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Subject: 
Re: illogical behavior ;)
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:00:52 GMT
Viewed: 
8294 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Timothy Gould wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Koudys wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Timothy Gould wrote:
   --snip--

I think this entire argument can be put down to a disagreement over what evidence is applicable to the use in the argument. I think you’re as unlikely to convince me that your choices are valid as I am to convince you that mine are. We are both picking and choosing what we will and won’t include.


Here’s the thing--my justification for ‘choosing evidence’, if you wish to call it that, is like anytrhing else

So here’s a hypothetical situation--

Bob had a pretty ‘transgressive’ start to life. He had gotten into some unlawful mischief in his youth, but, through ‘doing time’, community service, and such, the law now states that he has absolved all transgressions.

Now Bob is a productive worker in society, and a fine contributor to his local community. However, when he’s at the local PTA meeting, someone steps up and says, “Why that Bob!! He was a bad seed before!! He should be punished!!!”

Dave,

Your analogy is incorrect. It would be correct if Bob had done something in another town and then someone in the town hall had abused Bob for his actions in the other town, Bob had defended himself, James had said Bob was reformed and then Jim had said he wasn’t. James and Jim then argue over Bob’s reform. Noone has argued that Bob should be punished.

huh??

The analogy was as close to apt as I had the time to make--Eric (being Bob) had committed transgressions on LUGNET in the past for which he was ‘officially’ forgiven.

Now smomeone maliciosly attacked Eric, and people have chimed in stating ‘Eric (Bob) was bad in the past!! Sure the attacker was wrong, but Eric was wrong, too, so deserves the attack.”

That was the original issue. That was what the analogy refered to. Again, the obfuscation on your part is clouding the issue.




  
   I ‘pick and choose’ my evidence by what’s relevant for this issue. What isn’t relevant is people bringing up (almost constantly) the ‘badness’--the transgressions--of someone’s past when the ‘official’ stance is that these past transgressions are absolved.

So again, I’m not cherry picking. And when I talk about how *I*‘ve had (mostly) fun with my entire history on LUGNET, it doens’t mean I’m bringing *all* of the history of LUGNET into this issue *but you can’t*--it means that your issue of ‘Eric limits people’s fun here on LUGNET’ as you specified is crap--first it’s a separate issue from the original issue, therefore I addressed it as such, and secondly, once again saying that Eric limits people’s fun here has been addressed by the admins, both past and present, and now, it appears anyway, Eric *is* contributing to the ‘good times’ of LUGNET.

So I addressed the various issues that you prsented, and there’s no logical fallacy therein. If you want to jump around with ‘why Eric’s bad’ and I point out that, well, your premise is wrong, and you don’t like the truths--again, you are more than entitled to your own opinions, but you certainly are not entitled to what the truth is--nor am I for that matter. What is, is. Eric has shown himself to be a better person here. He looks like he has learned to at least try to let things go easier. So he got a little ‘officiously litigious’ on this one--again, the important bit is why he did that in the first place.

If he went on a rant for ‘no real reason’, then I’d call him on it. But (almost) everyone in this thread has pointedly said that *something* happened that was a malicious attack on Eric. We can debate the measure of response as a separate issue (like the above ‘Eric limits fun’), but the fact--the *truth* is--that the *malicious attack* did happen. That’s the issue. We can dress it up and debate all around it, but the truth is right there.

So where do you stand, Tim? Should Eric get an apology? Not from you and I, for as you stated, you had nothing to do with the ‘original sin’ but jumped in when I posted something I think you misinterpreted. We can discuss ‘does Eric *deserve* an apology?’ and go into all that is Eric and his impact on others...

