Recently, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took to the floor of the House to talk about Wikileaks, transparency in government, and the case of Daniel Ellsberg, the 
Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. He spoke about how the Iraq War was based on lies. He asked how the U. S. government should prosecute a citizen of Australia for publishing classified U. S. documents that he did not steal. Paul also said the following: “Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.”
Paul posed a number of questions at the end of his talk:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.
Source: Huffington Post
– Elaine Magliaro
@Buddha: I am 3.5 inches taller than the average American male. To psychoanalyze myself, if you detect inappropriate combativeness on my part it is probably due to a childhood spent in literally combative neighborhoods, and a young adulthood in which I was routinely dismissed as intellectually inferior because of my economically inferior background and jobs.
You say, “However, it is important to realize that (as Ian Ketterling said) “Logic is a way to go wrong with absolute certainty.”
Then Ketterling was wrong, or I would suspect speaking tongue-in-cheek about incorrect logic.
You say, “Just because something is formally logical doesn’t mean it is actually logical.”
This is a false statement. At least I have never seen anybody call anything “formal logic” to distinguish it from “actual logic.” I do not believe there is such a distinction taught anywhere.
You say, “There are many logical errors that can lead to formally correct arguments but irrational answers.
This is another false statement, and an impossibility. A formally correct argument does not contain errors, because errors are not permissible in a “correct” argument.
After your example, you say, That is a formally correct argument logically but a ridiculous answers.”
If what you are talking about is form in the sense of appearances, that is not what “formally correct argument logically” means. This is a long road to travel in order to say everything that looks like logic isn’t logical, which is true, but if it isn’t logical it is not “formally correct.”
You say, “Logic, like any tool, can be and is often misused.”
What I gather from your preamble statements and this conclusion is that you want to able to dismiss some entirely logical arguments because you find the answers ridiculous.
We can dismiss logical errors as simply errors, trying to generalize logic as unreliable is not necessary. Just as we dismiss arithmetic errors as simply errors; we do not claim addition is inherently unreliable when somebody sums up a column wrong. We do not say, “7+4=74” is “formally correct arithmetic,” we say it is bad arithmetic and wrong.
I think you ARE thin-skinned, you certainly explode with invective whenever anybody disagrees with you, and threaten some kind of argument Armageddon, and assert all kinds of authority. Those are the actions of a thin-skinned person; a thick-skinned person (and I do not claim to be one) pretty much ignores insults and is not easily provoked or embarrassed. That is the point of thick skin, nothing gets through it!
I think I can tell the difference between explanation and debate, I thought I was clear about that here, when I said: As for explaining what I suspect is a deeply flawed concept, feel free, but if you disagree with what I have written just tell me why you think I am wrong.
I prefer debate. I like to reason from axiomatic principles we agree upon. Slart and you do not care for that approach, and that’s fine. But that is the only discourse I think can lead to anything interesting, and the first step of that is agreeing upon something.
In this case you are wrong in saying I have made up my mind; on the contrary what I am saying is you (and Bob) have made up your mind, that human rights are grounded in property rights, and I think there is reason to reject that equivalence. I explained why and then I proposed an alternate place to start I thought we might agree upon.
As I said, I thought it was “the logical place to start.” However, if you are insistent upon a starting point I think is flawed, then there is no axiomatic foundation for debate.
As for me being a layman; so what? Whatever principles you want to start from, those ideas were original somewhere, sometime, in some mind. The fact that sharp-thinking peers of that time accepted that formulation is only slight evidence of its usefulness, and that evidence evaporates a little more with every passing decade.
Because I think that with the perspective of a few centuries worth of seeing the real-life ramifications of those ideas being implemented, and far more information than was available to those originators or their peers, I do not feel either cowed or reverent. I know more about human psychology and sociology and real-life modern business than Adam Smith did. I obviously know more than many of the founding fathers did; for example many of them firmly believed that non-Caucasians were inherently inferior races and women were inherently inferior thinkers and both were born into rightful subjugation.
