Comment by javert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by javert | Hacker News Reader

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You're making an unfair and illogical equivocation.

I could pick apart every piece of what you said, but I doubt that would be productive, so I'll just focus on one particularly damning thing.

> make another completely unsubstantiated value judgment by saying that we should be insulted by any argument that's not laid out in bland logical terms

Yes, I have made a value judgement that people should appeal to each other using reason and logic.

If you do not agree with that, there is no point in discussing _anything_ with you, because you cannot be reached.

(As a sidenote, that value judgement is not subjective. It's also not unsubstantiated. However, even if you _were_ interested in reasoned and logical arguments, it would not be useful for me to give you a philosophical treatise on this topic in the HN comments. Particularly not for something that all reasonable people (by the very definition of "reasonable"!) agree on already.)

Ah, yes, very logical of you. I think I recognize the form of the proof; isn't this the same basic argument that Fermat used to prove his last theorem? :p

Anyway, your point isn't nearly as straightforward and uncontroversial as you've made it out to be. You're not just saying that people should discuss things using logic, you're saying that people should discuss things using logic exclusively. Or at least that's how I interpret your statement that we should be insulted when somebody uses rhetorical devices.

If you really have the philosophical or mathematical background it would take to make a proper argument grounded only in logic, that would be one thing (and I suppose I can't conclude that you don't, based solely on the lack of evidence so far). What you see entirely too often online, though, are people who claim to be making perfectly logical arguments, but are only able to do so because they're extremely cavalier with their axioms ("freedom trumps health", perhaps, or "it is only possible to have a rational discussion with somebody who explicitly rejects all other forms of reasoning".)

And, for the record, I am explicitly not claiming to be making a proper, logically sound argument here. I acknowledge and accept that I don't know how to do it properly, and I'd most likely just make a mess of things.

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