John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
You've been saying that for 5 years, with no logic or evidence that supports you. You just keep repeating it and you have convinced nobody here or anywhere else.
Proof of Immortality, VI
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You've been saying that for 5 years, with no logic or evidence that supports you. You just keep repeating it and you have convinced nobody here or anywhere else.
Belz...
Fiend God
It must be stated, though, that every combination of cards is equally as unlikely, since there are only one of each in the deck.
Your age is showing.
Belz...
Fiend God
Past? The sharp shooter issue KILLS your entire argument. Your claim and everything in it and about it fails completely because of it. You won't get past it; you have to explain why it's not a sharp shooter fallacy, or change your theory entirely.
RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
You do that by drawing the circle on the side of the barn before you shoot.
When exactly are you drawing your circle?
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
It's equally unlikely you'll be dealt a Plebeian Sampler:
- 5 of hearts
- 8 of spades
- jack of spades
- 3 of clubs
- 9 of diamonds
The gist of poker is that you don't get to identify that as a winning hand after the deal. Where Jabba constantly thinks he's avoided the Texas sharpshooter fallacy is in saying he's not talking about you or me or him, but all seven billion people all living. Well, that's just like the other three people at the table each declaring that whatever they were dealt is also a winning hand. The fallacy is in the timing of the assignment of significance to the sample, not the size of the sample.
Oooh, a Denebian Full House!
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
What is the probability that someone who can't even keep up with the arguments on an internet forum could have come up with an insight, let alone a mathematical proof, that has eluded humanity's finest minds for centuries?
Show your working.
Jabba listen to me carefully. It's not that we "don't appreciate" it, it's that we don't believe it. This befuddled old man routine is an obvious, transparant stalling attempt.
Jabba you data dump entire flowcharts of how you want the argument to go. Stop pretending we believe you "just can't keep up."
The only problem you have is not being able to admit you are wrong.
I know to a metaphysical certainty that we could wait until the heat death of the universe an you will not have answered anyone's question.
Jabba again we're no stupid. We know what you are doing. It wouldn't take you anymore time to answer the questions than it would to provide another long, elaborate excuse as to why you aren't answering them yet.
I hypothesize that you owe me a hundred thousand dollars in golden doubloons. I claim that the proof of this is that my cat will never sprout wings and fly into space. Therefore the fact that my cat hasn't sprouted wings and flown into space is evidence that you do in fact owe me a hundred thousand dollars in gold doubloons.
You can't just call something a hypothesis Jabba. That word means something.
Oh Jesus goddamn Christ. "If you get past the part that proves I am wrong, as far as I can tell I am probably right"
And we could have steak and eggs if we had some steak. And some eggs.
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
The first problem is, the hypothesis does not claim that you should never occur.
Translation: If you completely ignore the fact that I based my argument on a fatal fallacy, you must agree that it is correct! Now mind you, that doesn't mean H is actually true*, just that you can't prove it false through fallacies. You actually have to be more intellectually rigorous to do what you are claiming to have done.
* - The preponderance of evidence does that quite nicely, at the moment.
:JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
The more delicate contours of that problem might be that Jabba may think we need his admission of error in order for us to be confident in our judgment. This, like many fringe tactics, is a distortion of a common human behavior. When confronted with our own errors, before admitting them we want not only to see the proof of error, but to reason for ourselves how it happened. If we can't do that -- specifically if we don't have the wherewithal to see how we erred -- we hold out hope to still be right. We figure that if it's hard for us to see how we err, it must be equally hard for others to see it and therefore we might not actually be wrong. Projecting our confusion onto others is one of several flavors of the same general class of defense mechanism.
Here, of course, there is no confusion. Jabba's argument is obviously wrong, according to a number of very simple and well-known kinds of error. We don't need his concession in order to be sure his proof doesn't work. Again, most people like to think that if they're wrong, they can only be wrong in subtle, questionable ways -- not very simple ones.
This is what I allude to above. If the event in question happens (or fails to happen) against the prediction of some line of reasoning, then it's not a foregone conclusion that the line of reasoning is sound and that the hypothesis it stems from must be false because of the event. We just as often use these inferential methods to test those consequential lines of reasoning as the hypotheses. Most of the formulations of any P(X|H) sound like, "If H were true then we should [not] expect to see X." If we observe X contrary to this, we don't get to say immediately that H must fail -- especially if we H with certainty. The connection purported between X and H is still on the table. In Jabba's argument, nothing is certain -- it's all guesswork. Thus he has no basis for knowing what part of the model is responsible for the errant observation.
This is how fringe theorists commonly use pseudo-mathematical notation to hide their assumptions and insist that others must gloss over them. Jabba's formulation of P(E|H) in his model is just such gibberish. It is, in its own way, just as absurd as your example above. Jabba just couches it in vague philosophical-sounding terms, the discussion of which he hopes we will wallow in endlessly. In easy-to-see fact, the contrary event only confirms what we know about his fantasy P(E|H) formulation. There's nothing wrong with H, but there is certainly something wrong with how Jabba says H should relate to E.
Belz...
Fiend God
And, usually, entirely unconsciously.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Jabba, do you realise that you have gone so far as to claim that on the condition that everyone ignores why you are wrong you are by default right?
Do you not see anything wrong with that?
Do you not see anything wrong with that?
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Everything is "potential" evidence. My fingerprints are potential evidence that I broke into a Starbucks and stole one of those terrible CDs. Of course, first I'd have to actually break into a Starbucks and steal one of those terrible CDs. I won't, but my fingerprints still have the "potential" to be evidence.
The entire concept is just stupid.
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
Hmmm. Jabba may believe that a skeptic's obstinacy is the the only thing preventing his emotional biases from prevailing against critical thinking. It's a simplistic deduction, but it fits with everything he's posted the last 5 years.
Jabba, what is your rejoinder to this?
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Belz...
Fiend God
He'll be back.
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
How could I forget? He's also busy and misunderstood.
At the point the most charitable interpretation of this whole mess is that Jabba is an extreme case of a person missing the factual correctness forest for the argumentative tries.
I've openly admitted that recently the whole internet style of debates in general has started to wear on me, with every discussion on the internet being at the mercy of some ongoing meta-debate about how to debate, a subtext which becomes the text in too many discussions.
In certain extreme cases it really does reach a tipping point where the "debate" becomes this stylized dance, a wizard duel of rules of points scoring and technicalities that are only tangentially related to any objective truths.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Don't forget befuddled old man routine. That always works.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Agreed, and -- I have to remind Jabba -- covered already as one of the individually fatal flaws: Jabba doesn't understand what evidence is. "Potential" this-or-that seems to be one of Jabba's idioms. In his argument it seems to play the role of something that isn't actually there, but his critics are expected to behave as if it did.
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