Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (38089)	5/12/1999 2:10:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 108807

And why not, pray tell?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (38089)	5/12/1999 2:26:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Under the right assumptions, definitions, and rules of logic, 2 + 2 always equals 4. However, you have to set up a sufficiently limited set of assumptions, definitions, and rules of logic. But so what? Under the right assumptions, definitions, and rules of logic ANYTHING can be proved irrefutably to be true. (Which is the ground underlying so many religions, including my own.) My position isn't mysticism. It's simply an assertion that there are other possible sets of assumptions, definitions, and rules of logic which are just as internally consistent as yours and for other physical environments may prove more accurate than yours in describing the environments. When I was debating, my basic rule was "he who succeeds in defining the terms wins the argument." So while my opponents focussed on memorizing facts, rehearsing argument and rebuttal, I added to that a careful analysis of how I could bend the definitions of the terms so I would win. (My debate record proved the success of this approach.) Nothing new, of course. Our President shows his knowledge of this principle daily. He didn't have sex with ...(under his definition of sex). He didn't lie (under his definition of lies). Our bombing in Yugoslavia is a humanitarian mission (under his definition of humanitarian mission, which seems to constitute any mission which deters attention from the Chinese spying scandal and other scandals, which makes it humanitarian because it helps him and he is, he would claim, human). Our bombing isn't a war, our bombing complies with international law, etc. All are false if you accept any commonly accepted definition of terms, but true IF you accept HIS definitions. He who defines the terms wins the argument, and perhaps his greatest skill as a politician is his ability to force his definitions of terms on the debate. [Maybe that's why I resent him so much -- because I understand him so well and because he perverts the language I love with such impugnity.]