It's funny, I've noticed a large number of people complain about the XBox 'sattelite' but I find it very comfortable (as do a fair number of my friends). Then again, I have freakishly large hands, and so that might be a factor... (consequently I dislike most other console controllers).
...of capitalism? Read a good book a few years ago: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. In it he argued that advertisements in the modern age (utililizing deceptive or emotional appeals) have killed the fundamental assumption of a capitalist system, namely that consumers are engaging in a rational process when judging a potential purpose. These types of ads short-circuit the rational side of the transaction to appeal to pretties or to emotional thrills.
That the positions of the two parties are not equivalent. There is a humongous power differential between the Muslim World and the Western World, and rightly or wrongly, the Muslim World feels consistantly put upon. Now, this is obviously no excuse for violence, but it does indicate perhaps why you see it occurring. Desperation and despair drive people to do all sorts of stupid things; people in the West do not honestly despair over the future treatment of their religious perogatives or the survival of their cultures. If American Christians were used to seeing Saudi troops in neighboring countries and overthrowing regimes in the area, meddling with internal policies and propping up obnoxious royal families, perhaps they would burn the Saudi emmbassy to the ground over a cartoon.
OTOH, many jurisdictions, in an effort to curb the amazing rising domestic bodycount, mandate an arrest of one or both parties if there is a domestic violence call. IMO, that's what the parent was alluding to.
Nope. In unstable nuclei, a neutron will decay (into a proton, electron and neutrino). The electron is emitted as beta radiation. The proton stays behind. Nobody cares about the neutrino.;)
...Nothing pisses me off more than people who don't understand informal fallacies using them in lieu of addressing an actual argument.
Deductive Logic is a GIGO machine, but a very efficient one. The formal structure assures the integrity of the machine. However, philosophers over the years (starting with Aristotle) have recognized that some types of input tend to lead to garbage output. (Note the word 'tend' for it will be important later.)
Not all language is argument. Thus, when someone observes "you seem to believe..." or "sounds to me that you...", they are not making an argument, they are making an observation (whether correctly or incorrectly). Observation processes are primarily inductive, and are thus formally flawed (affirming the consequent), and so do not guarantee the integrity of the result. If that observation happens to be incorrect, and they later use that observation as an element of that argument, it will likely not be a correct argument, though the argument itself is sound (valid and avoids the usual informal pitfalls).
What is really important in all of this is that informal fallacies are general guidelines for analyzing an argument for soundness, not hard and fast rules. Sometimes, an observation about a person is a legitimate element of an argument (such as if the argument deals with the veracity or tendency of action of that person) and as such are not automatically 'ad hominem' if introduced. It all depends on the overall context of the argument.
The same is true of other informal fallacies; they are guidelines for input of argument, and so are in fact a good starting point when one is looking for weaknesses in an argument. However, except in extremely egrecious cases, simply citing them is not sufficient to effectively critique an argument.
Actually, grandparent is basically correct; what you are forgetting is that the primary concern of citizens during most of our history is insulation against state power, and the Third and Fourth Amendments are restrictions specifically upon the power of the state to intrude substantially into the personal private sphere.
It would not have occurred to anyone for any time except basically our own (with our historically unique communications and information extraction and analysis tools) that the private information of any individual citizen reaqlly needed positive protection. Remember that the only agnecy that could violate that private sphere effectively (the government) was already fairly well-restricted; that the common person's private info has a paramount economic value is a very new concept.
Let me put it another way. To a busiess person the ideal environment is one where slavery is legal and there are no safety or environmental laws. That way they can make their slaves work all day for bread and water, dump their waste in the river and maximize profits for the shareholders (which in most cases is a handful of people).
No, actually you decribed a nightmare for most business people. Businesses must sell products to consumers; in order to do that, consumers must have money (and since the vast majority of consumers aren't wealthy by legacy or investment) and so must have jobs to provide that money. Healthy customers who have disposable income make happy companies, and these conditions are only generated by a somewhat resonable wage market.
Hey, I dislike Capitalism as much as the next guy (hey, wait...) but let's not be stupid about it.
Not to be a pedantic jerk, but it's generally poor logical form to argue for the invalidity of a position from the negative consequences that would arise if it were true. Unless you are an amoral pragmatist (and if that's your bag baby, then hey, go with it) then you must assume that arguments of value must proceed from axioms that grant value, and those truth values are not dependant upon their possibly negative consequences.
