This post is like the Night of the Long Knives.
What about tangents, digressions, or random whimsy?
What about counterfactuals designed to demonstrate faulty or questionable logic?
Reasoning by analogy is useful, but can almost always be substituted for with reasoning by metaphor.
You know what this post is really like? It's kind of like the time when the co-op I lived in at MIT, which had a lot of vegetarians living in it but wasn't formally vegetarian, decided to go all vegetarian for a week....
Can we make comparisons to situations in literature and myth? Or is that out too?
For instance, rather than saying "banning reasoning by analogy is like slavery," I can simply say "banning reasoning by analogy is slavery."
so instead of lots of tangents, we should jsut all fakepost as 'al'?
Trying to argue by analogy is totally like trying to build a house with a rock hammer.
This is like a situation where I run out of things to say.
LB -- that doesn't really seem apposite to me -- I wouldn't really say Unfogged has a large resident pool of people who disdain the use of analogy.
Where does Unfogged stand on allegories?
What analogies have been upsetting you, ogged? I haven't noticed whatever it is you're talking about in the post at all. Which yes I understand probably means I'm the offender.
Oh, put your possible worlds in your pipe and smoke it.
I see the spirit of Winston Churchill is sadly lacking at Unfogged. Banning analogies is just the sort of thing Neville Chamberlain would have done.
Where does Unfogged stand on alligators?
I just read Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, so I'm perfectly prepared to assert that, while in the past ogged meant what I would call analogies by his use of the word "analogies", now, he means "blondes".
Where does Unfogged stand on alligators?
At the zoo.
22: Just behind the eyes. Forward of that is too narrow, and behind that it can circle back and snap at you.
22: There is no safe place to stand on alligators.
Ogged is like the legionary on the Danube, holding back the hordes while we snicker over dancing catamites.
22 -- man those things can bite your arm off if you're not careful and/or sober.
27: Poor catamites. If only that Internet technician had called the police when he found pictures of their molestation.
18: It's a little known fact that the phrase "all the beer is in the fridge", meant to explain modal realism, had been sanitized from the original "all the weed is in my bong."
Reasoning by analogy is like buying brand X products. Reasoning by analogy is like marrying the wrong sister so you can be close to the right sister. Reasoning by analogy is like instant coffee. Reasoning by analogy is like Charles XII's unsuccessful invasion of Russia. Reasoning by analogy is like the marsupial tapir. Reasoning by analogy is like the Eastern Roman Empire speaking Greek. Reasoning by analogy is like putting another gasket on instead of fixing the problem. Reasoning by analogy is like colitis. Reasoning by analogy is like Lyndon La Rouche's claim that Aristotle was a Persian spy. Reasoning by analogy is like Newt Gingrinch dumping his cancerous first wife.
Similes, all similes.
Dude, this is like telling your kids their music is too loud by throwing the main power switch.
I have a theory that arguments by analogy actually reduce to inductive enumeration and vice versa. Arguments by analogy become stronger the more primary analogues you can put forward, while arguments by inductive enumeration become stronger the more the previous events resemble each other and the hypothesized future event.
So I'm saying that you are banning inductive enumeration as well.
34: An effective communicative technique?
This is just as if someone tried to ban analogies.
Was there ever any chance of this thread going any other way?
39: A snowball's chance in hell, perhaps.
(Actually I love the idea, if only because saying so will immediately cause Ogged to abandon it, thereby making me more popular than EVAH!)
36.--No, ogged's communication technique was not effective, so I guess my analogy was inapt.
Was there ever any chance of this thread going any other way?
If you louts were, I dunno, funny, every comment for the next week would have been in the form of:
1. Ogged has banned analogies.
2. The yellow bird has taken wing.
3. Labs is gay.
∴ Everything is permitted!
Then, I would have been sorry. But no, just more analogies.
This is like if someone had a popular, vivacious, tight-knit internet community, which worked out its own misunderstandings, and then someone decided the best way to preserve that community was to tinker with it to make them 'smarter.'
Back in the veldt, we fed them to the tigers.
31 is funny. Clown laughed at it, and he only recognized half of its potential.
I can't help it if you fail to appreciate subtlety, Ogged.
Actually I love the idea, if only because saying so …
You know you could say so without doing so.
43 only confirms me in my unshakable belief that ogged doesn't know from funny.
Which required massive catapults to span the distance from the veldt to the nearest tigers. Meanwhile, the local lions looked on sadly.
Back in the veldt, we fed them to the tigers.
And went back to eating dirt, happily.
Clown laughed at it, and he only recognized half of its potential.
We prefer to leave our joke in the plicit, B.
This post is like that one time at band camp.
51: Oh, it should, it should. So often isn't though.
And went back to eating dirt, happily.
Whereas our Neandertal cousins failed to recognize the merits of dirt-eating, and thereby perished.
LB hasn't even heard of the Rift Veldt Tiger, yet she dares to make comments about human psychology.
Dirt-eating is a prerequisite to agriculture, rube. You'd have us merrily flushing the game out towards you, only to be crushed in the stampede of wildebeest.
My analogy skills are weak, like a tomato in the rain.
