Racist, funny or who cares?Follow

The whole point of a debate is that there is not a correct side, only winners and losers.

If you make an excellent case for chopping up orphans and making them into meat pies, you can still win an argument against your non-cannibalistic brethren. Probably by making the Donner argument, but that's irrelevant.

Obviously. But if having a correct side was an initial condition, there would be no debate. Capice?

I can see your rationale, but I don't necessarily agree with it. If you give someone a math problem, or by extension, a logic problem, you don't need to know the answer in advance to define the conditions for victory, nor for there to be disagreement on the means to the correct answer.

That's a strange statement from someone who is so obviously using debating tricks to avoid having to defend his "side" in the first place. If you really think in terms of believing your position to be the correct one and then making arguments for that position, you would not be dancing round insisting that the other guy doesn't understand your position and thinking that means you "win". You'd be doing everything you could to make your position absolutely crystal clear so that there can be no confusion.


You aren't doing that though, are you?

Well, you quoted the answer you gave. I still had to search through the thread to find it. I have enough trouble reading and responding to the posts you reply directly to mine, so I kinda ignored the ones where you responded to other posters. Perhaps if you had taken the 5 seconds to directly respond to my direct question on any of the several times I posted it, you could have saved yourself a lot of frustration. Just a thought. Typing "yes" or "no" would have been faster is all.



No. That's you replying later about the issue after the fact. I've quoted the original statement with which I had issues several times. It's the one where you said that black people should support black businesses because no one else would, and that minorities should help out other minorities. I don't really care what words you wrote afterwards, because I wasn't asking whether you thought they should do so if those stores carry goods that they want, or are close by, or any of the dozens of other conditions you added after the fact. I wanted to know the opposite: Did you think that a black person should buy at a black owned store purely because it's black owned and for no other reason?

That was the question I kept asking, and it took you a ridiculous number of pages of spin before you finally answered it. And even though you have a couple of times now insisted that they shouldn't, your general statements seem to support policies and agendas which are in opposition to that. So I'm still left wondering whether you actually believe that, or just say you believe that because it's indefensible to say otherwise?

I'll assume, therefore, that you oppose all forms of affirmative action, hiring quotas based on race, admission benefits based on race, and private organizations who give out scholarships or rewards that restrict them based on race?

Those things all violate the principle you claim you agree with me on. Yet, so far, you've indicated that you agree with policies that target benefits to members of a given racial group on the grounds that they are needed to even out the outcomes. I also don't agree with that btw, and I'm not sure how one can claim to hold the position you claim while still supporting those things. But hey! Maybe now you'll insist that you don't support those things either and we can just call this a slam dunk for me?




Yes. I get that you keep saying that it's not about race. But you also keep injecting race into the issue. Why do that? Why not just say that people should support their local communities, and their friends and families, no matter what the skin color is? Why even mention skin color? If it's not a factor, then it's irrelevant and shouldn't be mentioned.

But you did anyway (and continue to do so). Which is strange to me.



Because a statement that legal benefits should not be granted based on race doesn't require any examination of the legal benefits themselves. Thus, insisting that I list off the legal benefits I'm talking about is an irrelevant question. It's like me saying that all birds have feathers, and you respond by insisting that I list off which types of birds I'm talking about. Um... All birds.




Of course you can. Because these things are based on concepts and social trends that are unaffected by the specifics. I'm making what's called a general argument. The correct way to respond to such an argument is to come up with a specific example which violates the general argument. Since all specifics must follow the general trend, this is a valid logical form of response.

I did give numerous examples to support my arguments. But what you kept doing was to say "yeah but", and then insist that I argue for this specific, and that specific, and then another, and another, and another. That's an endless argument btw. I don't have to prove every single case, since that would take forever. If you want to argue against me, you have to come up with your own specifics and then actually make an argument showing that a specific case violates the general case that I'm arguing.

You never did that. You didn't actually make any arguments. You just keep asking more and more questions without really explaining why those questions were relevant or how they proved a point you were making, or disproved a point I was making. That's why I kept calling them irrelevant. Just asking a question doesn't make it something I need to answer. You have to show that absent an answer to that question, some part of my own argument fails.

You didn't do that.



But only facts that are relevant to my arguments. You can't just jump up and down and insist that my arguments are poor. You have to actually show that they are in some way.

You didn't do that.




Yes. I could have. There's hope for you yet! :)

One of the features of a valid logical formulation is that the specifics don't really matter for the logic to work. You can literally replace a word with "x" and verify that it's true. In fact, one of the methods used to test logical statements is to replace the specific words with other words and test if the logic still works.

Let me put this in broader terms: A group of people who are today getting something for free will tend to resist giving up that free thing in the future. True?

It doesn't matter what the free things are. This is either something you believe is true, or you don't. I happen to think it's nearly axiomatically true, but I suppose it's debatable. The only significant structural part of my argument left to deal with is the assumption that recognition of changing "real" social conditions will not completely overcome the general trend of people not wanting to part with free stuff they're getting.

Absent other factors:

- Any person or group will not want to part with free things they're currently receiving.

- A group that is disadvantaged will not want to part with free things they're currently receiving.

- A group that is *not* disadvantaged will not want to part with free things they're currently receiving.

Are all of these true? I'm again going from general to specific. I admit that I'm speaking in generalities, but IMO it's up to those arguing that a specific case is an exception to that general rule to make that argument. If in general, we accept that groups of people wont give up free things if they can avoid it, unless there's some specific exception created between that group being disadvantaged versus not being disadvantaged, then the argument that legal benefits currently granted by race today wont be given up in the future when those groups are no longer disadvantaged would seem to have quite a bit of merit?

You're free to disagree, but to do so effectively, you really need to make some kind of argument as to why this general trend will not occur in this specific case. But you didn't do that. Heck. You didn't even attempt to do that.



That's close to what I said. I don't recall making it about economics though. I just said that it was a bad idea to create programs that benefit groups based on race because of current disadvantaged status because there's no reason to assume that when that disadvantaged status ends, that those benefits will be removed. Everything beyond that was you tossing out strawmen, including the whole "they'll enslave white people" bit. I never said that. You did.



What principle are you arguing for? I'm honestly curious.




Because they wont equally apply for white people? Why would you assume that laws which do things like mandate easier entrance requirements for students who are black or latino will magically change to say "white"? You do understand that the language of these laws don't say things like "current groups identified as minorities based on <insert some objective criteria here>", right?

In fact, I brought up that exact point earlier. I said that if that was the objective, why not base those things purely on need and ignore race? That way, as the social dynamics shift, the distribution of those benefits will automatically shift to those in need without requiring any changes to the law. But someone (Kachi I think?) argued passionately that this was unfair because there was no way to measure the true effect of institutionalized racism on the population, so it was necessary to skew the outcomes in order to balance out for that racism in the system.

Of course, since that argument starts with the assumption that there's no way to measure it, then there's no way to know what effect it's actually having, and no way to know how much "balancing" is really needed, or when that balancing is no longer needed. Um... Which pretty much proves my point, doesn't it?



That makes no sense though. If my argument was based on fear of the white population no longer being on top, wouldn't I be most worried about the non-white group that is most likely to threaten that top spot? You're making a broad claim that no only has zero support, but makes no logical sense at all.





It has to start within what? Did you mean "from within"? So how does this relate to affirmative action? How does this relate to scholarships for people of just one race? By "within" do you mean that the members of that race should choose to help out other members of their race purely because they both are of the same race? Doesn't that now completely reverse what you just spent the last 2 pages arguing?


You argued that a black person should not buy from a black store purely because it's owned by a black person but only if there were other non-race specific reasons (like helping out a friend or family, or member of the community). So when I asked if by "black community" you really meant "all black people" and not "people who live in a local community who happen to mostly be black", I was right to say that you really meant the former and not the latter?


Um... I'm not even sure what to say at this point. It's like you don't really understand what the words you're typing mean, but are just using them in some kind of conditioned response. You want to avoid appearing to be racially motivated, but also want to support a racially motivated "cause". But you can't see the inherent conflict between those two things. Like I've been saying: Bizarre!

Edited, Mar 10th 2011 7:49pm by gbaji

Well, before we go forward, you still have some comments to address.

Let's just do one at a time, since you easily get confused.

You said the following:



Earlier you said the following:



Please explain how the two can coexist or decide which one is true. Let's not play the "irrelevant game", just answer the question. You wondered why I didn't just say "yes" or "no" to your question, the answer is because you gave me the run-around by not answering my questions, so I wasn't going to be straight forward with you and your answers.

Let's just start over. You don't give me any hassle with my questions and I wont give you any hassle with your questions. I'll promise I'll answer every question.

You just have to laugh at this point. It's absurd.

Why the face palm? He simply ignored my questions and I wasn't going to move on till he answered my questions. At the same time, since I did already answer his questions previously before, I told him where he can find the answer. He just decided to be lazy and come up with this lame excuse of having to "look for it". I didn't know ctrl+f "election" or "President" was that time consuming.

When you get kids....don't use the above logic with them, k.

I though it hit that realm back when the argument was that the commercial was really about spousal abuse and controlling women.

Lol. Kinda makes two of us then. How about, since it's your point and all, you characterize it.



That's clearly false. Well, it's either false, or you are deliberately pretending that I don't understand your point because you don't want to have to defend it. I'm going with the latter actually, because the point you made is neither unusual nor particularly complex. Amusingly, it's the exact same point Alma is making, and he's also gone to great lengths to obfuscate it after the fact in order to avoid having to defend some of the more obvious logical gaps.


It's like a twofer in here!

Next time, leave it at that and maybe someone will believe you. "I give up" but then write a 12 page essay is hardly giving up.