Believing that there is no such thing as greater pleasure than the loss from having your child murdered, is a subset of “not believing you’ll follow through on your offer”.
I don’t think you’re following that to the logical conclusion, though. You were implicitly arguing that most people’s refusal would not be based on “doesn’t believe I’ll follow through”. It is entirely plausible that most people would give the reason which I described, and as you have admitted, the reason which I described is a type of “doesn’t believe I’ll follow through”. Therefore, your argument fails, because contrary to what you claimed, most people’s refusal would (or at least plausibly could) be based on “doesn’t believe I’ll follow through”.
I agree that most people’s refusal would be based on some version of “doesn’t believe I’ll follow through.” I’m not clear on where I claimed otherwise, though… can you point me at that claim?
So it seems to follow that if I offer someone the choice of murdering their child in exchange for greater pleasure, and they turn me down, we can confidently infer that they simply don’t believe I’ll follow through on the offer, because if they did, they would accept. Yes?
It’s true that you didn’t explicitly claim people wouldn’t do that, but in context, you did implicitly claim that. In context, you were responding to something you disagreed with and so it must mean that you thought that they would not in fact do that and you were presenting the claim that they would not do that to support your argument.
Someone recently suggested that there should be a list of 5 geek linguistic fallacies and I wonder if something like this should go in the list.
Your response seems very strange because either you meant to imply what you implied (in which case you thought you could misrepresent yourself as not implying anything), or you didn’t (in which case you said a complete non-sequitur that by pure coincidence sounded exactly like an argument you might have made for real)
My original question was directed to blacktrance, in an attempt to clarify my understanding of their position. They answered my question, clarifying the point I wanted to clarify; as far as I’m concerned it was an entirely sucessful exchange.
You’ve made a series of assertions about my question, and the argument you inferred from it, and various fallacies in that argument. You are of course welcome to do so, and I appreciate you answering my questions about your inferences, but none of that requires any particular response on my part as far as I can tell. You’ve shared your view of what I’m saying, and I’ve listened and learned from it. As far as I’m concerned that was an entirely successful exchange.
I infer that you find it unsatisfying, though. Well, OK. Can you state what it is you’re trying to achieve in this exchange, and how I can help you achieve it?
I infer that you find it unsatisfying, though. Well, OK. Can you state what it is you’re trying to achieve in this exchange, and how I can help you achieve it?
It appeared that you’re either willfully deceptive or incapable of communicating clearly, in such a way that it looks willfully deceptive. I was hoping you’d offer another alternative than those.
The other alternative I offer is that you’ve been mistaken about my goals from the beginning.
As I said a while back: I asked blacktrance a question about their working model, which got me the information I wanted about their model, which made it clear where our actual point of disagreement was (specifically, that blacktrance uses “values” to refer to what people like and not what we want). I echoed my understanding of that point, they agreed that I’d understood it correctly, at which point I thanked him and was done.
My goal was to more clearly understand blacktrance’s model and where it diverged from mine; it wasn’t to challenge it or argue a position. Meanwhile, you started from the false assumption that I was covertly making an argument, and that has informed our exchange since.
If you’re genuinely looking for another alternative, I recommend you back up and examine your reasons for believing that.
That said, I assume from your other comments that you don’t believe me and that you’ll see this response as more deception. More generally, I suspect I can’t give you want you want in a form you’ll find acceptable.
If I’m right, then perhaps we should leave it at that?
Believing that there is no such thing as greater pleasure than the loss from having your child murdered, is a subset of “not believing you’ll follow through on your offer”.
Yes, that’s true. If you believe what I’m offering doesn’t exist, it follows that you ought not believe I’ll follow through on that offer.
I don’t think you’re following that to the logical conclusion, though. You were implicitly arguing that most people’s refusal would not be based on “doesn’t believe I’ll follow through”. It is entirely plausible that most people would give the reason which I described, and as you have admitted, the reason which I described is a type of “doesn’t believe I’ll follow through”. Therefore, your argument fails, because contrary to what you claimed, most people’s refusal would (or at least plausibly could) be based on “doesn’t believe I’ll follow through”.
I agree that most people’s refusal would be based on some version of “doesn’t believe I’ll follow through.”
I’m not clear on where I claimed otherwise, though… can you point me at that claim?
It’s true that you didn’t explicitly claim people wouldn’t do that, but in context, you did implicitly claim that. In context, you were responding to something you disagreed with and so it must mean that you thought that they would not in fact do that and you were presenting the claim that they would not do that to support your argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
I see.
OK. Thanks for clearing that up.
Someone recently suggested that there should be a list of 5 geek linguistic fallacies and I wonder if something like this should go in the list.
Your response seems very strange because either you meant to imply what you implied (in which case you thought you could misrepresent yourself as not implying anything), or you didn’t (in which case you said a complete non-sequitur that by pure coincidence sounded exactly like an argument you might have made for real)
What response were you expecting?
My original question was directed to blacktrance, in an attempt to clarify my understanding of their position. They answered my question, clarifying the point I wanted to clarify; as far as I’m concerned it was an entirely sucessful exchange.
You’ve made a series of assertions about my question, and the argument you inferred from it, and various fallacies in that argument. You are of course welcome to do so, and I appreciate you answering my questions about your inferences, but none of that requires any particular response on my part as far as I can tell. You’ve shared your view of what I’m saying, and I’ve listened and learned from it. As far as I’m concerned that was an entirely successful exchange.
I infer that you find it unsatisfying, though. Well, OK. Can you state what it is you’re trying to achieve in this exchange, and how I can help you achieve it?
It appeared that you’re either willfully deceptive or incapable of communicating clearly, in such a way that it looks willfully deceptive. I was hoping you’d offer another alternative than those.
The other alternative I offer is that you’ve been mistaken about my goals from the beginning.
As I said a while back: I asked blacktrance a question about their working model, which got me the information I wanted about their model, which made it clear where our actual point of disagreement was (specifically, that blacktrance uses “values” to refer to what people like and not what we want). I echoed my understanding of that point, they agreed that I’d understood it correctly, at which point I thanked him and was done.
My goal was to more clearly understand blacktrance’s model and where it diverged from mine; it wasn’t to challenge it or argue a position. Meanwhile, you started from the false assumption that I was covertly making an argument, and that has informed our exchange since.
If you’re genuinely looking for another alternative, I recommend you back up and examine your reasons for believing that.
That said, I assume from your other comments that you don’t believe me and that you’ll see this response as more deception. More generally, I suspect I can’t give you want you want in a form you’ll find acceptable.
If I’m right, then perhaps we should leave it at that?