False dichotomies and other fallacies RPGers use

[pawsplay]

Except that there are people who do read and don't think forthemselves, they just pass on what they read.

Yes, but some people can't read, or read with such effort that they would never purposefully read anything more complicated than the wrapper of a microwave burrito. Once you exclude people who are simply suffering from a severe reading disorder, you are talking about people who are not smart enough to read and mindlessly parrot anything. They couldn't even pretend to be mindlessly parroting it, they couldn't even explain what it literally means.

I once gave an IQ test to someone who, when asked whose name was most generally associated with the theory of relativityy, replied, "Your parents." Apart from obviously not knowing a single useful idea of what the theory of relativity might be... "parents" is not a name!

 

[blargney the second]

Intelligence != education.

 

[pawsplay]

Can the same be said, if the word "gamers"/"gaming" is replaced with something like "Mafia wiseguys", "investment banker", etc ...?

Yes about the bankers. Mafia wiseguys typically have average or lower intelligence, and have a shockingly high rate of personality disorders and depression. Most criminals have already failed at trying to be something else.

I have actually met a few individuals with verified low IQ's.

One such person spent all their time talking about the heavy metal band Metallica, and nothing else.

Another such person, spend all his time drinking and snorting cocaine.

So... not really into the whole critical thinking thing, then?

 

[Fifth Element]

Once you exclude people who are simply suffering from a severe reading disorder, you are talking about people who are not smart enough to read and mindlessly parrot anything. They couldn't even pretend to be mindlessly parroting it, they couldn't even explain what it literally means.

Reading is a learned skill. Those with learning disabilities are not the only ones who can't read.

This is quite a tangent we're off on here.

 

[pawsplay]

Reading is a learned skill. Those with learning disabilities are not the only ones who can't read.

This is quite a tangent we're off on here.

Yes. So to bring it back on topic...

You made a strawman argument. I was not claiming that people with learning disabilities are the only ones who can't read.

 

[ggroy]

So... not really into the whole critical thinking thing, then?

On the surface that appeared to be the case.

The few things I saw these individuals do which may have required some thinking, is stuff like reading comic books or heavy metal magazines.

The low IQ cokehead guy, could play guitar half decently. He could listen to something, and figure out within a few minutes how to play it on a guitar or piano.

 

[Fifth Element]

You made a strawman argument. I was not claiming that people with learning disabilities are the only ones who can't read.

Sorry - I read your post to mean that if you take all people who can't read and take out those with learning disabilities, you are left with "people who are not smart enough to read and mindlessly parrot anything".

Piratecat here. I've privately addressed this post and the one after it. Other than using them as an example of "don't take the internet too seriously and don't take personal disagreements from thread to thread," please ignore them and carry on with the conversation.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I guess the problem here is that you consider "critical thinking" to include "if it's not in my experience, it can't happen."

No; the problem is that you don't listen.

I have answered this sour old chestnut so many times that I have lost count of how many times I have done so.

When you PMed me, I went through a chain of reasoning for you that you agreed with until it became obvious that the previous things you agreed with caused a necessary inference that you disagreed with.

In one thread, you argued that I was making an inference based on personal preference. I went through the reasoning item by item, so that you could see exactly how the inference was gained, and you were forced to admit that the inference was correct (even though you again ascribed inferences to the chain of reasoning which had nothing to do with it; you had, apparently, hoped your evidence demonstrated something else).

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5164564-post663.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5164602-post665.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5164702-post670.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5164730-post673.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5164730-post673.html

So, once more:

1. Each person has direct experience, which they use to build up a worldview. For this example, I will deal with a given person, X, whose experience is Y.

2. People make claims which are contrary (Person Z claims not-Y).

3. Depending upon the strength of Y, person X will either accept not-Y outright, provisionally accept not-Y, or require additional proof.

A. If Y is weakly experienced, and Z claims not-Y is strongly experienced, and X knows Z to be rational, X may simply accept not-Y and modify his worldview.

B. If Y is moderately experienced, and Z claims not-Y, and X knows Z to be rational, X will accept Z's claim provisionally, ascribing it no relative truth-value, and likewise consider alterations to his worldview to take into account Z's testimony of not-Y. That provisional acceptance is all that Z can or should expect, however, under any circumstances.....he is not "owed" anything more.

