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Stories such as the one you mention about the woman who lost her son are very moving - but this is exactly the problem. It’s not wise to base decisions on indiv
by mdavis6890 5y ago
Stories such as the one you mention about the woman who lost her son are very moving - but this is exactly the problem. It’s not wise to base decisions on individual anecdotes, or to reason from emotion.
Emotions are real and in some ways the most important consideration, but not one persons emotion, not a few tragic cases.
We have to do our best to check our human tendency to overweight these emotional stories and reason about the overall impact to everybody.
When we feel ourselves reacting emotionally to a story, that’s when we should least trust our own judgement.
- slg 5y agoMy argument is no more emotional or anecdotal than the one in the article. They didn't share any statistics about how chemistry kits resulted in smart kids or how accidents with the kits were so rare as to be worth ignoring. Their argument was one based purely on nostalgia and ideology. If you think their argument is reasoned, odds are it is because you have that same nostalgia or share that same ideology.
- mdavis6890 5y agoI don’t think their argument was well reasoned. For one thing, as other posters mentioned, these kits actually ARE still available. Neither one story of happy memories of chemistry sets or one story of a childhood cut short should be the basis of reasoning about things.
- watwut 5y agoThe "it was so múch fun" is as emotional as it gets. There is literally document all about emotions and you object to one of them and approve the others.