I did NOT commit the fallacy of appealing to authority. That you think I did shows that you don't really understand the fallacy. I sense that you are REJECTING my logical arguments because you think I am not properly trained in logic (or for some other reason, who knows). The point I was trying to make is that although I do not have a degree, I do understand the subject. All I asked was,
"IF a logic professor said the same things I said, would you listen to HIM, since HE actually has the credentials you seem to think I lack?"
Except that's not what you said. This is what you said:
"If you don't believe me, check with someone who actually has a degree in the subject. If someone with a degree said so, would you listen then? Or would you say the professor is also trolling you?"
Do you see the difference? I have no idea whether you have a degree in logic. I've never commented on what profession you might be in, or what degree you might have, because neither is relevant to this discussion. I have no idea why you think I believe you to lack certain credentials.
So my best guess was that you believed that getting someone with a degree in logic to back you up would, and should, be more persuasive to me. But instead of reading what you actually wrote, you decided instead to restate yourself in new terms and claim that I must not really understand the fallacy.
Notice how other discussions tend to move along at a much faster pace? That's because other interlocutors are more careful about reading each other, and more careful in disagreeing.
And, just so we're clear, I didn't return your jibe about trolling because you claimed an argument of mine lacked logic. Stating "I'm not sure your conclusion is really supported here, because..." and stating "take a class in logic" are two different things. You've done something similar in the above paragraph: "no, I didn't mean to use a logical fallacy; this what I meant" has turned instead into "you don't understand the logical fallacy." That's the mark of someone who is less interested in focusing on the issue under discussion, and more interested in turning the discussion into a kind of rhetorical pissing match. It may be that you've simply grown so accustomed to adopting a certain tone in your posts that you've grown unaware of how they sound to others, but it's not doing you any favors from the vantage of persuasion or credibility.
you wrote - "I described a post he made to another individual as sounding haughty; and the use of the term, especially in that context, doesn't imply offense. "
I disagree, and I think a reasonable interpretation of the meaning of the word "haughty" would support my disagreeing with you. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one I suppose. But if you weren't trying to imply any offense, I think "haughty" was the wrong word to use.
Interesting. If you read a letter to the editor in a newspaper, and the writer strikes what you think to be a somewhat haughty tone in commenting to the editor, do you personally take offense? Of course not.
As for the circle, now you are just being difficult. I read what you wrote perfectly fine. I have always excelled in reading comprehension, so I would appreciate it if you would stop disparaging my abilities.
If you want others to treat what you write with more courtesy, you're going to have to treat their writing in the same way. I'm very at home with a rough and tumble discussion, but you should expect to have to eat some of what you dish out. If you want to tell everyone you think has committed a logical fallacy in an argument to "read a book on logic," "take a logic class," etc., then you should expect to get some poking in return.
When you wrote "Full circle," you implied something that isn't true. You implied a closed system, or at least that accidents were the most significant factor in causing congestion. If you did NOT mean to imply that, why did you write "Full circle?" Being that so many things contribute to congestion, what point were you TRYING to make when you triumphantly said "Full circle," as though you had just made some sort of big point? Once you acknowledge that your "circle" is not closed, or even close to it, doesn't that render your entire "circle" point irrelevant?
I mean, seriously, what was your point? Yes, accidents cause congestion. And Fire causes burns. What is your point?
I wrote "full circle" in a "triumphant" tone of voice? What do your reading comprehension skills tell you about the danger of reading a tone into a single written phrase like full circle?
And actually, I'd like to see you articulate what you think a reasonable point I could have been making would be. Seriously. Look at the original post in which I used the phrase, and try to determine what reasonable point might have been made.
You continue to rely on a flawed argument, that of "We must go 55 instead of 75 because going 55 is safer than going 75."
This does not work. I am not going to bother explaining the flaw in that argument, because I have done exactly that no fewer than ten times in this thread.
I'm going to put this in bold.
No, that is not my argument; it is not anyone's argument.
My thesis has been: setting the speed limit at 80mph will result in substantially more costs than leaving the speed limit where it is currently, and I do not think the benefits are worth those costs. My reasoning has been: assuming we do not change driver education, laws, enforcement, and roads, the higher speed will result in more accidents, and in more accidents of greater severity. The benefit would be, at most, some savings in drive-time, which would be reduced by the increase in accidents and in more severe accidents. I do not think the savings in drive-time resulting from raising the maximum speed limit on some roads from 65mph to 80mph would be worth the costs in human lives and health, in property damage to cars, and increased fuel costs.
