately.

Just[0] reminds me of what some people attribute as the 'narcissist's prayer'[1].

[0]

>First of all, I don't have a dog.

>And if I had a dog, it doesn't bite.

>And if I had a dog and it did bite, then it didn't bite you.

>And if I had a dog and it did bite, and it bit you, then you provoked the dog."

[1]

>That didn't happen.

>And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

>And if it was, that's not a big deal.

>And if it is, that's not my fault.

>And if it was, I didn't mean it.

>And if I did... You deserved it.

In Brazil it is the main defense of former president "Lula" da Silva:

* Lula didn't took bribes.

* And if he did, it was peanuts.

* And even if he took a lot of cash it is way less then the other politicians.

* And if it is, it is not his fault - the system is like that and he would not be elected without bribery.

* And if it was, he didn't mean it.

* And if he did, it was in the best interest of the poor.

How to deal with someone that behaves like this, when leaving is not an option?

You use the gray rock method on them. Essentially you do not emotionally engage with them, be as boring as possible so they move on to other targets for narcissistic supply.

I was tangled up with a narc for over 18 years and didn't know what I was dealing with. It's one of the most soul-crushing things if you don't know what's going on. When figured out what I was dealing with, it was like waking up out of a coma.

Try the Pieter Hintjens psycopath book. Overlook that he uses a non-clinical use of the word psycopath. Pretend he instead wrote vampire, and read for the content. He gives strategies that do not involve leaving, and that seek to build you to a position of strength so your antagonist has to bend. (I have not had cause to test any of it, so no annecdotal endorsements herr)

Leaving is the only option.

If people buy into this too much, you can win arguments just by pushing your narrative before anyone has all the facts.

A news report comes out as, "dozens dead at nightclub shooting," and someone posts, "I bet it was a muslim. We need to kick all of them out". The first response is, "We have no idea who was behind this." Or, even worse, maybe even an outright denial if there's some initial evidence that suggests they're not Muslim.

Days later, once more evidence has been collected the police confirm the perpetrator was a Muslim radical. From that point on, every argument against discrimination gets tarred as being apologism and backpeddling. Sound arguments are dismissed merely because they followed after a valid argument that turned out to be unsound. Racism wins the day.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making more than one argument if we have a good reason to believe each is valid. Just following that pattern does not mean anything about whether it's correct or not.

Yes!

Racism is a moral issue but the liberal political tribe likes to frame it as a logic issue. Sometimes it is a logic issue, but often it's not, and as a tribe we need to develop the self-restraint to differentiate.

It's entirely possible for uncomfortable statements like "P(terrorist|muslim)>P(terrorist)" or "P(criminal|black)>P(criminal)" to be true but worth ignoring for the sake of the greater good if following up on them would trample individual rights. Sometimes discarding information against your immediate self interest is the right thing to do! Lady Justice doesn't wear a blindfold as a fashion accessory.

Unfortunately, the prevailing tactic seems to be "attack the uncomfortable fact" rather than "argue from morality when you cannot argue from logic." People on the fence can see right through this hypocrisy, which by my estimation is responsible for a significant portion of the unapologetic racism that has flourished in recent years.

I'm pretty sure you are talking about a different point. The original comment is about laying out all the arguments upfront to avoid the appearance of back peddling if the first argument turns out to be false. You seem to be focusing on the example more than this point.

Obviously, this can be used to simply lie about not having a dog. On the other hand, it is also the way you deal with any objections that might be raised if you are dealing with a claim that is wrong on many different levels. Say that someone posts what they claim is a video showing a Tesla roadster wrecking on autopilot while the driver was watching a movie.

It is very logical for Tesla to point out if it isn't actually a roadster in the photo. Further, they can say that even if it was, the roadster doesn't have autopilot. Even if it was a roadster and the roadster came with autopilot and the driver was using autopilot, the driver is still responsible for paying attention to the road and keeping hands on the wheel.

