Two Wrongs Make a Right is justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0681, within the Relevance Fallacy family. The core principle: justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
Scientific Definition
Justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong.
Plain-English Definition
Justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong.
Feynman Explanation
Their bad behavior is not your blank check.
Core Principle
Justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong.
Mechanisms
Justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong.
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Inputs (Triggers)
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Outputs (Behaviors)
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Behavioral Signature
Their bad behavior is not your blank check.
Examples
- 'They violated the partnership first, so we're allowed to.'
- Ethics infrastructure rots under retaliatory logic.
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Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
The mistake with this element is treating it as irrationality. It is almost always a rational response to a payoff nobody wrote down. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: their bad behavior is not your blank check. Every element in the Cognition dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, ethics infrastructure rots under retaliatory logic. It is amplified whenever ethics infrastructure rots under retaliatory logic. Inside organizations that shows up as ethics infrastructure rots under retaliatory logic. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to make the desired behavior observable, remove whatever currently pays for its opposite, and attach the reward to the behavior rather than to the noisy outcome downstream of it. Design against it the way you would design against a known failure mode — assume it will appear, and price the exploit before someone finds it.
Famous Experiments
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Design Principles
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Measurement Approaches
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Evidence
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The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
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Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Attacking the person rather than the argument.
It's true because authority says so.
Common sense says so, therefore it's true.
Believing something is true because of the consequences of its truth.
Claiming something is true because it hasn't been proven false (or vice versa).
If it's 'natural,' it's good.
It's better because it's newer.
It's right because it's how we've always done it.
I can't believe it; therefore it isn't true.
Saying it enough times until it sounds true.
It's true because many believe it.
Asking the other side to disprove an unsupported claim.
Where Two Wrongs Make a Right is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- EssayGoodhart's Law in the Real World
How measurable proxies capture judgment.
- EssayThe Perverse Incentives Hiding in Your KPIs
Cognitive shortcuts turned into scorecards.
- ReferenceThe incentive glossary
Definitions for every mental model, bias, and fallacy in the corpus.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
Questions about Two Wrongs Make a Right
- What is Two Wrongs Make a Right?
- Two Wrongs Make a Right is justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0681, within the Relevance Fallacy family. The core principle: justifying a wrong because someone else also did wrong. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Two Wrongs Make a Right?
- Ethics infrastructure rots under retaliatory logic. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-COG-0681).
- How is Two Wrongs Make a Right exploited?
- Ethics infrastructure rots under retaliatory logic.
- How do you design around Two Wrongs Make a Right?
- Name the behavior you want in observable terms, remove what currently pays for the opposite, attach the reward to the behavior rather than a lagging proxy, and publish how you will detect gaming.
- Which behavioral dimension does Two Wrongs Make a Right belong to?
- Two Wrongs Make a Right is classified in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Relevance Fallacy", class "Logical Fallacy". Its permanent identifier is HBT-COG-0681 and its evidence grade is B.