I have asked you, several times, dating back to early May, to provide some costs/benefits analysis to substantiate your claims to the contrary. You have produced none. You've done nothing but repeat your claims, and castigate others for what you perceive to be a lack of logic.
The problem with this discussion isn't a lack of logic. It's a lack of data on your part. Logic is the easy part of a discussion or argument. Getting empirical data to support your view is the hard part.
Regarding my driving 55 MPH when I others were driving 75 MPH -- You still aren't getting my point. Maybe that is my fault, maybe it is yours. I'll try rephrasing.
The point I made, which you completely missed, was that everyone was doing fine until a single driver (me) came along who was disrupting the natural flow of traffic. Had I made any reasonable effort to go with the flow, or get into the slow lane, there would have been no problem. You have either misunderstood this point, or ignored it. Either way, your approach is rather frustrating after awhile.
I asked you a few times whether your new argument was that by driving 55mph, you were causing other drivers to tailgate you, cut you off, and fail to yield. Judging by the above paragraph, the answer appears to be yes. And just so we're clear, this means that the other drivers, going 10-20mph above your speed, were FORCED to tailgate you, cut you off, and fail to yield, because of a 10-20mph speed differential. Are you really sure you want to make this argument?
Let me try another rephrase.
I am saying the following --
STATEMENT -- I believe that cars can safely drive 75 MPH on the highway, provided the cars do so cooperatively and there are no unnecessary disruptions of traffic. Drivers who are too "scared" to drive 75 MPH should drive in the right lane only, so that those in the left and middle lane can go where they are going at a reasonable pace.
Now, you have tried to DISPROVE my statement by showing how the other drivers reacted unpredictably when I was driving 55 MPH.
But that doesn't work. Part of my point, which might have been implied as opposed to directly stated, was that I am assuming there won't be a car disrupting traffic. Obviously if a car disrupts traffic, the other drivers might drive in unpredictable ways.
In order to disprove my statement, it would be necessary to give an example of cars going 75 MPH (WITHOUT the presence of a disruptive force such as myself driving 55 MPH) and being unable to do safely.
If drivers cannot encounter a car going 20mph slower on a highway without tailgating, cutting it off, or failing to yield, then they are NOT driving 75mph safely. If a driver WERE driving 75mph safely, and approached a vehicle traveling 20mph slower on a highway, he should be more than capable of slowing down, yielding appropriately, and NOT cutting it off.
You have made your point. you think it is impossible for drivers to safely drive faster than the speed limit (even though the speed limits rather arbitrarily change from road to road and state to state). You refuse to accept any scenario or conditions where this is not the case. You are unwilling to compromise in any way shape or form. There is no scenario I would ever be able to come up with where you would concede even the most minor point. I feel like you are being very stubborn, perhaps just for the sake of doing so.
Mmmm, no, as I said many times, we're designing laws for an entire range of drivers, and that means we must take into account the effects of raising the speed limit on drivers who will not be driving safely. Your response has been, variously, "why should we all suffer simply because some people can't drive well" and "99% of drivers can drive safely at 80mph." The latter is, given current training and laws, demonstrably untrue, and the former has been answered many times over.
Unfortunately FJones this is a policy issue that comes down to costs/benefits, and to make an argument here you need some reliable data. I wish this were as simple as a logical error in one area or another, but that isn't the case. It almost never is in policy disagreements. I think you have consistently tried to reduce the arguments of others to crude, simplistic caricatures because you'd like this to be a simple matter of logic, avoiding the messiness and complexity of empirical data, policy preferences, and the like. Like it or not, if you want to convince anyone, or even form a well informed opinion on the subject, you're going to need to get into that mess. That means becoming familiar with numbers like the dollar value commonly put on human lives for the purposes of cost/benefit analysis, something which you were completely unfamiliar with three months into this thread.
I would like if we could just ignore each other, since we don't seem to be communicating with one another effectively. I think a lot of interesting points have been made in this thread, some by you, some by others. But you and I are just not going to ever see eye to eye on this issue.
You're certainly free to ignore my posts.
I won't be offended.
God knows I'd like to get where I am going faster.