A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “political debate”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott Alexander introduces 'Guilt by Association' as a fallacy where people judge things negatively based on category membership rather than actual shared features, using examples like calling MLK a 'criminal' or abortion 'murder' to illustrate when this reasoning fails.
Scott proposes the "noncentral fallacy" as a candidate for the worst argument in the world: applying emotional reactions from archetypal category members to non-archetypal examples, illustrated through examples like calling Martin Luther King Jr. a "criminal."
Scott explains backward reasoning in game theory through decision trees, culminating in a counterintuitive example where giving the US president line-item veto power could actually reduce the president's ability to achieve desired outcomes.