Lets put it this way--had I ‘tampered with’ some links and images on a sidebar that pertained to your stuff--even if I did it as a joke, but you didn’t take it as such, should I offer you an apology? If not, then there’s nothing more to say. Again, it doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t get upset if this happened to you--I don’t think I would have been upset--I’m an ‘eh, whatever’ kind of guy *for me*. The fact is--Eric was upset, and he had a *right* to be upset--therefore he should get an apology. We can go on about all the other stuff regarding his past and what happens elsewhere (not on LUGNET), but that’s obfuscation, and irrelevant to the original issue.

I’ve generally considered you to be reasonable in your arguments. You are now, to put it bluntly, wrong in your argument and your means of delivery. What I have done is give examples to support my point. What you have done is give examples to support your point. I have consistently disagreed with your arguments. You have shifted from disagreeing with my examples to attacking my reasons for giving the examples. The reason you have shifted to this strategy is because, as I said, we are each selecting different samples for our arugments. The difference is that I have refrained from attacking your choices.


What you have done is brought up irrelevant ‘discussion points’ to make your case that Eric deserved what he got--‘he’s being sly--he’s bad elsewhere and good here...’

As far as I can see, Eric’s been a (mostly) supportive person lately here on LUGNET. You state that his actions in other forums is relevant. I rightly then state that if we look into his ‘other actions’ elsewhere then by god we better start looking into *all* other actions of *everyone involved*, ‘cause that’s what you’re calling for. You say ‘what he does over there’ is on the table, but you’re unwilling to then put ‘everything else’ on the table.

It’s disingenuous, and, once agian I’ll say--you’re better than that.

Furthermore, his--your, my, anyones--actions elsewhere has no bearing on this specific issue here at LUGNET. If I made in illegal left hand turn in Rome, Italy, the OPP officer here in Burlington, Ontario, Canada does not then have the right to pull me over for it.



   To put it succinctly, my reason for jumping in was to disagree with ONE STATEMENT of yours. I even spelt it out in my original post. I did obsfucate the issue by arguing with other points which was stupid but by my statement in the original post I hope it was pretty obvious why I jumped in. All else is obsfucation, both your arguments and mine. You can’t pick and choose what is obsfucation and what is relavent from my arguments in order to bolster your own.


And I pointed out to you that your ‘jumping in’ was due to a misinterpretation--I had in no way stated that Eric was ‘right’ in everything whilst those that were ‘poking fun at him’ were bad, and in no way was I setting any precident on this matter. I was specifically referring to the issue, and the facts of the issue pretty much speak for themselves.


   You have presented no proof satisfactory to me that my premise is wrong. Likewise I have presented no proof satisfactory to you that your premise is wrong. This is simply because you are choosing a different sample to me and arguing its merits while I am arguing the merits of mine.


I most certainly have. And we are now in the ‘fun’ territory, in which one of us ‘muddies the water’ at the cost of truth and justice. I’ll pull up a quotation form a blog I once read--

“The GOP has mastered an error condition in the political process, an infinite loop of abstraction that drains all meaning from political speech. They don’t have to focus on meaning, really, at all, they just turn up the burbling nonsense until we all descend past the noise machine event horizon into infinitely unproductive debate, never to re-emerge. This is how we progressives (rationalists?) keep ending up on the sucker side of the media war with the right: we’re still using the old paradigm of meaning and they’re busily deploying the equivalent of malware and DOS attacks. ”


By continuing to state, without proof or adherence to the issue (and subsequent issues thereof) in question, that I’m wrong, when in fact I have shown your reasonings to be flawed regarding this issue(s) and the way you pull in your ‘debating points’, you make it seem that this is all a matter of opinion, and that ‘the other side’s (my) opinion’ is questionable. When, in fact, all I’ve been doing is making the facts known, and using analogies (albeit not perfect ones, to be sure) to show how some of the points brought up by others to, well, not necessarily condone the actions of those that ‘done bad’ to Eric, really didn’t say, ‘Hey! it doesn’t matter what Eric did in the past or what he does in other places--that kind of ‘foul play’ should not be part of the LUGNET experience.’

