Quote:
Originally Posted by HERn
Thanks Mike, that was great! Are you a lawyer?
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Not a lawyer. Possibly worse, an accountant, specifically a tax accountant specializing in the U.S. tax issues of international operations.
Between reading tax laws and studying some logic and a little philosophy, I have come to see the systemic flaws in arguments, not just dealing with what I know to be true or false. I don't necessarily know the answer to some of the things that Lee claims is this way or that way. He could ultimately be right on some of them (though I have my suspicions concerning the controversial ones). But seeing the leaps in logic, the over-simplifying, the tricks of rhetoric to make the hearer/reader follow when there is nothing actually presented that connects to follow, etc., makes me very suspicious.
I start from a position that if it is really true, you don't need to trick people into following you. If your logic is sound, it will be seen as sound. But if your arguments are just rhetorical and argumentative tricks to make people agree without thinking, I assume that there must be something wrong with the "facts." It must not be "simply" this or "obviously" that. Instead it screams to me that it must not be so or there would be no need to hide what is really there.
That does not mean that there is nothing true that is being argued for in a wrong way. But when there is so much of it — and it includes too much "A really means B" and other things that take what I can see and makes me think it is really something else — I become very skeptical.
I followed a podcast from the Princeton Law Review for several years that tried to find problems with everyday, water-cooler arguments. It took on all sides of news clippings and other things that were being argued in the public square and picked apart the arguments. I continue to follow "Skeptoid." The guy is an atheist, but he seldom gets into religion and mostly covers myths, legends, conspiracy theories, SCAMs (that's supplementary, complimentary and alternative medicines, as Mark Crislip from "Quackcast" calls them).
And remember, the plural of anecdote is not data. (another Crislip saying)
(Taking a solution of water plus so little of something else that it is 99% sure that an entire liter of it would not have even one molecule is not a sound medical practice. You might actually get better in a few days. But you probably would have anyway.)
And I have probably offended almost everyone somewhere in there. That seems to be at least one of my callings in life.