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I just know that when I see people complaining about "6500 ft^2 McMansions" (as if we all have a responsibility to live in 20 ft^2 environmentally-friendly cardboard boxes)

Look up these logical fallacies and see if they sound familiar:
False Dilemma and Straw Man.

1. A and B regularly occur together.
2. Therefore A is the cause of B.

That's false of course, as the conclusion of this study!

As parent post says...

Some people manage to drink alcohol in moderation. Obviously they will have in general better habits than those who drink more or even than those who don't drink at all for some over reason than caring about health.

Such better habits lead to greater lifespan.
Nothing to do with alcohol itself.

As pointed here, effect of normalization to compensate dietetary habits is not detailled. Go figure.

Your list of exams supports my point, not yours, because in those professions, passing an exam is not enough to certify someone as qualified. Pilots are not allowed to fly based solely on passing a standardized exam (and would you fly in a plane with a pilot who passed the FAA exam but had never been subjected to any other form of evaluation?). Surgeons are not allowed to operate just because they've passed an exam (and would you let someone operate on you who had never passed any form of evaluation except their board exam?). Etc.

In other words, is any test absolutely perfect? Of course not. Nothing is. But I believe we were talking about the real world, not Black 'n' White Land were anything not utterly perfect is ipso facto utter garbage. Nowhere did I claim that standardized exams are useless. Of course exams add useful information to an overall assessment; they are simply not enough. I was specifically responding to your claim (repeated in your reply) that you could construct a comprehensive exit exam that covers all relevant skills and knowledge. I am stating that in practice, no exam is up to that task. (Your claim that you would only accept a "good" exam begs the question. My whole point is that your standard of a "good" exam is impossible in practice. Ironically, this is backed up by the list of professions you offered, all of which supplement standardized exams with other forms of evaluation in admitting people to the profession and making hiring decisions.)

Only that the tradition of belief in supernatural beings has been around far longer than the tradition of demanding proof of those beings.

Which means your argument is a logical fallacy

We are in danger of becoming a society where science is the new priesthood, universities are the new temples, and PhDs are the new bishops of a timid and trusting flock. I'd say this corruption of science is almost as alarming as global warming, and far easier to demonstrate. Any true follower of science must reject "consensus" for what it is: argument by authority.

Incorrect. Argument by authority "is fallacious only when the person [cited] is not a legitimate authority in a particular context." Climate scientists are, of course, exactly the authority one should cite about matters of climate science.

Comparing science to religion is very much the rage but the simple fact is that science produces testable theories which seek to correctly describe the world around us, while religion does not. Anyone with education and intelligence who studies scientific research or does their own scientific experiments can correct scientific errors, and this is not true for religion.

I'm not sure why you went off and attacked the concept of consensus because I wrote (correctly) that the scientific debate on this matter had ended. The vast majority of climate scientists acknowledge that the Earth is getting warmer and that one of the causes is human production of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. It is virtually impossible to find any respectable scientist who will disagree, anymore.

What this means is that we -- lay readers like you and I, and scientists alike -- can move on to other questions. Maverick scientists are of course welcome to try to disprove the existing consensus belief, and the wonderful thing about science is that they are always welcome to do so (and will receive great acclaim if they are right and everyone else is wrong). But it is correct, and significant, and important to say that there is consensus and the scientific debate on this particular question is over.

It doesn't matter who pays their bills.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumsta ntial-ad-hominem.html

This is a logical fallacy called a Biased Sample, also known as a "Pauline Kael"

Gosh, I really am going to have to start putting in tags. Or else make the jokes funnier.

Oddly enough, some of us haven't experienced any more instability in Firefox than Opera. Seriously, I use Firefox 2 about 80% of the time and Opera 9 about 20%, and they both crash at the same (low) rate.

Incidentally, I don't see any posts saying that the crasher isn't a flaw, and anyone who does say so is an idiot (no matter what their favorite browser is). Software should not crash, and assuming a stable environment, any crash is a flaw. There are arguments over terminology -- i.e. can a crash bug be properly considered a denial of service vulnerability or not. Even Opera devs are of the opinion that a crash bug isn't a security issue unless it (a) can execute arbitrary code or (b) can prevent you from restarting the browser.

