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When Theft Was Worse Than Murder

nautil.us

51–52 of 52 posts

Re: When Theft Was Worse Than Murder

#51
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's the strawman.

Is that response in the negative or the positive? I always get confused when people toss out the fallacy card to answer simple questions. It's not like I claimed no true Scotsman would commit copyright infringement, they are simple questions awaiting a yes or no response.

You went directly for the bank robbery line, which is at the very least dishonest when talking about copyright infringement.

Your simple questions are loaded and therefore will not be answered.

Re: When Theft Was Worse Than Murder

#52
post #45

So, I did my dissertation on these documents working with these same people. I don't really have an argument with Dedeo's argument. Now, my work was mostly qualitative (I tried to infer meaning from the text) than quantitative, but my work relied heavily on quantitative underpinnings. The only argument I have is with the title. In 17th, 18th, 19th century England thievery is never considered worse than murder. Ever.…

Do you have any pointers for someone outside the field to get an overview of critical responses to Pinker's thesis and work?

This review sums it up pretty well: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1232
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