Entitled Gamers and Other Logical Fallacies

Ziljan

Ziljan
Most common strawman argument I've seen this past week is accusation of people claiming they were told to "git gud". When in fact they had been given some specific tips on tactics on how to survive an encounter. Prior to 2.1, when someone made these kinds of helpful comments, the OP would graciously thank the advice giver, and that would be the end of the thread. Now it is clear that many of these posts, by people who clearly need help, no longer want help, they just want to complain until Frontier changes things back to 2.0 fish in a barrel farming simulator.

How do you logic your way out of that situation? You can't. It's all sophistry and histrionics.
 
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bitstorm

bitstorm
The argument goes both ways. The basis for this video is the scenario where someone writes a completely rational, calm and accurately presented post, and idiots reply to it. Is not always the case.

My feeling is there are a lot of posts that appear here that *may* have a decent point behind them. The trouble is they're presented in such a way to obscure the point, hyperbole + exaggeration, presenting things as true which clearly aren't , and just plain rudeness end up not painting a picture of an issue with the game, but more a picture of the poster, of an agenda, or that the poster is twisting the truth. Combine that with an regular stream of such posts and it's not surprising folk will reply with a similar tone.

Not excusing the behaviour, it's just this video makes some assumptions that are not necessarily applicable in a number of the cases here. My feeling is on this forum a calm rational reasoned posts will get you decent replies (with maybe the odd "bad" reply), while an angry, rude, hyperbole laden post will get you exactly the same back (with the odd calm reply from some of the more patient posters).

It's almost the flipside of this argument, mostly I tend to think it starts with OP, not with the reply.
 
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Vasious

Vasious
I find it interesting the straw man example has
Person A saying X is too expensive
Person B says well you are entitled the Devs have to be able to eat

It then says Person B is strawmaning person A by insisting person B is saying "Person A must want this for free"

But at the same time that is strawmaning person B by insisting that anyone questioning someone saying X is too expensive must be assuming that they want it for free.
 
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Comrade Napoleon

Comrade Napoleon
Ziljan said:
they just want to complain until Frontier changes things back to 2.0 fish in a barrel farming simulator.
.
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Fixed your post. :D Because that is what you wanted to come across. Thank you for your deep insight. I could not have existed without. :eek:
"My own opinion is always more valid, superior and right than other people opinions"

Cheers Cmdr's
 

Cynaqq

Cynaqq
As always, someone is arguing against logical fallacies succumbing to their own fallacies.

Sometimes, the complaints are really valid, at other times they are not. Every situation has to be taken into account in it's particular circumstances and turning the rebuttals to a complaint on it's head and declaring it a logical fallacy doesn't make it so. The guy in the video made several arguments which could be accused of being slippery slope arguments for example.

Being aware of logical fallacies and not causing or using them as much as possible is a good thing but hunting for possible logical fallacies in discussions instead of actually discussing the subject at hand is as bad as locking up an argument by introducing a logical fallacy.

An example. We are having a debate about the new AI since the release of 2.1. No matter what anyone says, there is someone on the other side to rely on anecdotal evidence and claiming the other side's argument is invalid. Both sides are succumbing to appeal to popularity. That's why I insist we need to leave the emotions out and have the discussion on pure statistics. Arguing over our individual experience during last night's play session will never work. AI situation is not something we can solve by ourselves as long as FD keeps the actual stats and parameters to themselves. We have nothing solid to base decisions on. FD does.

Does this mean we shouldn't discuss anything and ignore the forums altogether? Of course not. What we have to do is to try to leave our emotions at the door as much as possible, refrain from taking sides and attacking others using generalizations and stereotypes. We do exhibit behavior which defies logic, hence logical fallacies, because we mostly argue due to emotion instead of discuss due to logic. Sadly, this is what we raise our children in and what we run the world based on. It's no surprise internet forums is nothing more than an enhanced and anonymised version of bar discussions where people who know nothing about actually governing a political body try to save the world.
 
