/sci/ - Science & Math

>>5434766
No because it's not a fallacy.

That's like saying, "You have to reply to my sun of qualia vs. sun of Jacob Barnett thread with a serious answer just use your imagination!"

When people ask hypotheticals they're seeking a response based slightly on reality. But when you toss reality out the window, you're just asking for trouble and deserve the troll responses.

I've had someone bug me with hypotheticals in the past and I just knitpick it to death to shut them the hell up. It's not due to a lack of imagination, but rather due to a pointlessness in attempting to answer the unanswerable, and not gaining anything in the process.

Using a particular phrase/term wouldn't really help your cause, to be honest. People, especially these people, will respond best if you answer their concern individually. If you try to apply a label (fallacy of ___) they will either go "What's that?" and then you have to explain it and then they feel you're patronizing them, or they will just skip to the last part.

Nonetheless I do know what you mean. If I asked my grandmother what she thinks would happen to our extensive system of asphalt roads if we develop technology that removes most of the need for them, she would probably make some initial objections along the lines of "like what?" or "does this matter somehow?" And that's because she's not really interested, and I know that, so I wouldn't ask her.

The client is requesting an answer to a valid question. Because the question is trival it can be answered easily and without much time taking away from the focus of the conversation. You expect the listener to just assume everything? now that would truly be regressive.

tl;dr

stop being a fucking asshole

>>5434766
like you I find it endlessly frustrating

>>5434794
> when you toss reality out the window
It's like you don't even understand the point of asking questions, nevermind considering hypotheticals.

>>5434814
No, I understand the point of asking good questions, but not the point of asking terribly stupid questions like "lel wat if ur in da matrix wat do?"

>>5434794
There's a difference between an interesting thought experiment and the kind of person you seem to take OP for.
hypothetical questions, however far removed from reality they may be, can still be useful and interesting. Not as some kind of empirical way of understanding the world, but to understand people and evoke questions and emotions and ideas from them rather than get lost in the semantics of the scenario.

>>5434809
I agree with this anon, that a name for a thing is rarely helpful, and at worst obscures matters further.

You just need to make clear that the things you're proposing are Hypothetical questions and, when possible, distill the question to what you're really trying to ask. If necessary, make clear what you AREN'T trying to ask.

>>5434809
You're right that jargon wouldn't be of any use when dealing with an average person. I would be happy if I just knew a phrase you could say to communicate that they've missed the issue. When Sam Harris once made the error by arguing against a similar hypothetical by saying "There is a problem with being high on the couch while your family starves," Richard Dawkins replied "It wouldn't have to be that way," which is a pretty good way to respond. It saved him the trouble of changing the scenario to a hypothetical.

This also shows that it's not just average people who make the error, so perhaps a piece of jargon would be useful. The moron in my original post is actually someone in my philosophy class, so jargon would have been very useful to quickly explain to the class why their argument was wrong.

Pedantry maybe?

>>5434766
>I could just say "that's an ambiguity fallacy" or something and not have to go through the process of altering my hypothetical.

And then the person you were trying to convince would rightly conclude that you had not refuted his point. And you will be picked up by the anti-buzzword patrol and placed in a re-education camp.

>>5434872

Some people have the following personality trait, and enjoy new and unusual ideas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience

But if you need help seeing the point of the hypothetical in my original post: It's a way of showing that people value more than their subjective experiences, but how things actually are. Many people feel wrong about locking themselves in a virtual paradise, even though their subjective experience would be precisely what they want it to be. This is a crucially important fact about humans.

>>5434898
That is a very good way of describing it. If I don't mind insulting them, I could say "You're being pedantic, the main issue is..."

>>5434872
So you don't understand the point, then. I will give you a protip which will help you in all your days on this planet and others, science willing.

People ask questions and omit details because fixing the details will not change the answer to the question. It doesn't matter how you'd live when hooked up to the machine because the question isn't about nutrition.

>>5434917
>>5434927
Sorry, some people have this personality trait called "introspective" which causes them to learn about themselves passively on topics like this.

It must have slipped my mind that others need to ask questions like this in order to learn about themselves!

>>5434933
they're asking you the question to learn about you, are you completely fucking autistic????

>>5434935
Of course he's autistic. Using that as an insult is not constructive.

>>5434935
>completely fucking autistic
Can we dispense with the buzzwords and catch-all phrases that are (misused) all across 4chan.
Please.

>>5434896
Perhaps the phrase: "Well you're missing the point." or "That's not what I meant" or "You're dodging the question."

Jargoning-it-up in your class may make your teacher like you, and it may impress your classmates. But you shouldn't need it to express yourself with words.
Unless your professor has some kind of frightening "only five words per sentence" rule that he strictly upholds in your class.

>>5434917
The "matrix" thought experiment is literally first 5 minutes of Phi 101 and leads to a philosophical dead end. Even mentioning it is a complete waste of time in any context.

Could be an Ignoratio Elenchi. While his/her statement is valid, it's (according to you, the author of the hypothetical) irrelevant.