There's a reason you see this in legal cases: If you don't introduce claims and/or defenses at the beginning, you can't add them later. (Yes, you can amend, once or maybe twice. You can't do it repeatedly.) So you raise all the arguments you will use, and all the arguments you're going to have to fall back on if those fail, and all the arguments you're going to have to fall back on if those fail.

For a recent example: APIs can't be copyrighted. And if they can, it was fair use. And even if it wasn't fair use, it was de minimus.

I first came across this example in an article about the famous Texas criminal defense lawyer Richard "Racehorse" Haynes. This is the version he tells:

Haynes loves discussing his cases to teach young lawyers about trial practice. In 1978, he told attendees at an ABA meeting in New York City that attorneys too often limit their strategic defense options in court. When evidence inevitably surfaces that contradicts the defense’s position, lawyers need to have a backup plan.

“Say you sue me because you say my dog bit you,” he told the audience. “Well, now this is my defense: My dog doesn’t bite. And second, in the alternative, my dog was tied up that night. And third, I don’t believe you really got bit.”

His final defense, he said, would be: “I don’t have a dog.”

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/richard_racehorse...

ps. I noticed that the article uses the odd phrase "Doggy-Dog World" instead of the more standard "Dog-Eat-Dog World". I thought at first this was just a non-Enlish speaker's mistake, but apparently the corruption has more history than that: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/148120/where-did...

Nearby is the DARVO concept: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/DARVO

"DARVO is an acronym that stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender." [capitalization mine]

Narcissist use this all the time too.

Based on the comments here, it's hard to place the line between using this kind of argument in good faith vs bad faith. I'd propose that the line can be drawn at using contradictory premises.

If you make two arguments, and one depends on not having a dog while the other depends on having a dog with certain characteristics, then only one of these premises can be true. So you are making at least one of the arguments in bad faith.

It gets subtle, though. Compare "I have no dog, and if I do, my dog couldn't have made those particular bite marks" to "I have no dog, and even if I do, no dog in the world could have made those bite marks". The first does have contradictory premises: it can't be true that I have no dog and that my dog's teeth have certain characteristics different from other dogs. The second does not have contradictory premises: It's possible both that I have no dog and that the person was bitten by a non-dog animal.

Is this really a technique? I thought it was a core concept of argumentation: don't unnecessarily cede ground.

I don't think this is about unnecessarily ceding ground -- it's about arguing in bad faith as a tactic for delaying and confusing the issue.

I see it all the time and it's interesting that someone has given it a clever name.

It isn't necessarily arguing in bad faith. It's simply an argumentation technique, commonly used in high stake situations. My client can't have killed that person, because they were 1000 miles away. But even if that weren't the case, they have no motive. But even if they had a motive, they have no weapon. But even if they have the weapon and the motive, they have strong personal beliefs against violence.

For the sake of argument, assume all those things are true. That's a perfectly reasonable argument to use in a court situation. When there's going to be a final verdict, from which appeal is impossible or very expensive, you are an idiot if you only bring up the fact they were a 1000 miles away. You marshal every argument you possibly can. This isn't a dialog; you don't get a (cheap) response once the verdict is in.

I think this is a poor essay, blaming a standard argumentation technique for the poor behavior of certain industries. The problem isn't the four dog defense, the problem is the poor behavior of certain industries. I mean, remove the defense from those industries and what would change? Basically nothing; one would have to be some sort of very specific meta-contrarian cynic to claim otherwise. Clearly it's not the real problem.

Also, it's not the "Doggy-Dog World of Politicians"... it's the "Dog-Eat-Dog World of Politicians". I mention this because frankly it struck me as on par with the quality of the rest of the essay. Edit: In fact, on reflection, I've flagged it. It hasn't got much redeeming value.

> For the sake of argument, assume all those things are true.

This is about when your client did kill a person and you're using a slowly receding circle of lies to try to give them as much time as possible to skip town.

No, as the author of my post, I can assure you that my post was quite clearly about the fact that this style of defense is not intrinsically in bad faith, evil, or in any sense responsible for the bad behavior of the corporations in question. I double-checked with myself twice to be sure.

