Re: Summary of the debian-devel BoF at Debconf9
* Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au> [090819 00:42]:
> Your distinction is lost on me; pointing out that someone has presented
> a logical fallacy *is* saying what is wrong. That we have succinct
> labels with well-established meanings serves to more quickly communicate
> what is wrong, which I would think is pleasing to you.
I fail to see what differentiates usage of well-established, succinct
terms as you imagine from a "He is an asshole, ignore him."
The meaning is very well-established, very succinct, agreed upon by more
people than any of the fallacies. And it shares the property that it is
hard to refute because giving no arguments.
> > But I think it would much help if the replies on the lists itself are
> > about the topic, and not diverting into what are valid or invalid
> > forms to produce arguments.
>
> As Manoj has pointed out (better than I did earlier), to *name* a
> fallacious argument is merely to point out clearly that the discussion
> has *already* gone off-topic, and is best interpreted as a request that
> the off-topic digression be terminated quickly.
And it is you deciding that the other side has gone too far or off-topic
and it is you deciding the discussion no longer has any chance to lead
anywhere. This means that if you were wrong, then you are escalating the
discussion to an pure flame war and you are reguesting all on-topic
discussion to stop my pulling it into a off-topic discussion.
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
Reply to: