The centrist fallacy

You can't lose games you don't play. You can't be found wrong if you never assert anything as right. You can't fail challenges you never accept.

Enter the centrist.



"Centrist" positions are sometimes portrayed in memes (e.g. counter-signal memes) as simply not taking any position, and rather relishing in the perceived intellectual superiority of being a "neutral" or "objective" party.


What do we make of this character (I'll call him "The Centrist")?

I propose a new term here—the Centrist Fallacy, which goes as follows:

Not being wrong is the same as being right.

By simply refraining to participate in discussions, debates, The Centrist believes that he can take the intellectual, and by his reasoning, the moral high ground as well. What are his arguments?

Meet The Centrist


Let's start by taking a look at the first meme. Here is the text of that meme (what The Centrist says):

Nah bro, I'm a centrist. That means that I can criticize everything without holding any concrete beliefs myself, and that also means you can't criticize me in return.
Haha, nice try though.

Let's unpack this quote to see more clearly the tricks The Centrist uses.

Identity


First, The Centrist asserts his identity when he says, "Nah bro, I'm a centrist". Consider this a related trick to using an ad hominem to attack your opponent as a person, rather than address their argument(s) for the issue being addressed. Identifying oneself as "a centrist" is supposed to imply a number of virtues, namely:



This is a species of virtue signalling, whereby The Centrist attempts to assert his role in a conversation as that of a neutral expert or reasonable moderator. This is done even if the other people participating in some conversation didn't want this from The Centrist—this may be because, for instance, they believe The Centrist is not qualified to play this role...

Irresponsibility


The Centrist continues, "...that means that I can criticize everything without holding any concrete beliefs myself".

Refusing to hold any concrete beliefs can be, by one view, a form of rational skepticism. I don't see this as especially problematic. But, refusing to even state (and discuss) coherent positions yet try to market oneself as a reasonable interlocutor strikes me as a minimally annoying and at worst intentionally deceptive posture to assume.

Does the centrist have "skin in the game"—that is, does The Centrist have anything to gain or lose by the present discussion? Or, does he not really care about any of the issues at hand, and is instead merrily engaging in verbiage qua entertainment?

When people actually have a stake in something, I think it is safe to say that they will care more about said thing. For instance, if it is your job to give out driver's licenses, and you own all the cars, you probably have an interest to keep your cars intact and keep the people driving them safe, so you will naturally be more attentive to who is and isn't an adequately good driver in giving out licenses. You are more motivated to care about relevant facts, data, etc. in order to make the most informed decision you can. If friends you care about are LGBTQIA+, you may have think more carefully about how your positions about traditional gender roles affect these friends.

On the other hand, when direct consequences for what we do are abstracted further, and further away from us, it becomes more difficult to discuss things seriously. Have you ever been part of an organization that spent a lot of money on really useless stuff, at the orders of somebody who had no "skin in the game" (i.e. a manager using somebody else's money)? Or, perhaps, you've discussed multiculturalism from a person that comes from a more-or-less monocultural society, which they intend to continue living in.

While having "skin in the game" is not a requirement for talking about particular issues in my opinion, I think it is certainly an important dimension to consider when deciding to go ahead and have a serious conversation with someone. This is out to avoid wasting time. I believe that some people can be committed to principles like honoring logical consistency, objectively weighing evidence, etc. in the abstract. But, this is much easier said than done, and even the best-intentioned are fallible. So, seeing if someone has any sort of  stake in an argument is one heuristic for determining if they even want to have a discussion.

Immunity


Finally, The Centrist asserts, "...and that also means you can't criticize me in return". The Centrist is, by his reasoning immune from criticism.

Let's revisit identity for a second because it may seem that I contradicted myself—on one hand, I'm saying that The Centrist gives off red flags by virtue of virtue signalling, and then I say that the identity of who we are talking to is something to consider as a heuristic for finding a good discussion. Should we pay attention to identity or not?

My view is that we should pay attention to identity insofar as it informs how people approach a conversation. The person that approaches a conversation to show how clever or above-the-petty-disputes-of-mere-mortals they are (e.g. The Centrist) is to be avoided. Whereas, the person that has a genuine interest in coming to a greater understanding about some issue, rather than showing off what they already know, is to be welcomed. In my view, people that have a stake in a conversation tend to be less interested in flexing their frontal cortexes and more interested in discovering solutions. Those that are eager to criticize, but unwilling to bring up positive suggestions of their own to be subjected to the same sorts of criticism belong to the tribe of The Centrist.

An Argument


I'll construct The Centrist's claim to centrism as follows:

Claim 1: Positions on (many) disputes can be reduced to falling along a spectrum, ranging between two extremes. Consider: (no government ... small government ... big government). There is a spectrum for the dispute on hand.

Claim 2: Neither pole (extreme end) of the spectrum is the correct/optimal/best solution for the present dispute.

Claim 3: Choosing a position towards the center of the spectrum avoids the perceived excesses in the the conclusions entailed by principles proposed by position aligned towards either pole.

Conclusion: Choosing a more central position for a dispute avoids undesirable conclusions entailed by either pole's positions.

That is to say, "Not being wrong is the same as being right."

Convincing enough? Let's address some of these claims.

To come to think of it, this argument sounds a lot like a game theory problem related to Hot Dog stands I once read about. But I digress—back on topic!


Spectrums


In order for The Centrist to even have a center to claim, he must establish a spectrum of positions.

Can many disputes be reduced to spectrums of positions?

