Sick, Overtime, & Bad Arguments

[lavendermuse]

Sick & Weekend Overtime 
So I got sick back on Wednesday. A sore throat and achey body. Went to bed that night at 8, woke up just long enough to tell work I was comin in late, got up at 9. Started feeling better throughout the day and so committed to going to the photo shoot the next day of our grand prize vehicles for next year's big scratch card

Comments

[liltommygirl]

ooof.. hope you feel better soon!
yah i totally hate the whole getting ass early in this weather...
has it been raining up there?

[dmtri007]

The thing about fallacies is that they've existed for as long as there have been formal logical systems, which I'd put at being around 2000 years old. I often wonder how much we can do educationally to improve people's reasoning when the problem problem is intransigent. I sometimes wonder if the only way to combat these types of fallacious reasoning is with rhetoric--the skilled use of persuasion. The essence of the idea being that human beings are full of systematic, automatic biases that preclude reasoning with the masses, necessitating the use of various elements of persuasion against them

[twixttwoworlds]

my .02 -

the other problem we face is that people take different kinds of knowing as equally good across all situations. epistemology is a tricky beast like that; people tend to also be naive realists - that is to say that they think their version of the world is perfect and well and good. they also tend to not think about different typologies being relevant in different arenas.

this, as you know, is not so. but trying to get people to understand that is a pain.

to try and get people to understand fallacies requires much more than just telling them about it; it requires changing illiteracy, ilnumeracy, and a bevy of other problems with our situation. as beings who are constantly overtaxed with information, the current state of affairs makes sense. we are creatures of cognitive leisure, and as long as the simple answers are available through things like politics, religion, or blind adherence to any sort of simple ideal, we have much to work against as scientists.