Why “Scyllagism?”
XENO –
With all due respect, I’m not signing up for that. As already stated, I think the only rule necessary for any forum here is “don’t be a jerk.” I am not willing to submit my opinions/posting style/“weapons”/whatever to anyone else’s determination of whether they are “effective” or “ethically supportable.” The only one qualified to make that determination is me – and, arguably, the mods if I tip-toe too close to the DBAJ rule.
Hmm… this does not correlate well with “my cat’s breath smells like cat food” OPs. I like the intent of the law, but I don’t feel it can be explained clearly. Witness Hiyruu’s “phi” stunts… almost all of the posts flat-out ignore the OP; do you feel the OP was reasonable? 
(Of course, I did see your post in there so I know you don’t, which means you also followed the would-be Mundi’s Law by not ignoring the OP…)
I’ve always felt the most reasonable posts are hacked apart by, er, people trying to “read into them.” Not sure how else to say this, but you’ll often see it in response to a very clear and precise argument:
“Wait, are you trying to tell me that scarecrows aren’t democrats, or that strawmen aren’t republicans?”
Don’t know if that came out clearly…
Jodi: I would argue that we (all of us) are also beholden to community standards, at least to the extent that we must deal with prevailing expectations of conduct. As always, though, “community standards” != “individual obligation”.
Scylla: It was a play on the word syllogism. See, you, Scylla, had expressed a syllogistic scheme in a crafty manner, purportedly (and with humorous intent) to justify slapping elucidator’s name to an ignoble series of actions. If it offends you, I will withdraw my suggestion that we call that particular deductive scheme by your name. However, the syllogism I listed seems to be an accurate reproduction of your stated justification.
erl: Your “cat’s breath” refutation of Mundi’s Law seems valid. Perhaps we could say:
And, uh, what does Ray Bolger have to do with the Democratic Party?
Xeno:
Indeed. It was accurate enough to convince me of the rightness of my stance, and looks to me like a pretty strong argument (not looking to take any offense, just curious.)
If I may make a suggestion, it would be that trying to devise a comprehensive rational for what is acceptable or not in debate is a humongous exercise doomed to failure by its very subjective nature.
I’d like to try to boil it down to a few thoughts, which I’ll do in my next post.
Erislover:
I think you went over my head, there.
Scylla’s Highly Hypocritical Guidelines for Great Debates
-
Start each debate out fresh - no need to drag baggage from one thread to another. You don’t do anybody any favors, least of all yourself.
-
The love you give is equal to the love you get - As you post and critique the thoughts and arguments of others, remember that what goes around comes around.
-
Grudges are for the pit.
Sorry, XENO, but the “community standards” around here are set by the management, and I think they do a good job of it. I am not willing to agree to be bound by anyone else’s “expectations” regarding my conduct.
Don’t get me wrong: I try to stay on topic, I try to back my posts and points up with facts or reasoned argument, and I try to be civil. I do this, however, because it meets my own standards of what constitutes reasoned debate, not because it meets anyone else’s. I am not willing to suspend my own good judgment in this regard in order to submit to another’s.
If a person is violating reasonable discourse in GD, then one can either alert the mods or take that person to the Pit to administer a thrashing. I simply see no need for us as a community to agree on more explicit “rules” than exist right now. Seeing no need for it, I am not willing to agree to be bound by it.
Hypocritical? Well, I guess you called it accurately. Since you’ve brought us to precisely where we were going to get anyhow, I guess I’ll let the thread die. What kind of fighter of ignorance would I be, however, if I left before trying to clear up at least some of the ignorance here?
You don’t realize then that the Scyllagism is actually a flawed syllogism?
Scyllagism[ul][li]Turnabout is fair play[]and nomenclature is nothing more than namecalling[]and I’ve named an assumption about unpleasant behavior after myselftherefore it’s fair play to name the unpleasant behavior after my opponent[/ul][/li]
The second premise is true only in the most literal sense. Nomenclature is indeed meant, in this instance, as the act of naming something. However, it differs substantially from name calling, which is what peevish grade schoolers do when they’re not clever or strong enough of character to walk away from a fight. Naming is what you did by claiming Scylla’s First Axiom. Name calling is what you did by attaching another poster’s username to a practice you had derided as “relentless and immature escalation of minor quibbles.”
Additionally, the syllogism fails to follow the law of correspondence of weight you’d agreed was necessary in order for turnabout to indeed be fair play.
Finally, the conclusion derived produces a tactic (escalation of hostilities through insult) which is deliberately as counterproductive as the behavior your axiom had derided.
Thus, the syllogism is neither a strong argument on logical grounds, nor a compelling justification for the insult. It was, as implied by your titular guidelines, a hypocritical approach to debate.
