verbatim
[PLACEHOLDER]
Okay, I know I don't have the reputation of a serious poster, but bear with me here.
I just finished a 2 hour long discussion with someone about emotion/logic. Throughout the conversation he attempted to try and convince me that emotion is more important than logic. His main technique was to go about trying to create situations in which logic would fail and emotion would succeed (he was VERY clever, but his reasoning was flawed/I was stubborn beyond reason). We hit an impasse because we both thought we were correct and refused to back down (I maintain that I didn't back down because I was right, but he would probably say the same thing so it is irrelevant). Here are his statements (recreated to the best of my ability) so that you can (hopefully) help me figure out what I did wrong in my debate and improve myself for the future.
First point of his:
"If you had to choose, would you let 1 person die, or 1000 people die?"
My response was that'd I'd pick the one because logically the 1000 people dying is a worse situation. His reply is that my reasoning is flawed because I view humanity as a statistic. I realize I can't convince him and stonewall until the next topic comes up.
Second point of his: (After establishing that I am Religious)
I have since edited this out because I feel that another impasse will be reached, and Religious dicussions and Smogon don't have that good of a history. Please make your own thread if you feel that Smogon can successfully and nicely discuss Religion. the short story is that he cited Biblical quotes that he felt to be unlogical. I responded that a lot if not most of the Bible is metaphorical.
I forgot the rest of the examples at this point and asked him to outline what he felt was the crucial flaw in my logic (and told him that it would go online, as to be fair), his response is as follow verbatim, (beyond spellings and use of the enter key)
"Just that, when it comes to matters of others, and faiths, and things relating to over people, even if it seems you can, logic can't, or shouldn't be used as a means of solving those problems. Humans are supposed to equally balance emotion and logic. You seem to rely to heavily on logic. I guess the flaw is, You think everything can be solved with logic. But so many things require something beyond logic. That's all. XD"
I put this up for two reasons, for people to criticize me (Constructively, so I can identify my faults and improve) and to decide which one was right and which one was unjustifiably ignorant. Neither he nor I can answer the question as we are both biased parties. I felt that Smogon was the best group of unbiased intellectuals I have access to, and so brought it here.
I just finished a 2 hour long discussion with someone about emotion/logic. Throughout the conversation he attempted to try and convince me that emotion is more important than logic. His main technique was to go about trying to create situations in which logic would fail and emotion would succeed (he was VERY clever, but his reasoning was flawed/I was stubborn beyond reason). We hit an impasse because we both thought we were correct and refused to back down (I maintain that I didn't back down because I was right, but he would probably say the same thing so it is irrelevant). Here are his statements (recreated to the best of my ability) so that you can (hopefully) help me figure out what I did wrong in my debate and improve myself for the future.
First point of his:
"If you had to choose, would you let 1 person die, or 1000 people die?"
My response was that'd I'd pick the one because logically the 1000 people dying is a worse situation. His reply is that my reasoning is flawed because I view humanity as a statistic. I realize I can't convince him and stonewall until the next topic comes up.
Second point of his: (After establishing that I am Religious)
I have since edited this out because I feel that another impasse will be reached, and Religious dicussions and Smogon don't have that good of a history. Please make your own thread if you feel that Smogon can successfully and nicely discuss Religion. the short story is that he cited Biblical quotes that he felt to be unlogical. I responded that a lot if not most of the Bible is metaphorical.
I forgot the rest of the examples at this point and asked him to outline what he felt was the crucial flaw in my logic (and told him that it would go online, as to be fair), his response is as follow verbatim, (beyond spellings and use of the enter key)
"Just that, when it comes to matters of others, and faiths, and things relating to over people, even if it seems you can, logic can't, or shouldn't be used as a means of solving those problems. Humans are supposed to equally balance emotion and logic. You seem to rely to heavily on logic. I guess the flaw is, You think everything can be solved with logic. But so many things require something beyond logic. That's all. XD"
I put this up for two reasons, for people to criticize me (Constructively, so I can identify my faults and improve) and to decide which one was right and which one was unjustifiably ignorant. Neither he nor I can answer the question as we are both biased parties. I felt that Smogon was the best group of unbiased intellectuals I have access to, and so brought it here.