Converation thread

Democracy could also just as easily be two sheep and a wolf, or three sheep, or three wolves, so this argument is a stupid assumption to begin with.

Well you're the stupid expert here not me

I have seen my fair share, yes. It's what happens when you're right all the time, not that I expect you to understand...

That was a sad attempt at a shoot-back. Claiming to be right all the time? How arrogant of you. I myself have changed my mind on a number of political things – I used to be an interventionist, now I'm an isolationism; I used to be a nationalist, now I'm a States' Rights believer; I used to be a protectionist, now I believe in free trade. I'm the one with the open mind here.

lol it was a low-effort mocking joke in response to a low-effort ad hominem counter...I didn't realize we were supposed to be taking these last few comments seriously? You are the one who responded with "well you're the stupid expert here, not me" to a simple counter-argument against an anti-democratic claim. Don't act like I started this.

Also, it's pretty ironic for you to insist that you have an open-mind, after literally calling me a "stupid expert" for calling out a flaw in a centuries-old argument twisted to be against democratic decision-making. Odd, if you ask me. And according to your logic, since I used to be far-right but now I'm far-left, that makes me inherently open-minded as well.

Or it makes you susceptible to propaganda

Everyone is susceptible to propaganda, we are all just more susceptible to the kinds of ideas that we already believe in. I am more likely to fall for leftist propaganda because I have leftist beliefs, and you are more likely to fall for far-right propaganda because you have far-right beliefs. It's literally just called confirmation bias, and we all do it, whether unconsciously or not. The only way to differentiate is with supporting evidence and/or reasoning.

My beliefs are not "far-right" but in fact align with classical liberalism, a form of libertarianism.

And it’s just that: classical. Not with the values of the majority of the population, or even most people out there today. When the world creates new rights, abilities, and freedoms, those who hold to the liberal ideas of the past become conservatives because they moved in a different direction. Is moving bad? Not necessarily, and this is one of the times it’s good.

I sure hate to say it for the one millionth time, but you're using the question begging fallacy AGAIN.

The reason you call people out on this "millions of times" is because you use it incorrectly and seemingly just say it whenever. People telling you that you're wrong is not "begging the question", and, if anything, it is infinitely more fallacious of you to keep insisting that everyone else's premises are the false ones but yours are conveniently not. Literally every time I have ever seen anyone push back against some ridiculous claim of yours, you turn around and just accuse them of begging the question. It's clear that your incessant need to "own the Libs with facts and logic" or whatever is just preventing you from actually distinguishing facts from logic to begin with, much less understanding anything outside your own preconceived worldview.

If you want to go into specifics, I am ready. I Brough up the Question Begging Fallacy only when it was clearly part of a logical argument, in which case it clearly is wrong and irrational to use. If using the Laws of Logic to identify fallacies just so happens to support my preconceived worldview, that's to be expected, as, after looking at massive amounts of evidence and positions on both sides, I chose my view specifically because I thought it was logical. I never confused logic with facts, as the information these users brought up was, at best, controversial, and had not yet been est…  Read moreablished as fact in the chain of debate. I merely chose to use the logical fallacies argument precisely because I know the opposite user consider his argument to be factual, so going after that sort of thing particularly likely wouldn't have been persuasive. Rather, I intended to show that their worldviews were not built on solid logical foundations and try to show that unless your worldview can withstand logical scrutiny it is almost certainly false.