Logic

[fyshmom]

I am feeling tired today in general, and then just had a rush of a sort of slumping, tired, exhausted, bored, head-shaking, go on to do better things-ed-ness tonight. I am tired of faulty logic. It is exhausting me, probably because I am more exposed to it now than at any time in the past twenty years. I am open to different perspectives, I genuinely am, but I am feeling frustrated and bored with the ways in which these perspectives are often presented. I am tired of personal attacks (or impersonal, as they address anyone who believes X, Y, or Z as an idiot), either/or thinking (either you agree with me or you're a communist), or these simplistic, not very well-reasoned "there is only ONE way to fix this!" solutions to problems it is clear that the speaker could not begin to address, even if he or she rubbed both of his or her brain cells together really, really fast.

I apologize - I don't usually fall into this sort of ranting, but dang -- this is not secret knowledge. If you're going to make a point, make it in a logical, reasonable, well-thought out manner. Heck, that will HELP your "side" in the long-run. These emotional appeals may "work" but only for so long and only with a particular segment of the population. And I'm not saying that emotional appeals don't have their place, but in order to make a point, they must also be backed by actual reasoning and logic THAT IS COHESIVE.

Monkeys. What are you going to do?

PS - Here are two basic sites that I enjoyed:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/