In reality, Bush's cuts are called "for the rich" purely to divide and polarize

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery- slope.html

Just in case you aren't familiar with fallacies: Appeal to Common Practice

didn't ask for a definition of ideology in general or how it can affect one's perception. This response did not answer my questions. Unless you can--even in general terms--define what my ideology is, how can you make the claim that it's "blinding" my judgement?

And if the democrats had run on an anti-bribery platform to the same extent that republicans have run on under "traditional values," then I would say that they were opening themselves up to the label of hypocrites as well.

that would be anad hominem attack

LINK. Now re-examine your initial argument. Pornography is about sex. Rape is a small subset of sex. Violent porn is a small subset of porn. Or do I have to spell it out for you?

It's the supremely arrogant belief that your ends justifies your means.

I agree - I'm going to try to condense your argument down, in my own words. Bayes is hardly necessary unless you want to get all formal (and Bayesian views suffer from the fallacy of equivalence for initial conditions, anyway - though natch, that's kind of inevitable).

Here's the thing: the flip side of the fallacy of ad hominem is the fallacy of equivalence, the notion that one should initially consider every single argument equally.

Yes, arguments should be considered on their merits and not upon their origins. However, in the absence of the complete picture (and truly, it's rarely possible to have that complete picture) it is often useful to consider the source and their ability to think clearly and without prejudice. This is especially true in complex matters such as global climate change, and highly speculative and ideological matters such as the impact of DRM.

So whether it's purely logical or not, it's certainly reasonable to give more consideration to a statement about evolution that came from, say, Stephen Jay Gould over one that comes from Pat Robertson.

So, in short, argumentum ad hominem should be viewed with suspicion but is not without its uses.

Oh yes - and Doctorow is kind of a self-important twit. If I want his opinions, I'll read his freakin' blog, I don't need it on /. too.

Do have an honest counter argument or is insulting him the best you can come up with?

If it weren't for Apple, Creative Labs or Sony or Microsoft would be the #1 DRM'd music vendor, and we'd be bitching about their implementation instead. And the honest ones among us who dislike DRM no matter who makes it will still be doing what we have always done, buy our music from cool non-DRM'd labels and occasionally in that old fashioned "CD" format.

Under the moto: if you don't do anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide?

How long till it becomes mandatory and that police just ask you for the records each month?

I love it. Instead of posting a reply about why it doesn't make sense for Opera to go "open source", you attack the poster. Hmm, isn't there a name for that kind of thing?

Second, the OP did not state his reasoning as to why he believes Opera should go "open source". Perhaps he added this comment because he believes it makes good business sense for Opera to open up their code. There is absolutely nothing whatsoever to suggest the assertion that the OP supports any ideology. The term he used was "open source", and that term is apolitical.

A Circumstantial ad Hominem is a fallacy in which one attempts to attack a claim by asserting that the person making the claim is making it simply out of self interest. In some cases, this fallacy involves substituting an attack on a person's circumstances (such as the person's religion, political affiliation, ethnic background, etc.). The fallacy has the following forms:

      1. Person A makes claim X.
      2. Person B asserts that A makes claim X because it is in A's interest to claim X.
      3. Therefore claim X is false.

      1. Person A makes claim X.
      2. Person B makes an attack on A's circumstances.
      3. Therefore X is false.

It's not a binary choice. The idea that security is all important is why 3 x as many nukes as there is any reason to have. That's right we could have spent 1/3 as much on building nukes and been just as safe. This is not to say we would have been as safe with zero nukes.

You can defend stop some types of "terror attack's" by telling countries that support "TERRORISM" that we will hold them responsible for such support. If Iran creates a dirty bomb that's detonated on US soil then nuke the country into glass. We did the same thing with the USSR and Cuba and it worked.