Kind of like if the person responded that making a simulation machine would be impossible. While this may be true, it's irrelevant in the scenario you've laid out.

Also I discourage actually using Latin/Greek names for fallacies in regular conversations; just say "that's irrelevant".

>>5434941
>Can we dispense with the buzzwords and catch-all phrases that are (misused) all across 4chan.
>Please.
lol. You must be new here.

>>5434969
LEL. MEBBE UR A FAGET

I understand that what you're doing is common and largely accepted, but it does not help the fact that you're shitting all over a discussion by bringing autism into it for no good reason.

polite sage

>>5434974
>shitting all over a discussion
To the contrary, because it's so common and largely accepted the actual content of the discussion is not actually affected. Read the comments leading up to that statement. It started with an insult that does not even come close to derailing the thread or "shitting all over a discussion".

tl;dr insults don't ruin a discussion; lurk moar

>>5434951
Nozick's experience machine isn't about saying "For all we know, we are in a matrix right now" if that's what you thought.

>>5434991
It's the same "hurr wat is real and not real" dead end.

I like to think of it as "quit being an dick" fallacy.

When they nitpick some question I have I say "quit being a dick and answer the question. You can just abstain or something." Usually then I get an answer. If I don't it means they're being a dick, aftter which I leave; or they abstain and I respekt their decision.

Works out well.

Captcha: lexicon lawtors

>>5434872

Are you that autistic guy that goes completely ballistic when someone mentions concience?

formulating responses with what little detail one is given is a moronic reply?

Stop being so ignorant, OP. You're employing the very same behavior you are venting about in others.

>>5435084
No, I'm a dualist.

>>5435085

Are you serious? What a load of shit

>>5435085

You know, this argument would work a lot better if the OP phrased the question differently or used a different example.

But it said "You ask them if they would enter a virtual reality machine for the rest of their life wherein they would believe they are a successful actor." It's pretty much already included that you have the basic necessities of life.

>>5435141
it is only for normals, apparently

>>5435162

I think what's happened here is that sci spends too much time talking to cmputers, so to them it seems preposterous that people will be fed and taken care off in the VR machine since it was not initialized in the question.

Who the fuck would want to live life as a successful actor?

>>5435171

Successful actors?

Since you're assuming the person you're explaining the hypothetical is knowledgeable enough to know the answer to their easily answered question it's simply an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I don't think it's considered a fallacy even if it is fucking annoying to be in your shoes.

>>5435178
Most of them are messed up in drugs/divorces every day.

Imagine having a shitty job and then being stalked by fans/reporters.

>>5435198
imagine fucking hot actresses

>>5435218
>implying I'm not gay
>implying an ugly me would get sex

This fantasy sucks.

>>5435219

Are you trying to be like OPs friend on purpose or were you simply born unable to answer a hypothetical question?

>>5435220
Is that a hypothetical question because if so I can't answer that.

>>5435230

>>5435235

Thanks to this post linked to the homepage, I stumbled upon this thread and made my night. Thanks guys.

>>5434766
>Of course this is a moronic reply
someone's a bit of an asshole
how about you're a moron
you can point out that they're just avoiding the question, but there's no reason to make fun of them. that's extremely childish
>Perhaps most people just don't have very refined abstract reasoning skills
you're such an asshole that my vocabulary does not effectively describe how much of an asshole you are
the way you see these "morons" is the way i see you

>>5435361
ok i take that back
if someone's messing with you and just doesn't take you seriously, then it's perfectly understandable why you'd get frustrated
but if they're taking the question seriously and you're being an asshole then i don't take back what i said

The more intelligent you are the more you're able to accurately model situations. OP's smarter than most in this thread, at least the people who doubt the validity of "thought experiments", because you're implying that any experiment EVER was conducted without human thought playing some role.

So rather than focusing on how dumb everyone else is, which is very difficult to do personally speaking, I think we should focus on improving our own modeling capabilities.

>>5434766
The only one who committed an error is you, OP. You are the retard who makes up infantile and irrelevant hypotheticals with no basis in reality and without any deeper meaning. How about you stop wasting your time with cretinous escapism and instead start becoming a productive member of society, you degenerate imbecile?

>>5434941

A word means what most the people in the world think it means. Language is not static but dynamic. Autistic has evolved especially here on 4chan.

OP I think youre just not understanding the meaning behind those questions. For your example of being in a VR machine for the rest of your life, is there some sort of life support system is a perfectly valid question. If my life is going to be shortened, perhaps it will affect my answer. You need to read between the lines to see what they are getting at.

>>5434766

1) you're not proposing the hypotheticals correctly. gotta have a socratic approach(start with asking if the subject enjoys video games)

2) you can't imagine entering a virtual reality for the rest of your life because you don't know what that even means in terms of what would happen to your actual body and if you would remember the reality that you're in virtual reality.. you can speculate about these things but its all bullshit at the end so theres no point.

>>5436725

Therefore the feeling or thought-processing you're trying to induce from the hypothetical won't work