No, Annoyance is upset that you presented a logical fallacy as an argument, that no one including you seems to care, and that the statement of your error is somehow seen as being antithetical to Less Wrong’s purpose and mission.
There was a post (I’m having trouble finding) with many examples of how “fallacies” can be reasonable forms of argument. e.g. Argument from authority is fallacious, but for many questions, it would be irrational to weight a child’s opinion as heavily as an adult’s.
Could someone provide the link? Annoyance, perhaps you could respond to it, because you seem very quick to point out fallacies and many in the community think it is sometimes unhelpful.
There’s an argument from authority that’s a fallacy, and one that’s not.
Arguments of the form, “S is an authority on X and says p, so we have reason to think that p” can be valid (possibly missing some easy steps) but might be unsound.
Arguments of the form “S is an authority on X and says p, therefore p” are just plainly invalid.
with many examples of how “fallacies” can be reasonable forms of argument.
I strongly suspect ‘reasonable’ is being used in the most common, and most erroneous, sense—that of “not striking the speaker as being unusual or producing cognitive dissonance”.
Fallacies are, by their nature, invalid arguments. There are sometimes valid arguments related loosely to the content of certain fallacies, but they should be asserted rather than the invalid form.
many in the community think it is sometimes unhelpful.
(edit to alter content to what I now think is a better phrasing)
These individuals need to be publicly identified as irrationalists.
I think you’re missing my point—we should be in 1 of 2 situations:
the intended audience already knows there’s a logical fallacy, so your statement communicates nothing
the intended audience does not know there’s a logical fallacy, so they also didn’t identify what and where the logical fallacy is and you might as well be helpful and point it out.
thomblake’s first case refers to people actually noticing the instance of fallacy, not just being abstractly familiar with the kind. Are you twisting words on purpose, or are you actually failing to notice what was intended?
Annoyance was pointing out the third case, which I had suggested was unlikely—that one might not notice that the reasoning is fallacious, but can work it out once it’s brought to one’s attention. Presumably, such people are the intended audience of “Logical Fallacy!” and I could see how that might be helpful to them. I still think it would be much more helpful to point out the specific instance, with little more effort.
I do see your point. However, if people can’t work through a brief, simple written argument and analyze it for its logical content by themselves, they’re really not ready to contribute.
Passing over a fallacy without recognizing it is something that a reasonable person might do inadvertently, or even because they want to accept the argument and so will tend not to notice. But someone who is incapable of working through and finding the flaw?
It’s not as though I replied to a page-long comment “There’s a word misspelled”. There would be hundreds or thousands of words involved, and even a recognizable typo might take a long time to locate. A word that someone genuinely misspelled would probably prove evasive for a long time.
The logical content of such a comment would be much simpler—and few comments here are that complex.
So:
AngryParsley is upset that I don’t think that if more intelligence is bad, then less intelligence is good
Annoyance is upset that I do think that if more intelligence is bad, then less intelligence is good
Could you please just get upset at each other?
No, Annoyance is upset that you presented a logical fallacy as an argument, that no one including you seems to care, and that the statement of your error is somehow seen as being antithetical to Less Wrong’s purpose and mission.
There was a post (I’m having trouble finding) with many examples of how “fallacies” can be reasonable forms of argument. e.g. Argument from authority is fallacious, but for many questions, it would be irrational to weight a child’s opinion as heavily as an adult’s.
Could someone provide the link? Annoyance, perhaps you could respond to it, because you seem very quick to point out fallacies and many in the community think it is sometimes unhelpful.
maybe that’s why he’s called Annoyance?!
There’s an argument from authority that’s a fallacy, and one that’s not.
Arguments of the form, “S is an authority on X and says p, so we have reason to think that p” can be valid (possibly missing some easy steps) but might be unsound.
Arguments of the form “S is an authority on X and says p, therefore p” are just plainly invalid.
There is no contradiction here.
agreed, still looking for the link.
I strongly suspect ‘reasonable’ is being used in the most common, and most erroneous, sense—that of “not striking the speaker as being unusual or producing cognitive dissonance”.
Fallacies are, by their nature, invalid arguments. There are sometimes valid arguments related loosely to the content of certain fallacies, but they should be asserted rather than the invalid form.
(edit to alter content to what I now think is a better phrasing)
These individuals need to be publicly identified as irrationalists.
Hey, I publicly identify myself as an irrationalist, and I have no problem calling a spade a spade.
That said, folks could easily think “Logical fallacy!” is about as helpful as “That comment had 25 characters!”
If you think people won’t notice that there’s a fallacy, then you should also think that they won’t know what it is, and kindly point it out.
how are you defining irrationalist? we are all, of course, imperfect rationalists.
I’ll have to write a blog post about that. For now, suffice it to say that I use it analogously to how a Nietzschean might use “amoralist”.
Amoral is to moral/immoral as arational is to rational/irrational?
That would be a much better distinction, wouldn’t it?
Well, maybe—but then what are they doing here?
I think you’re missing my point—we should be in 1 of 2 situations:
the intended audience already knows there’s a logical fallacy, so your statement communicates nothing
the intended audience does not know there’s a logical fallacy, so they also didn’t identify what and where the logical fallacy is and you might as well be helpful and point it out.
Even people who know what the fallacy is won’t necessarily notice it.
And people who didn’t recognize the fallacy can still use logic to determine what it is—or rather, they should be able to.
thomblake’s first case refers to people actually noticing the instance of fallacy, not just being abstractly familiar with the kind. Are you twisting words on purpose, or are you actually failing to notice what was intended?
Annoyance was pointing out the third case, which I had suggested was unlikely—that one might not notice that the reasoning is fallacious, but can work it out once it’s brought to one’s attention. Presumably, such people are the intended audience of “Logical Fallacy!” and I could see how that might be helpful to them. I still think it would be much more helpful to point out the specific instance, with little more effort.
I do see your point. However, if people can’t work through a brief, simple written argument and analyze it for its logical content by themselves, they’re really not ready to contribute.
Passing over a fallacy without recognizing it is something that a reasonable person might do inadvertently, or even because they want to accept the argument and so will tend not to notice. But someone who is incapable of working through and finding the flaw?
It’s not as though I replied to a page-long comment “There’s a word misspelled”. There would be hundreds or thousands of words involved, and even a recognizable typo might take a long time to locate. A word that someone genuinely misspelled would probably prove evasive for a long time.
The logical content of such a comment would be much simpler—and few comments here are that complex.
“This comment consists of 120 characters” is unhelpful even if nobody bothered to count and the given number is correct.
Truth that doesn’t pay its rent is poison.