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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

Your entire premise is based on a basic logical fallacy. You absolutely do not have to take the argument to its extreme, and that is literally called an appeal to extremes.

The argument made was that cutting the CDC, and leadership related to global pandemics was probably a bad idea now that we may be experiencing one. Not that we should spend all of our money on the CDC regardless of returns.

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But that's precisely my point. I'm not saying that you or the OP is actually arguing the extreme of the position, I'm saying that the argument that "cutting the budget is needless" because "lives are on the line" implies the extreme unless you are willing to accept that there is a correct amount of diminishing returns where we would agree that cuts to the budget were not needless, but justifiable, regardless of lives being on the line. So if we accept that we both agree that there is a figure where this tradeoff takes place, then what I'd like to know is why the previous figure was correct, and the figure post-cuts is not.

Scott Adams calls what you're talking about “a half-pinion”, ie. when someone only looks at one side of an argument to form their opinion.

I'm not sure what side of the argument I'm ignoring, do you mind clarifying? I feel as though my argument is precisely predicated on adding additional considerations into the mix, rather than ignoring some component of the original point.

I was actually agreeing with you. I was trying to say the other poster had a “half-pinion”. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Ah, I see. Ya, I often reach for metaphors like this:

https://storage.needpix.com/rsynced_images/perspective-37858...

Basically, staring at one of the shadows on the wall and declaring confidently that you know what the shape of the solid is that produced it.

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