If It Walks like A Duck and Talks like A Duck…

why shouldn’t I call it a duck?

You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Maybe it was offered smugly as a way to jam an argument past your defenses. Maybe it was offered as the voice of reason, a voice for sanity in an important debate quickly spiraling into esoteric gymnastics. “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…” Each . dripping with implication. But there are actually a lot of reasonable ways to finish that thought. And tonight I’d like to explore one that doesn’t rely primarily on emotional manipulation.

First off, let’s try to establish some common ground. I won’t ask you to agree that there’s some small, possibly ridiculous-to-you to consider chance that it actually isn’t a duck. Not after we both agreed that it both walks and talks like one (and I do agree that it does). But can we at least agree that someone thinks it might not be a duck? Otherwise, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation (tongue-in-cheek self-reference: If it sounds like your having this conversation…) At that point, it may not even matter if the person is unreasonably and against all decency hedging about or straight up denying duckhood.

So back to the original question: If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, why shouldn’t you call it a duck?

Before we can answer that, I have to ask, what’s your endgame? Why are you trying to figure out if you should call it a duck? Are you looking to take action that depends on whether or not it’s a duck? Are you trying to satisfy intellectual curiosity? Is it pissing you off that someone else has the nerve to suggest it might not be a duck? Depending on where you hope to end up – on the duck issue and in life in general – your ability to understand when and why to reserve duck judgment could end up being crucial.

Say for instance, you want to call the thing in question a duck so that people understand why you want to treat it like a duck. That makes sense, but you may be making life unduly difficult for yourself. Because as cut-and-dry as the internally-rhyming walk/talk argument seems to you, it isn’t. Ducks do a lot besides walk and talk. They fly. They bite your fingers when you feed them bread. They push insurance. The thing in question, walking and talking the way it does may prefer Geico to Aflac. It may have maternal instincts towards a kitten. Or the reality of external objects may be a crock of shit. Do you really need to get into all of that, just to say “I love duck, and that looks enough like one that I’d like to cook it up and eat it?”

If your ulterior motive in trying to assess duckhood is to figure out whether or not to eat the ducklike thing, your threshold for proof is probably significantly lower than definitive.

But when you present your case to someone who obstensibly has input in the outcome (otherwise, just explain your position to them while picking duckish bits from between your teeth), if you make the argument: “I’m going to eat that duck because it’s a duck”, you are inviting them to voice their doubts about whether or not it really is a duck. And because “It IS a duck” is such a needlessly definitive statement, you are opening your position up to seemingly inane and inhuman objections from people who don’t really get what’s going on and may be unethical monsters. At first, you probably said “I’m gonna eat it because it’s a duck” out of intellectual sloppiness. It’s an easy mistake to make. One we make all the time and aren’t called on because the issue at hand is non-controversial. But you said it this time and the other person didn’t agree with you, possibly because they don’t want you to eat the duck. Or maybe because they’re just earnestly taking your position at face value and responding to it as you presented it (a good habit by the way, right up there with liberally calling judges at Magic tournaments).

The thing is, as long as you’re still willing to continue to honor the discussion, there are no unforgiveable or irrevocable mistakes. You can change your mind when you start to think you were wrong before. You can apologize for shitty things you said. You can get better.

Or you can roll your eyes and check out while definitively stating, “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…”

Before you may have just been sloppy, but at this point, you and you alone are making the conversation (whose motivation is to figure out what should happen to the duck-thing) ratcheting up the burden of proof. If you want everyone to let you eat that duck thing now, you better make an unassailable case. I ask you to take my word now because I actually think this duck-thing needs to get ate. You will fail. And it will be frustrating. Because people will make seemingly inane points that have nothing to do with operating in a world that can never provide certainty, where language is always overly reductive (even when everyone agrees on them except the crazy people), where objectivity is impossible, and where probability is a practical, rational person’s best friend.

Stop.

And breathe.

You are not forever stuck looking for duck-proof or resenting everyone who is undermining it.

Reframe your argument in the most forgiving way possible. A case you are capable of and comfortable making. The most lenient case that you find convincing. Something like, “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, I’d like to treat it like a duck until something happens that teaches me I need to check more boxes than just walking and talking.”

At this point, the other person will either agree with you that enough boxes have been checked, in which case they will be on board with you eating the duck-thing, or they might prefer figuring out if the thing has sex like a duck or whatever and will inform you of this preference. At any rate, you are now involved in a manageable, sensible, and likely resolvable coversation. And you have a much better understanding of where the other people in the conversation actually stand and whether or not they are ENEMIES or just enemies (a.k.a. people who mostly agree with you).

On the other hand, if you want/need to call it a duck because it makes it easier to sleep at night while eating whatever you want in front of people with wool-covered eyes, you probably aren’t ready for that conversation or this one. And your opinion on the matter just became much less relevant.