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MR_BOGAN
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03 Aug 2008, 4:53 pm

:wink: Yeah it was a joke. :P

OR WAS IT??? 8O



Fnord
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03 Aug 2008, 7:50 pm

The use of logic alone is the best method of arriving at the wrong conclusion with absolute certainty.

One must also use reason, irrefutable evidence, consistently repeatable and disciplined methodology, and a healthy awreness of the possibility for delusion, error, and fraudulent claims before one's certainty can be independently assured.


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nekowafer
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03 Aug 2008, 7:56 pm

Obviously it's not as simple and logic vs. emotion. I was just talking about those two specifically.



ViatorRose
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05 Aug 2008, 8:04 am

Fnord wrote:
The use of logic alone is the best method of arriving at the wrong conclusion with absolute certainty.

One must also use reason, irrefutable evidence, consistently repeatable and disciplined methodology, and a healthy awreness of the possibility for delusion, error, and fraudulent claims before one's certainty can be independently assured.


This may well be correct, but it sounds like something Dirk Gently would say.



Fnord
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05 Aug 2008, 10:47 am

ViatorRose wrote:
Fnord wrote:
The use of logic alone is the best method of arriving at the wrong conclusion with absolute certainty.

One must also use reason, irrefutable evidence, consistently repeatable and disciplined methodology, and a healthy awreness of the possibility for delusion, error, and fraudulent claims before one's certainty can be independently assured.


This may well be correct, but it sounds like something Dirk Gently would say.

The only Douglas Adams quote I could find on logic is this:

Quote:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED"

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (book one of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), p 50

Douglas Adams, of course, is the author of the "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" series.


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Triangular_Trees
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05 Aug 2008, 11:49 am

ViatorRose wrote:
Fnord wrote:
The use of logic alone is the best method of arriving at the wrong conclusion with absolute certainty.

One must also use reason, irrefutable evidence, consistently repeatable and disciplined methodology, and a healthy awreness of the possibility for delusion, error, and fraudulent claims before one's certainty can be independently assured.


This may well be correct, but it sounds like something Dirk Gently would say.


It wasn't that long ago that everyone knew females had one less rib than males, because logically they'd have to.

Then lo and behold, some crazy guy had the wild idea of counting male and female ribs. And guess what? Males and females have the same number

And I'm leaving this topic now because i might need a Corpus callosotomy within the next 2 years and I am still getting used to that possibility



ViatorRose
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06 Aug 2008, 9:10 am

Fnord wrote:
ViatorRose wrote:
Fnord wrote:
The use of logic alone is the best method of arriving at the wrong conclusion with absolute certainty.

One must also use reason, irrefutable evidence, consistently repeatable and disciplined methodology, and a healthy awreness of the possibility for delusion, error, and fraudulent claims before one's certainty can be independently assured.


This may well be correct, but it sounds like something Dirk Gently would say.

The only Douglas Adams quote I could find on logic is this:

Quote:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED"

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (book one of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), p 50

Douglas Adams, of course, is the author of the "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" series.


I apologise for not qualifying this remark, I did not realise you might go to so much trouble to disprove the comment.

As an aside, these are my favourite Dirk Gently related utterances:

From The Holistic Detective Agency:

'By means of an ingenious series of strategically deployed denials of the most exciting and exotic things, he was able to create the myth that he was a psychic, mystic, telepathic, fey, clairvoyant, psychosassic vampire bat.
What did “psychosassic” mean?
It was his own word and he vigorously denied that it meant anything at all.'

And from The Salmon of Doubt, though I disagree with the last one:

'Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there’s no point in trying to look in that direction because it won’t be coming from there.'

'Logic comes afterwards. It’s how we retrace our steps. It’s being wise after the event. Before the event you have to be very silly.'

Also this is a further Hitch Hiker's quote about logic, from Mostly Harmless:

'Now logic is a wonderful thing but it has, as the process of evolution has discovered, certain drawbacks. Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something that thinks equally as logically as it does. The easiest way to fool a completely logical robot is to feed it the same stimulus sequence over and over again so it gets locked in a loop.'

This one may not be universally proven, but rather frustratingly it happens a lot to me.



Fnord
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06 Aug 2008, 10:51 am

ViatorRose wrote:
I apologise for not qualifying this remark, I did not realise you might go to so much trouble to disprove the comment.

Whenever I see a false comment or other misrepresentation, I will go to the trouble to disprove it - count on it.


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