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Memories of the 28th Century

Miscellaneous thoughts about miscellaneous matters

  1. The Joy of False Premises

    by , 02-05-2019 at 05:30 PM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    A couple of days ago I was involved in an excellent example of the problem with false premises. If one selects the premises of an argument properly, then one can prove any argument using pseudo-logical methods. That is why using false premises is a logical fallacy.

    I was just trying to provide some interesting small talk and mentioned how I had again found a phishing site that was using one of my books as bait for people to leave their credit card information. I recounted informing ...
  2. Cherry Picking

    by , 11-09-2018 at 04:31 PM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    Yesterday, I noticed a post on my Facebook newsfeed about carbon dioxide in the past and climate change. It quickly became apparent that the data was incomplete, and someone had already posted a note about that. I posted links to two similar articles that had more complete information, and, of course, my comments were heartily criticized, because the original was from NASA, while I posted links by people who do make their livings backing an issue.

    Since then I have been thinking ...
  3. Some Simple Logic

    by , 09-21-2014 at 04:43 PM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    There are a few simple tricks that one can use to supplement the check of Occam’s Razor, when one is looking at an argument.

    If one is trying to show causality, then remember that effects follow causes. If your presumed cause follows the presumed effect, then you can be thoroughly certain that you are mistaken in your presumption of causality.

    If something happened in the past when something else did not exist, then the thing that did not exist did not cause that ...
    Tags: fallacies, logic
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  4. Intellectual Honesty

    by , 04-07-2014 at 04:18 PM (Memories of the 28th Century)
    I have known a good number of very intelligent people, and with a few exceptions (people with Asperger’s Syndrome) those intelligent people were perfectly willing to admit error when they learned that they were wrong. Unfortunately, that seems not to be true of some other people.

    A few days ago I was talking to a college student, and the matter of climate change came up. I explained the major problems with the matter as it has been presented in the press, and my student friend expressed ...

    Updated 04-15-2014 at 07:41 AM by PeterL

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