Comments on: Idiot of the century

By: Tim Worstall

Tim Worstall — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 11:02:00 +0000

"when you should merely be accusing me of being mistaken. "

But where’s the novelty in that?

By: dsquared

dsquared — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 07:54:00 +0000

Even Galileo admitted that the Sun moves round the Earth …

By: john b

john b — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 07:27:00 +0000

Because you’re incorrectly accusing me of logical inconsistency, when you should merely be accusing me of being mistaken. The two are not the same.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 07:17:00 +0000

I know a cat with three legs called Tripod.

Anyway, given that even Amnesty's American spokesman said that the Gulag analogy was not correct, and done to get media attention, then I can't see how you can have a leg to stand on.

Unless you stole it from a cat.

By: Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 07:10:00 +0000

I thought that his main point was "two legs good, four legs stupid."

By: Larry

Larry — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:55:00 +0000

I think you're misunderstanding Eric's point. As I understand it, his main contention is that no cat has three legs.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:50:00 +0000

Oops. Must pay attention to ‘allowed HTML tags’. And post before two people have already made my point.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:48:00 +0000

<I>What I am saying is that is is logically inconsistent to agree with one analogy and not the other</I>

Of course it bloody isn't. I agree with neither analogy, but I could at least construct a hypothetical case that the Amnesty analogy was plausible, whereas the whites/kulaks analogy is ridiculous and indefensible whichever way you look at it.

Regardless of my opinion, though, to describe it as 'logically inconsistent to agree with one analogy and not the other' is a silly thing to say unless the analogies are the same or at least equivalent. They aren't. They refer to two different sets of circumstances.

By: john b

john b — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:45:00 +0000

Look, if you want to show my beliefs are inconsistent, you need to show that in all relevant respects, the kulak analogy is equivalent to the gulag analogy.

You haven't done this. All you've shown is that I think one analogy is stupid, and that another, different analogy is not stupid.

Otherwise I can say "Eric thinks the analogy between kulaks and white Brits is stupid. But Eric doesn't think the analogy between [eg] the war to stop Saddam and the war to stop Hitler is stupid, so he's being inconsistent."

(not sure whether or not you'd actually view the second analogy as reasonable. The point is that it would be *perfectly consistent* of you to think that the kulak analogy was stupid and that the Hitler analogy was reasonable. You haven't demonstrated any difference between that set of beliefs and my set of beliefs).

By: Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:42:00 +0000

Not at all. All you have demonstrated is that the kulak analogy and the gulag analogy are linked by the fact that they are analogies. You argue that they are independently stupid. This stupidity is contestable, and the assignation of ‘stupidity’ to one of the these analogies does not demand that the other is equally labelled. This being so, the statement it "is logically inconsistent to agree with one analogy and not the other" does not follow. It only follows if we agree that both analogies are stupid.