D&D 5E So 5 Intelligence Huh

[TwoSix]

Of course, we'd have one less thing to argue about. I mean "discuss". And I admit, I kinda miss the old-school trenchwar-style "discussions" I used to get into on ENWorld back in the day. For reasons, I'm neither entirely clear on or proud of .

So 5 Damage on a Miss Huh

 

[Mallus]

Although if you charge downtime and gold for ASIs on level up, that might keep the PCs poor.

Now there's a thought ... *evil chuckle*

"I'm adding crippling student debt to our 5e campaign to make it more like AD&D."

Actually, my group might do something like that. We like a little satire, along with our pretending to be elves!

Eureka! Int represents the number of years of education.

That works! "I'll have you know I did most of my post-graduate work in involuntary immolation and am a Doctor of Fireballs."

So 5 Damage on a Miss Huh

Yep! And the "dissociated mechanics", "sense of wonder", "necessity of PC death", and the endless variations on "simulationism"/"rules-as-physics" debates.

edit: forgot my friend shilsen's great & enormous "horndog paladin" thread... though that got less contentious as it wore on, thanks, in part, to shil writing some wonderful fiction demonstrating how great Sir Cedric was as a character.

 

[pemerton]

So you're arguing that it's only probably true that you are correct, because that's not what your post said. Your post said you were comfortable that you were correct based on your authority. That absolute, not probable, which means that iv applies.

You realise that the reason Wikipedia uses "probably" or "presumptively" correct is because it is contrasting with demonstrably correct, in the sense of demonstrated by deductively valid inference?

No non-deductive argument can ever establish more than a probability or a defeasible case for its conclusion.
[MENTION=6777052]BoldItalic[/MENTION] makes just this point not far upthread by pointing out, for instance, that there is no demonstrative proof that all my experience is not hallucination.

I take it that you now accept, at least, that there is no general invalidity or unsoundedness in appealing to authority, familiarity or experience to establish a point?

I also note that you now use the word absolute. What does that mean? It's not a standard term for describing the relationship between premises and conclusion in describing and contrasting various forms of demonstrative and non-demonstrative argument.

The basic point remains, as I stated upthread and as Wikipeida itself also indicates (and how could it indicate anything else, given the obviousness of the point?): testimony is a reliable source of knowledge, provided that the person whose testimony one is relying on knows what s/he is talking about.

you have shown no consensus that lawyers and/or philosophers all follow your version of what irrational means. Given that lawyers and philosophers disagree on a great many things, it's unlikely that such a consensus exists.

I really don't get it.

I wrote a post describing a certain sort of conduct - namely, acting in a way so as to thwart the actor's own goals/interests - as irrational. You disputed my usage of irrational, asserting that it is confined in such circumstances to describing akratic behaviour.

I pointed out that dictionary.com itself lists usages of the sort I used - namely, behaviour which is not in accord with reason or is lacking in sound judgment. I also pointed out that my usage is one that I, and other academic lawyers and philosophers, use in going about our professional discussions.

I've just now noticed the following instances of contemporary usage on dictionary.com, which is very similar to my usage:

It was not irrational for Gingrich to believe the press had it in for him.​

In this case, irrational clearly does not mean "at odds with the person's own beliefs or judgment": if it did, then the statement would be trivially true (because if Gingrich believes X, then it is trivial to assert that it is not inconsistent with his belief to believe X). It means contrary to reason or unsupported by reasons.

Yet you continue to insist that my usage was in error, and now have made up or conjectured a controversy among academics that means I am not a reliable source as to what permissible usage of the word might be!

Do you have any evidence for the existence of this controversy?

Furthermore, even suppose such a controversy existed: it would still follow that there is a body of English speakers who use "irrational" as I did! Which would, in itself, be enough to establish the permissibility of my usage!

 

[iserith]

That works! "I'll have you know I did most of my post-graduate work in involuntary immolation and am a Doctor of Fireballs."

Pfft. Everybody knows you went to a total party school.

 

[pemerton]

You know, it occurred to me you could solve this whole problem -- to the extent it is one, which it isn't BTW -- by renaming Intelligence (INT) to Education (EDU).

Classic Traveller has both an INT and an EDU score. They play different functions in establishing bonuses to rolls and opening up options during character generation. I think it's always been a little bit arbitrary where the line is drawn between them as far as their role in play.

