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Prions are not alive and therefore do not need to compete for resources to further their existence.
by jcoffland 10y ago
Prions are not alive and therefore do not need to compete for resources to further their existence.
- computerphage 10y agoIf "not alive" => "doesn't need resources", then "needs resources" => "alive". That doesn't seem right to me.
- Sophistifunk 10y agoThat's... not how logic works.
- ianterrellwt 10y agoI think that might be how logic works. The fallacy seems to be with its parent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition
- Sophistifunk 10y ago"Alive implies needs-resources" is not the same as "needs-resources implies alive"
- dpark 10y agoOf course not. And if he'd said "alive implies needs resources", the argument would not be valid. ianterrelwt posted the article explaining this.
- andrewflnr 10y agoYou don't need to hedge. That's exactly how logic works.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ssambros 10y agoThat's exactly how logic works.
- computerphage 10y agoYes... it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition
- pvg 10y ago"All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat."
- ajnin 10y agoNo. Mirroring the parent would be : "All cats die. Socrates is immortal. Therefore Socrates is not a cat." Which is perfectly valid logic.
- pvg 10y agoI'll let Eugène Ionesco know.
- uzoodoo 10y agoMore like: "Non-living things don't move. The bus moves. Therefore, the bus is alive." This is false because there exist things that are non-living but move. Similarly, the original "not alive" => "doesn't need resources" argument is false because there exist things that are not alive that do need resources (such as buses), and so needing resources does not imply being alive.
- DiThi 10y agoThat's a deductive fallacy. Alive things need resources, but things that need resources are not necessarily alive.
- irisli 10y agocomputerphage wasn't using deduction but rather contraposition. (A -> B) => (!B -> !A). The absurdity of (!B -> !A) shows that (A -> B) is not true for all cases.
- uzoodoo 10y agoBut the premise "not alive => doesn't need resources" is false because there exist things are "not necessarily alive" that need resources. Therefore, the argument is invalid.
- computerphage 10y agoIt's not a fallacy. The truth table for implication and its contrapositive are the same. A | B | A => B | ¬B => ¬A T | T | T | T T | F | F | F F | T | T | T F | F | T | T My original point was that my parent was implicitly claiming that only living things need resources. That seemed absurd to me because of things like viruses, companies, governments, etc.
- jcoffland 10y agoI said, "do not need to compete for resources to further their existence." This is not the same as "do not need resources."
- xkcd-sucks 10y agoThey absolutely compete for resources, in the form of peptides that can fold into more prion aggregates or other proteins
- maxerickson 10y agoNow that the giant logic thread has played out below I feel I have to point out that I was saying that technological gray goo would have to compete with green goo, I wasn't talking about prions competing for resources.