PS: Whenever you feel the need to restate someone's argument before attacking it your probably creating a "Straw Man" argument. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man .html

It's a good idea to read up on the list at http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ and count the number of fallacies used in the average political speech. I think this will start to clear up some issues for you over time.

Note: I am ignoring the "Appeal to Emotion" and "Ad Hominem" attacks because I don't find them worthy of note, but feel free to waste your time with such things in the future.

It's not a binary choice. The idea that security is all important is why 3 x as many nukes as there is any reason to have. That's right we could have spent 1/3 as much on building nukes and been just as safe. This is not to say we would have been as safe with zero nukes.

You can defend stop some types of "terror attack's" by telling countries that support "TERRORISM" that we will hold them responsible for such support. If Iran creates a dirty bomb that's detonated on US soil then nuke the country into glass. We did the same thing with the USSR and Cuba and it worked.

PS: Whenever you feel the need to restate someone's argument before attacking it your probably creating a "Straw Man" argument. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man .html

It's a good idea to read up on the list at http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ and count the number of fallacies used in the average political speech. I think this will start to clear up some issues for you over time.

Note: I am ignoring the "Appeal to Emotion" and "Ad Hominem" attacks because I don't find them worthy of note, but feel free to waste your time with such things in the future.

Whether or not the CDC has sent staff to investigate Morgellon's claims *DOES NOT* relate to the validity of the claims. You need to brush up on logic and fallacies
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

I'd advise looking at http://www.morgellons.org/ since that site has more detail for medical professionals.

He must be of the stripe that anything illegal is wrong, which is a perfect example of begging the question.

1) Read what I posted, your quote has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. You are completely doing a strawman here.

2) Again read what I posted than read it a second time, of course you obviously don't get it when I say that building is different than imposing restrictions. I've not wavered from that statement they are two different things; and you are trying to apply crazy-world linking to it that again doesn't work.

3) Again read and again strawman, quote where I say evil. Print it, if not than you are doing an exageration. And a way insane one, this one is so blatently bad that I think you would even disagree with it if you read it a second time.

4) Wow, just wow... why don't you re-read what you posted. Talk about grasping for a bunches of fallacy laced brass rings. There is no doubt that voting with votes or dollars makes change, there is no doubt of that. But the past has shown time and time again that in technology the freemarket responds to people much beter than government regulations. Government regulations DIDN'T stop sony, PEOPLE did (actually the media more than anything else). You keep saying it, but let's see where the goverment did about... any new legislation specific to that passed??? Sony did get a good slapping by the EFF, but there is NO statement about preventing them from using the DRM you mentioned the "government" is protecting you from (which again they aren't)

5) I don't see why you are thinking those two have any relation two each other. Prove to me that they have a reasonable connection. You made the supposition from left field, now back it up that those two are interrelated. I don't really need to get out the dictionary and recite the definition of regulation do I? Because you keep on trying to add this left-field stuff into it, trying to put words into my mouth and trying to make crazed ties that have nothing to do with the topic of the government regulating technology. What's even better is that the goverment still hasn't outlawed Sony rootkits, they haven't put regulation in place preventing them at all.

You still haven't proven to me that government regulation of technology has helped more than hindered the common person. Why don't you go ahead and start listing them, I'm fairly positive my list would be longer than yours.

As to the whole crashing your hardware STRAWMAN, give it up, you'd have to be a three year old to fall for that. I don't fall for stupid fallacies and I'm tired of your high-school level of intelligence. Here why don't you look up the dozen or so (I actually stopped counting them, seriously you are that bad) of these you've broken over here and come back when you can put up and argument that is reasonable http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.htm l#index

Oh, and the whole neocon thing was a perfect example of the intellect level that you are playing at, so anybody and everbody can see the level of schooling you have.

That he is likely paid to be spouting this position does not change that the issue is worth discussing. It's not irrationally pro-nuclear; the "Here's why" paragraph presents a coherent reasoned argument. It is oversimplified — at a glance, there are gross oversimplifications and/or assumptions regarding future power requirements, the measurement of radioactive waste hazards, the weaponization risks associated with reprocessing, the total costs of nuclear electricity, the usability of nuclear fuel, and substitutibility of energy sources (including the uselessness of nuclear for peak load). This is because it's a brief editorial, not a two semester undergraduate course sequence. And, were anyone willing to devote the column inches to it, most of those oversimplifications could be fleshed out with the gory details, even with mathematical rigor.