I am not saying I am smarter than the founders, I am saying we have far more to reason with than they did, we have experiences and issues they could not have had or addressed, and I am saying that we are their equals: Our logic and reasoning is not inherently inferior to theirs.
I wasn’t being intentionally dickish and I had not made up my mind; that was all you. I presented my thinking and invited you to attack whatever you thought was wrong with it, instead you chose to interpret that as some sort of personal attack on your reputation or intelligence or whatever. So instead of attacking my logic, or presenting your own logic, you decided to attack me personally, maybe for not agreeing unconditionally to a stipulation that might ultimately just force me to agree with you.
I understand. I am interested in debate and you are not. It’s no big deal, everybody has their own reasons for posting.
Buddha is a Woosy:
“Now run a check on my hand to see which finger I’m holding up to you and your idiotic assessment.”
Let me guess, your index finger pointing the way to Marxist enlightenment?
Hillsdale College is one of the finest educational institutions in the country. Here is a sample of our coursework:
POL 403 – American Progressivism and Liberalism
3 Credit(s)
An examination of the Progressive political thought that was integral to the new direction undertaken in American politics in the twentieth century. The course addresses the most important national Progressive thinkers and their arguments, and also aims to understand the Progressives in light of the sources in the tradition of political philosophy from which they drew their principles. The course examines how progressivism has impacted contemporary American politics, and focuses on Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Croly, Theodore Roosevelt and John Dewey, among others.
POL 404 – American Conservatism
3 Credit(s)
This course will explore the nature and origin of American conservatism through a careful study of its principle thinkers and writers. Possible authors include, among others, Richard Weaver, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Harry Jaffa, Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, Robert Nisbet, and F.A. Hayek. Special attention will be given to the conservative movement after 1945.
POL 405 – Readings in American Politics
3 Credit(s)
This course focuses in greater depth on some of the political themes and statesmen covered in other courses in American politics.
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Pol 210 – Regimes: Classical and Modern
3 Credit(s)
This course focuses on the study of regimes with a special focus on the political science of Aristotle’s Politics and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
POL 211 – Classical Political Philosophy
3 Credit(s)
This course will offer an overview of major themes in classical political philosophy. The course will focus on the writings of Plato and Aristotle and selections from other writers such as Thucydides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Cicero.
Required: Students are required to take either POL 212 or POL 214. Students are strongly encouraged to take both.
POL 212 – Modern Political Philosophy I: Social Contract Theory
3 Credit(s)
This course will analyze the emergence of early modern political philosophy beginning with Machiavelli and developed later by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and other social contract theorists.
Seems pretty well rounded to me and that is just for political science majors.
Listen up little boy, dont speak unless you know what you are talking about.
“A wise man speaks because he has something to say, a fool speaks because he has to say something”
Tony C and Slartibartfast:
you both are cut from the same cloth. Just admit it and move on and become BFF’s.
Stop the quibbling. You only disagree on the shade of the green in the grass. You both agree that it is grass.
Stop the charade, kiss and make up.
Tony C,
So many words, so little of significance…
Buddha,
I don’t know, ‘artfully applied sciences’ has a certain poetry about it… 😉
Formal Logic?
IF (all phones) AND (all UFOs) ARE beige, AND (if not beige) THEN IS (not phone) AND IS (not UFO).
The proposition does not imply its converse nor inverse.
The proposition implies its logical contrapositive.
Corrections to the above are welcome
Tony,
I don’t care what you “accept”, genius. It was a formally logical example, i.e. its form is logical even though its contents and conclusion aren’t. That is an example (in form) used in probably every basic logic course taught in this country to show that form and function don’t always follow. Just because you disagree with the content *as you should not being totally insane* doesn’t change the form. It just means you’re too stupid to recognize forms over content in your rush to equivocate and “prove how right you are”. It really makes me want to ask . . . are you short? Because you sure do act like it.
I didn’t decide “it was too much for me” or it was about dogma or any of that other bullshit you want to assert.
