I think you’ve misunderstood my intended usage of Notecard Logic. It is actually almost the exact opposite of what you have said. Notecard Logic would be believing that you are proven/justified in believing something because you have a citation, regardless of the trustworthiness of that citation. Of course you should be able to find good sources backing up facts you believe.
You … also seem to have completely inverted my intent regarding Flowsheet Logic. Casting a barrage of small, petty, irrelevant arguments and believing that “winning” consists of getting your opponent to give up on refuting them would be Flowsheet Logic. I’m not sure if I’m parsing this sentence correctly: “Avoiding re-raising a point in order to score “points” in an imaginary contest”. How would avoiding re-raising an argument score any points even if you believed in Flowsheet Logic?
edit: Also, I think we may have reached Peak Fallacy Fallacy. At what point are we allowed to start critiquing the logic of argumentation again without being accused of this?
I think you’ve misunderstood my intended usage of Notecard Logic.
Possible, but I doubt it.
It is actually almost the exact opposite of what you have said. Notecard Logic would be believing that you are proven/justified in believing something because you have a citation, regardless of the trustworthiness of that citation. Of course you should be able to find good sources backing up facts you believe.
I call motte and bailey on this. Your bailey is dull and uninteresting. Your motte is the -offensive- form of this argument—the -alternative- to the “you have evidence to back up your assertion—even if that evidence takes the form of an article from [insert partisan rag]” formulation, the “you are just ‘making things up to defend your point of view’” formulation, as a fallacy.
You … also seem to have completely inverted my intent regarding Flowsheet Logic.
Again, possible.
Casting a barrage of small, petty, irrelevant arguments and believing that “winning” consists of getting your opponent to give up on refuting them would be Flowsheet Logic.
That would be a Snow Job. You don’t differentiate in your Flowsheet Logic description between somebody raising valid points and somebody raising invalid points, rather, you treat them -both- as Flowsheet Logic, whose characteristic is the -number- of arguments, rather than their validity, which is of secondary consideration and unimportant to the characteristic of Flowsheet Logic.
I’m not sure if I’m parsing this sentence correctly: “Avoiding re-raising a point in order to score “points” in an imaginary contest”. How would avoiding re-raising an argument score any points even if you believed in Flowsheet Logic?
Go look at your spreadsheet [edit: flowchart image, my bad]. Any argument that remains unaddressed is scored for the team that raised it, no? So, if you’re arguing like a debate team, you don’t want to bring back arguments that were left unaddressed, because those are free points.
Also, I think we may have reached Peak Fallacy Fallacy. At what point are we allowed to start critiquing the logic of argumentation again without being accused of this?
I do not accuse you of the fallacy fallacy, I accuse you of contributing to the fallacy fallacy, by producing new, usefully-ambiguous labels to slap on inconvenient arguments.
I guess I ultimately didn’t do a good job in my original article.
I am trying to point out widespread human tendencies in argumentation toward treating both argument and evidence as semantically empty tokens in some abstract game of Mancala. “If I get my tokens across the board (meaning, you ignore certain arguments because you find them petty or irrelevant, etc.) then I win!” It is a natural category of bad-arguing that I’m trying to highlight.
I think you may simply lack a referent for the phenomenon I am describing. In which case, consider yourself lucky. Again, I see this ramshackle logic on my Facebook feed all the time because many of my Facebook friends were debaters. I was a debater, and I learned to recognize the difference between “debating logic” and “actual logic” in my own thinking. It is highly salient and singular to me, and having recognized its failure modes, I now see it elsewhere as well.
Perhaps a clarifying point would be this: The purpose of argumentation for a flowsheet-arguer is to “win” by getting their argument to the “right side of the page”. In other words, they value the appearance of winning above any other aspect of the argument. They don’t particularly care whether it’s a good argument, they just care that their opponent can’t/won’t refute it. They don’t even need to believe their own argument. (Policy debate trains you to not need to believe your own arguments.) This is the problem with the mindset.
In contrast, I think a healthier purpose of argumentation would be to find truth, or to persuade, or even to exercise logical skill. Putting too much weight on the appearance of winning interferes with these loftier aims.
Note: I think that OrphanWilde is uncheritably downvoted for standing up for an unpopular position on this. One could easily read that as voting against perceived dissenters.
I fully agree that downvotes in general are a necessary feature of the system and everybody has their own right to use them as they see fit.
I also agree that if some comments go negative the cause is often hard so determine and to make drama about it is a lost cause.
Mostly. Here this is less about the individual but what tha pattern of downvotes tells about the community: Voting against perceived out-group. Maybe I have not made that clear enough. I suggest reconsidering whether the downvotes voted down because of perceived in-group opinion or because of genuine reasons.
I got 90% of my upvotes because my opinion happened to align with the majority group’s on a contentious topic. It’s hard to complain overmuch about downvotes for the same reason. Granted, it’s also hard to hold upvotes/downvotes in any kind of regard anymore; hell, my most upvoted comments of all time were social commentary on an issue 90%+ of the people involved were mindkilled on, rather than any of the meaningful contributions I’ve attempted.
