The Alt-Right Playbook x PhilosophyTube: Doublewrong

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Say, for the sake of argument, you’re having a discussion with a coworker about healthcare. (Actually, let’s go ahead and drop the pretence: you’re having a discussion about trans healthcare.) He says puberty blockers should be banned because some study said they're dangerous. And you’re a thoughtful person, so you look it up.

Only when you do, you find the study doesn’t say what he said it does. Maybe it says something close, maybe it says the total opposite! But more than that, you realize - even if it said what he said it did, that still wouldn’t support his argument. “Dangerous” could mean a lot of things - a little? a lot? low risk, high risk? Maybe one study isn’t enough to go on. Hell, maybe it’s bogus for a whole host of other reasons! Maybe it’s written by people with an obvious agenda, or contradicted by a better study he’s ignoring. So you go back and tell your coworker, “Hey, the study doesn’t say that, and even if it did, y’know…” But he simply repeats “The study said they’re dangerous.” He’s not just wrong… he’s

DOUBLEWRONG

Institutions create policy documents all the time. Anti-bullying policies, climate policies, DEI policies - your job probably has a bunch of them. But a lot of the time these documents exist not to be read or followed, just pointed to. If someone is bullied, harassed, or discriminated against, managers might point to a policy that says, ‘We are committed to not doing that.’ And… that’s it. The more you insist, ‘Hey, these policies aren’t being followed, the problem still exists!’ the more you become the problem.

The document is a dummy argument, a substitute for the real one: ‘There’s a problem’ Vs ‘No there isn’t.’ This isn’t a conversation about what some document says or doesn’t say; it’s a conversation about power.

When your coworker cites a study that doesn’t support his argument, he’s using that document in a similar way. He’s not reading it; just pointing to it. ‘This piece of paper means you have to listen to me.’ The study could be about plankton, or Henry VIII, or squirrel poop for all the difference it makes. (Okay, maybe it matters a little: it has to at least look semi-legit at a glance.) He’s not using evidence to inform his position; he’s decided what his position is and he’s pantomiming evidence to support it.

It’s almost as if we’ve stumbled into The Sorcerer’s Apprentice! Little Mickey’s put on the hat and declared, “I know how this works! You stand up, all big and tall, and say ‘I have a study that says you have to do what I tell you!’ That’s how you always play it. Well, this time I’ve got a study, so you have to do as I say!”

And you can tell him, “That’s not how this works, Mickey: it’s a study, not an incantation. It has to actually say what you claim, and it has to be a good study.”

“Ohhh, look at you moving the goalposts! Look at you gatekeeping! Deciding which studies count and which ones don’t. Well I believe this one’s every bit as good as yours, and I believe it proves me right!”

And is that what he believes? Maybe. Maybe not. Remember: The Card Says Moops - you can’t prove he doesn’t believe that. And for the purposes of ‘You have to listen to me’ that’s all he needs. This is a battle of wills now, not information, each half of the doublewrong argument functioning as both motte and bailey. If you successfully expose that study as bogus he’ll move on to another, and you’ll only be undermining the scientific method in his view: if studies aren’t always to be trusted, if even quack science can get peer-reviewed, who’s to say your studies aren’t as bogus as his? And that’s if he doesn’t change evidence entirely - ‘Okay maybe I can’t prove puberty blockers are dangerous, but this study says trans kids have high regret rates; this one says they’re unhappy; this one says they’re brainwashed!’

He’s understood the rhetorical function of science, but not the substance. Or perhaps he’s understood the rhetorical function all too well, enough to know, for the purposes of argument, substance rarely matters.

From here, you can chart the course of the entire conversation stretching out before you: You might rush in, hold the document under his nose and say, ‘Look! It doesn’t say what you said it does! What’s the matter, can’t read?’ Which might be satisfying, but does make you look the pedantic as*hole.