What happened was this: I decided YOU – as in you personally – are simply not worth the effort of explaining the concept at hand.
You have all the people skills of a wolverine on PCP. And make no mistake about it. You are a condescending asshole. You offered up the label asshole yourself, but I’ll gladly add the modifier. I mean that in the nicest way possible too, Richard.
This wasn’t a debate in progress in re rights/property. You and Bob were having a debate. I was engaged in an explanation of technicality that you wanted to make into a debate to prove how right you think you are. My discontinuing explaining a technicality of my field of expertise has nothing to do with me. And make no mistake – I wasn’t debating, I was in the process of explaining. That you can’t tell the two apart is no surprise since you cannot divorce discussions of form from content vis a vis basic logic. With that kind of attitude, it’s amazing you’ve ever learned anything. You’re a layman operating from preconceptions that may or may not (as in this case) be correct. You wanted to argue with Bob, he asked for an assist and I was in the process of explaining where you two were having a disconnect. If you’d parked your persistently shitty attitude, you’d have found out we aren’t too far apart on the subject matter (not far at all) but that there are indeed rational reasons for viewing rights in the framework of property. Hell, Bob and I are further apart on this one issue than you and me are in all likelihood. He’s much more of a Kant guy than I am and more vested in the rights as property proposition. However, like I said, there is a difference between standing your ground and being an obstinate douche bag. You’d be well served to learn where that line is drawn. You won’t, but hey, that’s your personality problem, not mine.
As to hurting someone’s feelings? That’s a good laugh. You think entirely too highly of yourself if you think you’re even remotely capable of hurting my feelings. My skin is thicker than your skull.
And you go right on thinking you’re “my equal” in debate. You’re good, but you aren’t so good that I’m waiting with bated breath for your approval as “your equal” or, indeed, even consider you a point of concern. Several of the other regulars debate far better debaters than you and I’ve taken them to task without trepidation and with enough success that I am their equal in their eyes. That means far more to me than your condescension when we weren’t even debating.
You are, however, much better at being a dick than I am. My charm always wins out on that. It’s my Achilles heel in seeking “dickishness”. But you keep on keepin’ on there, Tony. You want to be #1 at something? You got your wish.
Now if you want to tell me I’m your equal at being a dick?
That might mean something, sport.
_____
Slarti,
Our difference is largely semantic. Applied sciences, be they based on hard or soft sciences, are by their very nature partially art. There is just no good, concise English term that conveys these blended areas of study/practice. And “artfully applied sciences” hardly rolls off the tongue.
Buddha,
I think that the our disagreement regarding science boils down to semantics (the same is probably true regarding Tony C, but if so I doubt either of us will admit it… ;-)). The term ‘science’ can be used in the Aristotelian sense of ‘the systematic study of nature’ or in the modern sense of ‘the study of nature using the scientific method’. I generally use it in the narrower, modern sense and I believe that you are using it in the more inclusive sense. I further classify ‘hard’ sciences as those that are based on rigorous, quantitative empirical studies and ‘soft’ sciences as those that are not. I would also classify engineering and mathematics as arts rather than sciences – they are fundamentally creative activities (they’re about making something new rather than understanding something that already exists). Do you agree with those categories or is our disagreement substantive as well as semantic?
I would classify law as an art – attorneys create arguments (I’m sure that you, as a lawyer, can tell whether or not a case is ‘beautiful’ just like I can do the same for the proof of a theorem), legislators create laws (I doubt that you would argue that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution aren’t things of beauty even if too many of our new laws are pretty ugly…), and I have no idea what judges create (justice?). I’m completely in agreement with you that an axiomatic system of law would be horrible – because, in my opinion, it would be attempting a scientific solution to an artistic problem.
@Buddha: I can accept that I am an asshole. I cannot accept that example was logically correct, it was not. Sticking to my guns is what makes me an asshole, I presume, I do not back down in the face of intimidation or out of ‘respect’ or to preserve feelings.
