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> I do see comments like yours a lot - there's an emotional attachment and/or ego attached to the comment Could you explain how it's emotional? It comes across

• ectospheno 4y ago
  A truth stated passionately doesn’t become false. A falsehood stated calmly doesn’t become true. This is at the heart of why emotion is always a logical fallacy. Everyone would be better served by using and hearing it less. Focus on the actual argument.
  • zamalek 4y ago
    I am neurodivergent, so I may be missing something here. The argument seems pretty passionless. Excluding the assumption that C is unsafe, it contains purely facts. Your reply doesn't point out the passionate component of it either, and doesn't answer my question.
    • ulfbert_inc 4y ago
      Analogy is not an argument.
      • zamalek 4y ago
        That still doesn't point out the emotion in the comment. Your reply here would work as a reply to the root comment, but doesn't address what I am asking at all. Where is the passion?
        • ulfbert_inc 4y ago
          Fine, but that leaves us with passionless non-argument. How is it helpful?
        • Jtsummers 4y ago
          Asbestos is an emotionally charged topic for many people, especially the many who have (primarily) older relatives who have died or are dying from cancers caused by it. The analogy is resting primarily on the appeal to that kind of emotion without actually establishing a strong logical similarity between C and asbestos.
          • zamalek 4y ago
            That makes sense, thank you.
          • macintux 4y ago
            > Asbestos is an emotionally charged topic for many people, especially the many who have (primarily) older relatives who have died or are dying from cancers caused by it. I’ve not personally been impacted by this, but this seems reasonable. > The analogy is resting primarily on the appeal to that kind of emotion This seems like projection. It struck me as a perfectly legitimate analogy without any emotional correlation.
            • Jtsummers 4y ago
              I don't know, C isn't out there causing cancer and killing people left and right. It's hyperbolic to draw that comparison. Critical systems (especially post Therac-25) that are using C are already using a subset of C, static analysis tools, and comprehensive testing that raise the quality level of actual life-and-health-impacting C programs. EDIT: Because someone will probably make a note of it: Therac-25 wasn't written in C, but the flaws in that system and others helped lead to a massive change in the way critical systems are developed and treated. I referenced it because it's one of the most notable failures in safety-critical software systems.
              • macintux 4y ago
                It’s fine to argue that the analogy is flawed (all of them are) or that it’s irrelevant, or simply wrong. What this entire thread is about, however, is this highly charged response to what seemed like a straightforward analogy. > Frankly getting your knickers in a knot is emotional - the people using C are doing so for pragmatic reasons, not emotion. > I do see comments like yours a lot - there's an emotional attachment and/or ego attached to the comment, so the argument against is very vociferous and, honestly, ugly[1].
      • nvrspyx 4y ago
        Sure it is, depending on the analogy and the purpose of the analogy. An analogy also isn't always fallacious. It needs to have a faulty extrapolated assumption from the comparison. In this particular case, the argument is that C should be replaced with something safer for similar reasons that asbestos is replaced with something safer. However, one can certainly challenge the validity of this comparison and whether there's something faulty in it. I don't feel one way or the other because I don't work with C or other low-level languages, but it's a bit absurd to say that an analogy isn't an argument. It absolutely can be if the argument within is clear, even if fallacious.
        • ulfbert_inc 4y ago
          Thanks for clarifying. I meant valid, non-fallacious argument. More often than not I see analogies (ab)used as a tool to construct a straw man. This particular case demonstrates how analogy takes discussion away from merits and downsides of C to an emotionally charged subject of cancerogenic substances, as other commenters highlighted in this thread.
          • nvrspyx 4y ago
            Personally, I don't think it's the commenter's fault that some others have such strong emotions to the analogy that they're distracted from the point. There's no indication that the commenter was appealing to emotion and, as others have also pointed out, making a comparison to an "emotionally charged" subject does not nullify the validity of the comparison. In fact, it's fallacious to falsely invalidate the argument based on some cherry-picked, subjective, peripheral perspective like that. In my opinion, the appeal to emotion and the derailment of the discussion is from those doing so, not the original commenter. It seemed like just a simple, general, easily-mappable analogy that most people would get, even non-programmer laymen, that emphasizes that unsafe should be replaced with safe. Any analogy of something unsafe can be seen as "emotionally charged" if someone was personally impacted by it.
      • wiseowise 4y ago
        Unsafe C is a fact, there’s no need for an argument in their comment.
      • naasking 4y ago
        > Analogy is not an argument. Just for sake of clarity, formal analogy is a valid, non-fallacious argument because it's based on parity of reasoning. The original comment made a pretty good, arguably formal analogy between asbestos and C. The only way to dismiss the conclusion is if there were no alternative to asbestos, then you're kinda forced to use asbestos. This is the case for C in some contexts, like some microcontrollers that only come with C compilers. It's not generally true that we need C for much else though.
