Like a Tiny Piece of Glass in the Thick Skin of Your Heel.
I was perusing the message boards on IMDB's JFK entry in conjunction with watching a special on JFK's assassination and the theories regarding who was behind it last night when I ran across a discussion between two folks that blossomed into (what seemed) a full on argument between four or more.
I say "seemed" mainly because they could have been the same two people duking it out under different names. Their arguments on either side were very similar in form and structure.
Reading what appears on these boards is frequently an exercise in rhetoric and logic, or rather the novice use of them, and the JFK boards are a fine example of this. There are fallacies aplenty offered on both sides of the opinion fence, and many times the plebian comments appearing here do no credit to one or another side.
**BEGIN REHASH** The next two paragraphs are the only ones I will devote to expressing an opinion on the actual event. Skip them if you don't care.
So, getting to what I think, Oswald was alone in execution but, perhaps, helped with the planning. The only reason I think he may have had even a small measure of help with planning the actual assassination is that he was well known to be sympathetic to Cuba's communist government and its treatment by the United States. To me, even a simple affirmation of "we support you" from Castro's regime would constitute the barest fraction of complicity by them.
In the end it is unimportant why he did it because the argument of those on the JFK boards is that he could not possibly have done it himself. This, to me, is a strong indicator of someone who is on the side of conspiracy and multiple assassins and of someone who would not accept any evidence of anything but multiple assassins.
**END REHASH** You may now read on freely.
It seems a common thread of the really opinionated, woefully untrained people to engage in discussions and pepper them with fallacies. It irritates me almost as much as someone who mistakes loose for lose. It indicates a mind closed to rational discussion and ignorant of the skill necessary to critical thinking. But I am guilty of it too, at times, indicating that it is a skill that must be exercised.
People will often say things during such a discussion as "he could never have managed that himself" or "the Egyptians could never had managed building the pyramids without alien help." This is insulting to me personally as I am a human being who is amazed at what other human beings can accomplish, especially when organized effectively. In my encounters, it's usually the person who is searching for meaning in their own life or who feels some sort of slight or dissatisfaction with their life situation that resorts to mystical causes or conspiritorial speculation. I think it's a desire to be noticed.
Aside from that, there are several other things that irritate me about as much as the title of this post would suggest. So, without further delay, here it is;
Argumentum ad hominem - I really hate it when I am trying to read some board post and someone says "anyone who thinks X is an idiot" or some other nonsense. Makes me stop reading right there.
Appeal to emotion - "That's crazy!"; "Don't be stupid..."; "You're a fool if..."; "you're gonna die if you don't..." Thing like this and others that can be closely associated with ad hominem arguments.
Appeal to authority - while there is no doubt that having studied a subject for a period of time qualifies one to speak a bit more intelligently on that subject, the quality of the commentary is (almost always) directly proportional to the quality of work done when studying that subject.
Have you seen Super Size Me? It's not the best argument against the fast food industry I've heard, but one thing that has always stood out when I watch it is that the doctors predicted first that there would be a slight effect from the consumption of only fast food for a month, and when that was incorrect and there was a significant effect, they predicted that he would not return to normal. The medical consultancy was incorrect on that as well. So, it would seem, at least in their case, that if one were to use these physicians in an appeal to authority argument, it would be folly.
Appeal to n - Essentially, anything other than "appeal to reason".
Non sequitur - For some reason this one really gets me, I think because it shows often that people are lazy, but also that people who are equally lazy buy it as an argument of truth. I mean it can be true but don't use it as a means to get all zealous on me.
Of course, the list of irritations is not limited to logical fallacies. A great many people have lapses in vocabulary that really bother me, or their conversation is comprised of "IM Speak".
loose vs. lose - God that bugs me.
You're vs. your - Yeah.
'puter or puter - Sounds like some sort of disease; "The doctor said I came down with puter when he saw the mess in my pants."
Being (that/a/the, etc.) - Sorry Jenn, we love ya but...stop it :)
Irregardless - Most people mean regardless.
I could care less... - Really? Thanks for that, I think.
Sweet or unsweet? - Ok, I generally consider a place an average to crummy restaurant if you serve sweet tea. It's just one of those personal indicators of crappiness I have. But asking if I want "unsweet" tea is just bizarre. Aside from the fact that "unsweet" consists of the entire set of things that are not sweet (i.e. sour, bitter, etc.), it just sounds wierd.
ME: I'll have some tea please.
SERVER: Sweet or salty?
ME: Ummm...
