Do you have the slightest clue what hypotheticals and stipulations are?

[Elrohir]

1. Did you have the slightest clue what hypotheticals and stipulations were before this thread?
2. Do you have said clue now?
3. Did I miss anything?
4. Do you disagree with anything I've said?
5. What % of people who opened this thread do you suppose read the whole thing?
6. How few responses will this thread get before it sinks to page 2 oblivion?
7. Should "misuse of hypotheticals" be added to my previous thread on Most Annoying Argument Tactics?
8. Does anyone have any speculation as to why otherwise rhetorically literate people so often make themselves look stupid when it comes to hypotheticals? Is it that they see, but do not want to face, their own inconsistency on some other issue?
9. Any typos or thinkos?
10. Anything else?

1. Yep!
2. Yep!
3. Nothing jumped out at me.
4. There wasn't anything in the OP that I thought was wrong.
5. About 30%.
6. 37
7. I don't think you should gravedig it, but it probably belongs there.
8. Generally, I guess people just don't want to really think about the hypothetical, or their actual answer. Like Erik's thread awhile back that addressed whether you should rape your own child, or let a city be obliterated. Pretty much no one actually answered that question. I don't think it was because it was too difficult to understand or anything, but because if they had, then they would have had to face certain truths about themselves and their moral ideas. But not doing that misses the whole point, unfortunately.
9. Nope.
10. How many people do you really think will change because of this?

 

[LucyDuke]

it's a waste of perfectly good keyboard input

Uh, 'gloo, remember that this is OT?

 

[Fifty]

Well for a start I disagree with the rather odd assumption that people who answer the way they want to are stupid. It is only stupid to do this on an exam paper. Politicians make careers out of responding to questions in precisely the manner they want to, are they all necessarily stupid? (ok i'll grant you GWB.)

Where again did I say they were stupid?

 

[IglooDame]

Uh, 'gloo, remember that this is OT?

Granted, but there are relative gradations of uselessness even within the overall gathering of uselessness that is the OT subforum. This thread is clearly is on the doomed-to-irrelevance side even by OT's fairly unusual standards.

 

[LucyDuke]

Granted, but there are relative gradations of uselessness even within the overall gathering of uselessness that is the OT subforum. This thread is clearly is on the doomed-to-irrelevance side even by OT's fairly unusual standards.

Ah, see, I assumed that we all checked our expectations of even slight usefulness or productivity at the door.

Nobody grades the quality of poop on a scale.


Oh and yeah fifty that's all cool but people are gonna be dumb anyway especially when they're trying to be clever.

 

[Fifty]

Granted, but there are relative gradations of uselessness even within the overall gathering of uselessness that is the OT subforum. This thread is clearly is on the doomed-to-irrelevance side even by OT's fairly unusual standards.

It'll be fun to link at someone when they exhibit the tactics outlined in the OP, though!

Nobody grades the quality of poop on a scale.

WRONG

Oh and yeah fifty that's all cool but people are gonna be dumb anyway especially when they're trying to be clever.

People are always gonna murder, don't mean it should be legal!

 

[LucyDuke]

WRONG

Well, I knew that was gonna be disputed, but I thought it would be by Perfy. That ain't what I meant though! I mean that nobody looks at seven piles of poop and picks out which is the best pile of poop. Except I'm wrong about that, too, but people are always gonna grade poop, don't mean it should be allowed.

People are always gonna murder, don't mean it should be legal!

I ain't defendin' fools! Just sayin' that the ones that need to listen ain't gonna listen.

 

[Phlegmak]

...

Fifty, you know that when people make choices that aren't part of the stipulations, that it's some sort of protest vote at a hypothetical situation they disapprove of. I know you know this. OF COURSE the responders to such threads know what stipulations are and what hypotheticals are.

For example, I find these sorts of hypothetical situations incredibly annoying: "You have a box with a button on it, and if you press the button, the universe blows up. What do you do?" Such questions are incredibly annoying due to the extreme uselessness of the situation that I can't help but post stupid responses that help to ruin the thread. You know this and I know you know this.

 

[Fifty]

Fifty, you know that when people make choices that aren't part of the stipulations, that it's some sort of protest vote at a hypothetical situation they disapprove of. I know you know this. OF COURSE the responders to such threads know what stipulations are and what hypotheticals are.

For example, I find these sorts of hypothetical situations incredibly annoying: "You have a box with a button on it, and if you press the button, the universe blows up. What do you do?" Such questions are incredibly annoying due to the extreme uselessness of the situation that I can't help but post stupid responses that help to ruin the thread. You know this and I know you know this.