Or you can reject his so-called evidence as patently false, inadmissible, and leave yourself vulnerable to being obliterated the moment you make an honest mistake with a citation.

Or you can research every single shred of information he puts in front of you, so you can thoroughly debunk each and every one, which means he simply keeps putting bunk in front of you and drowns you with homework.

And he must see it, too, the conversation laid out in front of him. He hasn’t positioned himself to persuade you, but to ensure neither of you ever persuades the other. What is the purpose of this debate, then? This ritual? What is it you’re really arguing about?

Well, your coworker believes that the government (or a doctor doing what the government tells them) should force citizens from a minority to do something with their bodies they don’t want to do. But he won’t say that out loud because he knows that’s socially unacceptable. ‘I want the government to force people to do what I want with their bodies no matter how many of them die in the process,’ is an opinion that isn’t likely to make friends. So he substitutes the document for the thing he really believes. “It’s not me. It’s just science.” He is appealing to facts when, truthfully, this is a difference in values.

Doublewrong is a rhetorical technique to catch you out, to hide the real argument from you and leave you chasing the substitute. It also protects him.

People deploy these kinds of irrational, paradoxical moves to stop themselves thinking about topics that make them uncomfortable. If your coworker interrogated his values about the proper relationship between the government and minorities he might find he’s not the person he thought he was, or that his friends and colleagues expect him to be. (And you might too - let’s not pretend Leftists and Liberals have the moral high ground all the time - interrogating your fundamental values is an uncomfortable experience for most people.) He probably wants to think of himself as a good person, and yet he also believes (maybe not even consciously) that the government should own the bodies of at least some citizens. He knows he’d probably hate that if it happened to him, but he still wants it to happen to others. Doublewrong relieves him of the burden of forming a rational position. The document is his nice big safety blanket.

This plays on a human weakness that spans the entire political spectrum: we all wrap ourselves snug in faulty information from time to time. We share studies without reading because the abstract conforms to our assumptions; we treat a supposition that is likely as though it’s a proven fact. And this is, after a point, necessary: as informed as you are, you do have to stop researching somewhere. You do, at some point, have to go on assumptions, take someone’s word, trust that a pattern holds, because the video’s due before the end of the month if you want to charge your patrons and make rent!

…sorry.

But we do, sometimes, treat research as a ritual rather than a method. Because, often, we want to appeal to facts, papers, authorities, without having to do any of that pesky reasoning. But that is exactly what leaves us open to a doublewrong attack. The flaw with your coworker’s study is he’s using it to claim trans healthcare is dangerous, and he’s wrong. He has a comeback for every way you could try to convince him, but he’s still wrong. You can’t prove trans healthcare is safe by gesturing at studies, because the opposition won’t read them. And will write their own studies. You can’t prove it with peer review, because they’ll game peer review. You can’t call them liars because they’ll insist they’re sincere. There is no rule they can’t pervert, no system they can’t twist to their advantage. You can’t just appeal to things that signify “reason,” at some point one of you will have to do some actual reasoning to figure out who’s making sense, and, well, it’s not going to be them.

Remember: this is a conversation about values. Presuming you know what yours are, you may have to speak them aloud.

‘I think people should do what they like with their bodies without politicians interfering, and even if I thought puberty blockers were dangerous (which by the way they’re not because on the off-chance you actually care about evidence here’s all the good stuff) I think people have the right to make risky decisions about their healthcare too. If there was a drug with a 1% chance of healing your terminal cancer and a 99% chance of dangerous side effects I’d support your right to take it if you wanted.’ Now you’ve avoided the trap of arguing about what some document says. You’re focusing on the second, deeper part of the doublewrong instead of the first. You’ve also put him on the back foot: now he has to justify his values, which is exactly what he wanted to avoid!

Of course, he may just repeat himself: ‘The study says they’re dangerous!’ This is not a technique for winning arguments. It’s a technique for starting them.

Interesting. I’ve been seeing this one a lot online recently.