Something that happens a lot in politics is what I call the “unacceptable consequences fallacy”. 🧵
For example, let’s look at the idea that genes play a huge role in determining intelligence, a controversial idea in politics but not in behavioural genetics.
One of the reasons this idea is controversial is that it seems to imply all our efforts with education and social programmes are pointless. Some kids are dumb and thus doomed to failure and poverty.
In this example, starting idea A (genetics plays a huge role in determining intelligence) leads to B (no point in education), an idea which is unacceptable.
The fallacy comes when, *because* B is unacceptable, people refute A, even when there’s strong evidence for it.
In the intelligence/genetics debate, you can see this in all the political think pieces discussing eugenics, Nazis, the racist history of IQ, and questioning whether intelligence even exists.
But before refuting A because you don’t like B, it’s worth looking at that arrow linking the two: does B necessarily follow from A?
And there you see the error. Just because a trait is genetically determined doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take action to help those disadvantaged. Short-sightedness is another trait that has a strong genetic element. Yet we still give glasses to those in need of them.
Here’s another example. One of the controversies around the 2021 Sewell on racism was whether racism had improved in the UK. One side insisted “Britain is racist” while others countered that huge progress had been made.
Largely unspoken in this debate, but giving it all its energy, was the idea that if racism *had* improved, then it followed that we could relax about the issue and stop focusing so much on it.
So even though the argument was ostensibly about A (has racism improved?) it was really about B (should anti-racism still be a priority?).
Those of us who see it as obvious (at least from polling data) that racism has improved from a generation ago but still think should be a focus were left with nowhere to go.
Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 5, 2023.