Comments on: Critical thinking is—critical https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/ A blog about political change, among other things Fri, 17 Aug 2007 04:31:24 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 By: OBloodyHell https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12674 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12674 oops — follow the above with this —

I’ll tackle that one — the difference between a troll and a blogger is simple — the troll isn’t interested in the answers to the questions and never in a dialogue of response-counter-response.

Additionally, the troll utilizes the “reset switch” so common to The Left on many issues (I’ll grant, I’ve found The Right to be similarly Stuck On Stupid where anti-abortion is concerned): If you DO get them into a dialogue, you can start from some agreed-upon set of questions, answer them, get a positive “yeah, that follows” response, take it another step, get a similar response, etc., until you demonstrate a major fallacy of their position, which they cannot and do not deny.

Then, two days later they’ll be back at the original position which they were at as though the discussion never happened.

They’ve hit the “Reset Switch”:

“Danger Will Robinson! Foreign, sensible ideas present! Ideas clash with established rule system! Purging initiated… Purging… Purging…. Ideas Purged. All is Right and Proper Once Again.”

]]> By: OBloodyHell https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12675 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12675 > I happen to think that the “troll defense” is one of those last-ditch admissions of near-defeat. One can’t answer the questions so the inquisitor becomes a “troll” and can be ignored.

It seems to me that a good question deserve an answer even if the person asking is asking for annoying reasons….to grant you that much for the sake of discussion. And obviously if it is not a good question well then you can simply ignore their stupidity.)

]]> By: Ymarsakar https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12676 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12676 Now if trolls phrased their argumentation methodology like step here, there wouldn’t nearly be as much of a problem.

]]> By: step314 https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12677 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12677 I don’t like the expression “troll”. People who cross the bridge into forums, newsgroups, etc., with a great deal of commotion are not behaving like trolls, they are more behaving like Billy Goat Gruffs. Usually, these gruffy people are quacks, cranks, etc., but occasionally they are just people with extraordinary things to say who like to get to the point. An advantage of blogs over internet forums and newsgroups when it comes to discussion is that there is an editor on top whose views are fairly obvious. Without that, you get something akin to a toilet stall for grafiti. And in newsgroups especially (where the expression was used long before blogs were invented), where it is a total free-for-all, there are posters who hang out just like the troll in the fairytale and curse, snarl, stomp, etc., every time someone tries to cross the bridge into the newsgroup brusquely without bowing down to the regular posters. They don’t solve the crank problem, because their posts about the cranks can be as voluminous and as little interesting as the posts of the cranks. And they do even more harm by scaring people away who have interesting things to say. But it’s the trolls under the bridge who generally use the term troll, applying it to people who more resemble the third Billy Goat Gruff. Somehow criticizing people calling one a troll (in the modern sense) by pointing out that they are the ones being troll-like (in the fairy tale sense) sounds sort of like an insane, childish thing to do, but there you go, it’s really actually the exact way they are behaving, and maybe if one analyzed the psychology or history involved, one would discover why troll-like people decided to call their antagonists trolls. My impression is I don’t feel anyone in this thread is being much of a troll in any sense of the word.

]]> By: Ymarsakar https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12678 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12678 Of the science, therefore, which expounds the operations of the human understanding in the pursuit of truth, one essential part is the inquiry: What are the facts which are the objects of intuition or consciousness, and what are these which we merely infer? But this inquiry has never been considered a portion of logic. Its place is in another and a perfectly distinct department of science, to which the name metaphysics more particularly belongs: that portion of mental philosophy which attempts to determine what part of the furniture of the mind belongs to it originally, and what part is constructed out of materials furnished to it from without. To this science appertain the great and much debated questions of the existence of matter; the existence of spirit, and of a distinction between it and matter; the reality of time and space, as things without the mind, and distinguishable from the objects which are said to exist in them. For in the present state of the discussion on these topics, it is almost universally allowed that the existence of matter or of spirit, of space or of time, is in its nature unsusceptible of being proved; and that if anything is known of them, it must be by immediate intuition. To the same science belong the inquiries into the nature of Conception, Perception, Memory, and Belief; all of which are operations of the understanding in the pursuit of truth; but with which, as phenomena of the mind, or with the possibility which may or may not exist of analysing any of them into simpler phenomena, the logician as such has no concern. To this science must also be referred the following, and all analogous questions: To what extent our intellectual faculties and our emotions are innate—to what extent the result of association: Whether God, and duty, are realities, the existence of which is manifest to us a priori by the constitution of our rational faculty; or whether our ideas of them are acquired notions, the origin of which we are able to trace and explain; and the reality of the objects themselves a question not of consciousness or intuition, but of evidence and reasoning.

http://www.la.utexas.edu/research/poltheory/mill/sol/sol.int.html#intp03

]]> By: a guy in pajamas https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12679 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12679 As Louis L’Amour once wrote, American schools don’t teach kids how to think, they teach them how to have opinions.

Also, science uses every kind of logic, as well as intuition, accident, and other means. Robots don’t do science, humans do.

]]> By: Ymarsakar https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12680 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12680 Troutsky should be aware, and so should everyone else, that logic is only 1/2 science. Science only uses inductive logic, it never uses deductive logic. Politics and philosophy make use of 100% of the field of logic.

Troutsky is not playing with a full deck if he thinks his scientific logic applies in any way to politics. And neither would steve, for example, if he did the same thing.

]]> By: Joan https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12681 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12681 Sally, I think if we look hard enough at Steve’s comment, we can find examples of almost every rhetorical ploy and fallacy that Dr. Sanity catalogued.

I respect that Steve took the time to answer my challenge to his first comment in this thread, but I didn’t respond earlier because the only reply I could muster was “Whatever, dude.” I guess he likes playing word games, but I’ll still stand by my original opinion that he is missing the point.

]]> By: troutsky https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12682 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12682 I see the world through a set of lenses, filters that have been developed by everything I have been taught by others or found on my own through research. When it comes to science, I can look at data produced by verifiable experiment. When it comes to politics or historical interpretation, Steve is correct, we are back to hypotheticals and beliefs.

]]> By: Ymarsakar https://thenewneo.com/2006/04/15/critical-thinking-is-critical/#comment-12683 Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:48:00 +0000 http://neoneocon.com/2006/04/critical-thinking-is-critical.html#comment-12683 I tend to think “troll”, since it was never defined in denotative nor connotative nor contextual means, meant that someone was not worth debating or arguing with.

Steve is worth arguing with, because he is representative of the Old Guard in the Republican Party, and thus he should not have the sabotage intentions of the Democrats either domestically or foreign wise concerning American policy.

steve is more honest than most Democrats. He is also more polite, he doesn’t usually get angry in his words, and he keeps his composure. A military discipline that most Democrats would benefit from (aqua), to the extent that I’d benefit from their lack of screaming, that is.

But, you can’t expect everyone in your party to agree with you. Even if you don’t belong in that party, except by choice.

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