Someone who relates everything to a movie quote, or who quotes a movie for more than 1-2 seconds - I mean, I remember movie quotes and even long passages of movies that I love. But I don't sit there and attempt to (1) relate to you by reenacting an entire five-minute scene from a crummy movie or (2) be funny by performing someone's entire comedy routine (badly). Hell, it's hard enough to listen to people talk sometimes without having them pretend to be someone else who was not funny.
People who look at you when something funny happens in a movie - I have a friend who, every goddamned time something funny happens in a funny movie (which, if the movie is funny enough, happens often) he stares at me, as if it's not truly funny to him unless he has some sort of confirmation that it was funny. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, damn it irritates me! One day I am going to be in the movies with him, wait for a really funny part and when I see him looking over at me, I will turn suddenly to him and yell "woogie woogie woogie!" really loud while shaking my head.
I know, right? - There is a girl at work who is nice as can be, but every goddamned time someone says something she agrees with (which is often) she exclaims "I know, right?" Hell, she even types it in emails and chats.
Acrosst, dest, and any other time someone replaces a 'k' with a 't' or appends a 't' to a word - Where in the hell did that one come from?
Trying to use a word without at least looking it up in a thesaurus - Now, I understand that some folks think they have a handle on their word usage. But, in the course of my work adventures, I have run acrosst people that try desperately to use a word and either can't say it or have failed to grasp the difference between two words.
I heard a woman once say "it added a little brevity to the situation." Really? How does that happen exactly?
IM Speak - Few things are more irritating to me than reading something written by a teenager steeped in the ways of IM. It's not so much the idea that someone will type "ur" or "u no" to shorten the typing required to get a point across in an IM, it's that these people use this in every written correspondence. Worse, why type something like rilly or noe when the real words "really" and "know" are merely one letter more? The gains by using correct spelling far outweigh the time saved by excluding the letters.
Revenge is a dish best served cold - Ah, the Internet! I have searched high and low for the source of this quotation. Every source I have seen references the "original French" with "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid", attributed to Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
Only trouble is, that shit is nowhere to be found in the novel.
I have searched several online editions of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in both English and French for the entire sentence in English and French, parts of the sentence in English and French, and the single word "vengeance" in French, with "revenge" in English. Nothing resembling the quote has appeared in any of the searches.
Now, the problem for me is not that no one seems to know where it came from. Hell, attributing it to the Klingons is fine with me. The real problem is it seems someone said "hey it appears here in this novel" and it was parroted without over the Internet without someone taking the time to actually research it. I even submitted the question to alt.binaries.quotations and got the exact same answer.
Could I be wrong? Is there some forgotten French version of the novel floating out there with the sentence in it? I'd like to know, I'd hate to think absolutely no one has verified it. I don't think I am wrong though. Take a look for yourself, though.
I am guilty of a lot of things that I am convinced irritate others intensely. Usually, I am aware of it and do it because it's a part of my character. I say "dude" a lot. I can remember the very day I started using that word. It was a Wednesday, in 1995, and I was working at a local beer-and-pizza movie theatre, and a friend of mine said it in relation to something that I said. For some reason I though it was really funny used that way, and so it stuck.
I am also a know-it-all. The difference between me and the usual know-it-all is that if I don't know it, I will say so. Sometimes, though, that comes after a little playful bullshitting. There's nothing like giving someone a totally fake explanation that sounds like it's the truth!
There is a guy at work...we'll call him Stork. Stork seems to have a talent for coming in on the tail of a conversation between our whole department and asking the question that was just solved or addressed by that conversation. The man pays no attention to what is said in our public chat. Considering that he's been there longer than I have, I find it utterly amazing that he still remains clueless on the simple details of his job performance. Not to mention he is completely rude to the callers.
So, one day I decide I have had enough of Stork's stupid questions and inane comments.
GROUP: (half-hour long discussion ends with)...so that's the solution to the IE error with the branch users.
(2 minutes later)
STORK: I have a user getting an error in IE. What's that about?
ME (fed up): Man Stork, that's tough. It could be the memory activation unit failing in Windows. I would check that, and also the rasterizer.
STORK: OK, I will check that.
Presumably, Stork now goes to the knowledgebase we all have access to and searches for "rasterizer" and "memory activation unit", finding nothing. Five minutes later...
STORK: How do I check the memory activation unit?
It gets too painful after that.
I say "seemed" mainly because they could have been the same two people duking it out under different names. Their arguments on either side were very similar in form and structure.
Reading what appears on these boards is frequently an exercise in rhetoric and logic, or rather the novice use of them, and the JFK boards are a fine example of this. There are fallacies aplenty offered on both sides of the opinion fence, and many times the plebian comments appearing here do no credit to one or another side.