Consider this your wedgie.
**
::Shrug:: I try.
I’m not sure I understand. If you think it’s that simple, why didn’t you say so in the first place in your OP?
Wise?
They say advice helps only he who gives it, but take this for what it’s worth:
No. I didn’t give it too much thought. It seemed like a reasonable aproximation of part of my thought process, though, and since I thought it meant you agreed with me…
Well, in the other thread you did promise you would define your terms before using them. Seeing as you didn’t, you can hardly equivocate (your definition) here, can you?
ok, but see above for my reservations on this.
Nonsense. Elucidator (God help me for complementing him,) is usually pretty quick to go for the gentle yuck at somebody else’s expense, and usually pretty good natured about receiving a small jibe in return. As I said, I thought his post stood on humor value alone, and I thought my return jibe was pretty clever and ironic It took me about 3 or posts to set it up. The mild hypocrisy is intentional, and the idea of:
- Getting some good-natured revenge
- Furthering the debate
- Engaging in some irony (commiting the exact action I was describing as I described it, with the attendant hypocrisy)
was a fun little exercise. I had hoped it would be appreciated as clever and humorous.
Well, yeah. That’s kind of the point.
(I really did think you would pick this up, it’s no fun explaining.)
Again, yes. There really are a couple of broad hints that I’m kidding there. My immediate willingness to rename it Scyllization was something I thought would clue you in since you didn’t get it the first time.
Better watch yer own underoos, pal.
I don’t want this thread to die! I’d like to see these things hashed and consensus reached!
Scylla: Typically, I understand your posts quite well the first time; I just don’t frequently trust the “good-natured” part nowadays. If I’ve misinterpreted your posts in the last few threads in which I’ve exchanged views with you, and they were all in fact lighthearted pleasantries, I sure do apologize.
Stoid: Sorry, chicky; consensus seems to be that hashing out rules is hopeless. However, be heartened by the inarguable fact that this board does in fact exert certain community standards not covered by the administration. Jodi is very correct that none of us is bound by those standards, and in fact should base our behavior on our own sensibilities, but the frequent Pit threads about GD behavior indicate those standards do exist.
Xeno:
I think I read sarcasm there, but I could be wrong.
No, it has not been all lighthearted.
You were mistaken though, if you read anything but an attempt at clever humor and a friendly jibe (partly at my own expense) into the whole Elucidator effect thing.
It’s nice of you to admit you might have been mistaken about that (if that’s what you’re doing.)
That’s what I’m doing.
But you read the sarcasm right, too. It’s not the obviously combative posts I think I may have misread, nor the ones where you’re obviously going for silliness (although I trust many of those are done for pure distraction). It’s the ones where you’ve couched queries or constructed arguments in terms and manners which I perceived to be deliberately obfuscatory or intended purely to discredit your opponent without regard for factuality that I admit the possibility of subjective error on my part in assessing.
It’s just that you’ve told me flat out that you do such things, so I now tend to look for them in your posts.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by xenophon41 *
**
This is the kind of sentence structure up with which I will not put!
xeno:
This should hardly be revelation that I do these things. Most people do to one degree or another, or to one frequency or another.
I don’t think we see an awful lot of perfect and pure arguments on this message board, and I would suggest that mine are neither purer nor dirtier than average.
Being aware of this and conscious of my hypocrisies may make me guiltier than others or less so depending on your perspective and personal value system since I should be doing better.
Anyway, I make no claims for saintliness or infallibility.
Hopefully you are aware that we’ve been in something of a pissing contest for the last couple of threads. Our rhetorical flourishes, dishonesties, hyperboles, and trickeries have mirrored each other to a large extent (this would be of course inclusive of others besides yourself in that last debate.)
Do you see that this is true?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by elucidator *
**
Then I shall retire, lest you impugn my compositional adroitness a second time.
I certainly agree we’ve been in a pissing contest. While I don’t think I’ve been anything but upfront with the rhetorical flourishes, overused hyperbole or knowingly stated a position I don’t actually hold, I fully admit to verbal trickeries such as sandbagging (holding better arguments in reserve) and leaving myself open for specific jabs when I wanted to counterpunch.
And yes, I engage in picayunity as often as you do, and I frequently indulge my baser instincts just because I like to argue.
Good enough?
Sure.
So, seeing as you do that, should I be holding your arguments with a large degree of suspicion about their good nature as well?
What this says about debating, debating debating, and rules for debating— is it says anything at all— is strictly left as an exercize for the reader.
sigh You preview for coding errors, but miss the semantic ones.
“IF” it says anything at all… sheesh. Though I suppose, for a post discussing semantics, making a grammatical error is sort of a meta-gaudere’s law. 