Someone needs to name this fallacy. The existence of existing harmful norms does not, ex ante, justify introducing additional harmful norms. I propose naming it the "GenAI Defender Fallacy".

Separately--yes, I would love carbon receipts for everything. Such a system would be fascinating and do real good in this world.

▲ csallen 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The existence of existing harmful norms does not, ex ante, justify introducing additional harmful norms

The point isn't to justify anything.

It's to put things into perspective, and give people a more informed and holistic point of view, and then to ask them to reconsider their opinions in light of more information. There's nothing bad about that. In fact it's a good thing.

Especially in a world where people are so easily misled by others who cherrypick unexceptional statistics and then intentionally present them as exceptional in order to generate outrage, retweets, clicks, whatever.

▲ rcoveson 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a combination of argument from analogy and reductio ad absurdum. It's not a fallacy. You're free to dispute the validity of the analogy, or you can dispute the absurdity, which you did, by confirming that you would indeed love carbon receipts for everything.

▲ vlyan 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

selective outrage, on the other hand, already has a name.

▲ kraftman 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's the goal of complaining about it though? What's more likely, you persuade people to stop all of these habits that use electricity that burns carbon, or you convert the electricity supply to renewables?

▲ visarga 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But is fairness between carbon uses justified? Or we cut the line at some point.

▲ Alifatisk 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Someone needs to name this fallacy.

Whataboutism?

▲ EmiDub 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Whataboutism isn’t a fallacy and is widely misused online.

If someone says “I think x should stop because of y”. It is a valid argumentative response to say “y also occurs with z, so should z also stop?”. It is argumentatively revealing either hypocrisy, or that the original imperative relies on additional, unstated arguments/assumptions/biases.

▲ pfannkuchen 14 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t think that’s whataboutism?

Maybe I’m confused, but I thought whataboutism was more like “you are saying I am doing X bad thing? What about Y bad thing you’re doing, let’s discuss that instead”.

It’s a deflection technique, not a check on logical consistency.

▲ teravor 14 hours ago | parent [-]

    >  “you are saying I am doing X bad thing? What about Y bad thing you’re doing, let’s discuss that instead”.

no one is generally expecting or even asking for "let’s discuss that instead". what they are doing is trying to point out that your lack of of care about Y implies that you never actually cared about X in the first place but rather you only care about me doing X.

often times X is actually bad but human nature is such that no one actually cares about it while wanting to appear to when locked down on it. for this reason arguing about X directly is bad optics.

whataboustism is basically an effort to draw attention to the selective enforcement of norms, laws, morality, whatever. hypocrisy is implied.

	▲	david-gpu 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It can also be used to derail a conversation. I.e. "I find subject X unpleasant, so I am going to imply that you don't care enough about subject Y, which has a passing similarity to it, so that the subject of the conversation turns to Y rather than X. I do not actually care about subject Y, but I won't say that out loud". See also "concern trolling".

▲ LinXitoW 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Considering that especially leftists have spent literal decades hating on vegans for telling them about their individual footprint, there is no real fallacy here.

AI haters have somehow discovered personal responsibility. Awesome. They've never ever applied that to anything else they PERSONALLY do, though. It's only things others do. For any personal choices, suddenly it's all the governments fault or the corporations fault. No personal responsibility to be seen.

My 5-ish years of veganism have easily made up for a life time of prompting. Yet, I still would never generate video or images in part because of their impact.

How many of you non-vegan AI haters are going to be vegan now?

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recitedropper 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is such a strange reply I don't even know what to do with it. Good on you for being vegan, and not prompting?

I have gone lacto-ovo vegetarian in the past year, so I'll take your 5 years of veganism as inspiration. Otherwise, I welcome people waking up to the harm they cause, regardless of their past hypocrisy.

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shigawire 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can acknowledge that I should be vegan and still be unable/unwilling to make the sacrifices to do it.

People are flawed.

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Zambyte 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Being flawed isn't the issue. Everyone is flawed. The issue is blaming people for problems like environmental damage, while at the same time needlessly causing more damage yourself. The problem is being hypocritical. Some people are certainly more hypocritical than others.

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magicalist 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean, I actively advocate for better fuel efficiency standards but also haven't entirely eliminated red meat from my diet. If I'm discussing fuel efficiency standards and you call me hypocritical, even if I granted that, it doesn't seem like a useful turn of the conversation for anyone unless it's a rhetorical move to change the topic of conversation?

	▲	Zambyte 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Advocating vs blaming. Blaming people for using inefficient vehicles when you eat red meat (assuming you eat enough red meat to have more of an impact than the fuel) is hypocritical. Advocating for better alternatives to inefficient vehicles while eating red meat is not hypocritical.

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UltraSane 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I've gone chicken only. Mostly because pork and beef are too expensive. It is very hard to get 150+ grams of protein a day on a vegan diet. And butter is in almost every delicious baked good. Avoiding it is like having the worst allergy.