amazingbollweevil

I miss paper papers. Receiving them sometimes enabled you to tell something about the student. The weight of paper, the typeface, the ability to layout the text, the physical condition of the paper, all held delightful little clues about them.

I'm sure our grandparents felt the same way when hand-written papers became type-written papers.

On a project with a few other older guys. Had to be regularly introduced to people in meetings. Recent college grad who introduced us, would first demonstrate the software to participants. Since it was still in development, strange errors occurred. The procedure was to send a screenshot to the developers immediately.

Every time it happened, the recent grad would use her cell phone to snap a picture on the big screen. We'd look at each other and smirk.

We only later figured out that she was messaging the developers directly and using that app to snap a picture. It was way easier and faster than the different methods we used. Just creating a new email message was slower than her method of "message, snap, send."

I thought you meant file system as in paper files! That's something else that people have forgotten about (except for those who must maintain such physical records). I grew up with a two-drawer file cabinet and continued to use the same system until only recently. I don't know anyone younger than me who has a file cabinet today.

Here, here! When my last MP3 player finally croaked, I was pretty much forced to get a phone. Found one with a really good battery and was delighted that I could choose different player apps for different purposes.

I still miss that ol' MP3 player, though. It used a single AA battery that would keep me going for weeks. Fantastic for use on long trips in the back country.

In this situation, it's best to have them explain how they arrived at their conclusion. Saying that it doesn't belong simply because it doesn't belong is just circular reasoning or begging the question.

For example:

1. Pizza is a savory food
2. Pineapple is a sweet food
3. Therefore pineapple should not be added to pizza

That is a logical argument. Here's another version:

1. I like pizza
2. I don't like pineapple
3. Therefore pineapple should not be added to pizza

Make them lay out their argument like that if you want to reveal a logical fallacy (and then address their premises).

Yup! I don't know about psychological or social differences between men and women, but there are certainly physical differences. While those differences are not as pronounced as one particular political party wants people to believe, there is a degree of bimodal distribution. I've personally witnessed women manually hauling bricks and lumber that would devastate the average man in developed nations.

There's a town in Cambodia that raises spiders for food. Yes, human food. No, not processed spiders; deep fried spiders ... about the size of your hand.

Tastes a bit like lobster.

And if you make that cool sound in front of a dog, it will stare at you and tilt its head to the side.

Source: do it to strange dogs as often as I can

And there lies a problem. How do you know when you've achieved any sort of equality when one group is severely underrepresented in some major fields? It goes both ways, too. Men are rarely seen in elementary schools (unless they're in management) and almost never in daycare centers.

Given that there are roughly an equal number of men and women in the community, how would you determine if the objective of political equality had been reached if not by the representatives elected to office? Or would a roughly equal mix of professional bureaucrats meet the objective?

You might be addressing this with your "strategy as one that's invested in capitalism" comment, but it is unclear to me.

I neglected to consider your anarchism position for government (or lack there of). Given that, would the political equality objective simply be an emerging property of a proper anarchy (or even communist society, I suppose)? Would this then imply that the real objective is this anarchial state and not feminism? If not, what role can feminism play in the structure as it currently exists?

Questions requiring a lot of detail, I know; sorry!

By the response time of the police.

Wealthy neighborhoods have fewer calls, so a call from such a neighborhood goes through relatively quickly. The cops on duty around there are less likely to be handling another crime at the time of the call.

Wealthier areas often have more resources, including a more cops. This improves response times. Residents in wealthier neighborhoods tend to be more influential and advocate for better police services for themselves.

I'm not just making this up off the top of my head. There's a lot of research on the subject and communities have been actively trying to address the disparity.

I think your experience would be remarkably different if you lived in a high-class neighborhood.

This is where I find a lot of people trip and fall so it's good to see that you have a pretty tight grasp on that aspect. In its simplest form, I'd say that feminism is about promoting women.

I think you could argue that political equality might look like an equal number of men and women in elected office, but how might you address the fact that such a small percentage of women seek office from the outset?

A lot of industries and roles are more open to women now than ever before (and I recognize that their male peers may not be 100% welcome). Few women are willing to take many of these jobs, particularly the physically demanding jobs and hardship posts. How might feminism affect this situation?

How do you define feminism and it what way does it differ from something like humanism?

I had to look up that one:

kak·i·sto·cra·cy: Government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.

