Something I Have Noticed
So this is not a problem limited to my friends, I see it almost everywhere and in every form of media. But I think the people I hang out with are a good microcosm and representative example of it:
Like any good group of university educated, pseudo-intellectuals on the run from real responsibility and our adult lives we like to talk about serious, intellectual issues like politics and philosophy. But I too often see the people around me reducing the arguments to a simple right and wrong dichotomy. But this seems patently ridiculous, in any large, complex issue(or system for that matter) right and wrong or good and bad become erroneous terms. We should only be speaking of better and worse because no course of action will be wholly good or wholly bad in its effects.
An example: discussing how to reduce the economic woes that have befallen the world. Almost everyone I have ever heard, in person or in print or TV, discuss the issue of the current bailout plan in American reduces it to one of two things: the panacea or insta-fascism.
Why? It seems that by reducing our discourse to this sort of false dichotomy limits the intelligence of any conversation on it and dooms us to fail to make any meaningful progress in solving problems.
Anywho, just thought I would rant about a logical fallacy I too commonly see when people argue. For my birthday a few of my students gave me like a journal-esque thing, so I have been jotting notes in it on the metro. I am pondering simply transcribing some of my scrawl to livejournal in place of my usual, "Went here and here and here with friends: got drunk," sort of entry detailing my debaucheries.
Like any good group of university educated, pseudo-intellectuals on the run from real responsibility and our adult lives we like to talk about serious, intellectual issues like politics and philosophy. But I too often see the people around me reducing the arguments to a simple right and wrong dichotomy. But this seems patently ridiculous, in any large, complex issue(or system for that matter) right and wrong or good and bad become erroneous terms. We should only be speaking of better and worse because no course of action will be wholly good or wholly bad in its effects.
An example: discussing how to reduce the economic woes that have befallen the world. Almost everyone I have ever heard, in person or in print or TV, discuss the issue of the current bailout plan in American reduces it to one of two things: the panacea or insta-fascism.
Why? It seems that by reducing our discourse to this sort of false dichotomy limits the intelligence of any conversation on it and dooms us to fail to make any meaningful progress in solving problems.
Anywho, just thought I would rant about a logical fallacy I too commonly see when people argue. For my birthday a few of my students gave me like a journal-esque thing, so I have been jotting notes in it on the metro. I am pondering simply transcribing some of my scrawl to livejournal in place of my usual, "Went here and here and here with friends: got drunk," sort of entry detailing my debaucheries.