The PPTH Farm fallacy

[readingrat]

… or How is it that all doctors are morons, but some are bigger morons than others?

(Note: This is basically a continuation of my Tripwires and Thanksgiving rant, so if you haven't read it yet, you might want to do that first before reading this one. If you hated that one, then you're better off skipping this one altogether.)

In my last rant I talked about the Midsomer Murder Fallacy, i.e. making assumptions about characters based on RL knowledge that doesn't apply to the series in question. This one is about letting some characters be more equal than others; in other words, judging characters according to a moral code, but applying this code selectively. It's a fallacy that's a lot more difficult to detect than the Midsomer Murder one, because we're at the crossing point between fact and opinion. What we see on screen is fact, what we make of it is our opinion. Nonetheless, while I grant everyone the right to cherish and nurture prejudices and preferences in their private chambers, it's helpful if, during discussions on public forums, they are aware that some of their judgments are coloured by their preferences/prejudices and could go the other way if some other character were involved.

My example in this case is the Season 1 episode Detox. In it Cuddy, instigated by Wilson, makes a bet with House that he can't stay off vicodin for a week. The idea is to show House that he's an addict who can't do without his opiates for a longer period of time. House takes on the bet and wins, but admits in the end that he is an addict.

This episode is as ridiculous from a RL point of view as the Midsomer Murder episode that I cited in my last post. I admit that as a lay person I had no clue about the difference between dependence and addiction until I started writing fan fiction. But superficial research into the long-term effects of opiate use brought the difference to my notice, and the long and short of it is that anyone who uses opiates for a longer period of time will experience bodily withdrawal symptoms regardless of whether they are addicted or not. Hence withdrawal symptoms are not a valid test for addiction, and the fact that House has them is no proof whatsoever that he is addicted to vicodin. Putting him through the bet proves nothing except that withdrawal is painful. Now if I know that after merely skimming a few internet sites, shouldn't physicians know as much too? If my GP didn't know the difference between dependence and addiction, I'd consider him a moron for sure.

Viewers under the influence of the Midsomer Murder fallacy would at this point assume that the writers intend us to know that doctors should know the difference between dependency and addiction, and that therefore we are to consider all the doctors involved - Wilson, Cuddy, the team, and House - to be morons. That, in turn, would mean that House MD is a parody of medical shows, the same way Police Academy is a parody of police procedurals. I don't think I have ever heard anyone express this view; I guess anyone who made that assumption stopped watching the show and never made it to the forums, because as a parody House MD doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment value.

An opinion that I have heard a lot, however, is that some of the doctors involved should have known better. Mostly, the ones who should have known better are Wilson and Cuddy, while House can be excused for not knowing about the different effects of the medication he is taking. His team can swing either way in this scenario. This is what I'll call the PPTH Farm fallacy (in analogy to George Orwell's Animal Farm), because it exempts one party from rules and regulations that it subjects the other party to, despite the fact that both parties have the same starting point. I'm not really sure why it's usually House who is not expected to know about the basics of opiate use and abuse; one can make a argument for Wilson, as an oncologist who regularly has to prescribe opiates as a palliative, being obliged to know more than the others, but there's certainly no argument for Cuddy or House's team needing to know more than he does, and there's absolutely no argument for anyone knowing less than I do unless we're prepared to suspend disbelief and let go of all we know from RL. I've heard it argued that House is honour-bound to accept a bet (seriously, are they the Three Musketeers?), but I suspect that the long and short of it is that tall guys with searing blue eyes are allowed to have a bit more yardage between the goal posts than normal mortals.

This fallacy is probably the commonest fallacy around, and depending on which character or 'ship' a viewer favours, it is applied to pretty much everyone on the show, and not just to House. The fallacy justifies tripwires while condemning opossums in bathtubs and loosened grab rails, finds nothing noteworthy about House yelling at his employees but objects when Cuddy yells at hers, expects House to stay alive and out of trouble for Wilson, but not the other way round … (All the examples I've named, and many more, are used both ways around.) Spotting the fallacy is difficult enough, because there's usually some pretty solid argumentation around it. There is nothing wrong with objecting to opossums in bathtubs; I remember someone making a strong case against Lucas because it was, after all, very cruel towards the poor opossum, an aspect I hadn't considered until then. The question is whether the person in question would have developed such protective feelings for the wee beastie if House or Wilson had planted it in Lucas's bathtub.

And that's basically the test for the PPTH Farm Fallacy: if the respective positions of the protagonists are reversed, or if you replace your most loved/most hated figure with another, does this still bother you? (This requires some mental discipline and basic honesty with oneself.)

Does the fallacy matter? Aren't we allowed to have our own views and opinions, or view the show through our own experiences so that it relates to our lives?

I wouldn't mind if the PPTH Farm fallacy didn't lead to some very strange and scary theories. Let me give you an example. I read the beginning of a fanfic some time ago, a House/Cuddy established relationship one. In it Cuddy asks House what the difference is between sex with her and the sex he used to have with hookers. House, after putting up a valiant fight, finally agrees to show her by treating her the way he treated his hookers. What follows is basically the description of sex that is somewhere between non-con and rape. The fic ends - if I remember correctly, but I could be wrong because, frankly, I was somewhat distracted by physical feelings of nausea - with Cuddy being glad that her relationship with House is different, secure in the knowledge that House respects her more than he did his hookers.

This fic has a problem that has nothing to do with the fallacy as such: it turns House into a rapist, and the author doesn't even realise she is doing so. (No, it was not a dark!House fic.) But the actual fallacy lies in the assumption that hookers don't have the same right to physical safety and respect for their personal space that Cuddy is entitled to. Because they are 'only' hookers, their customers have the right to get physically rough and don't have to ask their consent for whatever they want to do to them. Cuddy, on the other hand, being a respectable woman (and probably a favourite of the author's) can expect to be treated with respect and consideration. That's the fallacy in full bloom: Cuddy is more equal than the hookers, for no other reason than that she's Cuddy.

This fic highlights another weakness that the fallacy leads to: it distorts the character that it is trying to protect, sometimes to such an extent that the original character can't be recognised any more. Let's look at Cuddy in the example above. Should she have been relieved at finding out that House used to rape hookers? I don't think so. If she had the slightest smidgen of sense, she'd run for the hills. The fallacy ends up turning her into a suicidal moron, too blinded by the approval she craves from her boyfriend to recognise that he's an utter bastard and a disaster waiting to happen. (The real Cuddy would have kneed House in the groin at the first signs of roughness and told him to get out of her life until he's got his sexual issues treated.)

This was an extreme example, but it basically applies to any example of the fallacy in action. Let's look at Detox again. If House, as a physician, is not expected to know the difference between addiction and dependence, or about the dangers of an uncontrolled detox, while Wilson and Cuddy are, then the fallacy makes Wilson and Cuddy out to be cruel and uncaring, but it also turns House into a blithering idiot for not knowing what two otherwise inferior doctors know or for not acting on his knowledge even though it's his health that's at stake. And that's going to happen every time we exempt characters from rules that we otherwise declare to be universally valid, because in our society we only exempt people from rules for a handful of reasons, and those mostly boil down to saying that they cannot be held fully responsible because they are not on the same mental level as an average person (children, people who are mentally incapacitated, people who are under the influence of intoxicating substances). Sure, if you want your favourite character to be considered incapacitated or permanently too high to be held accountable, then go ahead and create special rules for him or her. Otherwise, suck it up and make sure everyone is equal - always!