Logical fallacies

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AKiry
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by AKiry »

LogicExplorer wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2017 1:53 pm This forum doesn't appear to be so "philosophical", does it? You don't appear to think much about logic and philosophy here.

Based on what I've seen, I'd say that a common logical fallacy here is basing oneself too much on empricism and too little on reasoning. Thinking that the Earth is flat is a perfect example of that. Do you agree?
You need both to make correct inferences. Evidently, erroneous conclusions can be made quite easily based on inductive reasoning alone. I remember Isaac Asimov wrote short-story featuring such a fallacy where the (man-made) robot did not believe that humans created him because he is much smarter than people, based on the reasoning that something smarter than the creator must be smarter than the createe. Or in formal terms:
1: A more intelligent being must beget intelligence
2: I am more intelligent than humans
3: Therefore, humans did not create me
Therefore, the humans found that their machine had started a robot religion on the premise that a more intelligent robot god had created him and other robots. This is fine on a purely reason-based approach, but of course you could use empirical evidence to justify your reasoning (or not).
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Logical fallacies

Post by brimstoneSalad »

LogicExplorer wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2017 4:09 am Had you trusted your intuition, you would have had slightly more than 50% chance of picking the right side.
Evidence?
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Re: Logical fallacies

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2017 2:22 pm
LogicExplorer wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2017 4:09 am Had you trusted your intuition, you would have had slightly more than 50% chance of picking the right side.
Evidence?
It should be obvious. If people trusted their feelings, and ignored what they have been told, most of them wouldn't support the extinction of the "lower races".
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Logical fallacies

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LogicExplorer wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2017 11:41 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote: Sun Dec 10, 2017 2:22 pm
LogicExplorer wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2017 4:09 am Had you trusted your intuition, you would have had slightly more than 50% chance of picking the right side.
Evidence?
It should be obvious. If people trusted their feelings, and ignored what they have been told, most of them wouldn't support the extinction of the "lower races".

You made the claim here, the burden of proof lies on you to provide some evidence for it. "It should be obvious" is not evidence.

Maybe it's obvious to your intuition, I find the exact opposite to be obvious based on historical and anthropological evidence. Tribal societies are very xenophobic, and the majority of genocide today occurs in the least developed and least educated areas of the world. It's the result of ignorance and fear, and very much driven by intuition and instinct which is to favor our own (down to family, and close relatives).

It's education, not human intuition, which leads us to expand the circle of compassion and regard people who look different from us (and even non-human animals) as morally valuable too.

So, since you will provide no evidence for your claims, I'll take that as you conceding the point unless you're going to make a burden of proof shifting fallacy here.
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Re: Logical fallacies

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I'm affraid you've just set yourself the burden of proof you can't possibly meet. All of the biggest genocides in history occured in totalitarian governments (Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao...), probably all intentionally by the leaders. The idea that tribal societies often do genocides appears to be just a useful political agenda used quite a few times in history (to justify the oppression of the Native Americans, to justify the conquer of Australia, to justify the Italian conquer of Ethiopia...), each time with bad results.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Logical fallacies

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LogicExplorer wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 10:56 pm I'm affraid you've just set yourself the burden of proof you can't possibly meet.
You're the one who made the original claim, you need to provide evidence.
If you don't or won't, you need not reply.
LogicExplorer wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 10:56 pmAll of the biggest genocides in history occured in totalitarian governments (Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao...), probably all intentionally by the leaders.
Biggest, and few. They used to be smaller but incredibly common. The data is against your anarchist/anti-education beliefs.

Of course totalitarian governments have the same problem tribes do: they lend themselves to cultish group thinking, and there's no access to outside information (with totalitarianism they control it, with tribes they don't have it). We obviously benefit most from democracies where information is freely available and press isn't controlled.
Don't make the mistake of seeing government as a spectrum from tribe to totalitarian, and imagining education and information are in proportion; totalitarianism is not more government, it's often less government (in terms of laws) just more concentrated power and fiat, and it's not the pinnacle of access to information. Obviously this is evidence against your claims vs. education.

Taking your anarchist claims, even considering all government (and the totalitarian ones), comparatively fewer people have been killed overall as society has advanced (even counting the world wars) and as government has stabilized nations. The deaths are just more concentrated into wars; there's better quality of life and fewer deaths through smaller inter-family conflict.