So here's an almost relevant comic!
Analogy hasn't been the same since the mid-17th century happened.
16: Your theories are very interesting, Mr. w-lfs-n, but have little connection to reality.
60: I've never known anyone who got smarter *doing* ATM. Is that what you meant?
This post is like that one time at band camp.
It is not. Besides, that's under my real name, so I half expect to be asked about it in interviews.
66: Yikes. I hope they don't ask me about doing ATM at interviews.
I'm not a graphic / web designer but even I can see that there's space at the right hand side of the main page for a banned list. You could put the most disfavoured analogies there.
I once received an essay in which a student wrote "Feminism means that men get to be 'The Man.'" Poor kid was confused on so many levels.
This one time at banned camp...
Wrong thread! (Too many damn windows open.)
Why don't we unite in the spirit of comity and mock this guy? According to him, his book:
"One Cosmos Under God is the fruit of a lifetime of thought attempting to synthesize material from a number of diverse domains, including cosmology, theoretical biology, quantum physics, developmental psychoanalysis, attachment theory, anthropology, history, mysticism and theology, into a coherent, self-consistent, non-reductionistic whole."
73: Wow. That guy has an analogy problem.
73 -- 'theoretical biology' is a dead letter.
74: It's painful, but I can't stop reading it. I mean:
Some philosopher or physicist -- possibly Neils Bohr -- said words to the effect that the opposite of a true statement is a false one, but that the opposite of a profound truth is often another profound truth. I find that I am constantly teetering along the precipice of this profound truism. In fact, there is no question that it formed the basis of the compulsion to write my book.I actually have a photo -- one of these days I'll transfer it to digital so you can all see it -- of the day I set out to write the book... Gosh, I was such a different person back then... Hey, out the window, a squirrel! Wait, I'm getting distracted here... The photo shows me in my office liberary with I don't know how many books from various disciplines strewn all over the floor. I'm standing there in my magic robe, brooding over them, trying to figure out how they all fit together...
Initially, I thought the whole thing an elaborate joke.
I once received an essay in which a student wrote "Feminism means that men get to be 'The Man.'" Poor kid was confused on so many levels.
He probably listened to the Dr. Laura show. Every day Dr. Laura talks to some poor woman who works 60 hours a week and bears all the child-raising and housework burdens because her husband refuses to help, and Dr. Laura explains to her that she is in this miserable state because this is how feminists want women to be.
I am constantly teetering along the precipice
That wraps it all up quite neatly.
But Ogged, we're all just like Stringer Bell...
Metonyms are still permitted ATM, right?
You praisers of zeugma are probably thinking of syllepsis.
Syllepsis is but one kind of zeugma, though indeed the most lively and noticable.
"but one kind", yes—the good kind.
The only example I can ever remember, though, is "dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea".
"but one kind", yes--the good kind.
I cannot argue with this. However, "zeugma" is the more enjoyable word.
Alanis: He held his breath and the door for me. Or something like that.
He took my advice and my wallet.
Her tiara and virtue were tarnished.
I was downcast the day I discovered zeugma was really syllepsis. I felt better when I decided to keep calling it zeugma anyway.
Analogies are for the weak-minded.
Again, syllepsis is a type of zeugma. You can still call it zeugma.
That's like saying that just because dogs are a kind of mammal, you can call dogs mammals.
Which, I mean, come on.
In a situation where the only mammal you were likely to encounter was a dog, I see no problem with calling dogs mammals. Also, that was an analogy.
Or if it didn't particularly matter what kind of mammal you were talking about, since the salient characteristic of the dog you were discussing was something common to all mammals.
So, what, you think dogs aren't mammals?
Okay, wise guy, suppose I look out the window and see a robin on the lawn. Is it somehow infelicitous to say "Hey, there's a bird on the lawn"?
It might be infelicitous if you're a guest at the home of a notorious ornithophobe.
Speaking as a notorious ornithophobe, it would not. In fact, it might be quite appreciated.
What gives you the right to speak for all ornithophobes?
What if it were a misornithist?
One possible function of the statement in 97 could be to warn the addressee, you know.
"One possible function". Listen to yourself!
You just keep ducking the question because you know I'm right.
Man, it's slow around here tonight. Maybe I should just go to bed.
w-lfs-n is ignoring the possibility that one's host might be an ornithophiliac. (Speaking of which, there's a very nice passage in Against the Day concerning sheep-buggery -- hopefully I will remember this evening to copy it and send it off to Emerson.
I already know what there is to know, Clown.
That there's a reason Kiwis wear wellingtons?
They tried aucklands, but that didn't work as well.
Talking about kiwis (in context of the ornithophilia discussion) or Kiwis (in context of the arnophilia discussion)?
k/K, such lovely ambiguity. Are they not fruit?
They are fruit also, but fruit cannot wear wellingtons.
Though, I guess fruit could be the object of a fetish.
I'm not saying that hanging out with sheep makes a man fruity, but I have heard that wellingtons are must-have apparel in that trade. It is a rough trade.
Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews, when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews.
But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is also a fiend to its own offspring; worse than the Persian host who murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.
God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!
