Schooled in Logic

So last week I was involved in a conversation on the internet and at one point I was told that this arguing made the other person feel as if (presumably) he needed to give a refresher course in grade 9 logic. Now the appeal to 'logic' is nothing new in internet debates. I don't mean the appeal to use actual logic. Just an appeal to the word itself. If you drop the word 'logic' you can try and secure the upper hand by implying that your argument is somehow more logical or consistent than your opponents.

The fact is that more often than not you can't just use FOPL when you're talking about a subject where the rules are subject to interpretation. It's just not that simple. I don't recall any grade 9 lesson in logic covering how to proceed in that case, but if you take some higher level courses you will learn about fuzzy logic and how to deal with outcomes or statements that can't be assigned a truth value of just 0 or 1.

Debating things with amateurs on the internet is exhausting and these days I'd just rather not, so I dropped the subject. I know for certain that my justification was sound (it was a pretty basic topic) and his attempt to argue otherwise was either missing the point or just being juvenille. It really all comes back to this: http://xkcd.com/386/

Stephen Schmidt-Stutzman

Schooled in Logic