        • pjmlp 4y ago
          There is seldom a microcontroller that also doesn't have a Basic or Pascal compiler from https://www.mikroe.com https://www.mikroe.com, but naturally that is an additional cost that many would rather not care about.
      • IncRnd 4y ago
        > Analogy is not an argument. "An analogical argument is an explicit representation of a form of analogical reasoning that cites accepted similarities between two systems to support the conclusion that some further similarity exists." [1] [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/
    • lelanthran 4y ago
      > I am neurodivergent, so I may be missing something here. Yes, you're missing the logic. > Excluding the assumption that C is unsafe, it contains purely facts. You think C is carcinogenic and mere exposure to it kills? From a "purely facts" PoV, leaving all emotion aside, C runs, and has done so for a number of decades, life-critical systems, including munitions, weapons, life-support, industrial machinery and aviation. It's only because you are married to your argument that you think comparing C to a fatal poison is "pure facts".
      • lukeck 4y ago
        I interpreted the original comment as saying that C is detrimental to the long term health of a piece of software in a similar way to how asbestos is detrimental to the long term health of humans. I don’t think there was any suggestion made that C is detrimental to human health.
• P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  • zamalek 4y ago
    Sure, maybe the analogy isn't logical. > It's also logical to kill young children with autism so they don't become a financial or emotional burden on their family or society as a whole. It turns out claiming something is logical isn't, itself, enough of a reason to do something and those doing so should endeavor to give more convincing arguments. That's an analogy, and we are talking about a programming language - not humans. Again, where is the passion in the original comment? I have asked for nothing more than that.
    • P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      > That's an analogy, and we are talking about a programming language - not humans. Is it your supposition that asbestos was banned for non-human reasons? Or does this "logic" only work when convenient for your own defenses?
• tryauuum 4y ago
  I hate all analogies with physical world, because the person tends to pick up the most emotional one. It's emotional because they picked the thing that makes my lungs bleed. C, with all its flaws, doesn't damage my physical health. You call it a logical analogy, how an analogy can be logical? EDIT: and I hate analogies because, since they suck, someone will try to come up with a better analogy. And now we have a thread where people compare C to asbestos, then they compare C to a fire in kitchen. Not a kind of thread I would like to be in.
  • rcarr 4y ago
    How can you hate all analogies with the physical would? How do you propose somebody learns something completely abstract without any physical counterpart whatsoever? How do intend to teach people something as simple as numbers without using your fingers or some other quantity of items in the world? Vast quantities of language is built on analogy. Streaming, the internet, the World Wide Web, Starship. The word “cycle” comes from the Latin for “circle”. The list goes on. I struggle to even comprehend how someone can hold this opinion. Have you ever tried instructing anyone in anything?
    • oska 4y ago
      > Vast quantities of language is built on analogy. Streaming, the internet, the World Wide Web, Starship. These are metaphors, not analogies. [1] The GP is cautioning against argument by analogy, not the use of metaphorical language. Conceptual traps engendered by argument from analogy have been raised for thousands of years, indeed probably ever since formal discussion of language and reasoning have been recorded. [1] https://prowritingaid.com/analogy-vs-metaphor https://prowritingaid.com/analogy-vs-metaphor
      • rcarr 4y ago
        Yes but the metaphorical name has obviously come about through a simile or analogy. Like a ship but in space going to stars. We can understand a cycle through looking at how we draw a circle etc. The words themselves are metaphors but when you explain them to a child for the first time you do it through similies and analogies. They’re intrinsically linked. And I’m firmly in the camp that it is fine to use analogy in debate. Rarely do people claim when they make a comparison that it is a one to one mapping. Just that there are possible insights to be gleaned from the comparison which could potentially mean that we may be able to solve problems in one domain using similar solutions to the existing domain. Take this quote for example: > I hate all analogies with physical world, because the person tends to pick up the most emotional one. It's emotional because they picked the thing that makes my lungs bleed. C, with all its flaws, doesn't damage my physical health. Obviously interpretation is subjective but this seems a huge misinterpretation of what OP was saying. To me, OP is clearly arguing that C code is damaging to the long term health of computer programs the same way asbestos exposure is damaging to long term human health and that we should consider replacing or retiring C code with modern alternatives like Rust the same way asbestos has been replaced with modern building materials. Saying that you don’t like the argument because bad C programs are nowhere near as damaging to physical health as asbestos seems like a bad faith interpretation of what OP was trying to say. I also think the criticiser may feel differently if he was hooked up to a life support machine that was known to have buggy c code but that’s by the by. Hacker News seems to have gone really hellbent on this pedantic ‘this is fallacy x’, this is fallacy y’ stuff recently as if every comment is some kind of formal scientific paper. It’s really weird and I’m sure it never used to be like this. It’s sucks the joy and fun out of everything, I don’t know why people can’t just express interesting viewpoints here anymore like a normal conversation without the fallacy police showing up,