June 17, 200620 yr Heh. There may be a few people here that need to read this. http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skep ... ments.html Argument By Gibberish (Bafflement): this is the extreme version of Argument By Prestigious Jargon. An invented vocabulary helps the effect, and some net.kooks use lots of CAPitaLIZation. However, perfectly ordinary words can be used to baffle. For example, "Omniscience is greater than omnipotence, and the difference is two. Omnipotence plus two equals omniscience. META = 2." [From R. Buckminster Fuller's No More Secondhand God.] Gibberish may come from people who can't find meaning in technical jargon, so they think they should copy style instead of meaning. It can also be a "snow job", AKA "baffle them with BS", by someone actually familiar with the jargon. Or it could be Argument By Poetic Language. An example of poetic gibberish: "Each autonomous individual emerges holographically within egoless ontological consciousness as a non-dimensional geometric point within the transcendental thought-wave matrix." lmao.
June 17, 200620 yr If more people actually consulted such lists the world would be a better place. Not to mention the rants forum would be less cluttered with nonsensical, ill-formed arguments (not referring to all posters obviously :)) BTW if you like this sort of stuff you might like this book df
June 17, 200620 yr Looks like one of my courses psychology. In the midst of my exams I really don't feel like reading that for my pleasure, perhaps I'll visit the link in a month or so ;) Bill Hicks[/url]":dhj2kan9]Since the one thing we can say about fundamental matter is, that it is vibrating. And since all vibrations are theoretically sound, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that the universe is music and should be perceived as such.
June 17, 200620 yr Argument Of The Beard: assuming that two ends of a spectrum are the same, since one can travel along the spectrum in very small steps. The name comes from the idea that being clean-shaven must be the same as having a big beard, since in-between beards exist. Similarly, all piles of stones are small, since if you add one stone to a small pile of stones it remains small. However, the existence of pink should not undermine the distinction between white and red. Bad Analogy: claiming that two situations are highly similar, when they aren't. For example, "The solar system reminds me of an atom, with planets orbiting the sun like electrons orbiting the nucleus. We know that electrons can jump from orbit to orbit; so we must look to ancient records for sightings of planets jumping from orbit to orbit also." Or, "Minds, like rivers, can be broad. The broader the river, the shallower it is. Therefore, the broader the mind, the shallower it is." Or, "We have pure food and drug laws; why can't we have laws to keep movie-makers from giving us filth?" Great site you've found! I'm going to refer to this when my boyfriend and I argue. :P
June 17, 200620 yr At first when I was reading through these they never seemed to make sense. Then I realised that the site was a gold mine. It had about 50 ways of below the belt arguing. This is getting book marked :D Grats on finding this "TheRealist" your threads are a priority of mine to look at. They always have something worthwhile in them. Thanks Venomai for this super sig and Kwimbob for the awesome avatar!
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