Which brings us to Feeeelings, whoa oh oh feeeeeelings. The loser goes away frustrated and the winner goes away cocky in a bad arguement. In a good arguement, you win some points and you lose some. Back to the art of it. All involved must be careful to keep the balance of points won fairly level. So that everyone gets some consession, and no one goes home without a cookie.

Goodnight my friends. It's tomorrow here already. Sweet dreams

Feelings? Fork that. It's to the first blood drawn, which shall be good to the last drop. Also, 'till the last one drops. Cookie? Warm milk? Try sucking the life force out of your opponents. Helps if you first grow fangs and take lessons from Xaveria Hollander. For help on how to grow fangs, ask the lovely Jellybean and her picturesque Queen on Her throne. JB has been successful in engineering the Fang, as Her special purveyor to the throne.

No, I like to keep my arguments on a purely intellectual level. The only non-intellectual frivolity that I allow is humour. Properly done, it's not abrasive, provides some comic relief, people can go to the bathroom or fill up with chips or Coke. No personal attacks, and no fallacious arguments. If someone gets defeated, it should not be a question of subjective opinion. Or if someone wins.

No debating society rules. We don't tire out the opponents, we don't ask the same question in paraphrased forms, we don't all ask the one person the one and the same question, especially if it had been explained. That's not logic; that's bullying.

No alliances; if you have to kill your own brother by showing he made a mistake in facts or logic, so you must do.

I hope to avoid niggling, but claim no power to stop it. I mean by niggling the break-down of topics or sub-topics to small detail, then recostruct them into arguments, and claim that they are the same argument as before the recontruction, while they are demostratively different. It is not a fallacy, but greatly slows down the tempo. It creates extra work for the opponent, and it's not fair emotionally, but I cannot exclude the technique, since it can be used positively. An example of this would be an excessive debate over semantics, or selective interpetation of dictionary entries' definitions, and leaving it to the opponent to fight out the true meaning of the word in question. It can be done in time, but that's exactly it: in time, and in my opinion it's stupid to waste time on something like that. Also brain energy and neurons. Also some good ganja.

What am I saying. I must have lost my mind. Sorry, guys, someone called me a leader here, and it's gone to my head. As you were, troops. Never mind me, Nero. I just go and quietly burn down the city and poison my family.

(jasonpfaff)

Listen, you were the 1st one to point your little "illogical" finger, accusing me (and others) of a "supperior attitude". (as if we have to accomodate you by stepping down to your "underdeveloped" level!!! But when I ask you to prove it, you respond with some nonesense:
-- Yet, you haven't indicated ANY at all, for Pete's sake! * * * *

SO, listen, PAL, IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT, GET THEHELL OUT OF THE KITCHEN!!! (****this site is for ADULTS!****)
************* And don't bother appealing to me again, cuz I'm blocking your sorry A$$ OFF for good...

Back to feelings: Gloating and sulking will make feelings come into play. A balanced cookie system would smoothe ruffled feathers. This is very desirable over hurt feelings of people here.

But what I offer is to deny our feelings. Go purely for the intellect, don't gloat if you win, and take it like a man when you lose. So to speak. My apologies to the feministic ladies.

If we don't mix feelings with pleasure, that is to say, if we don't mix emotions into the logic and try to keep a balance, then alliances will be easier to avoid; no alliances, no need to speak against one's own values or beliefs or intellectual convictions; personal attacks would cease to exist (ideally); people would learn from their mistakes and their strengths in logic; hell, even insights for all would be generated. All this would not so easily be accomplished under the cookie system, which I believe is impossible to maintain anyway without the assistance of an impartial and power-imbued judge. Which we can't find, even if we looked for one.

So instead of allowing for emotions and compensating for their detrimental nature, I suggest we deny our emotions for the duration of the life of an argument and go back to being human beings only in the outside of the argument. Those who have watched boxing matches, will see two angry men, measuring each other up with angry eyes, and pounding the shyt out of each other for some time, and then after the winner is announced, the two men shaking hands or even hugging each other. This is more humane than a referee telling the boxers to increase or decrease the strength of the punch during the fight.

This thread is giving me a headache. Is that a common side effect?

I have to admit, though... it is pretty amusing when ticked-off people who try to seem highly educated can't spell properly.

undeveloped? ha so i guess that makes you developed? if thats the case im glad im undeveloped. (your right my emotions dont dictate my reason_

i cant take the heat? sais the the peron who is blocking my sorry a$$ off for good.

