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The Worst Argument In The World

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Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#101

Post by lmm »

csense wrote: post #61
mseebach wrote: post #43

This seems disingenuous to me. Already by calling what's essentially rhetoric "arguments", he's building a huge strawman. Take abortion - according to opponents a fetus is a living human being, and actively and purposefully killing a living human being is murder in the Charles Manson style. The argument for abortion isn't that it's somehow OK to kill really young human, it's that fetuses aren't independent human bein…

> The argument for abortion isn't that it's somehow OK to kill really young human Not true! At least, if you asked me to make an argument in favor of abortion, that's the argument that I would make. No human within the first year or so after conception has any of the distinguishing features which give intelligent beings a higher moral status: Tool use, language use, abstract thought, logical reasoning, permanent memo…

>To deal with the difficulty of measuring t_I, our culture and laws have instead picked a deadline t_D, such that t_D is much smaller than t_I in all cases (regardless of differing definitions or individual cases). We have declared that we should assume humans younger than t_D have proto-human legal status roughly equivalent to animal status, and humans older than t_D have full-human legal status. Killing before the deadline is legal if done in a humane way with the consent of the mother; killing after the deadline is treated the same as killing an adult would be (only allowable in very limited circumstances such as self-defense). Therefore our society can avoid some of the drains placed on it by humans who, it is known, will be born into far-from-ideal circumstances, while hopefully staying far away enough from t_I to avoid sanctioning the killing of anyone who has the moral status of a full human. (Obviously, t_D is the time of birth plus delta, where delta is less than one day (I'm not sure exactly what delta is, but I'm pretty sure it's less than one day). Delta is necessary to account for partial-birth abortions.)

That's a very arbitrary time at which to draw a line, and it's not even applied consistently. Everyone would consider the deliberate killing of a 22-week foetus being kept alive on an incubator to be murder, so clearly t_D must be <= 22 weeks after conception. A 26-week foetus is much closer to t_I, but there are those who consider it acceptable to kill such a thing, solely because it happens to be inside someone's body. That's the part I can't understand.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#102

Post by hef19898 »

csense wrote: post #45
Xcelerate wrote: post #28

I wonder if there's some sort of way to definitively defeat someone's argument in issues other than math and science. I doubt it -- I suspect all arguments essentially boil down to moral relativism based upon gut feelings (environmental or genetic factors). I guess a more optimistic question is whether there's a statistically significant process to convince* your opponent that your argument is correct. I would actual…

> arguments essentially boil down to moral relativism based upon gut feelings (environmental or genetic factors) There are many pieces of this problem. A few of them at random: 1. The US education system doesn't do a good job of teaching people to think rigorously and analytically. Up to 12th grade, math is largely memorizing specific algorithms, science is memorizing vocabulary words, real programming courses are us…

> to point one: In Germany its more or less the same, my best guess as to why it is so is that it is easier to do exams on memorized knowledge than independant thinking and because you need some basics to beginn with. This doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see more critical and analytical thinking

> point 2: largly depends on the subject. in maths, physics chemistry and biology (tough field given the whole evolution story) it's more about facts and not about opinion (generaly speaking, in the higher levels of it I guess it changes, but even then more on execution questions). In "softer" (lacking a better word) subjects I completly agree.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#103

Post by chris_wot »

slurgfest wrote: post #59
breckinloggins wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. The number of people who are responding to any of my little strawman arguments on their merits is surprising, and frankly disappointing on Hacker News. If you have replied to any of these "arguments" and asked me how I could possibly believe them, then you: - Have not understood the meta-topic of the post - Are unable to resist attacking silly arguments even when it is stated in my post that they are caricatures…

I'm not sure why you thought it was constructive to turn HN into a sounding board for your personal complaints about 'left-leaning argumentoids'. Setting aside the utility of providing more 'examples' of inflammatory political statements on HN, why maintain such thoroughgoing political bias? If the intent is to discuss forms of argument then the bias is only distracting. If the intent is to catalogue stereotypes or c…

Wow, way to miss the point! He was merely saying that the examples given seem a bit slanted, and I would be more effective to use some other examples to illustrate the point of the article!

