Thread: Amazon Rising
View Single Post
Old 07-04-2014, 09:57 AM   #91
Prestidigitweeze
Fledgling Demagogue
Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Prestidigitweeze ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Prestidigitweeze's Avatar
 
Posts: 2,384
Karma: 31132263
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: White Plains
Device: Clara HD; Oasis 2; Aura HD; iPad Air; PRS-350; Galaxy S7.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz View Post
To be fair, DiapDealer's response was to someone who was actually kinda passing judgment:
Apparently, you didn't catch this distinction:

Quote:
To be fair, you can't reduce his point to a self-cancelling circuit involving impossible standards of objectivity. This was his actual point. . . .
The key phrase is self-cancelling circuit.

In saying there's a lot of aggressive support for Amazon on MR, MattW was not suggesting he was magically above being biased. Right or wrong, he was saying he'd noticed a level of bias that seemed excessive.

To suggest he'd claimed to adhere to an impossible standard of objectivity because he mentioned bias at all is a straw man. Virtually any argument can be opposed in a fair way. No reason to stack the deck by inferring that opponents have painted themselves into corners when they haven't.

The go-to defense in children's arguments is "I know you are, but what am I?" In a harmless way, you used that defense by parroting the phrase "to be fair" to answer my post mockingly (since my post began the same way).

The more disheartening attack is the one we often see in partisan politics: The facile attempt to turn others' words around to suggest they're "hypocrites" or "liars," as if mere mechanical reversals were enough to prove character flaws.

When that's done in a debate, it cheapens the content because it substitutes primitive roadblocks for actual arguments and makes the tone less civil.

That's why the phrase self-cancelling circuit was applied to DiapDealer's characterization of MattW's response: because it was an inaccurate dismissal of the point of the post, not because MattW is or claimed to be bias-free.

Last edited by Prestidigitweeze; 07-04-2014 at 10:06 AM.
Prestidigitweeze is offline   Reply With Quote