Exploiting Hypocrisy

All it takes to expose many hypocrites is several minutes of questioning.  After all, hypocrisy can be evident without watching anyone's actions--their words and the ideas those words are supposed to express can betray just inconsistency as their actions, and sometimes it can bring even more to light.  Actions can be disguised in a cloak of false motives and can even sometimes be explained in a way that is not truly inconsistent with professed beliefs.  However, an irrational person cannot hide assumptions or philosophical inconsistencies completely, even if their actions are wholly consistent with their ideologies.

After all, even a single attempt to excuse or misleadingly describe just some aspects of their worldview shows that they do not have consistent alignment with reason, with inconsistency necessitating either stupidity or insincerity, if not both at once.  Such a person might present themselves as rational--as assumption-free, consistent, thorough, and focused on important truths.  They simply will not be able to do so forever if they truly are a hypocrite.  The moment their hypocrisy is exposed, they have given rationalists a glaring weak point that can be ruthlessly exploited as needed.  In fact, it is one of the greatest outwardly evident weaknesses to non-rationalists.

Hypocrisy is one of the best social tools a hypocrite could provide to a rationalist.  Most people cannot reason out explicitly philosophical truths on their own (not because of an ultimate inability to do so but because they lack self-development and philosophical initiative), but almost anyone can be at least manipulated into recognizing the hypocrisy of someone with worldviews they have no bias in favor of.  This is instrumental to swaying otherwise ignorant, apathetic people to oppose someone with a fallacious stance.  When a non-rationalist has hypocritical beliefs or engages in hypocritical actions, they have thus held out knives for rationalists to freely take and stab them with as others watch.

Simple questions can bait a hypocrite into thoughtlessly revealing their true self, making them vulnerable to even the sluggish, often inept observations of onlookers.  Hypocrisy, being one of the most consistently criticized errors in mainstream culture, has nowhere to hide when it has been forced into the open.  If someone will not be consistent in a rational way, it is very likely that they believe their own philosophical ideas in a selective manner.  When this is the case, there is always the possibility of exposing the inconsistencies to those who hoped they were at least sincere and consistent in their philosophies.  There are few weapons as potent in manipulating non-rationalists as exploiting hypocrisy on the level of actions, words, or beliefs.