Read Pinker's book, the better Angels of our nature.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-decline-of-violence/

Violence has declined in every way thanks to government and civilization (which overwrites crude intuition with civil rules of behavior and knowledge), except possibly against non-human animals.
LogicExplorer wrote: Mon Dec 11, 2017 10:56 pmThe idea that tribal societies often do genocides appears to be just a useful political agenda used quite a few times in history (to justify the oppression of the Native Americans, to justify the conquer of Australia, to justify the Italian conquer of Ethiopia...), each time with bad results.
That a true fact has been used for bad purposes does not make that fact become false.

I thought you were supposed to have some kind of grasp on basic logical fallacies? Come on.

You need to back up your claims with some real evidence here if you're going to make them. Please don't respond until and unless you at least have some links to credible sources that back up your claims.
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Re: Logical fallacies

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You know, when Teo123 was asked on the linguistforum.com, by someone who doesn't understand much about linguistics, to attempt to experimentally test his ideas about Croatian toponyms, he responded with "Suppose I dumped an English-Croatian dictionary into a statistical program and claimed to have found that the Grimm's Law was incorrect. Would you take that result seriously?" I think that also applies here.

Statistical data matters only if you have a sound theoretical framework behind your claims. It's obvious that too strict laws cause violence (perhaps even more obvious than the Grimm's Law is) and how they do that: if people can't get what they need (like food) legally, they will do it illegally (by stealing or murdering).
What's the theoretical basis for a claim that laws not being strict would cause violence? There is none. If murder was legalized, would you get a gun and start shooting people around? No? Then why do you assume someone else would do that? Unless you can explain that, the statistics you show don't matter. They are, at best, yet another example of the correlation-causation fallacy.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Logical fallacies

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LogicExplorer wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:42 am Statistical data matters only if you have a sound theoretical framework behind your claims.
No, now you're just throwing out evidence because it doesn't fit your beliefs. That's incredibly intellectually dishonest. Correlations are decent evidence when we don't have experimental data to go off of, particularly such extensive ones (apply Occam's razor, and you'll see explaining them away is more complex than accepting it as probably causal).

You are violating forum rules: you need to respond in kind with some evidence, or you need to admit that you don't have any and stop pushing this claim around.
You're welcome to participate on the forum, but this isn't the place to preach and then worm out of your burden of proof by denying evidence when it suits you.

Read the forum rules.
LogicExplorer wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:42 amIt's obvious that too strict laws cause violence (perhaps even more obvious than the Grimm's Law is) and how they do that: if people can't get what they need (like food) legally, they will do it illegally (by stealing or murdering).
Poverty causes violence, sure, and rule of law is also economically beneficial. You can call it Law => company investment => relief of poverty => reduction in violence if you like that better, but the principle still applies.

I'm not going to show you more evidence of that for you to just throw it out because it doesn't fit your world view.
LogicExplorer wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:42 amWhat's the theoretical basis for a claim that laws not being strict would cause violence? There is none. If murder was legalized, would you get a gun and start shooting people around? No?
This is one of the worst anarchist arguments there are. NOT EVERYBODY IS LIKE YOU.

Most people would not, as long as they have what they need, but a minority would either for something they just want, or just for fun. The world is about 1% psychopath, and about 1% sadist. One in 10,000 are sadistic psychopaths - about the closest thing to pure evil - and would just kill people for fun. If you're OK with a few people running around and doing that with no legal consequences (and no resources to catch them), then you just haven't thought about the consequences of that at all.
You realize that all that happens when you remove law is that lynch mobs form, right? They start witch hunts. If murder it legal, there's nothing to stop them either. Mob mentality is not rational.

Humans are not universally benevolent, and they become even less so when you scare them and push them into group thinking. Ideological conflict is very real too, and so is simple escalation into family feuds.
LogicExplorer wrote: Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:42 amThen why do you assume someone else would do that? Unless you can explain that, the statistics you show don't matter. They are, at best, yet another example of the correlation-causation fallacy.
You understand nothing about epistemology. Correlation is a form of inductive, probabilistic, evidence. It serves as an indication unless overridden by superior forms of evidence or explained by known (proven with superior evidence) confounding variables.

Hypothesis < correlation < experimental evidence.

You're pulling ad hoc hypotheses out of your ass to discount superior evidence. That superior evidence we have now should make us believe, lacking substantive evidence against it, that it's true that civilization and government have the effect at reducing violence.

I don't have to answer that hypothetical bullshit with anything. It's like a theist dancing around and coming up with a new excuse for how evolution is false: you must answer evidence with evidence. You have persistently failed to meet your burden of proof, and this is getting annoying, particularly for somebody who claims to have a grasp of logic, you make nothing but fallacy after fallacy.

