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Originally Posted by sapiens
Hypocrisy doesn't mean that you're "half-right" and I don't think that it is an improvement over being consistently wrong.
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It's possible that I overgeneralized with that first assertion, but the idea is this: when your professed beliefs and your behavior don't match, you're either saying the right thing or doing the right thing. Why wouldn't that be an improvement over doing AND saying the
wrong thing?
But yeah, come to think of it, there could definitely be exceptions to this idea. Do you have any in mind?
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I agree. I think that "hypocrisy" gets thrown around a lot. There are appropriate applications of the term, especially in character debates. However, it's often not applicable, and even when it is, it may not be relevant to the issue at hand.
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Even in character debates, I'm not sure I'd agree that it's a useful type of argument. If someone preaches against drunk driving and then gets a DUI, the problem is
not the hypocrisy, the problem is the DUI. You could say that the hypocrisy is useful in getting the hypocrite to change his behavior, and that would be an uncommon example of hypocrisy's relevancy. But it'd also be an example of hypocrisy's usefulness.