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>I think both arguments generalize, I cringe at my own pedantry here but I think it's important to the larger conversation. All arguments generalize. That isn
by avs733 9y ago
>I think both arguments generalize,
I cringe at my own pedantry here but I think it's important to the larger conversation.
All arguments generalize. That isn't just the point of the argument, it is what an argument is - a synthesis and generalization of evidence. That an argument generalizes isn't the problem, how and to what extent the argument does and the implications and chain of evidence for the generalizations is what matters.
- derefr 9y agoI'm not sure. I was thinking about it in a type-theoretic sense: argument x being a function over (A Evidence) to give (A Conclusion). The type-class of A can be large or small: some arguments have an abstract structure that can be applied to all sorts of things, while other arguments are constrained by a bunch of qualifications to only be about rather particular things. What I meant, to be clear, is that the two arguments I was referring to both are of the structure that starts with "people are dumb, and there is an agency that saves them from themselves" but then diverge by assuming different universal properties of organizations, using a concrete example of a good or bad organization and then assuming that those properties would always apply to an organization in such a role. The SEC and MiniTruth effectively "do the same thing." The SEC is a bit more specialized, but it still does have an information-control/censorship role, saying what news the officers of a public company must always, and must never, publish about said company. So it's interesting, in my mind, to ask what "an SEC doing MiniTruth's job" would look like, and "a MiniTruth doing the SEC's job" would look like, and then to try the two original arguments again with those altered visions as their subjects.