 

[TwoSix]

edit: forgot my friend shilsen's great & enormous "horndog paladin" thread... though that got less contentious as it wore on, thanks, in part, to shil writing some wonderful fiction demonstrating how great Sir Cedric was as a character.

I remember that thread! Sir Cedric was awesome.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I did?

Far be it for me to point out that you're now avoiding the questions asked. However, yes, you told me I already know your reasons. Seeing as how I asked instead of stating them, you must wish me to guess so that you can play this little game. Happy to oblige, if it makes you feel more comfortable.

 

[iserith]

Seeing as how I asked instead of stating them, you must wish me to guess so that you can play this little game.

What game is that?

 

[Mallus]

Pfft. Everybody knows you went to a total party school.

It wasn't a party until someone tossed a Fireball!

Classic Traveller has both an INT and an EDU score. They play different functions in establishing bonuses to rolls and opening up options during character generation. I think it's always been a little bit arbitrary where the line is drawn between them as far as their role in play.

I was going to mention LBB Traveller but I couldn't remember if it used both EDU and INT, or how the difference was defined. I was also trying to recall fantasy systems that ditched intelligence as a stat in favor of some form of "magic power" (classic Runequest has both INT & POW, doesn't it?). Practically-speaking, D&D players use INT to represent a "arcane spell caster" not a "smart person".

I remember that thread! Sir Cedric was awesome.

Cedric was indeed awesome. The PC he played in my long-running 3e campaign was pretty damn good, too. Meiji "Not in the Face!" Kitsume, a shugenja who managed to weaponize cowardice.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't think that your statement is "factually correct" at all! I've never read anything in a D&D rulebook that states or even implies that the 3d6 spread of ability scores is measuring the quantity of some property, of which the minimum possible amount is 3 units and the maximum 18. Gygax plots out a bell-curve shape in his DMG, which suggests what I've always assumed: that 3d6 establishes a ranking based around likelihoods (or frequency within the population: I think the game assumes that likelihoods and frequencies are the same thing, and if anything is at stake in that assumption as far as D&D is concerned I'm missing it at the moment).

In other words, all we can say in comparing 18 INT to 17 INT is that it is a greater amount of intelligence, and is found in only 1 in 216 people, as opposed to 3 in 216 for 17.

In AD&D, 3 STR "maps onto" a carrying capacity of 115 lb. For 18 STR (ignoring %) that capacity is 225 lb. Should we say that the person with 18 STR is twice as strong as, six times a strong as, or ?? times as strong as the 3 STR character? I don't think the game answers, or has ever purported to anwer, this question. Ability score points establish position in a ranking, with associated capabilities in both mechanics and fiction, but don't establish the quantity of some determinable property that can then be put into a ratio with some other quantity of that same property.

Do you mean "18 is three times 6, period"?

In any event, as I've said I don't think that the 3d6 roll applies the sort of concrete meaning that you suggest. It is just a device for establishing where one character stands in the ranking relative to others, and of allocating positions in those rankings on the basis of likelihoods/frequencies.

It does have that concrete meaning. What you're doing here is taking that meaning, throwing away parts of it, and arbitrarily adding new information. In a sense, you're helping make my point. In 3d6, 18 is strictly three times greater than 6. You can't map IQ data to this because that isn't true of the ordinal data that is IQ. You doubly can't map IQ to INT using the 3d6 distribution because of that first issue, but also because you've chosen to throw away information from that 3d6 distribution when mapping it to INT, so you have false information assigned to IQ when you map it to 3d6, and then you throw away that false information when you map 3d6 to INT. Those steps don't cancel, because the transforms aren't equal nor is the process reversible.

Essentially, by noting that INT doesn't retain the information inherent in 3d6, you've helped make my point. I had stopped at mapping IQ to 3d6 because that was sufficiently wrong and I didn't follow the thought past that point. You've done an admirable job of completing the thought, even if you were trying to argue against my position.

When I was overseas recently, my daughter was diagnosed with and treated for malaria. A rapid malaria test was taken, and the result was negative. Nevertheless, the treating doctor said that she should be treated for malaria, on the basis that he had both training and experience that led him to believe that the rapid test is prone to delivering false negatives. (The reason for this is that it is an antigen test, and in the early stages of onset - especially for a child from a non-immune population - the number of antigens may be quite low.)