**BEGIN REHASH** The next two paragraphs are the only ones I will devote to expressing an opinion on the actual event. Skip them if you don't care.
So, getting to what I think, Oswald was alone in execution but, perhaps, helped with the planning. The only reason I think he may have had even a small measure of help with planning the actual assassination is that he was well known to be sympathetic to Cuba's communist government and its treatment by the United States. To me, even a simple affirmation of "we support you" from Castro's regime would constitute the barest fraction of complicity by them.
In the end it is unimportant why he did it because the argument of those on the JFK boards is that he could not possibly have done it himself. This, to me, is a strong indicator of someone who is on the side of conspiracy and multiple assassins and of someone who would not accept any evidence of anything but multiple assassins.
**END REHASH** You may now read on freely.
It seems a common thread of the really opinionated, woefully untrained people to engage in discussions and pepper them with fallacies. It irritates me almost as much as someone who mistakes loose for lose. It indicates a mind closed to rational discussion and ignorant of the skill necessary to critical thinking. But I am guilty of it too, at times, indicating that it is a skill that must be exercised.
People will often say things during such a discussion as "he could never have managed that himself" or "the Egyptians could never had managed building the pyramids without alien help." This is insulting to me personally as I am a human being who is amazed at what other human beings can accomplish, especially when organized effectively. In my encounters, it's usually the person who is searching for meaning in their own life or who feels some sort of slight or dissatisfaction with their life situation that resorts to mystical causes or conspiritorial speculation. I think it's a desire to be noticed.
Aside from that, there are several other things that irritate me about as much as the title of this post would suggest. So, without further delay, here it is;
Argumentum ad hominem - I really hate it when I am trying to read some board post and someone says "anyone who thinks X is an idiot" or some other nonsense. Makes me stop reading right there.
Appeal to emotion - "That's crazy!"; "Don't be stupid..."; "You're a fool if..."; "you're gonna die if you don't..." Thing like this and others that can be closely associated with ad hominem arguments.
Appeal to authority - while there is no doubt that having studied a subject for a period of time qualifies one to speak a bit more intelligently on that subject, the quality of the commentary is (almost always) directly proportional to the quality of work done when studying that subject.
Have you seen Super Size Me? It's not the best argument against the fast food industry I've heard, but one thing that has always stood out when I watch it is that the doctors predicted first that there would be a slight effect from the consumption of only fast food for a month, and when that was incorrect and there was a significant effect, they predicted that he would not return to normal. The medical consultancy was incorrect on that as well. So, it would seem, at least in their case, that if one were to use these physicians in an appeal to authority argument, it would be folly.
Appeal to n - Essentially, anything other than "appeal to reason".
Non sequitur - For some reason this one really gets me, I think because it shows often that people are lazy, but also that people who are equally lazy buy it as an argument of truth. I mean it can be true but don't use it as a means to get all zealous on me.
Of course, the list of irritations is not limited to logical fallacies. A great many people have lapses in vocabulary that really bother me, or their conversation is comprised of "IM Speak".
loose vs. lose - God that bugs me.
You're vs. your - Yeah.
'puter or puter - Sounds like some sort of disease; "The doctor said I came down with puter when he saw the mess in my pants."
Being (that/a/the, etc.) - Sorry Jenn, we love ya but...stop it :)
Irregardless - Most people mean regardless.
I could care less... - Really? Thanks for that, I think.
Sweet or unsweet? - Ok, I generally consider a place an average to crummy restaurant if you serve sweet tea. It's just one of those personal indicators of crappiness I have. But asking if I want "unsweet" tea is just bizarre. Aside from the fact that "unsweet" consists of the entire set of things that are not sweet (i.e. sour, bitter, etc.), it just sounds wierd.
ME: I'll have some tea please.
SERVER: Sweet or salty?
ME: Ummm...
Someone who relates everything to a movie quote, or who quotes a movie for more than 1-2 seconds - I mean, I remember movie quotes and even long passages of movies that I love. But I don't sit there and attempt to (1) relate to you by reenacting an entire five-minute scene from a crummy movie or (2) be funny by performing someone's entire comedy routine (badly). Hell, it's hard enough to listen to people talk sometimes without having them pretend to be someone else who was not funny.
People who look at you when something funny happens in a movie - I have a friend who, every goddamned time something funny happens in a funny movie (which, if the movie is funny enough, happens often) he stares at me, as if it's not truly funny to him unless he has some sort of confirmation that it was funny. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, damn it irritates me! One day I am going to be in the movies with him, wait for a really funny part and when I see him looking over at me, I will turn suddenly to him and yell "woogie woogie woogie!" really loud while shaking my head.