This isn't to say that those arguments are necessarily dead right, either. The weaponization hazards are far too trivially dismissed, and nuclear power is not fully substitutable for some carbon resource applications. But the debate urgently needs to be held. If a decision is not made, inaction seems certain to lead to unpleasant — or even disastrous — results.

There are alternatives to nuclear power... but all require more work before being useful as carbon-fuel substitutes. Biodiesel is promising, but will likely cut into available food cropland. Solar and wind would require improvements in energy storage methods, due to their intermittency. Nuclear power's problems are at this point 99.44% political. And, as a peak oil kook, I think the problem is imminent.

So, yeah, it's a puff piece, and probably paid. Maybe some of the marching morons (who don't realize that) will be swayed enough by the initial appeal to authority to be willing to listen to a reasoned argument, rather than just saying "NIMBY NIMBY NIMBY!" all the time.

"Also, hauling out the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a defense is kind of silly, because the original poster would probably site that as an example of a broken law. That basically represents an argument by appealing to authority, and is also a debating technique to use when you have no solid facts or reasoning to back you up."

His "appeal to authority" was a citation of the equal accommodation promised by the Civil Rights Act. According to American law an American restaurant owner is forbidden from discriminating on the basis of race (even though the restaurant is the owner's property).

Finally, an appeal to authority is only an example of a logical fallacy when the person or source in question is NOT a legitimate authority on the subject. Any sensible person could see that you only bolster your argument by citing an authoritative source. In this case, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is quite clearly a legitimate authority on whether or not an American restaurant owner can discriminate on the basis of race.

Wah-wah - you shoot, and MISS.

You can cite whatever you want. But you can't argue that a person's history of lying about a subject for money that's still flowing into their unchanged story can be ignored when determining whether to trust them. And when they work with other people in the same racket, you can tell what they're all selling, and for whom.

I linked to a site that describes these whining deniers with more detail than just their brand names. People can do their own research and decide for themselves. I never claimed to "prove" anything - so you're floating that classic rightwinger strawman fallacy , in which you're scared of your own shadow.

Logical Fallacy # 1: Poisoning the Well

linky:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/poisoning -the-well.html

Logical Fallacy # 2: Guilt By Association

linky:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/guilt-by- association.html

Both are particularly amusing due to your choice of link to "prove" your point.

...

Make the requirements to vote the same as to own a gun.

Simply go to the polling place, fill out a Form 4473, show your ID, and the poll worker will check with the FBI database to make sure that you're not prohibited from voting. If everything is working correctly, you will be allowed to vote in a few minutes.

If the GCA/Brady system doesn't violate the rights of gun owners, then what possible objection could there be to implementing the same system for voting?

Robert Racansky

Logical Fallacy # 1: Poisoning the Well

linky:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/poisoning -the-well.html

Logical Fallacy # 2: Guilt By Association

linky:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/guilt-by- association.html

Both are particularly amusing due to your choice of link to "prove" your point.

...

Make the requirements to vote the same as to own a gun.

Simply go to the polling place, fill out a Form 4473, show your ID, and the poll worker will check with the FBI database to make sure that you're not prohibited from voting. If everything is working correctly, you will be allowed to vote in a few minutes.

If the GCA/Brady system doesn't violate the rights of gun owners, then what possible objection could there be to implementing the same system for voting?

Robert Racansky

I think I speak for the entire Star Wars fan community when I say, with all candor, "quit your fucking bitching already".

eheh! gotta love those logical fallacies

So DRM is bad because it involves encrypted information for which you don't have the key. Having encrypted information for which you do not have the key is bad, because it just is.

Regardless of peoples opinions of DRM, your logic is flawed (unless I just missed the silent <sarcasm> tags), and is exactly the kind of logic your PP was talking about.

