Talk:Two wrongs don't make a right/Archive 1

Just thought I'd insert one of my favourite tiny jokes here, keeping it out of the article itself, of course:

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights make an airplane -- ShadowDragon 20:57, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Sign outside Chinese restaurant: Two Wongs make it right!

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three do...

This is not a logical fallacy. Actually, no one has ever said that two wrongs make a right. It would be so obviously wrong. As wrong as saying 1 + 1 = 0.

Rather, two wrongs don't make right is a moral principle, or perhaps a slogan expressing a principle. So I moved everything to "slogan:Two wrongs don't make a right". --Uncle Ed 21:37, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This is a logical fallacy. We very frequently hear arguments going something like:

Speaker A: George Bush lied in his Congressional testimony.
Speaker B: But you're ignoring the fact that Bill Clinton lied in his Congressional testimony!

Even if Bill Clinton did lie in his Congressional testimony, that does not make it acceptable for George Bush to do so as well. Speaker B is trying to change the issue to something else. If no one has ever argued directly that "two wrongs make a right", that may be because that would reveal the obviousness of the fallacy invoked; instead "two wrongs make a right" is a necessary and unstated premise of the kind of argument that Speaker B uses.

This may also be a slogan often recited by mothers to their children, but this is a standard logical fallacy. [1] [2] [3] [4]. --Taak 19:56, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Anybody object if I change the name of "President Johnson". It could imply that LBJ lied to congress; whether he may or may not have done isn't the subject of this page? Grobertson 10:47, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Somebody might want to consider reorganizing this under the entry 'tu quoque,' which is the more-accepted and better-known name for this kind of faulty reasoning.