Father, forgive me, but I have not “keyed in” on anything. It is you who have keyed in on some side comment about another side comment about Einstein. I never implied that Einstein “cheated”, nor did I ever impugn his work, in any way.
You infered these things, Father.
You are like Doctor Frasier Crane, eavesdropping on the muffled whispers of a South Carolina redneck, thinking he might have heard the word “negro” but isn’t sure. Like Frasier would do, you walk up to the man to find out, assuming for yourself some moral imperative to learn what he is thinking so you can judge whether it is a right thought. And like Frasier, you run it into the ground so deep it could anchor a building.
Hard to tell exactly what would fit in under OP, or rather, what wouldn’t. Maybe I could try to restate it, to see if my understanding is off base. I thought that Lib was upset that other posters requested too much “fax ‘n’ figgers” in support of arguments that Lib thought should stand on their own as syllogistic reasoning.
When I made my crack about Einstein, it was an aside also, as a non-serious parting shot–Lib had raised the possibility that Einstein didn’t deserve credit (that BlakJak gave him) for bucking the scientific establishment of his time, but I think Einstein does. That’s all I’ve ever said.
My point, in regards to what I think is the OP? Lib can be hypocritical. He requires burden of proof of others, but bristles when it’s asked of him. Loveable, though.
Hey, I’m not arguing with you about einstein. I personally consider him to be one of the great original thinkers and one of the great scientific synthesizers of all time. My quiblle was with the Poe quote.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
This forum is not really designed to present formal deductions, unless you develop them offline. I really don’t mean to demand any unreasonably complex proof from anybody, and that was basically what the OP was asking for: accepting as axiomatic, without proof, arguments that “make sense”, that ring true to one’s common sense.
Spiritus
List of eagerly awaited responses:
Huh?
Oh, Spiritus. What does that mean?
What? Well, I guess dislike is not liking it for yourself and opposition is not liking it on behalf of others.
The problem, Lib, is when the argument does not “make sense” to others. In that case, it is reasonable for others to ask for some sort of backing or proof. I realize you think all your putatively axiomatic statments are so self-evidently true that no one should question them, but if that were so, people *wouldn’t" question them–and they do. They’re not harrassing you; it’s just not as obvious to them as it is to you. I daresay that people have made statements that they considered to be self-evidently true that you have questioned.
Maybe from the get-go, I should have said, “If I were a gang leader, or a leader of organized crime, I would oppose the legalization of drugs because I would fear a substantial loss of income.”
See what happens when you ignore a line of reasoning for too long? You apparently forget what you have said in teh past. You do remember when you accused me of injecting politics into your argument about whether drug leaders support the War on America I Mean drugs, don’t you? The words went something like:
Whereupon I asked you to parse your thesis apolitically. You have not done so, nor have you explained that you now understand that your statements defined a political position.
Oh good, you realize that they are not the same. Then I am sure you will agree that:
is a wholly unsupported conclusion in the chain of reasoning you were putting forth as airtight logical deduction.
The reference, of course, was to the list of issues to which you had not responded despite numerous intervening posts. It has now shrunk to zero, but the ball’s in your court again.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
I like it too, guys. The statement itself is unassailable. (One of those logical paradoxes - a ‘weaker’ assertion is usually stronger in the sense of being more defensible.) It’s also a lot less in-your-face: it’s saying, ‘I’m pretty sure I know what I’m talking about here,’ rather than ‘this is unequivocally so,’ and that’s a big difference in tone.
Keep it up, Lib - I think we’re getting somewhere.
Well, despite all the debating back and forth, I think you got your answer Lib. If someone took issue with a statement such as the one you made, what they could (should?) have done is exactly what Spiritus did - i.e. instead of asking for “fax ‘n’ figgers”, question the underlying logic behind the statement. It makes for a lot more interesting and enlightening debate than… “Please prove that to me with a link/cite/statistic.”
I disagree, PQ - my belief from the beginning was that Lib’s original assertion wasn’t provable by logic. So of course I asked for a cite.
His revised statement, at the top of the page, is unassailable. He’s the absolute authority concerning what he would do if he were a gang leader.
From there, of course, we can debate how representative he’d be of the general population of gang leaders. (Lib, I doubt you’re average in any which way, so I wouldn’t expect you to suddenly be typical of gang leaders. :)) Or, more likely, I would have just let it pass by; by itself, it’s a legitimate statement that I wouldn’t have felt the need to contest.
“Living in this complex world of the future is not unlike having bees live inside your head.” - F. Scott Firesign
From my work with disturbed teenagers (which I think I’ve mentioned), I can report that the gang leaders of my acquaintance were in favor of legalizing drugs. However, they were generally in favor of minimal government interference with private lives anyway.
OK, fair enough RTFirefly. Although I still think it bears mentioning that requesting a cite was not necessary to get him to revise his statement. Maybe requesting a cite is easier, but I’m not sure who the burden of proof lies with.
If it is a clearly off-the-wall statement, then surely the person who made the statement needs to supply the proof of it. If the statement is generally accepted, than I think maybe the requirement to disprove lies with the unbeliever. In this case, I think it was in a gray area, so I’m not sure who should be required to go and get proof. Maybe in that case, it should have been debated as was done here, instead of requiring a cite right off the bat. Or maybe I’m wrong.
In any case, I think Lib has a point, although perhaps this particular instance was not the best example. If I state, “Most people do not like to live in houses painted with polka-dots,” should a cite be required for that? In that case, the disbeliever should be the one that needs to get a cite to disprove.
PeeQueue…that brings us right back to the “extraordinary claims call for extraordinary proof” thesis, for which I have never been able to get a truly satisfactory delimitation of “extraordinary.” Other than the Potter Stewart concept.
