Re: The Promise of Forth

Guy Macon wrote:

So it is your assertion that we all have to accept your logical
fallacies

You have identified no logical fallacy of any significance in the real world. The world does not run on logic: the belief that it does is the fallacy. Indeed, logic, used the reckless way the idolaters of logic use it, proves that logic is useless, since it shows that any flaw in the premises invalidates the conclusion. All human knowledge is necessarily contingent and uncertain, so logic must therefore be useless. QED

Hiding behind logic when there is clearly a real world problem to address is the recourse of an ideologue, not a problem solver.

and refusal to even try to understand what a null hypothesis is in order to "fix the problem?"

*You* are the one who does not understand what a null hypothesis is. Do you think I somehow managed to get >300 publications, many in refereed journals (look me up at ads.harvard.edu), getting paid by MIT do do this work in most cases, in a field that is very statistically sophisticated without understanding that? Come on!

You should rename your self "Perry".

Perry Macon:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard testimony that my client was difficult to get along with, bore a grudge against the victim, and was seen shooting at him just before his unfortunate death. Witnesses have described the victim's bleeding wound following the shooting.

Yet, people die every day. There is no proof that the victim died of this wound: he could have been dying of some other cause at that very instant.

Furthermore, judgments of life, death, and identity are fallible. Even physicians have been known to make mistakes. It is possible that the victim is not actually dead! There is no perfectly infallible method to prove that he is.

And again, witnesses are notoriously unreliable. It is possible that nothing happened here.

The "null hypothesis" is an accepted scientific tool. We have here not one, but three null hypotheses.

1. Nothing happened. This is the simplest, so Occam's Razor, another accepted scientific tool, should tell you to accept this one.

2. The victim did not die: some mistake (a common event in human affairs) has occurred.

3. The victim died of some other cause (also a common occurance, unfortunately). That his death coincided with the purported events witnessed was merely coincidence.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that's logic and science. You must accept the null hypothesis and acquit my client.

;-)

--
John Doty, Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
--
History teaches that logical consistency is neither sufficient nor necessary to establish practical, real world truth. Those who attempt to use logic for that purpose are abusing it.
.

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