Side Comments on Progress after the Royal Society Conference

[lee_merrill]

@Dan_Eastwood

@lee_merrill

Yet we reject a quite logical argument that stems from paranoia, from unreasoning causes! If everyone is out to get you, you quite logically won’t call the police if something bad happens to you, because of course, they are out to get you too. An argument coming from nonreason, we always reject it, we don’t consider that valid reasoning, it’s part of a meritorious argument.

The paranoid is reasoning, albeit from incorrect information or mental aberration, but that is not “coming from nonreason”; it is reasoning to an incorrect conclusion.

No, I point out here that their logic is quite correct! The problem is not with their reasoning, instead it’s with their perception that everyone is out to get them, it’s with their premise.

@Dan_Eastwood

And FWIW, it is also possibly (but perhaps unlikely) to reach a correct conclusion from faulty reasoning.

Quite so! You have perhaps seen the FarSide cartoon where a mathematician has put up a proof on the blackboard, where one step reads “And then a miracle happens…”

Or once I put up a proof for my math teacher’s challenge, and as I was presenting it, he said “There! You divided by zero.” And I had! But the challenge was to prove a true statement, only my proof was faulty, even though it got the right result.