This response is completely warranted when you don't lead by example. It's easy to rally the troops to charge the front lines while hiding in your castle.
This informal fallacy is generally unrecognized. Having a Wikipedia article doesn't make it an accepted norm. What you're doing is called the appeal to authority fallacy which is generally recognized.
Both of you are wrong. Appealing to fallacies doesn't make a good argument, but neither does pointing that out knock down an argument. That'd be the “fallacy fallacy”.
Appealing to "accepted norms" is another case of appealing to authority – except a less verifiable authority, in that case. Ironically, I am currently listing fallacies, which itself does not a good argument make – so I will add to it that that's not what “informal” means; the adjective is merely specifying that it is not a logical flaw, but instead falls into a broader category (such as implying stronger evidence than exists, or something).
Your original argument is flawed, however; it neglects that organisations cannot increase the talent available to ethical companies and decrease the talent available to unethical ones by participating in the job market, and invokes an argument similar to the tu quoque fallacy by implying that Mozilla's actions have any bearing on how good its advice is.
Merely calling out that you used a fallacy (and misidentified at that!) is not a sufficient counterargument alone.
Yes, "informal" isn't "logical", hence the italics specifying as much.
No, my response wasn't a counterargument because what I was responding to wasn't an argument to begin with. There was nothing to defend because nothing of substance was produced.
No, my original argument is not flawed because your counterargument has nothing to do with the concept we've been discussing in this sub-thread.
Allow me to summarize: Mozilla sucks and yes, students should consider ethics in their job search which means they should probably not work for Mozilla.
I don't see any actual logical fallacy here. Tu quoque is often misunderstood and mis-applied. Can you explain, in very specific terms, what you see as logically incorrect here?
Being a hypocrite doesn't make you wrong. I believe everyone should give up flying because it's terrible for the environment, but I still fly on planes.
My personal hypocrisy doesn't make air travel any better for the planet.
1) Mozilla isn't right or wrong in this case, they just lack credibility on the matter which, again, warrants the type of response that the original and many other commentators here had.
2) Your analogy isn't quite 1:1 with this situation. If you were a railroad tycoon that flew daily to perform business and made a public statement about how awful flying on planes is and how everyone should stop in lieu of train travel, it would be hard to take you seriously and you would be rightfully called out. Mozilla likes to identify itself with the ethical side yet it is no better than the companies it is criticizing, going as far as being partially funded by one of them.
1) I disagree. I believe Mozilla is right, and engineers should consider the ethical implications of the things they're asked to build. This argument would be valid even if made by Mark Zuckerberg himself.
I'm fairly certain that the parent meant to say that the original criticism of Mozilla did not make any statement about whether the content of Mozilla's proselytizing is right or wrong.
Nobody has claimed that Mozilla's argument is invalid just because Mozilla are hypocrites for making it. People are expressing displeasure over Mozilla's hypocrisy, which is a valid issue, orthogonal to the merits of their proselytizing.
Edit: Sorry if I come across as belaboring, I hadn't read your other post. :)
Yes, I understand tu quoque, I just don't see it here. It appears to me that one must strawman the grandparents post in order to shoehorn tu quoque onto it.
There's not much to misunderstand, as the fallacy is fairly simple. Indeed, you can take the example shown in the wikipedia article and apply it directly to this topic:
Mozilla makes the argument that young people should consider the ethical issues before taking jobs.
HN user matheweis asserts that Mozilla's actions or past claims are inconsistent with their argument.
Therefore, the reasoning goes, the argument that young people should consider the ethical issues before taking jobs is false.
--
It should be incredibly clear how this line of reasoning is fallacious and therefore invalid.
HN user matheweis asserts that Mozilla's actions or past claims are inconsistent with their argument.
Therefore, the reasoning goes, the argument that young people should consider the ethical issues before taking jobs is false.
"""
This sequence strikes me as non sequitur and strawman. That is how "the reasoning goes" when one actually commits tu quoque, but merely pointing out hypocrisy is not tu quoque.
Edit: It's possible that I have not read all of his comments. I'm only aware of this:
"Mozilla wants young techies to consider ethics in their jobs?
Rich words indeed from the corporation that more than doubled executive pay and then found themselves needing to lay off 70 people to save costs on a restructuring"
