Who invented "valid arguments"?

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Who's idea was it that when making a speech or debate you need to follow all these complicated rules that almost never have anything to do with logic? A lot of smart people who have done their own original research lose debates simply for not being a robot, whereas somebody else could be speaking complete nonsense but still wins the debate through technicalities.

One big problem is your expected to explain the obvious in great detail like this:

"...and when these chemicals are mixed they produces a color as blue as the sky."

"Can you prove the sky is blue?"

Or

"Hackers cracked the code by replacing letters with numbers, such as replacing Es with 5s because E is the 5th number of the alphabet."

"Can you prove that E is the 5th number?"


Then there's the whole issue of everything be a "sweeping generalization" if something doesn't happen 100.0% all the time, ranging from stupid things like "not all coke cans are red" to stuff that are a big deal like "not all Islamic terrorists are evil." First of all, if I say Coke cans are red, you should know I'm talking about the regular Classic Coca-Cola and not the diet stuff, or some obscure variation, but the color of a Coke can shouldn't matter. Second of all, just because "not all Islamic terrorists are evil" doesn't mean it's not a serious problem.

I'm not sure about the examples but:

The state of human knowledge is in something of a bad way right now. It's not that there's too little of it - it's that there's too much and so much of that's politically or superstitiously generated BS. Based on the sheer bulk it seems like arguments are won or lost partly based on style and air, the rest seems to be whether or not the audience and commentators can keep up with what's being said or whether their objectivity or awareness of the topics is up to snuff to be commenting or moderating. Also it never helps to be right on an issue if that side of the argument is unpopular.

Right now with all the bulk and all the disagreements on subjects that there should technically be no disagreement on people have a way of bringing their own facts to the party - that's somewhat taken for granted because it's difficult to do better and the unfortunate side effect is large servings of confirmation bias. When you realize that your facts and the other person's facts are irreconcilable there's no debate - at least there's nothing that will come of it better than you'd get if you were debating choice in religion.

The theory I'm coming to on this - I'm really starting to think that truth just isn't that far up the list of most people's priorities; whether it's family/clan, in-group preference and defense, making money, or opportunism for other reasons. When you think about it we're wired to be animals, we're a lot better at that than holding truth over personal gain, and if a person really does hold truth over personal gain this natural state of people's preferences and I think also the strength of their limbic systems spells utter misery. That and I'm sure that while there may very well be a double-digit % minority who really care that much about the truth to keep it on the front burner and within their top one to three priorities I still think they can get quickly caught in the malaise, the sheer bulk of information that's out there, deferring to authority where they either don't have the interest or time, and the really depressing piece there is just how often authority crumbles in its reliability.

This is part of why I generally run from caustic/destructive debate - whoever's more caustic, chooses to give the other person less benefit of the doubt, or - simply put - has less grasp on how little they actually know, the person with the most proud and puffed out chest of the two, or the person with the more popular opinion, wins. Constructive debate is a completely different story because that's two people helping each other elucidate the strengths and weaknesses of their positions and the criticisms are actually of good quality in that case. IMHO mutually constructive debate is about the only variety that's worth much these days.

The rules of debate evolved for the 25 centuries since Plato and Aristotle.

I doubt anyone would demand that you prove "coke cans are red" if you said something was "as red as a coke can".

And the rules evolved largely because of the pitfalls of "common sense".

If you always followed common sense you would believe that the Earth is flat, and that the sun is a satellite of the Earth (instead of the other way around).

But you're right that if even if you follow "valid arguments" you can still arrive at wrong conclusions. And sometimes common sense is right. Lol!

it is relatively easy to define "red", to begin with, but it is very hard to define "evil".
as soon as one says: because they kill people, one could answer: so do the American drones.

eventually, we westerners argue for our violence with necessity, and we consider the other's violence unnecessary, and therefore evil.
now, I certainly would not want to say that beheading people is necessary, but the terrorist thinks that.
so the question is not whether he's evil, he would disagree here, or whether it's necessary, which he'd insist on, but what we expect to happen if we try keeping him from it.
will there be more or less beheadings?

the way we acted in the last 16 years, the answer is: more.
so, if the islamic terrorist is evil, are our actions creating more evil? are our actions therefore evil?

on the other hand: yes, it's easy to prove the colour of the sky, and E is the fifth number because the result creates something meaningful out of nonsense.