I know, right? - There is a girl at work who is nice as can be, but every goddamned time someone says something she agrees with (which is often) she exclaims "I know, right?" Hell, she even types it in emails and chats.
Acrosst, dest, and any other time someone replaces a 'k' with a 't' or appends a 't' to a word - Where in the hell did that one come from?
Trying to use a word without at least looking it up in a thesaurus - Now, I understand that some folks think they have a handle on their word usage. But, in the course of my work adventures, I have run acrosst people that try desperately to use a word and either can't say it or have failed to grasp the difference between two words.
I heard a woman once say "it added a little brevity to the situation." Really? How does that happen exactly?
IM Speak - Few things are more irritating to me than reading something written by a teenager steeped in the ways of IM. It's not so much the idea that someone will type "ur" or "u no" to shorten the typing required to get a point across in an IM, it's that these people use this in every written correspondence. Worse, why type something like rilly or noe when the real words "really" and "know" are merely one letter more? The gains by using correct spelling far outweigh the time saved by excluding the letters.
Revenge is a dish best served cold - Ah, the Internet! I have searched high and low for the source of this quotation. Every source I have seen references the "original French" with "La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid", attributed to Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
Only trouble is, that shit is nowhere to be found in the novel.
I have searched several online editions of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in both English and French for the entire sentence in English and French, parts of the sentence in English and French, and the single word "vengeance" in French, with "revenge" in English. Nothing resembling the quote has appeared in any of the searches.
Now, the problem for me is not that no one seems to know where it came from. Hell, attributing it to the Klingons is fine with me. The real problem is it seems someone said "hey it appears here in this novel" and it was parroted without over the Internet without someone taking the time to actually research it. I even submitted the question to alt.binaries.quotations and got the exact same answer.
Could I be wrong? Is there some forgotten French version of the novel floating out there with the sentence in it? I'd like to know, I'd hate to think absolutely no one has verified it. I don't think I am wrong though. Take a look for yourself, though.
I am guilty of a lot of things that I am convinced irritate others intensely. Usually, I am aware of it and do it because it's a part of my character. I say "dude" a lot. I can remember the very day I started using that word. It was a Wednesday, in 1995, and I was working at a local beer-and-pizza movie theatre, and a friend of mine said it in relation to something that I said. For some reason I though it was really funny used that way, and so it stuck.
I am also a know-it-all. The difference between me and the usual know-it-all is that if I don't know it, I will say so. Sometimes, though, that comes after a little playful bullshitting. There's nothing like giving someone a totally fake explanation that sounds like it's the truth!
There is a guy at work...we'll call him Stork. Stork seems to have a talent for coming in on the tail of a conversation between our whole department and asking the question that was just solved or addressed by that conversation. The man pays no attention to what is said in our public chat. Considering that he's been there longer than I have, I find it utterly amazing that he still remains clueless on the simple details of his job performance. Not to mention he is completely rude to the callers.
So, one day I decide I have had enough of Stork's stupid questions and inane comments.
GROUP: (half-hour long discussion ends with)...so that's the solution to the IE error with the branch users.
(2 minutes later)
STORK: I have a user getting an error in IE. What's that about?
ME (fed up): Man Stork, that's tough. It could be the memory activation unit failing in Windows. I would check that, and also the rasterizer.
STORK: OK, I will check that.
Presumably, Stork now goes to the knowledgebase we all have access to and searches for "rasterizer" and "memory activation unit", finding nothing. Five minutes later...
STORK: How do I check the memory activation unit?
It gets too painful after that.
posted by Primate Buddy | 3:57 PM
4 Comments:
Ohhh I love this post...yaay for being all picky about how people write and the logic they use. I try to teach my kids these things over and over. Maybe I should have you come in to do a lecture...you seem to have it all down :)
-N
I didn't get the Being thing.? I think I am going to loose it if I don't understand that one.
Dude, being that she is our friend, it pained me to write that passage. Makes sense now? Ever heard her say it?!? Kinda gets you right in the center of your forehead and pries open your skull like the Jaws of Life ripping open the mangled husk of a destroyed automobile to get at the tender flesh of the poor victim inside. Yeah.
You know, that was going to be a short post because I really didn't have all that much to say. I guess it's sort of like siphoning gas, once you suck out the initial flow, the rest of the brain follows along.
I love the fact that the correct usage would be, "I couldn't care less," yet I'd venture a guess that approximately 95% of people use it incorrectly. And that's being somewhat conservative.
It also really bugs me when people start sentences with "and." Honest.
Post a Comment
<< Home