How can the Backroom be better for you?

Here's a rough approximation of an old joke:

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Did you hear about the young criminal who was sentenced to Alcatraz Island, home of all the toughest prisoners? First day on the recreation yard, he was walking tough, and trying to not look scared. In the center of the yard, a very elderly prisoner was sitting up on a stool. The old man would say a number "one hundred thirty two!" and everyone would laugh. He would call out another number "Seventyone" and they would all snicker.

The young inmate turned to someone and asked what was happening.

The older inmate replied that they had all been in prison so long that they had heard all the jokes. To save time they numbered the jokes, and knew them all by number.

The young inmate made his way over to the old inmate and tugged on his sleeve. To everyone's surprise the old man asked what the kid wanted.

"May I tell a few jokes?". The old man looked thoughtful and slowly got off the stool.

The kid got up. "Thirtysix!" he called in a high voice. And then he tried another number, and another.

Silence. Boredom. Flatline. No reaction. Finally he looked down to the old inmate and asked what was wrong.

"Some guys just can't tell a joke."
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The point? Let's number the "usual responses" to issues that we see repeating themselves over, and over, and over again.

The board software requires a minimum 3 characters for a post to 'take', so we start with 100, and maybe go by series, thus (just picking subjects off the top of my head):

100-series: General
200-series: Abortion
300-series: Gun Control
400-series: Iraq War

and so on.

So, a news article gets posted where a guy says: "If I wasn't busy here in Iraq defending freedom, I'd go back to teh trailer park in Bohunk, Arkansas, and slam Maybelline up against teh wall and shoot her with my Cheney special-edition shotgun, for aborting li'l Leroy Jr, that we made last new years eve, while we watched them thar Katrina victims get evicted from their free hotels on teh TV."

With the poster comment: "I AGREE!"

Subsequent posts, instead of mind-numbing 7 paragraph treatises on the sacredness of human life, shotguns and hurricanes, anbd then point-by-point rebuttals/counter-rebuttals, could be:

122.

Then:

Oh yeah? 214!

But, 365.

etc.

All that needs work is construcing the 'typical responses', and assigning numbers.

Too much work? OK. A second meager suggestion:

Immediate 3-day ban for any poster with so little self-control that he can't compose a post without the f-bomb, in any form. Starts fights, dilutes all arguments, and makes us all look cheap.

My 2c.

Make it better? Let me run it for 72 hours. I'll clean up this town of lawlessness.

**polishes badge, spits, rides off into the sunset**

:eyebrows:

I love your first suggestion, Kukri.:laugh4:
And Dave, I´m just gonna say 431, 457 and 477.:idea2:

Ooooh, I used the F-bomb I think, Kukri hates me now. What if I use the "drunk" defense?

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

My 2c.

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As usual Kukrikhan's cents are more like hundred dollar bills. Thanks for spending. :bow:

I was wondering: would you rather prefer different topics, or just different ways of discussing them?

KukriKhan, brilliant, just brilliant!

But people in general don't like to have their way of looking at the world altered, they want it reaffirmed. In the UK right wingers read the Telegraph and lefties the Guardian. It it would make sense to swop to see the other point of view, but people entrench, they don't adapt.

Secondly, people are social creatures, and most have friends who they like very dearly who when the see them don't get any startling news or information - they just rehash the past in a slightly different way. Those friends of ours we know their views and we are not going to change them, so most talk is at one level pointless as we could accurately guess the response, but as humans we need the interaction.

~:smoking:

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Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

Ooooh, I used the F-bomb I think, Kukri hates me now. What if I use the "drunk" defense?

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Only if I can, too; I admit I composed that post while under the influence - that would be 'PUI', Posting Under [the] Influence... guilty.

By way of contrition, I take on-board rory's point, which I hadn't considered: the theraputic effect of actually moving one's fingertips across the keyboard, to put together a coherent (to the writer, anyway) expression of what one thinks and feels. Assigning canned response numbers would rob the writer of that effect.

Still, from the readers' perspective - seeing the usual suspects typing their usual responses to the usual subjects - I think I'll try to put together a top 20 list of usual responses, just for the readers' amusement. Kind of like naming chess moves 'The Italian Gambit', 'The Sicilian Defense', etc.

Plus... then I can avoid my weekend 'clean-the-garage' chores. :laugh4:

Kukri,

Did you really move to Calexico?

For those of you not well-versed in Southern California geography, Calexico and Mexicali are essentially one (small) city that staddles the US/Mexico border. Both names were formed by creatively combining "Mexico" with "California".

We're talking Bordertown with a capital B, not to mention italics.

Another thing that would improve the Back Room is less posts about side subjects unrelated to the topic, like personal messages that could be PMed.





~D

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Originally Posted by Tachikaze

We're talking Bordertown with a capital B, not to mention italics.

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And aren't we talking Orson Welles too?