COME ON JANE I WAS BEING SARCASIC! PLEASE DONT MISINTERPRETE MY SARCASM AS MEAN OR RUDE..... ok but seriously, do we understand now.
i do apologize for resorting to 'sarcasm' as you call it honestly, i just wanted to see how you held up to the same treatment iv seen you give others including myself. it gets us nowhere.
so if you want, please take my apology, it wont happen again. (sarcasm is not in character for me)

Depends. Is the pain mostly centred, evenly distributed or on one or the other of the sides? Only in this last case can the headache be called a side-effect of this thread.

When you see two-inch giraffes ride giant mosquitoes in mosques wearing masks, and a mushroom-headed foursome of them play "Strawberry Hills Forever", then my advice for you is to get off the site immedately.

... Unless she is Left-handed -- that would confuse the whole determination!

Now, WUX...no one is going to read all this. Even though i did. But I must say you have revealed the obvious reason why you're never going to get a woman in your corner. Gjeeeeesh!!

Who wants to play fair? No one is kid-king anyone's butt, butt me I'm calling in the big guns.
Evan where are you?


Would anyone like to know why Jason started this whole thing? did it have something to do with jane? Tell us what happened Jason, or Jane or Whoever said something so perfect it couldn't be denied?

Above is the original arguement. I actually think it has some basis in reality. Without inflection, it's easy to misunderstand. I think Jason meant, If you are arguing purely to win an arguement, there is no valid reason to play other than to compete.

furthermore, I am guessing someone has been attacking Jason's posts somewhere else in the community. and he is justified to feel offended.

I like this.

Truth is subjective.

Logic is objective,
that is, either the argument is valid or invalid.
Carp is a fish. Charlie Tuna is a fish.
Charlie Tuna is a carp. Valid??

There is a science to it. You have to be able to distinguish the pattern of premises and conclusions. Then you can decide if the pattern of thinking is valid or invalid.

Not valid. Carp are not the only fish. That would need to be established before one could logically conclude that Charlie Tuna were a carp. If all fish were carp, and Charlie were a fish, then Charlie must necessarily be a carp.

Carp is a fish.

Charlie Tuna is a carp.

Charlie Tuna is a fish.

That has valid form, but is necessarily false because we know that Charlie Tuna is a tuna and not a carp, the secondary premise is false.

A false premise cannot logically lead to a true conclusion.

{mygenerationbaby}

Darling, has it ever occurred to you what a privilage it is to have someone as wise as wux at this site???

Personally, I enjoy his type of self-expression...

Unfortunately, not many women comprehand the point:
Wux doesn't have to attract women with his elloquence -- he's beyond that! If most of women knew any better, they'd be all over him! Unfortunately, he's to wise for that! Thus he never turns his attaction engine on...

So, it's not his loss -- it's OUR's!!!

P.S. And it would be helpful examining your faulty logic before accusing others of mindlessness!!!

ok, all conflict aside, i have a question about the whole 'there are no absolutes' deal. its probably been asked before so mabey someone could help me catch up, but math is an absolute correct? (im not sure exactly, but i would imagine it is)
so if math is absolute then there are absolutes? or adleast one?
im not arguing for or against i just need clarification.
thx

im sorry, iv been busy job searching. i started this thread beacuse i wanted to see how many people would play nice in a thread that ephasized producive thinking and arguing, and denounced bulies...
(for lack of a better word)
and it apears to be working,
I really have no issue with Jane. I took a hipocriical aprouch in responding to her first post in this thread to show her how it feels and how counter productive it is.
i dont like shooting people down, i dont know why some people do.
all in all Janes has some great ideas, and a very interesting perspective, and me bickering with her gets either of us nowhere.
i do apologize for the hipocracy.

Oh gosh, now we have to go "there" again...

It really depends on what you consider "absolute" to mean.

Math is a creation of mankind. It is (intended to be) a "sybolic representation of reality". In other words, it's "a map of the territory" not "the territory" itself. So, since it is "dependent on" man for it's existence, it is not an absolute.

On the other hand, one might consider a "concept" to be absolute, in that it is not dependent on anything material. So in that sense, math could be considered absolute. But by that definition, any concept at all would have to be considered an absolute as well - even a concept as mundane as "chair" would be an absolute, as woold something at the other end of the spectrum, such as the concept of "I".

So pick your definition/meaning and go from there.

Here Here!!
Nice work SkyHook