Reasoning and Logic

[Anonymous No.16861890]

Hello /lit/, I am coming from /out/ where they told me to read kaczynski. I usually don't read that much but that kinda got me interested and now I am amazed at how analytically he argues in his books and how he always has a very strong way of convincing the reader with logic.
This fascinates me a lot and I also think that it could be useful to know a little more about logical fallacies and how to spot/avoid them and basically how to win an argument on 4chan. I want to be able to write essays that actually convince the reader, assuming I ever have some original thoughts that are worth writing down I want to be prepared.
As I don't want to upset anyone I already looked through the wiki but the only thing that comes close is pic related, and I would like to read only one book on the topic.

[Anonymous No.16861965]

Logic is something monkeys can do, it's not very impressive.

[Anonymous No.16862291]

>>16861890
You don't want logic, you want rhetoric. Just read the first rhetoric book and you'll be good.

[Anonymous No.16862401]

>>16862291
Thanks, but in that case what is logic?

[Anonymous No.16862404]

Start with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.16862554]

>>16861890
Start with Shogun then Ascendancy then In Waves then whatever you want after that

[Anonymous No.16863023]

>>16862554
Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.16863054]

>>16861890
Assuming you've done some uni math and know how to do induction, an excellent book on logic is "Set Theory, Logic, and their Limitations." If you like that and want something less math related try this one on causation "Counterfactuals" by Lewis.

The Rhetorica ad Herremium and Quintilians Institutiones are both excellent rhetoric texts.

I would also add the Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria Nova has invaluable advice for how to style your writing despite it being from the middle ages.

[Anonymous No.16863181]

Pic related is accessible and concise but also gets to a lot of important results and intuitions. They used this in the math logic class that was required for the philosophy grad students but open as an elective to math, computer science, and philosophy undergrads, so a background doing proofs really isn't necessary (although it will help if you have it.)

Afterwards if something catches your interest there are other places to look that can help supplement understanding especially wrt reasoning, metaphysics and ontology, philosophy of mathematics, philosophical logic, also different formal/syllogistic systems related to logic like category and type theory, different modal logics etc.

Part of the thing with Kaczynski is while he does proceed in a reason oriented way there are always underlying questions about the reasoning process. The more you can learn how to negotiate these different underlying questions and form your own informed conclusions, more interesting stuff will open up when it comes to reading these kinds of things.

Also depending on your educational background there might be better recommendations but I'm giving these recs assuming you haven't done something like university level courses that involve first-order logic proofs (or something analogous).

[Anonymous No.16863965]

>>16861890
Read the trivium book and then that first logic book on the chart

[Anonymous No.16864180]

>>16862401

logic is basically the code for human arguments. Well that's the philosophical part of logic and it does kind of go in absurdum about what we in everyday life say is logic or logical.

Another way to put it, and what i actually think you're after, is that logic is the discipline of putting arguments where they belong and not exaggerating or understating their meaning. This sounds all good and perfect until you come to the following point:

Logic and different philosophical arguments are most of the times based on axioms, which are assumed truths. And since nothing can be proven to be true, this is where one might get stuck (and get a degree in philosophy or go full Nitch (yes, fuck you grammarfags)) and go mental. A better way to tackle this is to just state that, "given that this seems most plausible" or "based on bla bla bla i'm gonna assume xxxx is true".

Anywho, let's get back to the pros and cons of logic. The pros of logic is that given that your axiom holds up and that the data you put into your arguments is true, your argument will be true. The problem (or the con) with logic is that it only works if you have correct information. And this might seem like a smaller hurdle than it is. In games and intelligence tests and other analytical thinking tasks, most of the times you have complete information or a certain set of rules that do not change without the knowledge of the participants. In reality, no one knows shit about how things actually are. Things are jumbled together in general groups (at the expense of precision), words are used in different ways by different agitators, different people have different information and have a subjective bias that makes them weigh the arguments differently... I think you get what i'm getting at.

The problem with logic isn't logic itself but rather that the fields in which it can be properly applied is basically programming and mental penis measuring by philosophers. I haven't read the unabomber manifesto but from what i've understood he was highly intelligent and quite rigid in his understanding of how things were. This to me smells a lot like Aspergers. People with Aspergers usually have better logical thinking than they have other cognitive abilities, and this is because they have a lower ability to percieve implicit information. Therefore the world seems logical to them and they try to apply these rules to others and the world around them. And when that doesn't work, they rage. That's ok, as long as they don't rage so much that they try to blow people up.


Yeah, it's been a while since i studied philosophy so some might come with some "ackcchuallly" here but... this is the gist of it.