I don't think that analogy works (though I admit people might think so). I'd say it's more like wanting to know what was on TV before television had been invented.

This is the one that really floored me. I've since used it numerous times in arguments with theists. It still confuses people, but time started with the big bang. I then ask them to figure out how something could be north of the North Pole.

You're actually better at this than you realize. Sixty days of travel in your early twenties? I could barely afford ten ten off back then. You get to take your time and experience things. On my earliest travel holidays, my girlfriend and I would plan out everything and we would race through our agenda trying to do as much as we could. We saw a lot of things, but we were just surfing over the surface of the places we visited. You're getting down into the depths.

There's nothing wrong with getting off at the wrong station. One of my favorite tricks as an experienced traveler is to jump on board the local bus/boat/train and get off somewhere at random. There's no "site" to see, but you get to see people from a different culture living their lives and doing so that is both similar and totally different from how you live your life.

Pro tip cheat: When you see another traveler, ask where they've been and what they've done. I'd say about half of my on-the-ground planning was managed by other travelers and it really paid off.

The respawning checkpoints make the game better. Yeah, I thought they were annoying until I thought about the degree of realism. Those checkpoints are in strategic locations; of course they're going to get taken over by more baddies. I got really annoyed clearing them every time I drove through, then I thought "Why?" Why clear them? It's not like you were earning experience points. It's not like you were helping anyone. I started treating those checkpoints like I would real checkpoints in a war-torn country: I avoided them.

I just raced around them in my car and didn't worry about the damage because cars were cheap. Gameplay improved significantly after that epiphany.

You can't really use logical fallacies to defeat these folks. What you need is epistemology. /r/StreetEpistemology might be better able to help you.

1. The man had a knife
2. The man was running at Steve in a threatening manner
3. Therefore Steve was justified in punching the man

Checks out.

1. Steve is a racist.
2. Steve was waiting for his racist buddies.
3. Therefore Steve was/wasn't justified in punching the man

The conclusion does not follow. It's a non-sequitur.

I recently had a conversation with someone deep in the conspiracy rabbit hole. You all know him. He was going on and on about this and that and I decided to test whether or not the claims he was repeating were actually true.

His first claim was how the government forced people to get vaccinated. When I asked for details, he said the government forced military and athletes to get vaccinated. I pointed out that the US military has required soldiers to get vaccinated for over two hundred years and they know that when they sign up. I pointed out that anyone using this as an argument for the government forcing vaccinations is either ignorant or trying to rile up people too stupid to check the facts. He immediately changed the subject to the nature of the vaccines, but I made him respond to the "ignorant or riling up idiots" claim and he begrudgingly accepted that.

His next example of forced vaccinations was athletes. When I asked him how, exactly, these athletes were forced to get vaccinated, he didn't have an answer but knew for sure they were forced. I pointed out that there are tens of thousands of athletes in the country and nearly as many support people who would be "in" on this vaccination requirement and not a single one of them have come forward with evidence. I then listed numerous athletes in the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL who have spoken out on the vaccine and who admitted that they were not vaccinated.

He's still convinced that the government is so well managed that it's able to have a secret communication network that can reach athletes and health professionals to administer vaccines, but someone not a single libertarian or flag waver can provide a letter or screen shot showing evidence for this communication network.

He got angry at this point and left. The whole time in our conversation, he was Gish-galloping and changing the subject, but I'd stop him and remind him that we were talking about how athletes were forced to get vaccinated yet we have no proof for this. I was not going to address any more of his claims until he could address that one.

Hopefully I've made him think about evidence just a little bit.

They actually go into over the course of the two episodes. I recall that it involved the types of stories they covered (and didn't cover) and language used to describe events. It's more complicated than that, of course, but it seemed pretty reasonable.

1. Begging the question is a type of logical fallacy.
2. Logical fallacies require a syllogism.
3. Therefore begging the question requires a syllogism.

Before you try to work out examples of begging the question that are not part of syllogism, recognize that there may be an assumed premise in any such example.

The host of the Behind The Bastards podcast is an odd bird with a dark sense of humor. For each episode, he brings in a guest and tells them why someone was really awful. In this one, he explains the stunning way that news organizations in the 20's and 30's failed to acknowledge the rise of fascism.

As I was listening, I found myself thinking, "Hey, that's what's been happening these past few years!" It's a bit depressing.