Of all of the logical fallacies to watch out for in detecting when someone is being intentionally intellectually dishonest in attacking a proposition there are two that stand out:
1) Of the various disjunctive supporting arguments available, the attacker will avoid the strongest. 2) When attacking any such disjunctive supporting arguments, the attack will pretend (or imply) that the arguments are actually conjunctive. When they do one of these things, you might continue just to see if they do the other, at which point there is no point continuing the argument. They aren't even playing devil's advocate. They're just plain devilish. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 3:01 PM, Edmund Storms <stor...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > Of course it is erratic. The only question is: Is it erratic because of > random error or because the required conditions are not created every time. > We now know that certain critical conditions are required, which are not > created except by guided luck. So what? This problem is typical of all new > discoveries before they are mastered. > > What is the usefulness of all this discussion. Cude will not accept the > most obvious and well supported arguments and he will not > accept what I just said here. He makes no effort to find common ground or > to add any insight to the discussion. In his mind, the CF claims are only > pseudoscience - end of discussion. Why not let him go his way with this > belief and discuss something useful because, as past experiences > demonstrated, there is no end to this process. > > Ed > > On May 8, 2013, at 1:37 PM, Joshua Cude wrote: > > On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:16 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> >> >> The results are not erratic. >> > > Storms called cold fusion his reluctant mistress, and in an interview with > ruby carat (I think) he says the effect depends on mother natures mood (I'm > paraphrasing). Sounds erratic to me. > > > >