You have three options:

1. Meet your burden of proof, provide some comparable or superior evidence, not more ad hoc bullshitting to discount evidence.
2. Admit you can not meet it, and abandon this assertion you are making. Stop going around claiming murder should be legal, etc. (e.g. let this drop gracefully)
3. Continue doing what you're doing and eventually get banned for violating forum rules.
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Re: Logical fallacies

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Logic studies valid thought and thoughts that are close to valid thought (logical fallacies). Saying "Without laws, people would be running around with guns and shooting each other. Here are some dubious statistics about tribal people being violent." is very far from a valid thought.

Yes, I realize there are psychopaths who want to kill other people for whatever reason. But you seem to imply that laws affect whether they actually do that or not. Do they? As far as I am aware, there is no study confirming that. The death penalty laws and the gun control laws, which have been tested for their effectiveness, have little to no effect on criminals. And there is no theoretical basis for why they should have any effect: the laws only affect rational people because they are ones who obey them. The right inductive inference from that would be that laws can't lower the crime rates at all.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Logical fallacies

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LogicExplorer wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:25 am Logic studies valid thought and thoughts that are close to valid thought (logical fallacies). Saying "Without laws, people would be running around with guns and shooting each other. Here are some dubious statistics about tribal people being violent." is very far from a valid thought.
Not what I said. You're straw-manning.
Read Pinker's book. These are not dubious statistics.
LogicExplorer wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:25 amYes, I realize there are psychopaths who want to kill other people for whatever reason. But you seem to imply that laws affect whether they actually do that or not. Do they?
Low-IQ psychopaths: No. And the prisons are full of them. The legal system physically stops them. Particularly because it's easy to catch them.
Medium to High-IQ psychopaths: Yes. They're over-represented as corporate C.E.O.s instead of in prisons.

Bear in mind only sadistic psychopaths kill people for fun, and they are more rare.
High-IQ sadistic psychopaths sometimes do it too, but less frequently because they have to be careful not to get caught. These are your intelligent serial killers.

We don't yet know enough about how these conditions work to fix these people or prevent them, wholesale, from becoming like that. If interventions are early enough it can help, but it's not a sure thing.

In some Utopian future where everybody is a well adjusted, educated, intelligent person with peaceful conflict resolution skills in a culture that promotes those above all else, it may be possible to decriminalize murder, but only because it might never actually happen; there would be no harm in leaving criminal something that nobody ever does or wants to do.

LogicExplorer wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:25 amAs far as I am aware, there is no study confirming that.
I'm not going to do more research for you.
There doesn't need to be such a study. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in itself.
YOU made a claim, and you adopt the burden of proof there. I have provided more evidence than you ever have.
LogicExplorer wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:25 amThe death penalty laws and the gun control laws, which have been tested for their effectiveness, have little to no effect on criminals.
Because criminals are stupid, and don't understand cause and effect.
Intelligent people don't go around breaking laws even if they might want to, because they understand it has consequences.

None of this is evidence for your claim.

A world where murder is legal doesn't just have those criminals killing people, it has otherwise law abiding psychopaths, lynch mobs, etc.

LogicExplorer wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:25 amAnd there is no theoretical basis for why they should have any effect: the laws only affect rational people because they are ones who obey them.
It has an effect on rational people, but more importantly the legal system provides people a non-escalating recourse for harm. If you don't understand the significance of that, you know nothing of human psychology.
LogicExplorer wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 12:25 amThe right inductive inference from that would be that laws can't lower the crime rates at all.
Incorrect. I've explained why.

If you don't understand it, construct a formal argument with premises and conclusion and I'll debunk it for you.

Otherwise, you need to drop this, or put up some evidence.

Correlational evidence is not perfect evidence, but it's superior to pure conjecture without any evidence. You are violating forum rules by answering significant evidence of correlation, and all credible authority on the subject (not an appeal to unqualified authority), with mere conjecture.
You MUST provide evidence to back up your claims.

If you want to start a thread to discuss whether correlation is evidence, go ahead.

Otherwise, in this thread, here, and now, you have three options:

1. Provide a formal logical argument if you seriously think what you're saying makes sense and you don't understand my answer.
2. Provide equal or superior evidence to that I have provided in answer. Evidence with evidence.
3. Stop making these nonsense assertions. Believe what you want, but if you keep talking about how making murder legal would be fine you will be banned.

This is your final warning. If you do it again, I'm going to ask for a consensus on banning you. This is a serious waste of time, and it's beyond absurd.
No sensible person is going to flinch at joining a forum where people who make arguments that murder should be legal and dismiss evidence against it and refuse to provide any of their own are banned for breaking forum rules of backing up their arguments.
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