4 ms·

> should society devote its limited resources to reversing past wrongs, or on preventing future extinctions? This needs to be called out as the idiotic fallacy

by nkoren 10y ago

> should society devote its limited resources to reversing past wrongs, or on preventing future extinctions? This needs to be called out as the idiotic fallacy that it is. Not sure if "straw man" quite covers it, but it's close. Take any two things and posit a zero-sum game between them -- nothing good ever comes out of this kind of analysis. "Given society's limited resources, should we be educating our children, or feeding them? A careful analysis doesn't favor the former." Oh, sod off. We can do both. If you're going to frame your argument as a zero sum, then you need to have a very valid reason why it's actually zero-sum. Otherwise that's just a manipulative way of doing a terrible analysis.

weaksauce 10y ago
Maybe we can invent a word for this like, say, zeroneous.
avar 10y ago
Even funnier: If this wasn't a dumb fallacy and we grant them that it's zero sum. Just how many man-hours will be wasted by people reading this NYT article as opposed to say curing cancer, or actually reviving mammoths?
- M_Grey 10y ago
  There's no point being upset by this kind of idiocy.... its endemic to humanity as a whole. It is frankly, the tip of a giant iceberg which is in the process of sinking us. “The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." (Einstein, 1945)
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Just how many man-hours will be wasted by people reading this NYT article as opposed to say curing cancer, or actually reviving mammoths? That's irrelevant, not only because the majority of those readers are not the same people that would be curing cancer or reviving mammoths, but also because the resources it talks about are more about budgets, organizational priorities, etc, and not about missed hours.
dougmwne 10y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 10y ago
>"Given society's limited resources, should we be educating our children, or feeding them? A careful analysis doesn't favor the former." Oh, sod off. We can do both. I thought you were against strawmen. This is a contrived example where we actually can do both. This is not the case for everything. And even if it was, there's opportunity cost -- in this case the cost of devoting fewer resources to one action because you are splitting them into two actions. When one of the things is more important than the other it makes total sense to consider this case. Even your contrived for the US example, is very real elsewhere. Parents for example, the world over, often do have to make the choice between educating their children and feeding them. A classic example is the "can't send the kids to school, they need to stay at the farm to help the family make a living" -- and this affects hundreds of millions.

by nkoren 10y ago

weaksauce 10y ago

Maybe we can invent a word for this like, say, zeroneous.

avar 10y ago

Even funnier: If this wasn't a dumb fallacy and we grant them that it's zero sum. Just how many man-hours will be wasted by people reading this NYT article as opposed to say curing cancer, or actually reviving mammoths?

M_Grey 10y ago
There's no point being upset by this kind of idiocy.... its endemic to humanity as a whole. It is frankly, the tip of a giant iceberg which is in the process of sinking us. “The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." (Einstein, 1945)
coldtea 10y ago
>Just how many man-hours will be wasted by people reading this NYT article as opposed to say curing cancer, or actually reviving mammoths? That's irrelevant, not only because the majority of those readers are not the same people that would be curing cancer or reviving mammoths, but also because the resources it talks about are more about budgets, organizational priorities, etc, and not about missed hours.

dougmwne 10y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 10y ago

>"Given society's limited resources, should we be educating our children, or feeding them? A careful analysis doesn't favor the former." Oh, sod off. We can do both. I thought you were against strawmen. This is a contrived example where we actually can do both. This is not the case for everything. And even if it was, there's opportunity cost -- in this case the cost of devoting fewer resources to one action because you are splitting them into two actions. When one of the things is more important than the other it makes total sense to consider this case. Even your contrived for the US example, is very real elsewhere. Parents for example, the world over, often do have to make the choice between educating their children and feeding them. A classic example is the "can't send the kids to school, they need to stay at the farm to help the family make a living" -- and this affects hundreds of millions.