Indeed, many questions can be framed in this way. For example,

All other things being equal, what temperature should the thermostat be set to in the office?

Here, there is the COLD-WINGER position and the HOT-WINGER position. The Extreme COLD-WINGERs want to crank the temperature down to industrial freezer levels. The HOT-WINGERs want to turn the office into Buffalo Wild Wings. The Centrist enters as a reasonable guy here.

Most questions that we would be interested in discussing are more interesting than the question above. In any case, if we really cared about the above question, we could just run some experiments (or see if other people had already done so). There isn't much to discuss.

Talking about complex issues of policy and the like, are not so easily reduced to spectrums of positions. For example, suppose we are talking about privacy policies and user data on social media sites. What sorts (if any) policies should governments put in place to protect users?

First, I don't think anyone would argue for counting these things based on something like memory (e.g. 0 bytes one one end, to 1000000000 terabytes per user on the other), stating a position like, "the government should only protect 1.44 MB of data per citizen". If these were the sorts of positions we were discussing, then sure, a spectrum might work. Relatively more or less data...

In reality I think people seriously discussing these issues would bring up distinctions of kind, not just quantity, and thus resist simply being put on a spectrum:



...and so forth.


So while Claim 1 that positions on disputes may fall along a spectrum seems reasonable for some questions, it seems absurd to me to claim to be a centrist generally. Unless perhaps, if centrism itself is taken to be some kind of principle.

Principles


One way to evaluate alternatives is to measure them against some kind of principle. So, for instance, you might have a number of metrics by which you evaluate how healthy some food is for you. You may then decide what the best choice for lunch is by the maximize healthy principle, whereby you choose the combination of items you think is healthiest.

Another example of a principle is the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), an ethical stance that asserts (Wikipedia):

...aggression is inherently wrong. In this context, "aggression" is defined as initiating or threatening any forcible interference with an individual or individual's property.

One policy may be preferred over another because it respects a particular principle.

Is centrism a principle?

While I'm sure people have formulated sophisticated accounts of what it means to negotiate and compromise, especially in trying to resolve some dispute between groups which do not share the same moral principles, I think that "centrism" construed as "choose some position in the middle" can't stand without some tricky verbal gymnastics.

Suppose Terrible Person 1 says that we should enslave 1/4 of the population and Terrible Person 2 says that we should enslave 3/4 of the population. Is the ethical thing to do therefore to enslave half the population?

To those that object to slavery on principle, seeking the middle ground here just because its center is not a morally defensible position. In this case, I hope we would argue to reject Claim 2, "neither pole (extreme end) of the spectrum is the correct/optimal/best solution for the present dispute," and say that a position even more extreme than Terrible Person 1's position, namely that NONE of the population enslaved is the preferable arrangement. In this case, our moral intuitions (I'm assuming) incline us to embrace the excesses (of freedom), such that rejecting Claim 2 allows us to unproblematically accept Claim 3, "Choosing a position towards the center of the spectrum avoids the perceived excesses in the the conclusions entailed by principles proposed by position aligned towards either pole." In this case, we don't want to avoid "excesses".

Conclusions


Having treated Claims 1-3 above, I think in more cases than not, we can avoid the  conclusion that, "choosing a more central position for a dispute avoids undesirable conclusions entailed by either pole's positions".

Let's take a look at what avoiding conclusions means for a bit.

Perhaps what is most troubling to me with The Centrist's position is its abandonment of principles and focus on choosing some fitting conclusion. If, rather than trying to come up with some guiding principles (e.g. the Non-Aggression Principle, Rule by Law, sustainability, etc.) and instead jump to deciding which conclusions we do and don't like and saying we want something in the middle, we have abandoned the search for solid foundations. Redirecting conversations from finding ways to reconcile principled viewpoints into ego-fueling I'm-a-reasonable-guyisms does more harm than good to finding out how to resolve real differences between people that deeply care about particular issues.

Don't be that guy


Many disputes can be looked at as optimization problems, whereby we place possible solutions across some spectrum. This is like in calculus class where you're asked to find the maximum or minimum for some function over some range. For a question that can be reduced to a model like this, then sure, The Centrist says something rather trite in (implicitly) maintaining that the best answer to some question is likely to fall somewhere is the middle of two extremes rather than at either pole.




However, by choosing to ignore the reasons (i.e. principles) which underly more extreme positions, The Centrist does little more than play amoral pragmatist at best if he does not offer some positive suggestions for how conflicting viewpoints may actually be resolved, aside from some absurd principle of centrism itself, which is parasitic upon the views of the poles he criticizes.

The guy you don't want to be is the person that attempts to optimize their agreeableness, at the expense of all principle. Stating some platitude like "things aren't so black and white" or "there are few absolutes", but then failing to supply alternative explanations or principles from which to build some positive response to a dispute isn't very helpful.

Instead, the better centrist (who I'll call a "moderator") should sort through the claims made by the more extreme positions, and evaluate which ones do indeed hold. Then, the moderator can come to different, well-reasoned conclusions, which likely were not opposed by either of the more extreme positions. This isn't simply "choosing the middle ground", but is the willingness to accept or reject claims made on all sides. Not refusing to pass judgment. But passing judgment equally. The moderator is not committed to being moderate, but rather is partial to reason and evidence, whichever party has that to offer.


If you enjoyed this post, please check out my previous post, "Water cooler social theorizing" for some more thoughts on how to do have productive discussions 💧

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