The goomba fallacy is when some people say A, and some people say B. And then you say, isn’t it ridiculous that people believe A and B at the same time? But it isn’t necessarily true that anyone believes both at the same time.

Never heard of the goomba fallacy? That’s because it’s new. It was coined in 2024. It’s widely circulated in certain parts of the internet, and if you’re not in those parts of the internet then good for you, you’re not missing much.

The goomba fallacy doesn’t have anything to do with goombas. It’s just that the meme image that popularized the fallacy contains goombas. Source

My instinct when learning about a fallacy has always been to pick it apart. What exactly makes the fallacy wrong? Are there contexts where the fallacy isn’t wrong? What is the goal when people commit the fallacy, or point out the fallacy? So here is my overanalysis of the goomba fallacy.

Surface analysis

The goomba fallacy is a special case of the composition fallacy. The composition fallacy is when you assume that what is true for individual parts is also true of the whole. If you look at individual people, you may find people who believe A, and who believe B. But these are properties of individuals and not properties of the crowd as a whole. Therefore you cannot assume that everyone in the crowd believes A and B simultaneously.

Under this analysis, the goomba fallacy is always straightforwardly wrong.

Next step back a little, and consider why people commit the goomba fallacy. The purpose of the fallacy is to accuse people of hypocrisy. It’s to show that people have beliefs that conflict with one another.

And when people point out the goomba fallacy, the purpose is to defend against the accusation of hypocrisy. There isn’t necessarily any hypocrisy occurring. Yes, there may be different beliefs that conflict with one another, but those beliefs are not necessarily held by the same individuals. So rather than talking about hypocrisy, what we’re seeing instead looks like ordinary disagreement between different people.

In defense of hypocrisy

Let me ask the question: Why is hypocrisy bad? Why is ordinary disagreement less bad?

Both hypocrisy and disagreement imply the existence of conflicting beliefs. If two beliefs conflict, at least one of them must be false. So if all we care about is the presence of false beliefs, then both hypocrisy and disagreement are equally problematic.

Think about it from this angle. “Individual people” are not in fact indivisible units. Individual people change over time, may be thought of as many distinct people from one moment to the next. Brains are material objects with spatially separated components. We think of individuals as cohesive wholes as a matter of practical reality, but we understand that not all parts of the individual are necessarily aligned, thus the sin of misalignment, i.e. hypocrisy.

But couldn’t we also apply the same reasoning to communities? We understand that communities are made of many component parts, yet we may conceive of them as cohesive wholes. Just as we speak of the sin of misalignment within the individual, we can reasonably speak about the sin of misalignment within a community. Why can’t people within the community talk to each other and get their story straight? Why is the community presenting a unified front while ignoring substantial disagreements within their own ranks?

Disanalogies

I drew an analogy between hypocrisy and disagreement, but the reader should remain unconvinced. There are some major disanalogies.

In particular, it is relatively easy to resolve a conflict between one’s own beliefs. It is much harder to resolve disagreements between distinct people.

Hypocrisy is the greater sin, because it suggests you’re not even trying! You could just stop believing one of the things, but for some reason you chose not to. Is this epistemological neglect? Or worse, you may be deliberately advancing contradictions with malicious intent.

On the other hand, if people disagree, that doesn’t reflect neglect, it reflects the fact that people do not have infinite resources to argue until they come to a consensus. It’s widely understood that communities, even communities with a shared political goal, are essentially alliances. Disagreements, even on important matters, must be accepted if you want to get things done.

Blurring the line

We’ve shown that disagreements within a community are often accepted as a matter of practicality. Are there any analogous situations for individuals?

One example comes from lawyers. Lawyers have a practice of “arguing in the alternative”–making multiple parallel arguments on behalf of their client, ignoring that some of those arguments conflict with one another. I think this contributes to the image of lawyers as dishonest, but it serves a practical purpose. The lawyer is professionally obligated to pursue all arguments that may help their client, and they only need the judge/jury to accept one of their arguments. It does not matter which argument gets accepted, and the lawyer’s own belief on the matter is irrelevant.

And then there’s the classic example of hypocrisy: Rules for thee, not for me. Technically this is logically consistent, but violates a common ethical principle: rules should apply fairly or not at all. This form of hypocrisy is clearly self-serving, and should be rejected.

Is there an analogous situation in the community context? Suppose some people in a community believe “rules for thee”, and other people in the community believe “not for me”. When it comes to enforcing the rules on other people, the community is insistent. But when it comes to applying rules on themselves, the community remains silent. Is this not a form of community hypocrisy? The community is being epistemologically negligent for a self-serving purpose.

Generally speaking, it’s worse for a single person to hold conflicting beliefs than it is for the conflicting beliefs to be spread across multiple people. People commit the goomba fallacy because it gives them the upper hand in an argument if they can show that their opponents are being hypocritical.  But my intention has been the blur the line just a bit. Sometimes, hypocrisy does not require that contradictory beliefs are held within a single individual; hypocrisy may occur on a community level too.