Yep. When evaluating a dispute between someone and Pinker I started by saying that I could take it for granted that his arguments are sound
Did you mean valid here? Its the soundness of Pinker’s arguments that I am claiming to have undermined, so I’m kind of confused.
I think that my internal argument-evaluation-algorithm focuses most of its effort on premises and treats the subsequent reasoning as a mostly mechanical and straightforward process. Getting enough and good enough data together instinctively seems like the greater obstacle to me, possibly because I do fairly well with formal logic.
Ah. The problem with treating reasoning as mechanical is that almost no-one actually does reasoning reliably enough for that to work. If they did, the quality of public debate would be completely different.
Did you mean valid here? Its the soundness of Pinker’s arguments that I am claiming to have undermined, so I’m kind of confused.
I think that my internal argument-evaluation-algorithm focuses most of its effort on premises and treats the subsequent reasoning as a mostly mechanical and straightforward process. Getting enough and good enough data together instinctively seems like the greater obstacle to me, possibly because I do fairly well with formal logic.
Yep. My mistake.
Ah. The problem with treating reasoning as mechanical is that almost no-one actually does reasoning reliably enough for that to work. If they did, the quality of public debate would be completely different.
Absolutely agreed. I know I don’t reason as reliably as I seem to generally expect. This is my bug, not the world’s.