It's really hard to prove the sky is blue because you need to use equipment to measure the frequency of the light beam, and explain how rods and cones respond to different light frequencies.

It's even harder to explain how colors look like to a colorblind person.

No. It isn't hard at all.

You take a snapshot, and show the picture.

Or not even that. You justify as a witness that you saw with your own eyes that its blue.

Anyone who doesn't accept that is practicing sophistry.

When I first started homebrew programming I had to explain to brainiacs that it's their bloated code that causes slowdown, not the SNES's 3.58 Mhz 65816 CPU. I had to prove some pretty basic stuff like how using less instructions speeds code up, and how registers are faster than memory. They still wouldn't believe me.

I'd recommend an introduction to abstract math. In this world, you have two choices: logical argument or stuff like Infowars.

http://m.sfgate.com/weird/article/NASA- ... 259620.php

Gosh. Programming a machine is a different kettle of fish from the kinda thing I thought you were talking about (arguing philosophy, or law).

The proof of any pudding is in the eating.

I suppose you could create some simple dummy programs that illustrate your point. One program that does some simple task one way, and show how runs faster than another that does the same task another way.

Valid argument:

The surface of the moon is made of cheese.
Therefore, the moon comprises cheese.

Valid Argument: In logic, an argument is valid if and only if it takes a form that makes it impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to be false
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity

Some things can be assumed as "simply true", mainly things that are defined by humans (like what "blue" looks like, or the order of the alphabet).

In essence, a 'valid argument' is one that is based on a combination of verifiable facts and human-made definitions, while a non-valid argument is based on opinions and assumptions.

LNH makes a good point (the cheese thing is not really a good example, but its a good point).

That the phrase "valid argument" means a specific thing in the realm of debate.

The actual meaning of the phrase "valid argument" is this: that the argument is constructed in such a way that if the premise were true then your conclusion would also have to be true.

The classic version:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore Socrates is mortal.

The concluding statement about Socrates is true, AND valid, because the first line is true, and the argument based upon it is valid. And leads to the true conclusion.

The premise does not have to be true for the argument to be "valid". It just has to be constructed in such a way that the argument WOULD be true IF the premise were true.

All guys who drive Ford Explorers are wife beaters.

Naturalplastic drives a Ford Explorer.

Therefore Naturalplastic is a wife beater.

The above would be true if the premise stated in the first line were true. So the whole statement is valid. But not necessarily "true".

How this applies to the OP's situation is not obvious.

I suppose the OP could use it to turn the tables on these folks (not in hostile way, but in a diagnostic way, if that makes sense) and ask THEM if they are disputing him based upon his premise (that instructions slow down processing), or upon his conclusion (that the person's particular program has too many instructions). And then take it from there in partnering with them in programming.

Yeah, it's a little too late for that. I've been banned from those websites years ago. I'm still working on a game, it's just that I couldn't get a game done when those discussions took place.

But every time I work on my game I think "look at how much work they got me into doing, and now I have to finish this damn game just so I can sell it and finally get a profit from all this hard work, but I feel like my brain got dumber having to argue and programming gives me headaches."

What kind of a game is it, may I ask?

An action platformer about an anime girl fighting large monsters and robots. The monsters and robots have lots of moving joints (which is something those people kept saying was impossible.)

"Impossible"??????

Why would they think that anthropomorphic characters like robots, monsters, and an actual human female hotties, would lack knees and elbows?

The 1920's pioneers of cartoon animation had the same problem back in the days of the early film industry. The issue was man hours (what it takes to draw the hundreds of drawings of the same thing over and over again but with the tiny changes in motion to create the illusion of animation), and not the processing speed of a computer, or the number of lines of programming you had to write. But it was the same principle.

Their solution was to create characters without joints, but with curved flexible pvc pipe type limbs, ending with big shoes, and with big white gloves. Felix the Cat, early Mickey Mouse, and the like all did all kinds of slapstick, and other action, but you (the viewer) never get wise to the fact that they never bend an elbow, or a knee! Because you never notice that they don't have elbows or knees! Clever slight of hand by the animators.

Saved a boat load of man hours.

Maybe you can get away with making some of your animie characters have limbs like Felix the Cat, or Mickey Mouse.

Of course the protagonist would have to have normal legs, and arms, because she (like Betty Boop) is a hottie. Lol!