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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix

The problem with that fallacy list is that it doesn't tell you what is correct logic, which means it's useless. For example one of the examples of "strawman" says this is a fallacy:

- x wants to abolish the submarine program. I don't understand how he wants to leave us that defenseless.

It's not entirely correct to just call that a fallacy. It's assuming implicitly that the submarines are useful for defense, but it's not explicitly stated. The conclusion can still be correct, but it requires one more premise to be stated explicitly for the deduction to be complete, namely "our army without the submarine program is much weaker than with the submarine program". Often such details have to be understood and not explicitly stated, because if you have to mention every implicit premise you won't be doing anything else. That can't be done in written form, but it's however useful when reasoning to think of which things are assumed and not mentioned explicitly. Is the abolishment really abolishment, or is the money going to some other military program, etc.

So while the conclusion of that argument might be correct, someone who has read the fallacy list would immediately say it's incorrect, while it doesn't have to be in reality. That's why I'd recommend mathematical logic and discrete mathematics which gives good examples of correct logic too, as a guide to logic.

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I see your point. But surely it would be easy to see obvious fallacies? 'ur onle sain that cuz ur teh commie', and statements like 'Everything should be free. What a world that would be' on the Healthcare subject aren't that difficult to identify as useless fallacies that add nothing to the subject.

Likewise, I see alot of 'Redherrings' on this forum, they're not that difficult to spot either.


1:'Chavez did A!'

2: 'Oh yeah? Bush did B!'

1: 'But Clinton did C!'

:wall:

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

...and makes us all look cheap.

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Facetious?

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Originally Posted by GoreBag

Facetious?

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Absolutely.

We may be easy, but never cheap. :)

@Tachi: Nope. Still up here in hayseed-land. Commuted 3 weeks down there on a temp work assignment (223 miles a day, whew!). I seem destined to live/work in border areas. :)

@AdrianII: nice catch! Uncle Chuck doing his best as the Mexicano drug detective - and [drool] Marlene Dietrich, doing... well, anything. Entertainment doesn't get much better than that.

So... on topic; ummm, errr, OK.

Podcasts.

Let's have the rhetorical opponents record their arguments and put them here for download, so that those of us afk during the day can still keep up.

this was sort of the reason i started the backroom gif thread - people could just hotlink the images to the appropriate thread for a reply, and it would save time over actually typing out the usual nonsense.

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

Let's have the rhetorical opponents record their arguments and put them here for download, so that those of us afk during the day can still keep up.

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Originally Posted by Mongoose

I see your point. But surely it would be easy to see obvious fallacies? 'ur onle sain that cuz ur teh commie', and statements like 'Everything should be free. What a world that would be' on the Healthcare subject aren't that difficult to identify as useless fallacies that add nothing to the subject.

Likewise, I see alot of 'Redherrings' on this forum, they're not that difficult to spot either.


1:'Chavez did A!'

2: 'Oh yeah? Bush did B!'

1: 'But Clinton did C!'

:wall:

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Yes, all I'm saying is that the fallacy list is a two-edged sword. So far, I've seen many examples of abusing (by ignorance or deliberately) the fallacy list in a way such that a fallacy mentioned in the fallacy list was committed by the one using the fallacy list:

1. Appeal to authority fallacy - you misinterpret the fallacy list and say that because your misinterpreted version of the fallacy list says the other side committed a fallacy, the thesis of the other side is false
2. Burden of Proof fallacy - you claim that someones reasoning is wrong, therefore his/her conclusion is false. In reality, an incorrect reasoning can yield a conclusion which is true. All we know about an incorrect deduction is that it doesn't mean the conclusion MUST be true. A correct deduction is one which makes it a necessity that the conclusion is correct. But an incorrect deduction, which show several of the fallacies, can therefore in fact be true, even though we can't formulate the correct deduction at that time. In short: something that can't be proven to be true isn't false, it's just not 100% guaranteed to be true.
3. Ad Hominem Tu Quoque fallacy - because someone (correctly or incorrectly) showed that someone committed a fallacy on the fallacy list, all they say after that is claimed to be incorrect.
4. Red Herring - when the actual subject is discussed references (correct or incorrect) to the fallacy list are made to change subject
5. Strawman - interpret the statement the other one made incorrectly, thus being able to see a fallacy in it. In fact the original statement might have been correct.

If I would generalize, the most common fallacy I see is lack of acceptance of the existence of uncertainty, the fact that we usually don't know everything, and that it's very difficult (perhaps/probably impossible) to know everything. Very few things can be said for sure, and it's important to see the difference between "is", "might be", "it's therefore likely that" and "it doesn't necessarily have to be", "it isn't" and so on. A statement is either true or false in the reality we are trying to describe, but usually we can't know which truth values our statements have. Because all logic is based on making assumptions about things we can't prove. If those assumptions are correct, our conclusions will be correct. They may be correct otherwise, but don't have to be. That's why synthesis is the best friend of logic. Whenever a statement is made, it's important to see what consequences that statement would get in all possible applied situations you could think of. If you can find a single situation where the actual conclusion A is contradicted, you know that the either the premises of A, or the actual deductions that led to A, are incorrect, known as a contrapositive proof.

