It was suggested to me that the stasis fallacy (May 27, 2010) was simply the law of unintended consequences (= LUC). I agree that they are related. But one may have an unintended consequence that could not have been predicted and therefore does not involve fallacious reasoning. Consider Columbus’s discovery of America.
On the other hand if one makes a change without properly thinking it through and obtains an unexpected consequence, then the issue of fallacious thinking is independent of one’s intentions. (I am assuming a good faith effort. Treachery is another matter.) Consider the example that led me to consider this in the first place. Al Gore obtained more popular votes for president than George Bush did in the presidential election of 2000. But Bush won the electoral vote and the presidency. We heard over and over again: “If the election of 2000 had been decided by popular vote, then Gore would have won.” The response was always some variation of: “But the election was not by popular vote”. For some purposes that is a sufficient answer. But I think that this is worth a bit more reflection. Put aside your own political perspective and consider the logic of the statement: “If the election of 2000 had been decided by popular vote, then Gore would have won.” This is certainly true if one is talking about God coming down after the election is over and decreeing that the voting system has been changed to popular vote. If that is what was meant by the statement, then the statement is obviously true but also silly. For the statement to be meaningful it has to be about what would have happened if the rules had been changed (to popular vote election) before the election took place. To claim that the vote as actually cast would have been duplicated with those other rules, then one has to assume (among other things) that the candidates would have campaigned in exactly the same way. That is nonsense. In fact, if the rules had been changed, then the candidates would have campaigned very differently. With the existing system it was totally irrelevant whether Gore won California (or Bush won Texas) by 1 million votes or 3 million votes. Either way he still got all of the electoral votes of that state. There was no reason for either candidate to try to win the national popular vote. And they didn’t. If the rules had been changed to national popular vote, then Gore would have spent more time on the coasts and Bush on flyover country getting out their base voters. It is very possible - perhaps even likely - that Gore would have won. But if so it would not have been because of how the votes were actually cast in 2000 but because of how they would have been cast in a completely different kind of election.
I believe that most people’s thinking about this topic involved a straight forward error in analysis. However, one has to note that many of the folks who made this argument would have preferred a different outcome to the election. It is hard to believe that, for them, their error led them to unintended consequences.
Monday, August 2, 2010
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LUC vs. Stasis Fallacy
ReplyDeleteMy product and my competitor’s product sells for $10/unit. I lower the cost of my product to $5 dollars assuming I will sell more product. Instead the public now perceives my product as being inferior because it is so much cheaper than that of my competitor (who did not lower his price) and I sell less product.
The reaction of the consumer was certainly an “unintended consequences”, however, my assumption (more precisely failure to consider) that consumer perception of my product would remain unchanged is a “Stasis Fallacy”
I like the term “Stasis Fallacy” because it points to a search for “unintended consequences” based on the proposed change at hand. In my example a change in consumer perceptions is perfectly for seeable.