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The Worst Argument In The World

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141–150 of 152 posts

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#141
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Evolutionary psychology is a valid science, however, and this is an enormous however, untrained individuals attempting to use it to enforce social norms is absolutely 100% sexist. I personally believe that sexism is not immediately a negative thing, but neutral. Sex based discrimination is useful and can hold a lot of value in determining our next course of action. Using sexism as a moral axiom is illogical. What's…

Sexism implies discrimination. Every single word in your statement could substitute racism or ageism for sexism and it wouldn't make anything you're saying any more meaningful. Does racism also mean something else in the dialect of English you speak?

I don't see conflating racism, sexism and ageism very useful. They all have different causes and validity, depending on context. Does attaching -ism after the word "nerd" make nerds suddenly an oppressed group?

There's nothing wrong with discrimination as such. Dividing two things into separate compartments gives us the ability to process their differences instead of trying to fit two thing together that do not go together, again, depending on context. But discrimination definitely is a very useful mental tool.

A word about racism. I see it mostly as an in-built defense tactic for territory and one's own genetic line. Is this outdated? Perhaps. Does this have anything to do with sexism? Not really that I can see. Other than the -ism at the end.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#142
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty disappointing to me that people would downvote you for saying what seemed so obvious. Conservatism in America is always associated with a decision making process dictated by religion. He attacks creationism with evolution and the Christianity's disapproval of euthanasia and abortion. These generalizations are neutral since the right will stand by these fallacies. Where the bias comes to play is when he sa…

..."affirmative action is racist" and "taxation is theft". This is not what conservatives believe... You must not get much chain email. Not to disagree that some examples of lefty dumbness would have improved the article. Plenty of dumb in the world to go around. But I've seen those exact points argued by conservatives on Hacker News, let alone the fox news discussion forums.

Well, Gmail has a good learning algorithm :) I definitely agree with you that these points are argued but I don't believe, or perhaps hope, that they represent the majority of conservatives.

I think it's considered fact that right media is significantly more sensationalist. Naturally, this turns "I humbly disagree" points of view into "You should hate because" arguments. In the same sense that they don't report on the moderate right, they also don't report on the moderate left. It could just as easily be said that I heard "in a liberal America, everyone will drive a Prius" in a chain email. Of course you wouldn't hesitate in believing that is false.

It's not that Fox News doesn't actually report the news (despite a perpetual joke deeming otherwise) it's just that it skews points to make them more approachable for socially conservative voter. They must say that "abortion is murder" to their party because it consists of people vehemently against murder and more importantly, people against redefining their definition of murder. Conservatism itself is defined by this a lack of progressivism and without it, most of the social stances are blurred if not completely flip flopped.

As you know, most voters aren't that informed. Nearly nobody, left or right, ponders real solutions to the problems facing the government. Instead they have a belief, usually predetermined, and look for information to support that belief. Arguments are reenactments of actual debates with more swearing mixed with regurgitation of often incorrect statistics.

The left and right is saturated with bigots. A fractional amount of voters even consider both candidates. To the left, Obama can do no wrong. To the right, if he says run, they walk - if he says walk, they run. In my experience, the only people who are informed enough to vote are those who consider voting bi-partisan, and who classify themselves as independent, libertarian, etc. This all goes back to why you see these points blanketed over all conservatives which I think is because these moderates don't want to associate themselves with the extremist nature of the right media. A moderate, even someone who considers themselves mostly Republican, cannot possibly seem partial when he is next to someone using religion as political justification and partial people don't like appearing impartial. Just know that just because someone votes Republican, doesn't mean they have tunnel vision and belong the Westboro Baptist Church any more than a voter of Democrat is expected to be on the newest season of Whale Wars.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty disappointing to me that people would downvote you for saying what seemed so obvious. Conservatism in America is always associated with a decision making process dictated by religion. He attacks creationism with evolution and the Christianity's disapproval of euthanasia and abortion. These generalizations are neutral since the right will stand by these fallacies. Where the bias comes to play is when he sa…

> Conservatism in America is always associated with a decision making process dictated by religion. That seems to be the case today, but I don't think it was always that way. The original idea of conservatism as I understand it is basically to avoid seeing everything as an emergency and to avoid seeing every emergency as the exclusive domain of the state. Conservatism is about moving slowly (conservatively) to avoid…

I don't know the history of the word conservatism but I do know there was a time when Republicans were more progressive than Democrats. Eventually they switched.