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DrSeuss

DrSeuss
no one ever convinces anyone else of anything on the internet using truth! OP and vid creator must be new here, the internet is like politics, the only way you get anywhere is by lying, hyperbolizing, and venomously attacking anyone who moderately opposes your position, am I right?
 

Pardot Kynes

P
ethelred said:
Also never forget that over half the people you meet will be of less than average intelligence.
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Why over a half?

Exactly half of people are at or below average intelligence - by the definition of an arithmetic mean. So why over a half? That confusing message has been caused by you including the condition 'of people you meet.'

That depends who you meet. If you are a university professor, slightly over half the people you meet may be of over average intelligence. If you are in prison, over half the people you meet are likely to be under average intelligence.

Your clever statement - which went slightly awry - would be better stated 'half of people are of average intelligence or below.'
 

Ziljan

Ziljan
Comrade Napoleon said:
Fixed your post. :D Because that is what you wanted to come across. Thank you for your deep insight. I could not have existed without. :eek:
"My own opinion is always more valid, superior and right than other people opinions"

Cheers Cmdr's
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This is the exact kind of mental filter I was talking about.

You missed the entire point of my post which is that the tone on this Forum has completely changed from collegial problem solving, to adversarial mud slinging. I miss the problem solving. I miss the questions from people who were looking for in game solutions.
 

Kuroshio

Kuroshio
Thoughts? I'm disappointed. I can rattle of a dozen cognitive biases at work over the last few days - Naive Cynicism, Illusion of Asymmetric Insight, Clustering Illusion, Curse of Knowledge, just to name a few. Otherwise smart and insightful people not stopping to think before posting, not checking their premises, firing off their own emotional reactions against one another, while empathy has become victim of collateral damage.Throw in the most disturbing social mechanisms and rhetorical devices available - Dehumanization, Poisoning the Well, Appeals to Fear and No True Scotsmans, whatever is helpful in establishing Us v. Them mentalities.

My thoughts? I think posting videos without summarizing the content and with the sole purpose of categorizing one group of people (Them) against another group of people (Us) is propaganda, designed to attract shouts of 'Right!' (and 'Wrong!'), enforcing group think and drowning out argument. I think everyone who posts about logical fallacies should be aware of the fact that throwing a bunch of people in a group defined from the outside and assigning a derogatory term to them is a contradiction, because one of the terms is asking people to think and discuss, and the other wants them to feel and shout.

What I think? I think everyone here should wait five minutes before hitting the post button, use the time to read aloud what he wrote, and ask himself if what he wrote is something he'd like to hear if he were on the receiving end.

Edit: And I think I'm a little angry. Sorry about that. Also sorry about the forum eating the formatting, I hope it's fixed now. :)
 
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Comrade Napoleon

Comrade Napoleon
Ziljan said:
This is the exact kind of mental filter I was talking about.

You missed the entire point of my post which is that the tone on this Forum has completely changed from collegial problem solving, to adversarial mud slinging. I miss the problem solving. I miss the questions from people who were looking for in game solutions.
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Well if you miss that, I suggest you ask for collaboration in another way :D

Cheers Cmdr's
 

Zazzilas Arden

Zazzilas Arden
Comrade Napoleon said:
Fixed your post. :D Because that is what you wanted to come across. Thank you for your deep insight. I could not have existed without. :eek:
"My own opinion is always more valid, superior and right than other people opinions"

Cheers Cmdr's
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You have a nasty habit of ignoring good points, purposefully taking words or phrases out of context in an attempt to be confrontational, and being rude in general. You might want to stop that. Pretty sure at least one of those is against forum rules.

Cheers.
 
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Mike Syron

Mike Syron
GluttonyFang said:
Never assume your converse partner to be well-educated until proven, especially on the internet.
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Very true, but oooh ... those emotions. They can make you easily look like an *peep* pretty fast, regardless of any education, and I believe it's the most important thing you have to understand. Honestly, I needed some time myself to really comprehend this and to simply not post if I'm upset in any way. It just steals life time and makes you look like some *peep*. Nobody wants to look like some *peep* *peep* and *peep*. *peep*!

;-)
 
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