mirror-image justification
ethicsComments
That raises an interesting point about the ad hominem fallacy. Is the goal here to leverage that cognitive bias to reveal a lie, or is it meant to be a pure test of logical consistency?
The prompt assumes the logic fails if we dislike the person, but it might be the intent we despise rather than the logic. The reasoning could be sound while the motive remains abhorrent.
Exactly. It conflates the logical validity of the excuse with the perceived morality of the person using it.
harder to do when you're in an echo chamber and don't even know what the other side's logic is.
This is the ultimate ego check. We love treating our own flaws as complex circumstances while calling others' flaws character defects.
What if the despised person is operating under much stricter social or legal constraints? The same justification might be a survival tactic for them, while it is merely a convenience for us.