I have not “clearly made up my mind,” as you put it. On the contrary, I have come to the table with a considered argument which I expounded upon, I gave my reasons for why I find the rote answers and dogma lacking, and you have apparently decided that is too much for you, or you don’t like arguing with somebody that doesn’t accept the dogmatic formulation, or you just I am being an asshole. I was not acting like a dick, I was acting like you are my equal in a debate.
Why you are offended by that is a mystery, perhaps you cannot debate from anything but the rote you have memorized after all. (Now I’m being an asshole; if I get the label I get the privileges!)
Tony,
The example was formally correct and that was the only point. Your babbling only indicates part of the reason why it’s irrational, but it’s not illogical. It comports with monotonicity of entailment.
Now if you just want to keep acting like a dick, you’ll have to find someone else to play with.
Tony,
I could go further in explaining the legal utility of the artifice in question originally and the nuances between property of self and real property. We are not as far apart on the issue of human rights as a form of property rights as you might imagine (and for the record, I don’t go nearly as far with that analogy as either Bob or Kant would). If you’d care to think about it yourself – which I am now going to advise you to do since yours is the only opinion that you’ll apparently listen to – it has to do with attribution in the philosophical sense and the constraints under which adjudication operates. Here’s a hint: it’s an answer that does require fuzzy logic and approximations.
However, upon reading some of your later replies, instead of expounding I’m going to revert my answer to the simple “you’re an asshole” (since that is one of your “acceptable” options) and move on rather than waste time on somebody who has clearly made up their mind that they know what’s best – even in fields that are not their specialty. Despite having the knowledge to know better than to think all solutions are binary, you apparently have issues with non-binary answers for a field you aren’t trained in, ergo, I’ll not waste my time explaining something to you that has a rational basis when you’re likely going to turn around and say it doesn’t because it’s not neat enough for your closed and rigid mind. Inflexibility in thinking is not a positive attribute, Tony. There’s a difference between sticking to your guns and simply being an obstinate douche bag. You’d know this if you didn’t spend so much time with engineers.
@Buddha: Actually that is not correct logic at all; just because two things belong to the same superset it is not logical to assume they are equivalent.
Three is a number, seven is a number, that does not mean three is seven. Men get angry, women get angry, that does not mean men are women.
In mathematics you would be claiming a transitive property; i.e. If A=B and B=C then A=C. But “being beige” is not an equality, it is having a characteristic. In math, a simple example of a characteristic is “less than.” If A<C, and B<C, this does not mean A<B or B<A or A=B. All we know is that A and B belong to a set we can define as all numbers less than C.
I do not think there are logical conclusions that do not make sense; they all make sense. We may choose to ignore them; but that is an emotional decision, not a logical one. For example, logically we can never be truly 100% certain if a person convicted of a crime is guilty. The witnesses may be lying, the evidence may be planted, there may be some vast conspiracy to put the person in jail. But we ignore that logic and accept the very remote risk we are convicting an innocent, and put them in jail anyway, because if we let logic decide we cannot ever punish crime, and logic also tells us crime will become rampant.
It isn't that logic produces bad answers, it is really just like the discussion of the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex: Logic alone is never enough, at some point the amygdala calls a halt to speculation and chooses. I think this is why the law specifies the highest deliberative threshold for a jury at "beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Slarti,
You’ll notice I categorized law as a form soft science (specifically a kind of engineering based on soft sciences and liberal arts), not as a hard science, as to avoid the rigid bindings of axiomatic thinking. This was with purpose and forethought. Axiomatic law as applied to society would create all kinds of problems.
Gyges,
Law as social engineering is the application of the soft sciences of psychology, sociology and history as well as the liberal arts of philosophy and ethics. When done properly that is. However, a set of rules can be falsified like any model.
The way to do that is by 1) crafting rules with as narrowly tailored scope as possible, 2) carefully keeping in mind the goals you wish to accomplish by implementing those rules and 3) run a performance analysis of the rules in action to see if they meet the desired goals or not or if they have unintended negative consequences that may require modifying the model.
Chan,
Oooo. You “ran a check on” me. Pardon me while I laugh my ass off.
Listen up, Hillsdale Clown College student. I have more respect for ekeyra and her ignorance brought on by home schooling and its inherent pitfalls (unintentional ignorance) than I do for your ignorance brought on by choosing ideology driven education over an actual well-rounded education when you had a choice (purposeful ignorance – in your case to further rationalize your innate selfishness).
She can learn where she’s gone wrong, whereas you have simply chosen to go wrong.
Now run a check on my hand to see which finger I’m holding up to you and your idiotic assessment.
ekeyra,
It is logical to attempt to remove a root cause to a problem. In that respect, prohibition laws are a good idea on paper. However, it is important to realize that (as Ian Ketterling said) “Logic is a way to go wrong with absolute certainty.” Just because something is formally logical doesn’t mean it is actually logical. There are many logical errors that can lead to formally correct arguments but irrational answers.
All phones are beige.
All UFOs are beige.
Therefore all phones are UFOs.
That is a formally correct argument logically but a ridiculous answers. Logic, like any tool, can be and is often misused.
You’ll note (and history proves) that I’m not a fan of prohibition laws and for this very reason: they don’t actually address causes. The error is in tracing causal connections – a form of cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Drug use and abuse are symptoms in a sociological context. Prohibition laws are moralistic and reactionary (the very worst sorts of laws as law should be ethical and objective) but they serve no purpose but to create criminal underclasses that profit from prohibition itself.
@Slarti: You display a stunning ineptitude in interpreting plain English. Well, no better way to start the new year, I guess.
Huff and puff all you want, anybody reading my writing will have read that I DO understand the necessity of falsifiability in an experiment, which YOU cannot distinguish from the original question in this particular exchange which was here: Gyges, when Gyges said he thinks we need to define what makes something a “science.”
So let me put you back on track: The question is not what makes a good scientific experiment or hypothesis (which includes falsifiability, testability, repeatability, etc) but what makes something a “science.” More specifically, what is it that makes Darwinism a “science”? I certainly think Darwinism is a science, but it isn’t falsifiable.
The modern version of the scientific method was itself an invention of the middle ages, by those seeking “truth.” That does not mean science was not done or did not exist before then. Euclid formalized geometry and engaged in proofs 2000 years before that, chemistry and mathematics and chemistry were well under way and many of those early results still stand. The writings of Malthus (definitely) and Adam Smith (I believe) had some influence on Darwin’s theory; but what passed for “proof” by these earlier writers would be laughed off the stage or dismissed as psuedo-science by modern scientists. Yet they both were, in my book, scientists in the sense of trying to find truth backed up by evidence in the world, despite never conducting a falsifiable experiment in their lives (speaking of Smith and Malthus, and to my knowledge).
As for your prime example of my “false dichotomy:” Ha! Either Harry Reid is corrupt or he is not. That is a true dichotomy, not a false one. Either he has violated the public trust by taking advantage of the contacts and/or power of his position in order to enrich himself (as I think he has) or he has not. If he has, he is corrupt. As the old saying goes, a girl can’t be a “little bit” pregnant, either she has conceived and is pregnant or she has not, and is not.
There are true dichotomies in this world with no middle ground, even if we are not sure of the answer at some given point in time: Either a male has impregnated a female or he has not, people have been in traffic accidents or they have not, people have smoked pot or they have not, people have graduated college or they have not.
As for my formulation of how I think government ought to work: Thank you for the confirmation when you write: If there were any objective, rational way to determine the causes necessary to achieve a desired change then your way might work…
That is precisely the point; my way might work and the current way, in my view, is deeply flawed. I have no intention of starting a new government in a vacuum; what seems to escape you is that defining an ideal that might work is how we can decide the direction and changes we should make from here.
Empirical evidence tells us that society has tended to improve
Empirical evidence tells us that unless the rich are constrained by laws and threats of imprisonment, bankruptcy or violence, they will take more and more until they are so constrained. What empirical evidence tells us is that when people do not feel or see the consequences of their choices upon others, they routinely make choices without regard to those consequences. It is efficient thinking, and sociopathic — They don’t care. If women and children are dying from lung cancer from laboring in a modern-day Chinese toy factory, they don’t care as long as they don’t have to see it: The stuffed animals are cute and cheap so the customers don’t care, the price is right so Walmart executives don’t care, the Chinese billionaire that owns the factory and gives the orders never has to deal with the human misery caused by his orders, so he doesn’t care. The result is de facto slavery.
As I said in my posts, in searching for a definition of what is and is not science, I do not personally have a definition to propose that encompasses everything I think of as science.
Falsifiability is a small part of it; to me the purpose of a science is to explain the world and make useful predictions about outcomes. Different things do that to different extents. Particle physics is a science because it makes stunningly accurate predictions about the behavior or particles, even if these predictions break down at extremes. Psychology and sociology can be sciences, because done correctly they can make useful, reasonably accurate statistical predictions about how people will act or react, individually and in groups.
Is Martial Arts a science? It has no hypothesis and formal proofs, but my Kung Fu training made some extremely accurate predictions of what would bring men to the ground in pain; and concentrates (to me) more than any other martial art on what actually works in a fight.
[…] allows you to take comfort in your refusal to act based on your smug, hipper-than-thou certainty in your flawed conclusion that the rest of us are fools for not realizing that there is nothing that we can possibly do[…]
I am not convinced all of you are fools. You are, obviously, and so are some others, but I can engage in a reasonable conversation with many here. (Not you, but that is your choice, I have tried and you refused.)
I also do not think there is nothing we can do; even in the political discussion I was recommending a specific course of action. It is just a course of action you don’t like, so you mischaracterized it as “nothing.” So once again, but much earlier this time around, we see the evidence that you are a false debater, that you falsely interpret what I wrote and then argue with passion against what I never wrote.
One would not expect a scientist and logician to engage in such tactics; but obviously to anyone you are still an insecure child, emotionally. Even your silly justification for posting (because Gyges requested it) is farcical. You really seem to think of yourself as the white knight of logic, riding to the rescue of your simple-minded peasants whenever summoned by one in distress. What do you think, that Gyges cannot defend himself? Not even in a friendly discussion of what constitutes “science?” Or is it just your own insecure cowardice that drives you to always claim you are fighting on behalf of others and not yourself? I’m really curious, why do you always pretend this false selflessness? What emotional need does that serve for you?
Now, on to how I present my arguments: I present them scientifically. You may think it polite to let people believe in something I think is wrong, but I think it does them a disservice in the long run. If I believe somebody is wrong, I tell them so, and I defend my position. I believe I actually argue against what they wrote, I don’t just make up shit and then argue against that shit I made up, as you do about me.
I am the one engaged in scientific argumentation. I am the one that isn’t lying about my beliefs or pretending that stupid positions are just as valid as intelligent ones.
You are the pretender to science and intellectuality that is incapable of making an honest argument against what I WROTE instead of some mischaracterization of what I wrote, one that you invented because it was easier to argue against than reality.
I don’t need to paraphrase great men, because unlike you I do not rely on externalities like credentials or degrees or fame or respect, all forms of intimidation, in order to reinforce weak arguments and bad logic. I believe every argument should either live or die on its merits and nothing else; because giving extra credit based on authorship is just stupidly illogical, and it makes authors lazy and infests the science with sloppiness and inaccuracies. It is wrong.
Metaphorically speaking I argue naked, unclothed by my regalia and without the shield of my reputation, as every real scientist should.
I am informed by Darwin’s logic, and Smith’s, and Jefferson’s, and hundreds of others, and I may use their logic but I don’t need to quote them because I understand their logic. I do not think those authors are infallible, I believe what I believe because those specific arguments makes sense to me. I believe a flawed person, like Newton or Euler or Jefferson, can, with care, invent and put forth a flawless argument.
