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>It simultaneously reminds me of both George Bush's classic "You're either with us or against us", and of the old joke, "There are 10 kinds of people in the wor

>It simultaneously reminds me of both George Bush's classic "You're either with us or against us", and of the old joke, "There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't". All three are superficially correct but utterly useless and needlessly divisive statements. Not a very good comparison. "You're either with us or against us" was not a 'superficially true' statement, it's a false dilemma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youre_either_with_us,_or_against_us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youre_either_with_us,_or_agains...

Jach 15y ago
One would also say that about understanding binary. Understanding is to me clearly a scale with no hard limits; what does it mean to fully understand binary? Knowing powers of 2 up to arbitrary n? Being able to make finite state machines for sequence detection, gray code converters, etc.? Knowing binary jokes when you see them?
- rflrob 15y ago
  I don't think binary is really subtle enough to have a fine gradation of shades of grey. I interpret "Understand binary" to mean something along the lines of "be comfortable with the notion that the numbering system we use has an arbitrary base (10), and that you can still have the same radix notation with a base of 2." If you get the joke about 10 people, you probably understand binary, and vice-versa. And now, for a completely different binary joke: I've got 1100011 but a bit ain't one.
jerf 15y ago
It actually wasn't a false dilemma either. His intent in the statement was to make the point that in the "war against terror", there aren't any neutrals. He didn't consider it neutral to "passively" harbor terrorists, even if you didn't actively support them with resources; he was making the point that either you enforced laws against terrorist activities (and therefore had some in the first place) or you were part of the terrorism problem. I'm not saying you have to agree or disagree with this, or that I particularly do. But this is not logically a false dilemma, where it accidentally or duplicitously leaves out a third option. It is a statement that in this case there is no meaningful third option. It may be false under your particular set of moral values, but it is/was not a logical fallacy.

Jach 15y ago

One would also say that about understanding binary. Understanding is to me clearly a scale with no hard limits; what does it mean to fully understand binary? Knowing powers of 2 up to arbitrary n? Being able to make finite state machines for sequence detection, gray code converters, etc.? Knowing binary jokes when you see them?

rflrob 15y ago
I don't think binary is really subtle enough to have a fine gradation of shades of grey. I interpret "Understand binary" to mean something along the lines of "be comfortable with the notion that the numbering system we use has an arbitrary base (10), and that you can still have the same radix notation with a base of 2." If you get the joke about 10 people, you probably understand binary, and vice-versa. And now, for a completely different binary joke: I've got 1100011 but a bit ain't one.

jerf 15y ago

It actually wasn't a false dilemma either. His intent in the statement was to make the point that in the "war against terror", there aren't any neutrals. He didn't consider it neutral to "passively" harbor terrorists, even if you didn't actively support them with resources; he was making the point that either you enforced laws against terrorist activities (and therefore had some in the first place) or you were part of the terrorism problem. I'm not saying you have to agree or disagree with this, or that I particularly do. But this is not logically a false dilemma, where it accidentally or duplicitously leaves out a third option. It is a statement that in this case there is no meaningful third option. It may be false under your particular set of moral values, but it is/was not a logical fallacy.