"Not as bad as" - RationalWiki's formulation of Moore-Coulter

[Underseer]

I was never happy with the name we came up for this phenomenon ("Moore-Coulter"), but Rational Wiki goes into greater detail than we did, and breaks the arguments down much better than we did, so I think this is worth reading:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

 

[Togo]

I was never happy with the name we came up for this phenomenon ("Moore-Coulter"), but Rational Wiki goes into greater detail than we did, and breaks the arguments down much better than we did, so I think this is worth reading:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

I like the article.

Not sure I understand the connection to Moore-Coulter though, or indeed Moore-Coulter as a thing. They always struck me as two people who were wrong in quite distinct and seperate ways, so labelling them as if they were the same phenomenon always strikes me as strange, more like a political disarmament agreement than a real equivalence.

 

[bigfield]

Expect this to get cited a lot on this board.

 

[Underseer]

I was never happy with the name we came up for this phenomenon ("Moore-Coulter"), but Rational Wiki goes into greater detail than we did, and breaks the arguments down much better than we did, so I think this is worth reading:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

I like the article.

Not sure I understand the connection to Moore-Coulter though, or indeed Moore-Coulter as a thing. They always struck me as two people who were wrong in quite distinct and seperate ways, so labelling them as if they were the same phenomenon always strikes me as strange, more like a political disarmament agreement than a real equivalence.

My understanding of Moore-Coulter is that it's a combination of a false equivalence fallacy and a tu quoque/red herring fallacy.

 

[fast]

"Yes, I'm late on my payments, but it's not as bad as those that don't pay at all, so you shouldn't treat me badly, as you should with those that don't pay at all, so back the hell up off me." Somehow, because the late payer is paying whereas the non-payer isn't, the payer feels justified in what they're doing since what others do is worst.

Is this a good example?

ETA: I shouldn't say, "badly". We shouldn't treat slow payers nor non-payers badly, but they should both be held accountable for their failure to make timely payments. Thus, we should 'explain' to slow payers the importance of not paying late. The fact that slow paying customers at least pay when non-payers don't pay does not mitigate their responsibility, so their "not as bad argument" doesn't hold weight.

That would be like a boy touching a girls boobs saying he shouldn't get in trouble because his actions aren't as bad as people who rape.

 

[Togo]

Ok, I think I'm not sufficiently familair with the original meme.