DaveE said it, and yet, here we are--many post later, going around with people not, well, saying that.



   Furthermore I have never said that Eric shouldn’t get an apology so you are building a strawman. I have, in fact, even apologised to Eric for something in this thread which would hardly support the position that I think Eric shouldn’t get an apology.

I was stating the original case (again), which was trying to bring the debate back to where it was relevant. No you didn’t say *anywhere* that Eric didn’t deserve an apology. However, the direction of your posting points and the great length you’ve undertaken to bring up parenthetical issues (which I fully believe are great debating ideas in and of themselves, fyi, so y’know,keep bringing ‘em up) has shown me that you believe--regarding the original issue--Eric doesn’t deserve an apology. Either by past misdeeds or by whay he does elsewhere, he shouldn’t get one. My interpretation on this could be totally flawed (and it’s early in the morning and I haven’t the time to go re-read the entire thread, so I’ll just go with my gut and my faulty recollection on this one)

Just from your above statement--you never said that Eric doesn’t deserve an apology. You even showed us, the jury that you apologized to Eric for something in this very thread! Bravo! That’s what we like to see (at least, what I like to see--taking ownership and standing up and ‘doing the right thing’!) It’s still obfuscating because in that lovely little paragraph, as well as everywhere else, you did not make the point--

So here’s the million dollar question, Tim:

Should Eric get an apology from the transgressor(s) for the malicous mislinking on the Technic sidebar?

You’ve stated that you have never said he shouldn’t get one. However, that’s not the same as, ‘Well, yes he should get an apology’. In that, there’s all the world of difference (there’s a computer logic analogy that I’d like to throw in right now but then I’d just be going off on another ‘Daveism’...)

  
  
   I’m not sure how you can read that I am speaking for Rene. I state that Eric’s action threatening Ross (should be Al, my mistake) and Rene is an issue. Nor did I go flying off the handle over it, or at least no more so than you did (if you are implying that I did).

I used language that I regret and, on reading it, made unintentional allusions. My ‘didn’t fly off the handle’ was meant to point out that my way of ‘admonishing Eric’ to not aggravate the situation was as low key--by saying ‘you’re better than this’, I think, was a very nice way and about as far from ‘flying off the handle’ as one can get. I also think that this entire thread has demonstrated that everyone involved has been doing same--tempers haven’t ‘flared’ and no one has ‘flown off the handle’.

OK. I genuinely wasn’t sure where it was directed which is why I chose to add the brackets.


Sorry ‘bout that.

  
  
  
   The body of evidence *here* shows that he’s pretty good *here* *now*. I’m sorry if you can’t see that. And I’m sorry that people like to provoke him *here* that leads to these issues. I’m also sorry that I do tend to go on about it :)

As I said above, you are picking your body of evidence according to what suits your argument (or possible vice versa) as am I (or possibly vice versa). It is similar to the situation in mathematics where there are various ways for measuring time-moving averages and intuition must be used (usually) to choose which one is more applicable to the situation. Our intuitions disagree.


I’m using the relevant data for this issue. If you want to talk about other issues, I’m all for that and we can pull in whatever data you wish to pull in. Keeping the data relevant to the issue isn’t ‘cherry picking’. It’s keeping the data relevant to the issue.

You claim you are using the relevant data and I claim that you aren’t. I’m sure you will continue to insist that your sample is the right one and you’re yet to give me a convincing argument that mine isn’t the right one. Considering that sample choice is an issue in scientific papers where there are much more rigorous ways of deciding what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ I think that outright stating that yours is relavent and mine isn’t is adding nothing to your argument. To shift to another common forum of debate, in Law there are times when you can use a person’t past transgressions as an argument for their current guilt. It is restricted I agree but it doesn’t make selection as clear cut as you seem to think (and for all the faults of any given, Democratic legal system I am optimistic that the people involved in shaping it are trying hard to balance the needs of society against an individuals needs in choosing what is allowable as evidence)


Absolutely I agree that there are times when you can bring in character reference and all past misdeeds--if a guy’s being charged with whatever offence, and there’s a history of similar offences, then by all means, I can’t see why it wouldn’t be admissable.