So basically you do poster 1-3 stuff, but you're a closet poster 5... well poster 5 is wrong too!

 

[moscaverde]

I agree with the op, this is even more annoying in real life, discussing serious things (yes, some people don´t know what stipulations and what hypotheticals are).
Some answers are funny, though.

 

[Phlegmak]

So basically you do poster 1-3 stuff, but you're a closet poster 5... well poster 5 is wrong too!

So you actually ponder idiotic hypothetical situations in a scientific manner? I don't believe you.

 

[Fifty]

So you actually ponder idiotic hypothetical situations in a scientific manner? I don't believe you.

Sure I do! It can be interesting and it can actually disprove real viewpoints about stuff! And before you dismiss the stuff below as airy, speculative philosophy, realize the extent to which some of the greatest scientists utilized thought experiments (Einstein most famously).

For instance, suppose my ethical view is that "maximum amount of happiness in the world" is the ultimate end. Well, then I could consider this completely bizarre hypothetical, and realize that I don't really want to hold that view anymore:

Consider two worlds:

World A has 1,000,000 very happy and content people in it. Suppose that we can quantify the happiness in this world at one unit of happiness per person, for a total of 1,000,000 happiness-units.

World B has 1,000,000^1,000,000 people in it, each of whom lives horrible crappy lives with very little happiness. Suppose that we can quantify the happiness in this world at .001 units of happiness per person.

The total amount of happiness in World B is much higher than that in World A, yet World A seems clearly preferable to World A (i.e. if I had to choose to bring into existence one of these two worlds, any sane, ethical person would choose World A). So, my ethical view has been disproved by a wildly unrealistic thought experiment! Horray for thought experiments!

There are other, more worldly thought experiments too. Suppose your view is "torture is always wrong under any circumstances whatsoever". Then I'd ask, if you had a choice between administering moderate torture to a horrible child rapist murderer, or having every innocent child in the universe get raped and murdered, which would you choose? Surely, you'd choose to torture the murderer! Thus, your view on torture is in need of revision, perhaps to something more mild like "though torture isn't always wrong under any circumstances whatsoever, it is wrong in every realistically forseeable circumstance in our world, so it ought to be prohibited as a matter of law".

 

[punkbass2000]

But what's behind poster number 6??

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I tend not to use the term "under any circumstances whatsoever" when describing my ethical positions, just "under any circumstances that can reasonably be expected".

 

[Fifty]

I tend not to use the term "under any circumstances whatsoever" when describing my ethical positions, just "under any circumstances that can reasonably be expected".

Nobody ever said or implied you did. You're evidently failing to understand my hypothetical about the usefullness of hypotheticals????

 

[The Last Conformist]

Fifty, you know that when people make choices that aren't part of the stipulations, that it's some sort of protest vote at a hypothetical situation they disapprove of. I know you know this. OF COURSE the responders to such threads know what stipulations are and what hypotheticals are.

For example, I find these sorts of hypothetical situations incredibly annoying: "You have a box with a button on it, and if you press the button, the universe blows up. What do you do?" Such questions are incredibly annoying due to the extreme uselessness of the situation that I can't help but post stupid responses that help to ruin the thread. You know this and I know you know this.

So ... why don't you avoid the stupid hypotheticals threads?

 

[Phlegmak]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7037071&postcount=33

Those hypotheticals are different from the more common ones of "You have to push a button on a box that might or might not kill someone you don't know."

So ... why don't you avoid the stupid hypotheticals threads?

Yes, that's the point I'm at now. However, the stupidity of a thread is usually not gleaned until after the thread is opened and read a little bit. Once I've read at least a little of it, I'm at the point where I'm annoyed and I have no problem trying to ruin the thread.

To you and Fifty: You both probably know that I also have made threads about hypotheticals but I always try to put some reason and logic into my hypotheticals.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Nobody ever said or implied you did. You're evidently failing to understand my hypothetical about the usefullness of hypotheticals????

I never accused anyone of saying I did this - just pointing out how it allows me to deal with these hypotheticals.

(I am not saying that you said that I said that someone accused me of . . . ah, forget it.)

 

[Elrohir]

I never accused anyone of saying I did this - just pointing out how it allows me to deal with these hypotheticals.

(I am not saying that you said that I said that someone accused me of . . . ah, forget it.)

Eran that was 38!

6. How few responses will this thread get before it sinks to page 2 oblivion?

6. 37

EDIT: Wait, Phlegmak posted number 38. Nevermind, I love you again.

 

[lovett]

Pears and Rasberries respectively.

It's a question of ease of consumption really.