Sorry for the wall of text crit.

[Anonymous No.16864862]

>>16862291
This nigga gets it.

[Anonymous No.16866069]

>>16864180
based effortposter

[Anonymous No.16867042]

>>16861890
Understanding arguments is crucial to being well-educated, but studying grammar to this end is doing it the dumb way. Arguably the same goes for logic.

[Anonymous No.16867064]

Read Goldfarb's Deductive Logic for a great first course in logic.

>>16864180
I would "ackcchuallly" this poster if I had the energy. This is a pretty pseud understanding of what logic is, how argument works, and in what our knowledge consists.

[Anonymous No.16867085]

>>16867064
>I can totally BTFO the effortposter, but I can't be bothered

[Anonymous No.16867134]

>>16861890
>impressed by kaczynski
jej

[Anonymous No.16867248]

>>16862404
Start with the Greeks.

Rhetoric is useless and random without reason and truth.

[Anonymous No.16867683]

logic isn't very useful unless you're going into mathematics/compsci or interested in history

otherwise for real world concerns in all their complexity, not just trickery and reductionism, it is usually too confining.

[Anonymous No.16869126]

>>16867064
>pseud

Bait successful.

Please explain to me, a clinical psychologist with a masters in neuroscience who left philosophy for psychology due to the circlejerk philosophy has become, how knowledge works.
I mean it is quite amazing that the fountain of knowledge who apparently can explain things that the greatest minds of mankind are struggling with spends his time shitposting on an anonymous internet forum. I am honestly excited to read your explanation. And just for clarity’s sake, please refrain from using terms that do not have a scientific basis (i e philosophical or psychological assumptions that came out of some ”great” thinker’s ass which can neither be proved or disproved, and can’t be studied empirically).

[Anonymous No.16869194]

>>16869126
fucking hell, dial it down a few notches you cringelord

[Anonymous No.16869212]

>>16862401
Logic is the formal study of how to derive new truths from old truths. It's an attempt to mechanise the attempts to do so; it tells you nothing about how to obtain any particular kind of truth, which is where the popular understanding of logic falls short: there is not a single logic structuring the universe, but rather logics which seem to correspond to the intelligibility of existence.

[Anonymous No.16869230]

>>16861890
>Hello /lit/, I am coming from /out/ where they told me to read kaczynski.
ha yes the big gays from out desperate to larp as alpha males to realize their power fantasies enjoy the mental ramblings of a gay dude who got fucked in the ass

[Anonymous No.16869237]

>>16862401
>>Thanks, but in that case what is logic?


By the way truth is not found in logic. Logic is just a field by autistic pedants about well formed formulas and valuations, ie sending a formula to 1 or 0 and asking what are those valuations which are stable under inference rules. Zero truth in this, especially truth in the casual sense. Tarski truth is moronic, meaningless. Peak atheist.
Just like there is no truth in science, just some stats and a stat convention for saying ''if p value is XXX then the result is''true''''

This is why science is shit for politics and even for daily life.
At best scientists can come up about some stats about some formal system. Like ''this material has such and wear and tear, therefore our backlog of such conditons lead to 60% of breaking in the next year''
That's the pinnacle of the scientific claim and all their claims remain phrased as uncertainty.

logic and science are just a narrative like any other and it is not proven at all it investigates anything

This is because formalized science is based on logicized maths, hyped as ''the language of the universe'' by posci addicts lol

and logicized maths is based on logic

all mathematicians are logic babies addicted to ZFC and they are all platonist, ie ''numbers are real bro not social construct''.

[Anonymous No.16869329]

>>16864180
>The problem (or the con) with logic is that it only works if you have correct information.
No, you also must have faith in your inference rules and nobody agrees on what those rules must be

[Anonymous No.16870094]

>>16869230
This is just not true. Most of the true /out/doorsmen are quite humble, the type of people you describe are the larpers on this board. There are an admittedly large number of them but there is also a good amount of comfy threads that have nothing to do with trying to be manly

[Anonymous No.16870183]

>>16870094
Don't mind them /out/ poster. Wait until you reach /x/ tier, if you know how to avoid the Creepypastas and occult shills.

[Anonymous No.16870221]

/out/ is just muh hunting muh simping over whores in woods

[Anonymous No.16870892]

>>16870221
Are we talking about the same /out/? Sure there are some muricans talking about muh guns and hunting, but there is also a lot of hiking and foraging threads

[Anonymous No.16872196]

>>16869126
I unironically think you put that anon in their place, given how they didnt' seem to reply. Well done, and I see nothing wrong with
>>16864180
By the way