Intergalactic Summit

Stitcher: PIE Inc. Logic

Nicoletta, usually when you and I are of differing views on something and wind up arguing about it, your position is at least a mostly coherent one that I can understand, even if your position almost invariably hinges on some fallacious reasoning.

This time however, it's an incoherent maze of Ad Hominem, strawmen and loaded questions that I don't think I can adequately navigate.

So, I'm not even going to bother with the attempt. I genuinely have no idea where you're coming from this time, and I'm not prepared to engage until I know what you're flying.

Well I try to state it plainly for you:

There's a difference in stating:
A) "Sarumite blue grapes taste oftentimes bad."
and
B) "Given all types of grapes, specifically Sarumite blue grapes taste oftentimes bad."

You might see that in the first case I imply nothing in regard to whether other types of grapes taste oftentimes bad or not, even though the grapes I predicate 'taste oftentimes bad' are specified. In the second case the grapes that are predicated to taste bad are still specified, but it is also specified that it is something in which thy differ from other grapes.

A statement of the type "Sarumite blue grapes are inferior to other grapes." can't be inferred from statement A) for lack of any direct or implied comparison, while statement B) allows just this inference.

Because when I think of a person completely free from concepts such as racial prejudice and ethnic superiority, Rodj Blake leaps to the forefront of my mind like an interceptor with an overheated warp drive.

... said literally no-one in the history of the cluster.

He's probably giggling at this point.

Important as the difference between bourbon and scotch may be, if your objective is to demonstrate your client's sobriety then the distinction is of little use.

Anyway, Rodj is a known bigot. He's never exactly acknowledged the fact, but then again he doesn't need to, much in the same way that a fish doesn't need to acknowledge that it swims. Between that and the non sequitur which his opinion entailed in the context of quoting my observation (which was about freedom, rather than people) I dare say that my inference of his motive was a perfectly reasonable one.

At least Diana Kim has the guts to own up to her racism. Too bad that Blake hides behind the false shield of "dark humor" to disguise his.

Shame on you Pilot Mithra for defending and enabling him.

To my (limited) understanding of sociolinguistics, the specification is implied, as Hakatain-haan mentioned. That many people are not nice is a universal and not worthy of mention; to mention a specific race as having the trait is to single them out in association with that trait.

You are of course correct in formal logic. Assuming no implicit prepositions, it is not a racist statement. However, language is heavily loaded with implicit prepositions - an issue that vexes me daily. Perhaps this is the point of contention?

- S

The contention hinges on the fact that in the logic of social situations, there is no such thing as "no implicit prepositions". Even if I had no prior knowledge of anything about Blake, I could immediately make basic contextual assumptions just from the public information about which corporation he's in.

Formally, of course, it's not valid reasoning to assume that what's true of the whole is true for its component parts. Sociologically, that assumption is made much more valid by the fact that membership in PIE requires voluntary application, which constitutes an active endorsement of their politics. The duration of his membership means that the probability that he's unaware of and would disagree with their politics can be safely deemed infinitesimal.

As things stand, he and I are both old veterans of the IGS and I have a wealth of past behaviour to reference. Not only am I justified in concluding that his most probable motive was a racist one, but if I then turn out to have been wrong about it and the statement was purely innocent then the weight of occasions on which his motives WERE racist would be enough to render this one occasion an insignificant statistical anomaly out of a very large sample size.




True, but you should know me well enough by now to know that I'm a sucker for pointlessly dissecting an argument that's of no real consequence.

Some people grow bonsai trees, some people juggle geese, I quibble.

Fair enough, just so long as we all understand the situation. Carry on!