wakibaki
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Subjectivist thinking is flawed.
Subjectivist arguments always depend on a misrepresentation.
If a scientist is worth his salt he will defeat a subjectivist on a level playing field.
In order to maintain a subjectivist outlook a disorganized personality is required. A inconsistent world view is to be anticipated. This is likely to afford opportunities to discombobulate the opponent.
When the ideas of subjectivism were first mooted, more conventional reviewers were taken by surprise, as were a scientifically-minded section of the public.
Gentlemen engineers and scientists, they never for a moment imagined the depths to which the argument would sink. For this reason they were a bit slow off the mark to comprehensively dismiss the nonsense being talked, before it got a toehold. They used moderate language, for they were accustomed to arguing in a moderate atmosphere. They didn't realize they might as well have talked moderation to Goebbels.
The gloves are off now, however. Every trick of rhetoric, every courtroom legal stunt is to be anticipated to be used in defence of unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable claims. The one good thing about this is that it points up the poverty of good arguments available.
I have some rules that I use for dealing with those fallacious arguments and obstreperous individuals.
I suspect that beneath the superficialities of the individual sophistries these arguments are classifiable. By that I mean that a decision tree could be developed to deal with them. The beauty of this approach is that it can't be employed in reverse, since the scientific approach is purged of fallacy by peer review. There are no patterns of illogic to discover.
Some individuals can be argued to a standstill and still continue to post. It's important to identify these as quickly as possible, because when other people understand what is going on, the oxygen of attention frequently becomes scarce.
Just one of the patterns I have noticed is the 'super objectivist'. You must be familiar with this one. He wants to shake us out of our complacent acceptance of theories which he himself doesn't understand. At some point he will attempt to introduce some 'evidence' which the regular objectivists have ignored. This guy has doomed himself to defeat by his lip-service to scientific test. It's just a question of keeping your eye on exactly what he says, waiting for the self-contradiction, and grinding away until he cracks. You know he's got to crack, because he's a subjectivist in objectivist's clothing.
Anyway before I talk about strategy, I'll give somebody else a go. If anybody else is interested.
Subjectivist arguments always depend on a misrepresentation.
If a scientist is worth his salt he will defeat a subjectivist on a level playing field.
In order to maintain a subjectivist outlook a disorganized personality is required. A inconsistent world view is to be anticipated. This is likely to afford opportunities to discombobulate the opponent.
When the ideas of subjectivism were first mooted, more conventional reviewers were taken by surprise, as were a scientifically-minded section of the public.
Gentlemen engineers and scientists, they never for a moment imagined the depths to which the argument would sink. For this reason they were a bit slow off the mark to comprehensively dismiss the nonsense being talked, before it got a toehold. They used moderate language, for they were accustomed to arguing in a moderate atmosphere. They didn't realize they might as well have talked moderation to Goebbels.
The gloves are off now, however. Every trick of rhetoric, every courtroom legal stunt is to be anticipated to be used in defence of unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable claims. The one good thing about this is that it points up the poverty of good arguments available.
I have some rules that I use for dealing with those fallacious arguments and obstreperous individuals.
I suspect that beneath the superficialities of the individual sophistries these arguments are classifiable. By that I mean that a decision tree could be developed to deal with them. The beauty of this approach is that it can't be employed in reverse, since the scientific approach is purged of fallacy by peer review. There are no patterns of illogic to discover.
Some individuals can be argued to a standstill and still continue to post. It's important to identify these as quickly as possible, because when other people understand what is going on, the oxygen of attention frequently becomes scarce.
Just one of the patterns I have noticed is the 'super objectivist'. You must be familiar with this one. He wants to shake us out of our complacent acceptance of theories which he himself doesn't understand. At some point he will attempt to introduce some 'evidence' which the regular objectivists have ignored. This guy has doomed himself to defeat by his lip-service to scientific test. It's just a question of keeping your eye on exactly what he says, waiting for the self-contradiction, and grinding away until he cracks. You know he's got to crack, because he's a subjectivist in objectivist's clothing.
Anyway before I talk about strategy, I'll give somebody else a go. If anybody else is interested.