If you show that the deduction is incorrect, you can help the other side to correct it. If you can show that the deduction is incorrect, you know that one or more of your premises aren't necessarily true (note: that doesn't mean they're false, only that you can't prove they're true by the deduction you presented, but possibly by another deduction. You can also always find a set of premises which proves any point you might want proven, so it's important that the asumptions/premises aren't too unrealistical). If all sides in a discussion use correct logic, they WILL obtain the same conclusions unless their premises differ. That's why in a debate with correct logic, the debate will end up discussing the correctness of the premises on a very low-level detailed level. Usually this, quite interestingly, shows that most opinions/theories only differ on the detail level in a theoretical form of reasoning. This however still allows for magnifications of the differences in opinions/theories in practical applied situations.

Another important thing is that most discussions, as I mentioned above, omit some of the premises to make it's simpler. Usually however such arguments aren't as convincing. If a situation occurs when one of the parts is unclear and the other asks for a clarification, if your logic is correct you should be able to present those implicitly made assumptions (although in some cases it might take several days to remember them if you made the deduction chain a long time ago).

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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix

So far, I've seen many examples of abusing (by ignorance or deliberately) the fallacy list in a way such that a fallacy mentioned in the fallacy list was committed by the one using the fallacy list.

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:laugh4: What a bunch of jerks we are. Thanks for your instructive lecture. I think like Kukrikhan I will scrap the Red Herrings for breakfast, but I agree with some other posters that the word 'Strawman' should be punishable by a three-day ban.

@Kukrikhan, you're hilarious man. Good to see you in such an excellent mood. Oh, and what I remember best from that movie (it has been some time ago) are these 'biblical' thorny bushes being blown through the streets at night (don't know what they are called in English, in Dutch we literally call them 'blackberry-bushes').

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

:laugh4: What a bunch of jerks we are. Thanks for your instructive lecture. I think like Kukrikhan I will scrap the Red Herrings for breakfast, but I agree with some other posters that the word 'Strawman' should be punishable by a three-day ban.

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Great idea, somezimes I wish to add to that list "hypocrisy", I don´t know why, but I´ve come to hate that word by reading the backroom.:furious3:

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Originally Posted by Husar

Great idea, somezimes I wish to add to that list "hypocrisy", I don´t know why, but I´ve come to hate that word by reading the backroom.:furious3:

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Are you calling me a strawman? That's a phallusie, you hippercrate! ~:)

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

And aren't we talking Orson Welles too?

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Very good. An A in film studies class for you!!!:bow:

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Originally Posted by Tachikaze

Very good. An A in film studies class for you!!!:bow:

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You gotta love Welles. Oh, and the bushes are called tumble-weeds in English-- courtesy of Lord Kukrikhan, who PM'ed me about it.
:bow:

I think alot of people need to realize that if they disagree with me they are a communist, a nazi, and a terrorist,

A Communaziterrorist.

~D

36 24 36

Garners a lot of agreement about the sancity of pi.

opps nothing to contribute -

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

Garners a lot of agreement about the sancity of pi.

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I 46 that. :bow:

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

36 24 36

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While I agree with you on the 24, I think 36 is stretching things a bit. :book:

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

While I agree with you on the 24, I think 36 is stretching things a bit. :book:

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Mind your 109's and 11's, Fat One. But you are right that this thread makes the backroom a little better!

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

Are you calling me a strawman? That's a phallusie, you hippercrate! ~:)

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~:pissed:

I tried looking for an 'exploding head' emoticon, but there's naught to be found.

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Originally Posted by GoreBag

~:pissed:

I tried looking for an 'exploding head' emoticon, but there's naught to be found.

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I wouldn't get all worked up over a 78. https://img70.imageshack.us/img70/15...owsleep3cr.gif

I like your style, Gorebag. Go easy on the Christians on the forum though, they are an inflammable lot...

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

I wouldn't get all worked up over a 78. https://img70.imageshack.us/img70/15...owsleep3cr.gif

I like your style, Gorebag. Go easy on the Christians on the forum though, they are an inflammable lot...

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Hey, GoreBag is ma mate, and I´m a Christian!
I don´t care that much what he believes, he´s a nice guy, and I hope you (can be), too.:2thumbsup:
Besides that, don´t forget the 32.

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Originally Posted by Husar

Besides that, don´t forget the 32.

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Ouch. I was about to burn some flags. Thanks for the heads-up.
71-30 :bow:

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

Ouch. I was about to burn some flags. Thanks for the heads-up.
71-30 :bow:

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How true, and don´t forget to check your 6.(I just couldn´t resist)

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Originally Posted by Husar

How true, and don´t forget to check your 6.(I just couldn´t resist)

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95! :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

95! :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

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Hehe, reminds me of the 51!:laugh4: