Hacker News Reader

Comment by davesque | Hacker News Reader

> You mean like America?

Ahh yes, one of my favorite logical fallacies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Tu quoque is not a logical fallacy. There's no logical step that's violated. It's an informal fallacy.

Technically, yes. It's an informal logical fallacy. The point is that it's a pretty ineffective means of advancing the discussion.

Right FTA: it's an "informal logical fallacy.

But since the answer is no, is this still a fallacy?

It's not being used as a fallacy, since it's not part of an argument that proves a point.

I don't follow you. My interpretation was that OP said roughly, "I don't understand/approve of GDPR because of this and this." Child then responded by saying roughly, "but America does it too." Seems like the child was trying to imply that OP's claims/concerns are false because they are hypocritical.

Not really, he said in substance: "America do this, EU will not". Using this example to somehow gain a moral high ground.

The intended effect was to provide some context and to take away a worry. I can see why Americans would be worried because there are many examples of where America has 'exported' its laws all over the globe. The EU is emphatically not doing this, they simply require that if you do business in Europe that you have a European presence so they can enforce their local laws against you.

That "European presence" requirement is, by itself, an attempt to force their laws on the world, and if it's going to have teeth, will require other countries to bow to pressure to enforce it even though they had no input.

If Jamaica passed a law fining any company that hired homosexuals, we'd consider it bullshit even if they tried to abstract it a level up by only passing it as a local law, and then passing another law saying companies that serve Jamaicans have to have local representatives. I'm not sure why you think this is any less bullshitty a tactic, other than the fact that the law they're trying to push seems more reasonable (which I agree with).

So you're saying F. local laws that get in the way of international commerce? You could stop doing business with Jamaica, and hence put pressure on it's elected bodies.

If you don't like foreign markets, don't enter them.

I think that child was saying that since America does that routinelly, Europe is entitled to do it too. Alternatively, may do it for strategical power reasons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com