I am utterly unsympathetic. You would think that out of the hundreds of members of parliament/congress (pick your system), at least one of these idiots would bother to actually analyze the law, or at the very least have an aid do so. Politicians have been given and a charter on the limits of their powers. It is up to THEM to see that they follow their rules. One time is a mistake. Two times is incompetence.

Three times is an utter failure to uphold your oath to the constitution and the people that it protects.

Whenever a politician votes for a law that will simply be forbidden to come into affect because it is unconstitutional, they are wasting MY money. They are pissing away time that they should be spending trying to solve real problem.

Well put. And if anyone out there wants to know more about various logical falacies, see http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies. It has excellent descriptions of all of the common fallacies, plus some not-so-obvious ones.

Offtopic, I know, but I feel the discussions here could be much more productive (with much less FUD) if people understood logic a little better.

Bush won fairly.

You seem so sure, but how can you know this if there is no transparency in the voting process? Answer: You can't. It's impossible. You. Don't. Know. Unless you have access to information that nobody else has, which I strongly doubt. This has nothing to do with who happened to win in the case - it's about the process.

Also, blackboxvoting is not considered a reputable source.

So your logic is as follows:

A: blackboxvoting is not a reliable source
B: blackboxvoting suggests that elections were rigged
THEREFORE: the suggestion that elections were rigged must be false

?

That's a logical fallacy (poisoning the well) ... the reliability of blackboxvoting has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the claims are true or not ... if blackboxvoting said "the sky is blue" would you reject that too?.

For the last time, that's NOT what "begging the question" means. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-t he-question.html

The fundamental issue: people sitting in other countries have acted to kill a substantial number of people in the US and abroad.

You are wrong - that is not the fundamental issue being discussed. The issue is whether or not the president has the authority to spy on US citizens *without approval & oversight*. Bush thinks he does; many others disagree. This is a core issue of civil rights.

Twisting the argument into "but we need to do it to catch bad guys!" is a nice straw man. It's not about what "bad guys" want to do, it's about what rights law-abiding citizens have. There's plenty of people both in the US and the rest of the world, that want to kill people in a terroristic fashion (recall some examples), so at what point should we - the United States of America - draw the line between liberty & security?

As a point of reference, China doesn't seem to have had many problems with terrorism.

Ahh, yes decade old data.

I'm not practiced on my fallacies so I'm not sure if this is an appeal to ridicule or something else, but that's pretty much what it sounds like to me.

The fact that they're using data that stops a decade ago doesn't make the data any less valid. You can sneer about it if you want, but it means absolutely nothing, especially since it's gotten even hotter since, which if anything supports their theory.

I think the existence of the article you're posting on directly refutes the entire basis of your argument (especially since you specifically mentioned Slashdot). Good job.

Take a look at some of the other people posting on this article; you'll find plenty of outrage. I'm a communist, and I too am outraged.

liberal-leaning (and thus Democrat-leaning)

You're kidding, right? Democrats are not all liberal, just like republicans are not all conservative. Even given my own political opinions, I refuse to support the democratic party.

" usual liberal ranting, etc. etc."

See links.

but everyone knows this is the is the absolute truth.

I don't "know" this, and I'm someone. I've just proved your statement absolutely false. Perhaps you should learn not to exaggerate and state your opinions as if they are facts.

Democrats get a free pass for this kind of behavior, but Republicans get called everything but a child of God for the same kind of actions.

Alright, let's see some examples. Come on--let's see them.

Disclaimer: I'm a card-carrying Libertarian, not a Republican, so take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. I call 'em as I see 'em.

What you are has nothing to do with the truth or validity of what you're saying.

I think the existence of the article you're posting on directly refutes the entire basis of your argument (especially since you specifically mentioned Slashdot). Good job.

Take a look at some of the other people posting on this article; you'll find plenty of outrage. I'm a communist, and I too am outraged.

liberal-leaning (and thus Democrat-leaning)

You're kidding, right? Democrats are not all liberal, just like republicans are not all conservative. Even given my own political opinions, I refuse to support the democratic party.