Blaming this defense is like blaming the fact that some companies are bad actors on the fact that they are using syllogisms. It's not the syllogisms. It's very weak thinking to think it could be. The problem is not the "four dog" defense, it's the bad actions themselves.

Yes now that there's a name for it, I can see it everywhere.

For example (thankfully the number of people that I know who are climate change skeptics has dwindled hugely in the last year or two):

- the world isn't warming at all

- anyway if it is warming, it's not because of human activities

- and even if it's caused by human activities, its effects will minor

- and even it it's happening, and it's caused by human activities and its effects are going to be serious, it's too expensive to do anything about it.

Agreed, I shared this article link yesterday in a comment on the Panera bread disclosures. I’m more of the school of thought that this is a technique that helps when you have no intention of fixing the root cause not neccesarily maintaining public image.

I wonder if it actually "helps" or if it's just the natural escalation of continued revelations about something you have no intention of fixing and no preexisting PR plan for.

It’s a form of something called “arguing in the alternative.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_in_the_alternative

It’s very real.

For anyone who isn't seeing the exact pattern... It's not just 4 arguments in a row. Here is an easy to use template.

1. Challenge the Reality

I did not do the bad thing.

2. Challenge the Morality/Legality

I did the thing, but it wasn't that bad.

3. Challenge the Motivation

I did the bad thing, but I didn't mean to.

4. Challenge the Relevance

I did the bad thing, but so does everyone else, its not a big deal, and why aren't we talking about the bigger issues?

I wonder how attacking individuals in court and casting doubt on the causes of their sickness could be of any use against the larger picture, i.e. against the correlation between leukemia cluster and the TCE contaminated area. I also wonder if another dirty trick would work against such cases, where the plaintiff side throws the burden of proof on the defendant asking for numbers deduced from the costly inquiries and how those numbers explain anything in relation with numbers deduced from a non-contaminated area.

This sounds like the inverse of the 5 Whys - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys

Arguendo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguendo

At least as it concerns the EPA, this is wholly a problem in the US. In Europe, new chemicals need to be proven they are safe before they can be used. In the US, new chemicals need to be proven they are bad before they are removed. It's totally backwards and in my opinion, is the direct cause for all of this bullshit.

Aside from that, is there a general way to combat the four dog defense?

> Aside from that, is there a general way to combat the four dog defense?

I always suggest to people that one way to discern a dishonest opinion (if you're not expert) is that they throw lots of contradictory (or at least weirdly independent) arguments at you.

For example, an article denying global warming might argue that the Earth is not warming and that the warming is caused by the Sun. These are contradictory (if it is caused by Sun, it is warming). Or it is more subtle, they claim the data from e.g. NASA are fake but use the same data to argue a different point.

In other words, dishonest debaters do not promote a coherent theory, and instead try to find as many holes in the opponents position as they can (which is always possible, no real-world knowledge is ever complete). But the real truth is always coherent, and that's how it can be recognized.

Recognizing the defense is different than combating it. Or perhaps I misunderstood - are you saying that the way to combat it is to point out that they have no coherent theory?

Any conversation sits on the premise of quality interaction between the parties involved. This quality assumes competence and good will, each having to be over a certain minimal level depending on the subject discussed. When any of the involved parties determines that there is not or can not be enough competence or good will, then normally the discussion should either cease or switch to another level. (At most, you may explain your decision ...if you have that minimal level of respect towards any of the parties involved in discussion, that is.)

I didn't have contact with any Russians,

but if I did, they were completely proper,

and if they weren't, then their efforts didn't influence the election

and if they did, Why shouldn't I do everything it takes to win?

Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

But... the article was posted because it's relevant to our politics right now.

It came up in the comments yesterday about the recent Panera security breach. Someone speculated that we were seeing the emergence of an infosec version of the four dogs defense. Presumably someone then felt it was interesting enough to warrant its own submission.

A lot of submissions have overlap with the politics of the moment, but that doesn't mean the discussion should cross straight into that. On the contrary, we should mostly resist doing so.

On HN, the idea is to focus on the diffs, which are what's interesting, and try not to rush into the shallow hotness that makes all discussions the same. Repetition isn't interesting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com