The argument presented by the doctor was, roughly, this: I am a doctor experienced in diagnosing and treating malaria cases. Although the test has come back negative, I still think it is highly likely that your daughter has malaria and should be treated for it. I accepted the argument, my daughter was treated, and she recovered. (She was also treated with antibiotics in response to a further clinical diagnosis parallel to the malaria one - it therefore remains a medical mystery whether she had one or both conditions and hence whether it was the antibiotics, the anti-malarial drugs or both that cured her.)

There is no fallacy in the doctor's reasoning: he has expertise, and his opinion was grounded in that expertise. Being a rational person who wanted his seriously ill daughter to get better, I took his advice.

Agreed, no fallacy. He presented his relevant experience and training along with reasons why he felt that the test could be wrong, and offered you his professional opinion. I'm very glad your daughter is healthy.

In pragmatic contradiction with the previous paragraph, and against my better judgment, I've had a look at the Wikipedia page on argument from authority. It opens by saying that "The argument from authority . . . can be fallacious, such as when an authority is cited on a topic outside their area of expertise or when the authority cited is not a true expert.

Fallacious examples of using the appeal include any appeal to authority used in the context of deductive reasoning, when the cited authority is stating a contentious or controversial position, if they are speaking about issues unrelated to their expertise or if they are not a true expert at all."

The argument made by the treating doctor was not made in the context of deductive reasoning - it was about medical diagnosis, not logical or mathematical proof - nor was it a statement of a contentious position (though in such cases one might still do better to listen to the experts than to amateurs) and I had (and continue to have) no reason to doubt the doctor's expertise.

Yes.

My remarks about the permissible usage of the word "irrational" likewise were not made in the context of deductive reasoning - questions of usage are empirical questions, not matters of logical or mathematical proof - nor was I stating a particularly contentious position (to the best of my knowledge there is no raging controversy around usage of irrational). If [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] believes that, in fact, I do not have expertise in relation to usage of the term among academics with an interest in the matter, than that is his prerogative. On this one I'm fairly confident in my own familiarity, though. I've used the word "irrational" in various conversations with colleagues to describe non-akratic behaviour that is at odds with the reasons that govern the situation, and have generally not caused confusion or encountered resistance on account of such usage.

Firstly, it doesn't matter if you're aware of a general contention around an issue, the issue was in contention in the argument. Secondly, I don't think you can declare that word usage is empirical in nature. We often determine the meaning of a new word through deduction, not empiricism. Thirdly, the empirical and contention arguments fail the moment you touch prescriptive vs descriptive usage.

You're attempting to define away the controversy so that your presentation of credentials, which aren't at all relevant to the determination of the argument, aren't the set up for a potential fallacy. It's a good try, but you're asserting things that aren't in evidence.

Wikipedia then goes on to discuss Locke, which is no surprise, because the classical empiricists have extremely strict standards for epistemic warrant, and testimony will often fail to meet those standards. (Russell has a good and accessible discussion of this in his Problems of Philosophy - he characterises testimony as giving rise to probable opinion rather than knowledge in the strict sense.) But in my experience ENworld doesn't operate with a standard for warrant at the level the classical empiricists demand.

Wikipedia then gives the general form of the argument from authority, and the conditions in which it is fallacious:

The argument from authority can take several forms. A legitimate argument from authority can take the general form:

X holds that A is true.
X is an authority on the subject.
The consensus of authorities agrees with X.
There is a presumption that A is true.

The argument is fallacious if one or more of the premises are false, or if it is claimed that the conclusion must be true on the basis of authority, rather than only probably true.​

This is pretty uninteresting: it tells us nothing but that if authorities on a subject affirm something about a subject, that generates a reason to believe X (or, what can be treated as much the same, that counts as evidence that X is probably true); and that inferences of such a sort are not deductively valid. Both those things are obvious: its inherent in the definition of epistemic authority that pronouncements by the authority are more probably true; and obviously there is no deductively valid inference from A said that X to X.

It is uninteresting. I'm not sure why you brought it up. It has nothing to do with the form of your argument, which was, 'I am a lawyer, I know what irrational means, and you, sir, do not.' That's the form of a fallacious argument. It may be true, but it's still of the form. You used your expertise as backing for why you know you're correct.

I think that's enough Wikipedia. The main thing that it tells us is what was already obvious: testimony, including expert opinion, can be a good source of information, but only if the person knows what s/he is talking about. I'm confident that, when it comes to the usage of "irrational", I know what I'm talking about. QED.

You finish by begging the question. lol.