fallacy... hoohaa
Shannon the brilliant posted a link to this site. here is a sample of what i found there:
"False Compromise:
if one does not understand a debate, it must be "fair" to split the difference, and agree on a compromise between the opinions. (But one side is very possibly wrong, and in any case one could simply suspend judgment.) Journalists often invoke this fallacy in the name of "balanced" coverage.
Television reporters like balanced coverage so much that they may give half of their report to a view held by a small minority of the people in question. There are many possible reasons for this, some of them good. However, viewers need to be aware of this tendency. "
i put that in quotes so you know they're not my words.. of course they're not, some things are capitalized.
so yeah. anyway. isn't this great?? of course it is. this perhaps explains what i find so dumb about the news, and most people lately. "i don't know what they were talking about, so i'll say they both made good points" even though that is clearly false. so that should be confrontational enough to have something to say about it.
what else fnord did i want to say.. there were some really really useful things in there. now i should say this: i do not believe that anything is absolute (with the oxymoronic exception of my claim), that is to say i think it's possible for the reality of something to be subject to interpretation and that the interpretation is as good as we can get anyway. so two people can contradict and be right. well, right has connotation.. but that's the point here, right is subjective. correct perhaps means something slightly different.. right, when compared to wrong, is a matter of personal definition. they may be similar to many people, but they are not identical, no more than two people are. i think taht's all i wanted to say fnord.
"False Compromise:
if one does not understand a debate, it must be "fair" to split the difference, and agree on a compromise between the opinions. (But one side is very possibly wrong, and in any case one could simply suspend judgment.) Journalists often invoke this fallacy in the name of "balanced" coverage.
Television reporters like balanced coverage so much that they may give half of their report to a view held by a small minority of the people in question. There are many possible reasons for this, some of them good. However, viewers need to be aware of this tendency. "
i put that in quotes so you know they're not my words.. of course they're not, some things are capitalized.
so yeah. anyway. isn't this great?? of course it is. this perhaps explains what i find so dumb about the news, and most people lately. "i don't know what they were talking about, so i'll say they both made good points" even though that is clearly false. so that should be confrontational enough to have something to say about it.
what else fnord did i want to say.. there were some really really useful things in there. now i should say this: i do not believe that anything is absolute (with the oxymoronic exception of my claim), that is to say i think it's possible for the reality of something to be subject to interpretation and that the interpretation is as good as we can get anyway. so two people can contradict and be right. well, right has connotation.. but that's the point here, right is subjective. correct perhaps means something slightly different.. right, when compared to wrong, is a matter of personal definition. they may be similar to many people, but they are not identical, no more than two people are. i think taht's all i wanted to say fnord.
1 Comments:
AHHH... stop making me so damn uncomfortable! "Right" has connotation. That's a correct statement. But I think what you were hinting at was that for you, even when you're wrong, you still think you're right. :)
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