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#104

Post by freehunter »

breckinloggins wrote: post #60
slurgfest wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - evolution has been directly observed and is the overwhelming consensus among biologists, if not among fundamentalists whose theology is threatened by it... yet you have carefully impugned its existence by referencing "fantastic parts," as if evolution were a matter of unicorns or Roswell or something. Go learn about Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, then come and lecture us on how evolution isn't really a fact. I wil…

I replied in general to this and other comments above, but I wanted to directly respond to this: > I will never understand why basic facts of biology are supposedly left-wing. It does seem to be the case that "reality has a liberal bias", but you really have to embed yourself in the culture of the religious right to fully "grok" it. I've lived in the Bible belt all my life, and quite frankly the reason basic facts of…

I was reading an article on the BBC that was an opinion piece wondering why the level of people identifying as Christian in the US was going down and the number of identifying atheists was going up. I don't want to dig for that article back (it's irrelevant in this argument). My point is, while it might seem like the number of people denying evolution is going up, its entirely plausible that they may just be getting louder out of desperation.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#105

Post by chris_wot »

adastra wrote: post #41
breckinloggins wrote: post #13

The article could use some more neutral and left-leaning "Worst argument in the world (TWAITW)" examples. I'm fairly neutral politically, and the piece sounded left-biased to me. Note that I'm not stating my opinion here; the author even apologizes for it in the article. Perhaps he is simply at a loss for examples? We could help. Here's a neutral one (from the comments): - "George Washington was a traitor !" (should…

This post has so much flame-bait in it I almost wonder if it's a meta-post-- a practical joke to see how many people go after these various politically-charged statements rather than comment on the article itself. I'll assume it's not though. In which case, I really don't see how adding more politically-charged examples to this discussion, or any other for that matter, is at all productive.

Pot, kettle, black.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#106

Post by chris_wot »

slurgfest wrote: post #39
angrycoder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two issues with your comment: 1) It is a blog post not a scientific study or an article in the newspaper. 2) Everyone knows republicans can't read.

You certainly aren't helping anyone on HN except Republicans with vapid remarks like 'republicans can't read'.

I have to agree. At most the comment was an extremely poor attempt at humour. At worst, it's a pointless ad hominem attack. Not helpful.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#107

Post by mej10 »

DannoHung wrote: post #74
csense wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument for abortion isn't that it's somehow OK to kill really young human Not true! At least, if you asked me to make an argument in favor of abortion, that's the argument that I would make. No human within the first year or so after conception has any of the distinguishing features which give intelligent beings a higher moral status: Tool use, language use, abstract thought, logical reasoning, permanent memo…

I think your premises are incorrect. Create a machine that is like a human in all respects that you cite, tool use, language use, abstract thought, logical reasoning, permanent memory, and if it is just comprised of that, we will call it a very amazing robot. You could even add self-preservation routines, and we will call it an amazing robot that knows its own value. But unless you add emotions that are recognizable…

"Contrary to the stereotype, rationality doesn't mean denying emotion. When emotion is appropriate to the reality of the situation, it should be embraced; only when emotion isn't appropriate should it be suppressed."

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hp/feeling_rational/

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#108

Post by rpbertp13 »

tikhonj wrote: post #10
tokenadult wrote: post #2

I read the interesting submitted article and its comments right after it was submitted here on Hacker News. The worst argument in the world (a general FORM of argument) is described this way in the submitted article: "I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: 'X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features. Therefore, we should judge X as if it also had those features, even though it does…

I think pointing out a logical fallacy is not a refutation. Rather than saying "your argument is wrong", it says "your argument is not well-formed". This is much like the difference between a program that has a bug and a program that has a parse error. To take the most glaring example: "my point is true because my point is true". Obviously, nobody actually says this seriously. But some arguments are isomorphic to thi…

Fallacious arguments (of which circular arguments are a subset) aren't literally meaningless. "My point is true because my point is true" is perfectly comprehensible, it just fails to establish the fact that "my point is true". You can disagree with it reasonably by pointing out the fallacy, so it has linguistic substance, and it is not meaningless.

It is very different from, say, "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" which is literally meaningless.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#110

Post by sageikosa »

DannoHung wrote: post #74
csense wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument for abortion isn't that it's somehow OK to kill really young human Not true! At least, if you asked me to make an argument in favor of abortion, that's the argument that I would make. No human within the first year or so after conception has any of the distinguishing features which give intelligent beings a higher moral status: Tool use, language use, abstract thought, logical reasoning, permanent memo…

I think your premises are incorrect. Create a machine that is like a human in all respects that you cite, tool use, language use, abstract thought, logical reasoning, permanent memory, and if it is just comprised of that, we will call it a very amazing robot. You could even add self-preservation routines, and we will call it an amazing robot that knows its own value. But unless you add emotions that are recognizable…

Rationality and emotions are not dichotomous. If you take the time to rationally choose your value system, your emotions will direct you towards rational objectives. Your emotions do not become divorced from decision making, they become analyzable and adjustable so that they can work for you, instead of against you.

Or to put it another way, if your emotions seem irrational, then you're probably doing something wrong.

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