For the purposes of anyone reading: When someone makes a list of two dozen supposed “rules”, then they must also offer a method to prioritize between them—or their claims become unfalsifiable and “not even wrong”, since by cherrypicking rules, one can then explain anything.
E.g. sam says people are not allowed to “criticize blacks, women, homosexuals”—and yet at other times he accuses people of only being allowed to praise Romney (a white man), but attack Cain (a black man) and Palin (a woman). To explain this he can apply a different rule about “left-wing Republicans”—but does this rule always supercede or not? Nobody knows, so the claim is unfalsifiable.
People often bash Paris Hilton—though she’s both a parasite, and female as well. This would falsify two of sam’s supposed rules, but he can use a different rule (about being allowed to bash whites) to explain this away as well.
Things like “no enemies on the left, no friends to the right” are likewise unfalsifiable since someone can arbitrarily label people like Gaddafi’s Libya or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda or even Fidel Castro’s Cuba “right-wing” if one wants to.
Compare and contrast with the actually excellent response by lessdazed who provided just two rules, clearly prioritized, and which yet explain a far vaster list of taboo subjects more precisely and comprehensively that sam’s list does, by connecting them all back to the core issue of egalitarianism. That ruleset has predictive capacity, because that ruleset could be falsified, if it were false.
For the purposes of anyone reading: When someone makes a list of two dozen supposed “rules”, then they must also offer a method to prioritize between them—or their claims become unfalsifiable and “not even wrong”, since by cherrypicking rules, one can then explain anything.
They explain less, to the extent that the rules contradict each other. It is unlikely that they explain nothing—in fact they would probably have to be explicitly contrived for that purpose.
For the purposes of anyone reading: When someone makes a list of two dozen supposed “rules”, then they must also offer a method to prioritize between them—or their claims become unfalsifiable and “not even wrong”, since by cherrypicking rules, one can then explain anything.
E.g. sam says people are not allowed to “criticize blacks, women, homosexuals”—and yet at other times he accuses people of only being allowed to praise Romney (a white man), but attack Cain (a black man) and Palin (a woman). To explain this he can apply a different rule about “left-wing Republicans”—but does this rule always supercede or not? Nobody knows, so the claim is unfalsifiable.
People often bash Paris Hilton—though she’s both a parasite, and female as well. This would falsify two of sam’s supposed rules, but he can use a different rule (about being allowed to bash whites) to explain this away as well.
Things like “no enemies on the left, no friends to the right” are likewise unfalsifiable since someone can arbitrarily label people like Gaddafi’s Libya or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda or even Fidel Castro’s Cuba “right-wing” if one wants to.
Compare and contrast with the actually excellent response by lessdazed who provided just two rules, clearly prioritized, and which yet explain a far vaster list of taboo subjects more precisely and comprehensively that sam’s list does, by connecting them all back to the core issue of egalitarianism. That ruleset has predictive capacity, because that ruleset could be falsified, if it were false.
They explain less, to the extent that the rules contradict each other. It is unlikely that they explain nothing—in fact they would probably have to be explicitly contrived for that purpose.
Upvote for pedantry