" usual liberal ranting, etc. etc."

See links.

but everyone knows this is the is the absolute truth.

I don't "know" this, and I'm someone. I've just proved your statement absolutely false. Perhaps you should learn not to exaggerate and state your opinions as if they are facts.

Democrats get a free pass for this kind of behavior, but Republicans get called everything but a child of God for the same kind of actions.

Alright, let's see some examples. Come on--let's see them.

Disclaimer: I'm a card-carrying Libertarian, not a Republican, so take your conspiracy theories elsewhere. I call 'em as I see 'em.

What you are has nothing to do with the truth or validity of what you're saying.

The American legal system does a fairly good job of tossing frivolous lawsuits. This is not to say it couldn't be improved, of course, but the fact remains. I direct your attention to the Spotlight fallacy.

That's a silly analogy as a paper on the postmodern ennui of electrons would be absurd.

The fact that it was absurd was kinda the point of the analogy. That doesn't mean it can't be done though - Alan Sokal wrote a paper containing 100% unadulterated nonsense about postmodernism and got it published in a prestigious journal. The paper wasn't "the postmodern ennui of electrons," but it wasn't too far off.

Still, I have to disagree with you for the very reasons you use to support your argument. Having a much broader range of what can be considered 'correct' doesn't make something easier, because that's not the case.

You're begging the question.

Literature is about interpretation, and there is usually no 'correct' interpretation. There are, however, persuasive interpretations, but more importantly enlightening interpretations: those that reveal something new and important about the human condition etc.

That's precisely what makes it easier than science; you can't get by in a science program by just being persuasive, nor will any professor with integrity let you get by for being persuasive. I personally have gotten away with the most unadulterated (but persuasive! :)) bullshit in literature classes that would never in a million years fly in the science classes I took. And I have never once read a Cliff's Notes or any other review of any classic text that revealed "something new and important about the human condition" - that is just absurd.

and after all I believe we're all ultimately trying to answer the same questions.

We are, but scientists are simply much, much better at it. The humanities are filled with elitism and rule by sycophants, since interpretations don't have to fit the data. Science is quite different - if you discover the (correct) Theory of Everything tomorrow, it will be accepted relatively shortly, no matter how many sycophants Steven Hawking or Roger Penrose or anybody with a competing theory has.

To see the difference more clearly, try telling a postmodern art critic that Josef Albers's paintings of squares-within-squares are meaningless, and that the reverence for them is elitist and completely misguided. You'll most likely be subject to an uninterrupted stream of bullshit from the art critic, who will retroactively defend the childish work, probably with nonsense about how squares within squares somehow "reveal something new and important about the human condition," or maybe just the time-honored staple of elitst art critics: multisyllabic gibberish. And why? Because everyone in his milieu tells him that square-era Josef Albers was a great artist, and he'd rather confabulate than use common sense, if common sense means standing up a large number of colleagues.

If, however, your "dead-on accurate" experience is a degree in physics and subsequent cinch degree in French literature, then more power to you.

Doesn't follow. My experience comes from taking classes in both science and the humanities from qualified teachers in both subjects - the humanities classes were much easier, without exception. The humanities classes would accept (and reward significantly) papers with an unbelievable proportion of bullshit in them, without exception. This is not true of any hard science course I have ever taken. You don't need to get a certification in Reflexology to know that that it's bullshit.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to -popularity.html

That still leaves wide open the question of why the hell that 25 year-old wants to have sex with a 12 year-old kid?

That still leaves wide open the question of why the hell that 25 year-old wants to have sex with a 12 year-old kid?

That still leaves wide open the question of why the hell that 25 year-old wants to have sex with a 12 year-old kid?

"QT works on less platforms than GNUstep,"

The right to murder an unborn child

Congratulations! You have successfully begged the question! Abortion is not murder unless you assume abortion is murder.

As to the rest of your post, I, an advocate of abortion rights, do not believe that the 9th amendment protects such a right. I am of the opinion that abortion is a state issue (see Amdendment 10).

More on this argument here