Gongol.com Archives: July 2025
July 9, 2025
Sometimes post hoc really is ergo propter hoc
One classic logical fallacy is "post hoc ergo propter hoc" -- after this, therefore because of this. It's good to be aware of the fallacy, since things often happen in sequence but not out of consequence. Sometimes you wash your car and then it rains -- meteorology taking no actual interest whatsoever in the state of your automobile. ■ But when a flagship product of a major business goes quite offensively out of all bounds of sense and good taste, the sudden departure of a chief executive officer should probably be viewed as a consequence of the event, by default. Linda Yaccarino probably wasn't pushed out of "X" (formerly known as Twitter) after its artificial-intelligence chatbot, Grok, lurched into a fascist-praising, antisemitic mode. There's an excellent chance she got fed up and quit. ■ A reasonable person probably would quit under the circumstances, given that the CEO is plainly overshadowed by the non-CEO majority owner. Elon Musk joked about the situation even before she was hired, tweeting, I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" Not a very good job listing. ■ A reasonable person, though, might also have avoided being in a position to lead an organization with a company mouthpiece over which they have no control. As the owner has gone about touting how great and "significantly" improved the uncontrolled chatbot is, the CEO has been hostage to whatever data set was used to train it. ■ Warren Buffett once advised, "Culture has to come from the top and be consistent." That cannot be the case when company culture is being publicly shaped in the voice of unhinged hate and offensiveness. No rational person would take the newly-open seat at X. It's going to remain much too hot for a while.
