High school debate Tactics: Argumentum ad absurdum

Canna Sylvan said:

You use your stitch, I use mine. Why is yours better?

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UncleBuck said:

i like you, so i did not mean to imply a "fuck you" attitude in the other thread. it's just that every thread devolves. all of them. if you want to keep it to the original point, or some other point that came up somewhere in the thread, ya just gotta quote what you're responding to.

canna has whipped a million and one threads into discussions of his veganism or autism, and when i used to start rawn pawl threads they were hijacked immediately into "but obama SO BAD!" threads.

i apologize for my tone in the other thread, but my point remains. we are a bunch of devolvers here.

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UncleBuck said:

other people call you much worse things for your veganism than i do. i don't recall even commenting on it, besides to sometimes suggest that it's the cause of your angry manic episodes.

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killemsoftly said:

I appreciate that Buck. Thank you.
I can see your point about quoting. I prolly took offense to quickly and overreacted. I agree: 'devolution' seems to occur very often. Not just here. Seen it many times. lol
I think that it does have a tendency to become a race to the bottom, unfortunately.

peace.

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Canna Sylvan said:

That expression on your face from the stitch behind you sure looks like you're uncomfortable.

Ask your wife about what's called a sensory overload, and how it can resemble an angry manic episode.

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UncleBuck said:

i'll ask her. mental illnesses fascinate me.

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Canna Sylvan said:

What I have isn't a mental illness. It's my inability to handle all the incoming stimuluses bombarding me. I don't have a filtering mechanism like most people. I have to instead think of everything. Weed is the only thing that makes that effect go away. When high I can concentrate on one sensory input at a time. My favorite is watching a movie and it looks more 3d than a Nintendo DS while extremely baked.

Sometimes if I get high enough, I can concentrate and make objects appear which look like a hologram of Princess Leah that R2 projected. My thinking is people with mental illness get stuck between the dream state and conscious state. But they don't perceive enough conscious state detail reality, and their dream state looks more real.

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UncleReemis said:

I can pop both my thumbs in and out of socket. You ain't got shit on that!

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GreatwhiteNorth said:

Sound familiar ?
...
The third is a mathematical proof by contradiction, arguing that the denial of the assertion would result in a logical contradiction (there is a smallest positive rational number and yet there is a smaller one).

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killemsoftly said:

you fuzzy wabbit!
sorry. not a furry.

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heckler73 said:

Well, I take offense to that, sir!
To which I offer the following:

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Canna Sylvan said:

Super position is much is much easier to show as a graph.

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heckler73 said:

Well here is an application of Ramsey Theorem in creating small-set triads {1,2,3} from the fundamental intervals in a melody, including a large set {4,5,6} chord (which sounds ugly as hell):


As you can see, Ramsey Theorem guarantees one can find a monochromatic set given sufficient "n"!

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GreatwhiteNorth said:

Sound familiar ?
There's at least two persons on this forum that know what this means. I am one of them, however I do not employ it as a strategy. See if you can spot the other that utilizes it at every opportunity.

Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to absurdity"; pl.: reductiones ad absurdum), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin: argument to absurdity), is a common form of argument which seeks to demonstrate that a statement is true by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result follows from its denial,[1] or in turn to demonstrate that a statement is false by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result follows from its acceptance. First appearing in classical Greek philosophy (the Latin term derives from the Greek "εις άτοπον απαγωγή" or eis atopon apagoge, "reduction to the impossible", for example in Aristotle's Prior Analytics),[1] this technique has been used throughout history in both formal mathematical and philosophical reasoning, as well as informal debate.

The "absurd" conclusion of a reductio ad absurdum argument can take a range of forms:

• Rocks have weight, otherwise we would see them floating in the air.
• Society must have laws, otherwise there would be chaos.
• There is no smallest positive rational number, because if there were, it could be divided by two to get a smaller one.

The first example above argues that the denial of the assertion would have a ridiculous result, against the evidence of our senses. The second argues that the denial would have an untenable result: unacceptable, unworkable or unpleasant for society. The third is a mathematical proof by contradiction, arguing that the denial of the assertion would result in a logical contradiction (there is a smallest positive rational number and yet there is a smaller one).

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Canna Sylvan said:

That's way over my head. Visualizing one variable superposition in my head is hard enough. It takes visualizing eight different things at once, just for one thing. Then doing that three times, fuck that. I don't see how any human can do that. I still can't properly do one variable completely with all possibilities.

What do you think about the Pauli Exclusion Principle and how it would allow an inter-connectiveness among all existence inside us to the whole universe?

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Ceepea said:

You forgot the myriad other logical fallacies people fall for on here....

argument from authority
argument from incredulity
argument from ignorance
falsum in uno falsum in omnibus
red herrings
circular arguments
straw men arguments

the list goes on....

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Doer said:

And that is why debate has rules and judges. When the other side picks up on any of that and expresses it in their counter argument, to the satisfaction of the Judges.....YOU LOSE.

So GWN, good try buddy to help with order, but really it is counter to your intention,

Tell everyone. Cool your jets. This is simple discussion.

No one here, including me, could stand up in an actual debate with trained debaters.

And there have been no actual debates in Politics since Lincoln-Douglas, I don't think,

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heckler73 said:

Physics allows for a lot of things, most notably, spherical cows in a vacuum. It can be abused about as much as any religious text.
And that's why people with purple polka dots should not be allowed to buy Super Big Gulps in South Carolina!


I beg to differ; Politics is rooted in debate. It is imperative one understands essential elements of logic, rhetoric, and grammar in order to engage in fruitful ideological discourse with a purpose. Otherwise, it is nothing more than TnT. To which, having pedagogical interjections such as the OP are useful reminders (or introductions, to some) of these points.
That said, it is a stoner forum, so it becomes equally understandable for peculiar flavours of opinion to be expressed. Deviations? Of course! Yet there is still an underlying method to the madness...a fundamental frequency that carries the respective threads, keeping the root information (or purpose) intact.

In conclusion, Senator Schuylaar, I would like to address the committee on the issue of false advertising in the clumping cat-litter market...

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schuylaar said:

to debate only; debate is TNT..unless the debate has a subject ie; politics or news..since the OP contains neither ergo TNT.

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