C. If Y is strongly experienced, or experienced in every instance, and Z claims not-Y, X may provisionally accept Z's claim, as described under B, if he knows Z to be rational. If, OTOH, he suspects that Z is not rational, has a strong observer bias, or is willing to manipulate data to make it meet his ends, X is justified in dismissing the claim of not-Y.​

It should be noted that what consitutes an "extraordinary claim" is not based on the position of the claimant, but upon the position of whoever the claimant wishes to persuade. If all of my experience is Y, then not-Y is an extraordinary claim.

Or, as I put it upthread:

It is quite frequently true that people will offer anecdotes to counter a point, but that does not mean that the anecdote is a valid counter. The rational person must consider the possibility that the other speaker is (1) mistaken in his observation, (2) mistaken in his characterization of his observation, and (3) is lying because he wants to firm up his position (to make it ironclad, as it were).

When someone solicits the opinions of others, and then reports on those opinions, you also have to consider how well you believe that person can sift the aforementioned factors.

For example, let us say that I claim to like eating strawberries. You need to take the context into account, as well as your general estimation of my personality. If you are offering me strawberries, and you know that I am the kind of person who is likely to avoid giving offense, you are not at all sure that my claim is true. Indeed, your subsequent observations may lead you to believe that my claim is false (I only eat one or two, and do not seem to enjoy them). Even if I do seem to enjoy them, you do not know that my claim is true, because you have reasonable grounds to doubt my motives about that claim.

On the InterWeb, where everyone wears a "mask" of sorts, and one cannot directly observe the "speaker", this problem is compounded.

The rational reader has to ask himself at least these questions:

What do I know of the poster? Has he been generally insightful in the past? Has he been generally truthful in the past? Does he admit errors, or does he take offense when error is suspected/pointed out? IOW, how much of his self-worth, in my estimation, is tied up in his being correct? The less likely he is to admit error, the less likely his anecdotes are to be trusted.

How rational does the poster appear to be? Should I assume that he is interpretting data correctly? Is the data he is relying upon hearsay? (And hearsay includes "My players say.......")

Not to put too fine a point on it, do I believe that, confronted with the same direct evidence that the poster is supplying indirect testimony of, that I would draw the same conclusion as the poster?

Does his anecdote make sense, within my experience and to the best of my knowledge? It would be a poor reader indeed who decided that Gygax was a major fan of 4e in the afterlife simply because I claimed his ghost appeared to me, told me so, and aged me 10 years.​

Or, as Jeff Wilder put it:

Look, if every single one of my experiences with anything goes one way, and I have a lot of those experiences, I'm going to believe my experiences over what you tell me the experiences of someone else have been.

If you tell me what your experiences have been, I'll need to make a judgment as to whether or not I believe you that your experience contradicts mine.

But if you tell me what someone else's experiences have been, it's not even close. I don't make any decision whatsoever as to whether or not you're being truthful, and don't need to, because there are so many other explanations for the disparity. I will simply assume you're wrong, and will continue to do so until I have better evidence from another source than the evidence I already rely on, which is my 100 percent consistent experience.

Everybody makes decisions on this basis every single day. It's incredible that you're implicitly claiming otherwise and disparaging this method of weighting evidence, which, quite literally, people could not live without.

You either don't understand these ubiquitous "weight of evidence" standards, or you're pretending not to

(http://www.enworld.org/forum/5164748-post677.html)

So, please don't continue to PM me, dredge this up in various threads, and then pretend to be wounded about how I "pulled you into this". And, if you are going to characterize my position, please do so correctly.

Thank you, and enjoy having me on your Ignore list.


RC

 

[coyote6]

This may not be the case. From "The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. Volume 1. (English Translation)" on page xx, Maja Winteler-Einstein (Albert's sister) writes (translated from the original German):

I'm not sure I've ever seen a page xx in a messageboard post. Should this spawn a thread deploring the sad decline of post editing?

That would be fallacious, though.

 

[ggroy]

I'm not sure I've ever seen a page xx in a messageboard post. Should this spawn a thread deploring the sad decline of post editing?

In the first section of that book, the pages were numbered with roman numerals from v to xxii. (Pages i to iv were not numbered). So xx would correspond to the 20th page in that first section.