For a topical example, if a person believes that abortion is wrong because they believe that a fetus is a human being, it is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of that statement that a consequence of treating a fetus like a human being is that many of them will be born as children in destitute poverty, or worse. Even if infanticide were the order of the day, it would still not affent the objective truth value of the status of the fetus (one way or the other).
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny, I've noticed a large number of people complain about the XBox 'sattelite' but I find it very comfortable (as do a fair number of my friends). Then again, I have freakishly large hands, and so that might be a factor... (consequently I dislike most other console controllers).
At the very least, its FFT.
Just FFT.
OTOH, many jurisdictions, in an effort to curb the amazing rising domestic bodycount, mandate an arrest of one or both parties if there is a domestic violence call. IMO, that's what the parent was alluding to.
Nope. In unstable nuclei, a neutron will decay (into a proton, electron and neutrino). The electron is emitted as beta radiation. The proton stays behind. Nobody cares about the neutrino. ;)
...Nothing pisses me off more than people who don't understand informal fallacies using them in lieu of addressing an actual argument.
Deductive Logic is a GIGO machine, but a very efficient one. The formal structure assures the integrity of the machine. However, philosophers over the years (starting with Aristotle) have recognized that some types of input tend to lead to garbage output. (Note the word 'tend' for it will be important later.)
Not all language is argument. Thus, when someone observes "you seem to believe..." or "sounds to me that you...", they are not making an argument, they are making an observation (whether correctly or incorrectly). Observation processes are primarily inductive, and are thus formally flawed (affirming the consequent), and so do not guarantee the integrity of the result. If that observation happens to be incorrect, and they later use that observation as an element of that argument, it will likely not be a correct argument, though the argument itself is sound (valid and avoids the usual informal pitfalls).
What is really important in all of this is that informal fallacies are general guidelines for analyzing an argument for soundness, not hard and fast rules. Sometimes, an observation about a person is a legitimate element of an argument (such as if the argument deals with the veracity or tendency of action of that person) and as such are not automatically 'ad hominem' if introduced. It all depends on the overall context of the argument.
The same is true of other informal fallacies; they are guidelines for input of argument, and so are in fact a good starting point when one is looking for weaknesses in an argument. However, except in extremely egrecious cases, simply citing them is not sufficient to effectively critique an argument.
Actually, grandparent is basically correct; what you are forgetting is that the primary concern of citizens during most of our history is insulation against state power, and the Third and Fourth Amendments are restrictions specifically upon the power of the state to intrude substantially into the personal private sphere.
It would not have occurred to anyone for any time except basically our own (with our historically unique communications and information extraction and analysis tools) that the private information of any individual citizen reaqlly needed positive protection. Remember that the only agnecy that could violate that private sphere effectively (the government) was already fairly well-restricted; that the common person's private info has a paramount economic value is a very new concept.
Let me put it another way. To a busiess person the ideal environment is one where slavery is legal and there are no safety or environmental laws. That way they can make their slaves work all day for bread and water, dump their waste in the river and maximize profits for the shareholders (which in most cases is a handful of people).
No, actually you decribed a nightmare for most business people. Businesses must sell products to consumers; in order to do that, consumers must have money (and since the vast majority of consumers aren't wealthy by legacy or investment) and so must have jobs to provide that money. Healthy customers who have disposable income make happy companies, and these conditions are only generated by a somewhat resonable wage market.
Hey, I dislike Capitalism as much as the next guy (hey, wait...) but let's not be stupid about it.Not to be a pedantic jerk, but it's generally poor logical form to argue for the invalidity of a position from the negative consequences that would arise if it were true. Unless you are an amoral pragmatist (and if that's your bag baby, then hey, go with it) then you must assume that arguments of value must proceed from axioms that grant value, and those truth values are not dependant upon their possibly negative consequences.
For a topical example, if a person believes that abortion is wrong because they believe that a fetus is a human being, it is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of that statement that a consequence of treating a fetus like a human being is that many of them will be born as children in destitute poverty, or worse. Even if infanticide were the order of the day, it would still not affent the objective truth value of the status of the fetus (one way or the other).