I don’t buy into Darwinism as a matter of faith, I believe it as a matter of reason. It is a science because it explains a huge number of observations with some relatively simple rules and very few or no exceptions. It is analogous to a lossy compression algorithm in that sense; representing very nearly the same information in a much smaller space.
When I present myself, I present what I believe based upon what I know. If I know and recall a fact that refutes something, I use it. Should I withhold it and pretend to be as ignorant as you, just to make you feel better? How would that help either you or me?
You seem to think I should pretend I am uncertain, but I do not lie. I think it misleads others and allows for misunderstandings, and as a real scientist I prefer an accurate understanding over any pretense of friendship or false comfort.
I understand that if I gain my friends under false pretenses, then I have no real friends, and anything they might do for me out of friendship would be my gain by fraud. I prefer to argue honestly, and I think it is that which offends you, because you never seem to address my actual arguments, you are constantly just offended by my tone, my airs, my rudeness, and my hipper-than-thou attitude. You are not a scientist, you are a pouting child.
As proof: Show my my words on this thread that present the false dichotomy you claim I have used. Good luck.
Tony C posted:
As for your tendency towards false dichotomy… In general, you have exhibited a tendency to cast things as black and white (Harry Reid is either honest or corrupt, President Obama sold out health care reform to corporate interests because he didn’t get everything you think he should have, etc.) rather than take the time to address the nuances and complexity of the situation. It’s like you are trying to analyze a war as a series of independent tic-tac-toe games instead of a series of battles- in the real world the outcomes come in many shades of gray, not just complete victory and utter defeat. Perhaps because of this, you have continually failed to differentiate between the corruption inherent in the system and the corruption of politicians (in an attempt to place more blame on politicians as far as I can tell…). This seems to fill you with righteous indignation about how ‘they’ are screwing us over, but from a pragmatic point of view it seems counterproductive and irrational. Also, whether intentional or not, you put on an air of ultimate rationality – as if because we have arrived at different conclusions than you have that our conclusions are simply products of our emotions getting the better of our reason while your superior self-awareness prevents you from succumbing to such petty emotions. While it is possible that parts of my reasoning may be in error, all of the arguments I’ve ever made against your comments have been based on reasoning rather than emotion. I may argue against you with passion and emotion, but I do it because I truly believe that your reasoning is flawed based on my own reason and understanding, not because of a knee-jerk emotional reaction to you being an asshole (although HOW I articulate my arguments is certainly influenced by your behavior…).
For specific instances of either/or thinking from you, we have:
“…for the purpose of Constitutions, Laws and Governance I still maintain there are two modes only: carefully considered, rational, reality-based thought with a full exploration of reasonable consequences and assumptions, and anything less than that.”
While your ‘two modes’ might classify all of the possible ways to approach the law, it is, in the words of one of my professors, like classifying food as bananas and non-bananas. Complete rationality (which you’ve pointed out can be disfunctional on an individual level) isn’t necessarily the best choice for constructing systems which must deal with human beings (who are, of necessity, at least slightly irrational according to you). Like all idealizations it tends to work perfectly in the abstract but go horribly wrong when an attempt is made to put it into practice. Certainly rationality is an important component on which the law is based, but it should never be the ONLY component on which the law is based – to do so is to invite unintended consequences. What happens when your uber-rational society can’t decide on the red or the blue tie?
Or we could look at:
“ I believe you are making the cognitive error that because I have said something radical that you disagree with (I presume) I must therefore be an uneducated, ignorant goofball, a high-school algebraist expounding upon the theory of calculus. Or an academic, long lost in my elaborate whiteboard theories, safely ensconced in my ivory tower and sadly divorced from the real world.”
Not exactly on point, but nonetheless an example of how you try to unnaturally shrink the range of possible responses. This is a typical tactic of yours by which you attack your opponent with a straw man argument – presumably to deflect attention from your inability to attack their reasoning directly – and then you refute said straw man by boasting about your life experience (in what is little more than an implicit appeal to authority).