I agree that having a more popular moderate party would be nice, granted, I feel like many people who are forced to vote Republican or Democrat are just Libertarians (which seem to express the views of most moderates) and must decide between the lesser of two evils. Of course, that's due more due to the stranglehold of the two-party system on elections rather than people thinking outside of those parties.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#144
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…

> Therefore, the moral status of a human immediately after the time of conception t_0 is akin to that of an animal. It's not okay to torture, abuse, or injure them for fun; it's not okay for people outside their family to interfere with them; it's morally and socially acceptable and even admirable for individuals to form very deep emotional attachments with them and spend enormous resources helping and protecting the…

> "well, potential things don't count because I say so"

I would say I don't care about potential things. This is a fairly fundamental moral principle for me and if you disagree with it perhaps we do not have a true disagreement but simply different preferences.

I could point out that a moral principle involving caring about potential things has a high complexity which may be convincing to some people:

If you care about potential things you will also have to draw a line to avoid say, outlawing changing your mind about having sex because that prevents the conception of a potential person.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#145
post #37

I hate to say this, but I found this article absolutely terrible. All of these "Martin Luther King IS ...", "George Washington WAS ...", etc. statements (form: Noun TO BE Adj.), really remind me of the arguments in favor of E-Prime and its associated benefits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime . The author likely intended this, of course, but reinforces exactly the same kind of thinking and tone in nearly every ot…

How do you indicate category membership in E-Prime?

What if I want to say "A dog is an animal"?

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#146
post #9

This is a logic shortcut (heuristic), with its origins in decisionmaking under incomplete information and time constraint. Yes, in the context of manipulative pre-meditation (and perfect information) it takes on a new character. Edit: Clarification/simplify

But when such a heuristic is challenged it should be reformed into a proper argument.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#147
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..."affirmative action is racist" and "taxation is theft". This is not what conservatives believe... You must not get much chain email. Not to disagree that some examples of lefty dumbness would have improved the article. Plenty of dumb in the world to go around. But I've seen those exact points argued by conservatives on Hacker News, let alone the fox news discussion forums.

Well, Gmail has a good learning algorithm :) I definitely agree with you that these points are argued but I don't believe, or perhaps hope, that they represent the majority of conservatives. I think it's considered fact that right media is significantly more sensationalist. Naturally, this turns "I humbly disagree" points of view into "You should hate because" arguments. In the same sense that they don't report on th…

I think you're suffering from a bit of david broderism. "I want to look reasonable, so I'll say both sides do it".

Fox News viewers are the least informed viewers in every survey ever conducted. They thought that Saddam had been caught with WMDs in like 2007. Almost a majority thinks Obama wasn't born in America. These are scientific surveys, and it's completely different from a liberal being biased to explain away facts that they acknowledge.

If Fox News is saying something, and people are repeating it, I think we're doing them a disservice by saying they don't really believe it.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#148
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Gmail has a good learning algorithm :) I definitely agree with you that these points are argued but I don't believe, or perhaps hope, that they represent the majority of conservatives. I think it's considered fact that right media is significantly more sensationalist. Naturally, this turns "I humbly disagree" points of view into "You should hate because" arguments. In the same sense that they don't report on th…

I think you're suffering from a bit of david broderism. "I want to look reasonable, so I'll say both sides do it". Fox News viewers are the least informed viewers in every survey ever conducted. They thought that Saddam had been caught with WMDs in like 2007. Almost a majority thinks Obama wasn't born in America. These are scientific surveys, and it's completely different from a liberal being biased to explain away f…

I think your just bit too accustomed to extremists on the internet. I had no intent about looking reasonable but I'm happy you think I am.

I'd be interested in reading your sources though I don't have to stretch my imagination to believe them. I want to make it clear that I never said right media doesn't believe what they are saying only that what they are saying doesn't represent every conservative voter. The people who believe everything on fox is fictitious are equally as ignorant as the people who believe everything on fox. Most of the stories are the exactly the same as CNN... perhaps less informative, definitely with a rightist point of view, but news nonetheless.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#149

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…

Evolutionary psychology isn't valid science: it is not falsifiable. Evolution is a series of accidents that happened to produce the observable outcome. Trying to retroactively assign causality between those outcomes and other simultaneously-evolving outcomes is ridiculous because there is no control condition.

Re: The Worst Argument In The World

#150
post #126
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His reply is a bit vague, but as I recall this has actually been studied and it turns out that (for instance) other animals have blood coagulation systems that are lacking several of the 30 supposedly essential parts and still work fine - see e.g. http://creationwiki.org/Blood_clotting_is_irreducibly_comple... and the usual anti-creationism resources. Similarly, the supposedly "irreducably complex" bacterial motors t…

Thank you for the link. Was really interesting to read Behe's response to the critique.

I agree that I was vague, however my response was not intended to be an absolute refutation of every argument that follows that pattern, otherwise I'd be playing whack-a-mole with arguments forever. It was meant to be a general explanation of how the argument makes a large assumption that would be pretty easy to refute with further research. As the person above did with a link.

Also, I did give further reading with the selfish gene for a specific example of a bacteria's flagellum.

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