That said, if a guy’s in a store, legally buying groceries, and a cop comes up and slaps the cuffs on him and locks him up *because* he’s robbed stores in the past, even if he’s done his pennance for his past misdeeds, then who’s wrong?

Certainly *not* the guy doing things legal. If Eric did something wrong here on LUGNET, then there’s a whole body of evidence to be used against him in whatever decisions need to be made by the admins. Once again, I call ‘relevance’. Since you bring up the legal system as you did, it’s perfectly apt in this case. In this case, Eric was wronged. He wasn’t doing wrong. If he was doing wrong, then by all means, bring up all past transgressions and have at it! However, by saying, ‘He done wrong before’, so somehow the transgressors against Eric are, well, not perfeclty exonerated, should be given some leniency--is crap. The legal system would state same. If a ‘reformed’ criminal’s house is broken into, can the cops ignore that? “Well, he was a robber--jsut desserts I say!!”

Some circles would appreciate the irony (I sorta do), but in no way does that absolve the current crooks.

  
  
  
   Where did I ‘bolster’ my point from past evidence? I made a somewhat parenthetical observation that my fun here at LUGNET is in no way diminished by people I don’t like.

Parenthical or obsfucating? ;)

I’m good at both. I dealt with this above, but it bears repeating. Your point that ‘Eric limits fun’ is a separate issue, and I dealt with that point by showing that a) LUGNET’s big enough for everyone, and b) I’ve had fun through many many bumps along LUGNET’s history. My having fun has never been dependant on anyone else.

You seem to be saying (from the top paragraph and this one) that the issue of fun was both a separate issue and also formed part of my main argument. It’s one or the other. I will tell you now that it is a side issue. I should never have brought it up and I don’t entirely disagree with you (nor do I entirely agree with you).

I have no idea where we are on this one--this entire thread has gone 5 minutes past any reasonable interest. That said, I made the point that it was a separate issue, and I dealt with it as such. If I put ‘hooks’ into it from other lines of discussion, they were for whatever reasons that I’m not bothering to look up. Was it part of your main arguement? Or not? It doesn’t matter--the point is dealt with--if someone is having ‘less fun’ because of their ‘run in’s’ with Eric, then the solution is to not have ‘run in’s’ with Eric. Easier said than done, to be sure, but it is a big world and I don’t find myself fretting about these kinds of things. I ignore what I consider background noise (and I’m sure many people ignore me ‘cause I’m background noise to them). Eh, life’s too short for that type of worry. So where are we now? +6 minutes??

  
  
   Except I just realised that I somewhat contradict my own arguments by stating that I agree with it and you somewhat contradict your statement by the arguments you make in this post with it... which goes to show that the optimal solution may actually be the least logical.

   Dave K

Tim

Actually, as far as I’m concerned, everyone in this thread has been performing better than expected. No yippage of ‘bans’ or ‘i’m quitting!!’. It’s been a pretty good conversation all around. I think everyone has demonstrated the ‘better than that’ attitude. However, there have been some (minor, at least to me) pot shots directed at Eric.

Dave K

So we both argued a point, contradicted ourselves on that point and now you consider that that point may have been correct (and I think I agree with you)? That’s some good going on both our parts.

Tim


As long as we’re having fun...

   PS. While I am enjoying this debate I’m afraid this will have to my final word as I will not be around for a while.

Take care,

Dave K



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: illogical behavior ;)
 
(...) Dave, Your analogy is incorrect. It would be correct if Bob had done something in another town and then someone in the town hall had abused Bob for his actions in the other town, Bob had defended himself, James had said Bob was reformed and (...) (18 years ago, 15-Feb-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

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