How about this?
I think that your continual narrowing of the possibilities to an unattainable ideal or irredeemably corrupt is linked to your defeatist attitude. You have made it clear that you believe the system is beyond saving and by assuming that the world is black and white instead of a range of grays, you have enabled your ‘reasoning’ to prove yourself correct. Maybe the ‘knowledge’ that nothing you could possibly do will make a difference allows you to take comfort in your refusal to act based on your smug, hipper-than-thou certainty in your flawed conclusion that the rest of us are fools for not realizing that there is nothing that we can possibly do to improve things so we might as well give up. This seems to me to be nearly a textbook case of confirmation bias.
Empirical evidence tells us that society has tended to improve (although it takes steps backwards from time to time). One would think that a scientist wouldn’t expect this tendency to reverse itself for no reason. To paraphrase a great man, the intellectual arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards science.
@Slarti: Oh, I see, there was no science before somebody invented the scientific method.
As for “indivisible” I put it in quotes for a reason you apparently failed to comprehend.
As for your supervolcano: Sure, and if God appeared before us and claimed Darwin was wrong, we have falsified evolution! It is clearly YOU that does not understand science or YOU that lacks scientific imagination, because your experiments are just as much fantasies as discovering pixies in the garden or magical tree elves baking cookies. Come up with an experiment we can start right now that will falsify Darwin’s theory of evolution, that isn’t sprung from magical thinking.
The Manhattan project split the nuclei of atoms and that changed the chemical properties of those atoms. That CONFIRMS the atomic hypothesis. The point isn’t that the atoms are physically indivisible; it is that nuclei are unique and if they ARE divided they will no longer be the same element. Uranium, with 92 protons, decays eventually to Lead with 82 protons. An 82 proton nucleus is chemically LEAD and not uranium. Is this clear? An atom of uranium contains 92 protons, if you split the nucleus and the parts contain less than 92 protons, they aren’t uranium any more.
Tony,
Ironically, when I started looking for examples of you forcing false dichotomies I first found the exact opposite: I strongly disagree with your suggestion that science is like a sliding scale – I don’t think you can be a little bit of a scientist any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. You either operate according to the scientific method or you don’t – this is legitimately a binary question. Tycho Brahe was not a scientist – while he performed a necessary service in the interest of science, he did not ask questions of the heavens – he just recorded them. Conversely, while Kepler achieved what he did only because he was able to stand on Brahe’s shoulders, he was unquestionably a scientist – he deduced mathematical laws which accurately predicted planetary motions. Whether or not some field of study is a science has nothing to do with it’s explanatory power, it has to do with the methodology of the inquiry.
As for your lack of theoretical falsifying experiments – the only thing I see is a lack of imagination on your part. If you could show a mass extinction to be the result of a supervolcano, you would falsify the theory that it was caused by a meteor. Similarly if you found materials in a lunar core sample that were not found on Earth you would falsify the theory that the moon was originally a piece of the Earth that was knocked off in a planetary collision. And finally, I’m not sure how the Manhattan Project could be said not to have falsified the proposition “that elements are composed of “indivisible” atoms of that element“. By my count that puts you at 0 for 3. Maybe you’ve been doing too much engineering and not enough science… (not that there’s anything wrong with it ;-)).
I’ll give you the specific examples you asked for later…
@Slarti: P.S. Nuclear explosions and atom splitting do not falsify the atomic elemental hypothesis; in fact they confirm it. If you split a uranium atom it no longer has any of the properties of uranium. None of the resultant physical matter will have the properties of uranium.
In contrast, if you divide a block of uranium, or scrape shavings from a block, or melt it and pour it out as fifty separate beads of uranium, the resultant objects will each have all the elemental properties of uranium. A single atom of uranium has all the elemental properties of uranium. The same goes for any other element, like iron or gold. That is the atomic elemental hypothesis.