If you take pictures and post them on photography websites, the “likes” will tell you that you should photograph sunsets, puppies, and well-lit soft porn. That’s… really bad advice :-/
I think you’ve misunderstood my intended usage of Notecard Logic. It is actually almost the exact opposite of what you have said. Notecard Logic would be believing that you are proven/justified in believing something because you have a citation, regardless of the trustworthiness of that citation. Of course you should be able to find good sources backing up facts you believe.
You … also seem to have completely inverted my intent regarding Flowsheet Logic. Casting a barrage of small, petty, irrelevant arguments and believing that “winning” consists of getting your opponent to give up on refuting them would be Flowsheet Logic. I’m not sure if I’m parsing this sentence correctly: “Avoiding re-raising a point in order to score “points” in an imaginary contest”. How would avoiding re-raising an argument score any points even if you believed in Flowsheet Logic?
edit: Also, I think we may have reached Peak Fallacy Fallacy. At what point are we allowed to start critiquing the logic of argumentation again without being accused of this?
Possible, but I doubt it.
I call motte and bailey on this. Your bailey is dull and uninteresting. Your motte is the -offensive- form of this argument—the -alternative- to the “you have evidence to back up your assertion—even if that evidence takes the form of an article from [insert partisan rag]” formulation, the “you are just ‘making things up to defend your point of view’” formulation, as a fallacy.
Again, possible.
That would be a Snow Job. You don’t differentiate in your Flowsheet Logic description between somebody raising valid points and somebody raising invalid points, rather, you treat them -both- as Flowsheet Logic, whose characteristic is the -number- of arguments, rather than their validity, which is of secondary consideration and unimportant to the characteristic of Flowsheet Logic.
Go look at your spreadsheet [edit: flowchart image, my bad]. Any argument that remains unaddressed is scored for the team that raised it, no? So, if you’re arguing like a debate team, you don’t want to bring back arguments that were left unaddressed, because those are free points.
I do not accuse you of the fallacy fallacy, I accuse you of contributing to the fallacy fallacy, by producing new, usefully-ambiguous labels to slap on inconvenient arguments.
I guess I ultimately didn’t do a good job in my original article.
I am trying to point out widespread human tendencies in argumentation toward treating both argument and evidence as semantically empty tokens in some abstract game of Mancala. “If I get my tokens across the board (meaning, you ignore certain arguments because you find them petty or irrelevant, etc.) then I win!” It is a natural category of bad-arguing that I’m trying to highlight.
I think you may simply lack a referent for the phenomenon I am describing. In which case, consider yourself lucky. Again, I see this ramshackle logic on my Facebook feed all the time because many of my Facebook friends were debaters. I was a debater, and I learned to recognize the difference between “debating logic” and “actual logic” in my own thinking. It is highly salient and singular to me, and having recognized its failure modes, I now see it elsewhere as well.
Perhaps a clarifying point would be this: The purpose of argumentation for a flowsheet-arguer is to “win” by getting their argument to the “right side of the page”. In other words, they value the appearance of winning above any other aspect of the argument. They don’t particularly care whether it’s a good argument, they just care that their opponent can’t/won’t refute it. They don’t even need to believe their own argument. (Policy debate trains you to not need to believe your own arguments.) This is the problem with the mindset.
In contrast, I think a healthier purpose of argumentation would be to find truth, or to persuade, or even to exercise logical skill. Putting too much weight on the appearance of winning interferes with these loftier aims.
Fair enough. Downvote retracted.
I upvoted the whole chain up to here because it shows how a rational discussion should go: Point out flaws, clarify what is meant, summarize, update!
Good practice!.
Note: I think that OrphanWilde is uncheritably downvoted for standing up for an unpopular position on this. One could easily read that as voting against perceived dissenters.
Downvotes are part of the system, not a failure of the system. Let’s not make a drama when someone’s comment gets into negative numbers.
I fully agree that downvotes in general are a necessary feature of the system and everybody has their own right to use them as they see fit.
I also agree that if some comments go negative the cause is often hard so determine and to make drama about it is a lost cause.
Mostly. Here this is less about the individual but what tha pattern of downvotes tells about the community: Voting against perceived out-group. Maybe I have not made that clear enough. I suggest reconsidering whether the downvotes voted down because of perceived in-group opinion or because of genuine reasons.
I got 90% of my upvotes because my opinion happened to align with the majority group’s on a contentious topic. It’s hard to complain overmuch about downvotes for the same reason. Granted, it’s also hard to hold upvotes/downvotes in any kind of regard anymore; hell, my most upvoted comments of all time were social commentary on an issue 90%+ of the people involved were mindkilled on, rather than any of the meaningful contributions I’ve attempted.
Karma is a passable negative feedback tool, but it’s a horrible positive feedback tool.
My intuition would have been the opposite. Can you explain?
Maybe an example will help.
If you take pictures and post them on photography websites, the “likes” will tell you that you should photograph sunsets, puppies, and well-lit soft porn. That’s… really bad advice :-/