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Comment by djohnston | Hacker News Reader

yes it does. you don't get to criticize someone for an action while performing the exact same action and expect your argument to have a shred of credibility

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No it doesn't. The argument speaks for itself. If I murder someone in cold blood, then get up the next morning and call a press conference saying "Murder is wrong! We need to put a stop to murder!" no one would chime in and say "No way, murder is perfectly fine, you just did it last night!"

Call the news orgs out for doing the same reprehensible activity, yes. But let's judge the arguments about which activities are reprehensible on their own merits.

Hypocrisy comes from the Greek word for pretending or acting. You don't usually listen to hypocrites on an issue, because they lack the character to have a valid stance on the issue. If a murderer kills someone and then says murder is bad, we know they're full of crap and don't actually believe murder is bad, they're simply saying that to appear remorseful and less guilty..

In this situation Buzzfeed is pretending that this tracking is bad to generate more clicks so that their ads can invade more privacy to generate more income, exactly like Facebook. If they actually thought it was bad, their business model wouldn't rely upon it.

Only suckers believe Buzzfeed actually thinks this is bad.

I think it's important to acclaim arguments against bad behavior, even when made by people who are doing that same bad behavior.

(1) Having good arguments out in the world is a good thing.

(2) Positive feedback tends to reinforce behavior - and we want to reinforce news orgs making good arguments against bad behavior.

(3) After you have acclaimed their argument, it's much more effective when you use it against them.

If you just constantly snipe at people and organizations, I think it becomes much harder to effect change.

In "Phaedo," Plato has Socrates give a lesson about misology - that is, hating all reasoning and arguments, and assuming they are bad because you can always find flaws and it's so difficult to reach certainty. It's the intellectual version of misanthropy. Socrates cautions strongly against misology. Just because there are problems with an argument, doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to try to improve and take the good parts from every argument we can find, no matter how flawed the other parts (or the speaker) are. I think this is an important lesson in these times. I think we should stop fighting over whether a person or organization is allowed to say certain things, and concentrate on what parts of what they say should change our behavior.

I agree with most of what you say. But Socrates not only spoke of Logos he spoke of Ethos and Kairos. Bad people making good statements can often weaken an argument because no one wants to associated with lying aholes. I’m sure Hitler said something good about something, but I’m sure as hell not using his arguments.

> I’m sure Hitler said something good about something, but I’m sure as hell not using his arguments.

That's ridiculous. If Hitler once made a good argument about something, that doesn't invalidate usage of that same argument by other people.

I mean really. I can't even think of a hypothetical example where that would make sense.

And Hitler fucking sucked, fuck that guy.

>we know they're full of crap and don't actually believe murder is bad, they're simply saying that to appear remorseful and less guilty.

Actually, no. The world is full of people who do bad things while believing they are bad.

For example, I engage in a lot of practices that I think are harmful for the environment. I buy food that I suspect/believe is causing the environment harm. I buy products made with packaging that I believe causes harm. But I'm still openly against those practices. And if a ballot measure comes up to ban products involving those practices in my city/state/country, I'll vote for it.

There's no inconsistency here. The notion that one is required to practice what they preach is a flawed one. Knowledge and practice are orthogonal. People do bad things because they get value out of them. Knowing it is wrong doesn't suddenly reduce the value one gets from them. My food tastes the same regardless of my knowledge on the harm it does to the environment.

If a murderer kills someone and then says murder is bad, we know they're full of crap

Only if we already know they've murdered someone before they advocate against murder. Until we do find out, the murderer appears the same as anybody else, despite being a hypocrite.

Your analogy only makes sense if Buzzfeed stopped using the same practices. If you continue to murder people while shouting "murder is bad" then you might be correct but you're still a hypocrite.

Yes, but the more important thing is that murder is wrong, not that someone's a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is the most minor of malfeasances.

A smoker who writes a column that smoking is bad is still doing good writing.

This argument is very common against people with fringe political beliefs. "If you don't believe in property rights, why do you have a car?"

That's different. If you don't believe in property rights, you think that the law is fundamentally broken, not that any individual who owns property is evil. This article is basically doing the latter, which is why it's difficult to take seriously.

It's common against everyone. "You believe in climate change? Yet you sometimes use a car? Checkmate!"

...which doesn't invalidate the argument.

A charge of hypocrisy is a straight-up ad hominem. It might make you mistrust the person making the argument, but it doesn't say anything about the facts.

This post is completely correct: yes, you're correct and you're a hypocrite.

But: so what?

When I read the news, the last thing I care about is the mores of the news organisation. Reporting on a politician pilfering taxes? Couldn't care less if the reporter panama papered his way through life. Writing about a politician illegally snooping on citizens? Don't give a damn if you got that info by illegally snooping on the politician. Is the news true? That's all I want to know.

I read the news for the news. Are the facts solid? Good. Are you crooked? Don't care.

> then you might be correct

The comment I was replying to seemed to indicate that the Buzzfeed author's stance was incorrect. This is a fine point, but really important, and I think it gets lost in public discourse a lot these days: hypocricy does not invalidate an argument.

Whether or not you are a hypocrite has no bearing on whether or not what you are saying is correct.

If you were obviously a murderer, and then publicly railed against murder, it would make it seem suspiciously like you were up to something, which would tend to make people doubt what you're saying.

It doesn't make what they're saying automatically invalid, but knowledge that the person saying something is obviously a hypocrite is a form of evidence about how likely what they're saying is true.

No one is attacking the actual argument. We're attacking Buzzfeed's belief in their own argument. We're saying they're like the murderer, who once caught, says murder is bad in the hopes of leniency. Only Buzzfeed is saying privacy violations are bad in the explicit hope they'll get to violate more privacy. Worse than hypocrites, this makes them scoundrels.

I couldn't care less whether "Buzzfeed" believes their own argument or not.

I'm putting the quotes there because Buzzfeed is not a singular entity with a set of beliefs it identifies with. It's also not like a cult where everyone has to believe the same ideas. Which is why it is nonsensical to ascribe hypocrisy to a non-person entity ...

And that is exactly how you can get an article against adtech written for and published on a platform that is using said adtech similar to what the article speaks out against.

The worst part of it all is IMHO that the entire top of this discussion is dominated by arguing about whether Buzzfeed is hypocritical or not, instead of discussing the actual topic at hand.

I think you missed the point. The reason the top of the discussion is dominated, as you say, is that the argument is obviously true to them. The more interesting story is Buzzfeed arguing that it is true, with the takeaway being: are they ran by horrible people, or just don't really believe it is true.

|no one would chime in and say "No way, murder is perfectly fine, you just did it last night!"

No, but they might say: "Why should we listen to you!? MURDERER!" Then proceed to stone you to death, and see who dares get up on the podium to make an announcement about stoning.

No, we wouldn't believe that you think its bad since you did it. We still know its bad.

A counter example: If I was a pack-a-day smoker and tell you smoking is bad for you, and that you shouldn't do it as it's bad for your health based off XYZ studies, that doesn't mean my statement is poor.

Why not, may I ask? Just means both sides are wrong.

You’re arguing about credibility like it’s interchangeable with something being factually correct.

There are different constructs.

Its not exactly the same, If I'm doing it, It might be benefiting me. If other do it might harm me.

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