#sophistry — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sophistry, aggregated by home.social.
-
@CuratedEpictetus What act is Long referring to? Presumably none is completely free from errors if the degree of them is significant, even as it concerns the bundle of naming, blaming, shaming and abuse. Being ill instructed, or wealthy is no excuse for the excessive use of blame by the few to make popular the grief of the oppressor so it undermines the grief of the oppressed. #TheGreatLie #Sophistry #Stoicism #Indemonstrables #peripatetics #Aristotle #Philosophy #PosterioriAnalytics #Categories #Syllogisms
-
@CuratedEpictetus What act is Long referring to? Presumably none is completely free from errors if the degree of them is significant, even as it concerns the bundle of naming, blaming, shaming and abuse. Being ill instructed, or wealthy is no excuse for the excessive use of blame by the few to make popular the grief of the oppressor so it undermines the grief of the oppressed. #TheGreatLie #Sophistry #Stoicism #Indemonstrables #peripatetics #Aristotle #Philosophy #PosterioriAnalytics #Categories #Syllogisms
-
Om Malik on why Anthropic named its most powerful AI model Mythos: "Augustus had the Senate and the priests. Dario had the Oval Office and the Vatican. The structure is the same. Two thousand years apart."
#AI #philosophy #sophistry -
Om Malik on why Anthropic named its most powerful AI model Mythos: "Augustus had the Senate and the priests. Dario had the Oval Office and the Vatican. The structure is the same. Two thousand years apart."
#AI #philosophy #sophistry -
Praising by Faint Damn
A chat about an eugenicist in California made me think about rhetorical tricks. My gentle readers are familiar with objective allies, where the centrist journalist cries “that candidate is horrible and awful and I am going to put his words on the front page and in the prime-time news every day” and watches the ad revenue roll in, while the candidate launches a line of propaganda on the theme “look how much those elitists hate me and how powerful I am” and hires a new accountant to track his donations. Ever since smartphones came out, vlogs and podcasts are funded by people declaring another influencer the enemy, launching a five-part series to attack them, and sending their viewers to the ‘enemy’ channel until the ‘enemy’ returns the favour by launching a counter-video or anti-episode. This pays much better than useful factual videos on knitting or woodworking. There is a related concept whose name I am trying to find.
The eugenicist explained that after he discovered the online far right, he decided to share their ideas by posting about them a lot and rebutting some of their peripherial points but not the ones he agreed with. He hoped that people would follow his links, read the original posts, and decide they agreed with some of them. He is not the only person to use this gambit.
In his 1764 treatise against execution and judicial torture, Cesare Beccaria included a brief chapter on the crime of heresy:
rational men will see that the place where I live, the present age, and the matter at hand do not permit me to examine the nature of such a crime. It would take me too long and too far from my subject to prove how a perfect uniformity of thought is necessary in a state, the example of many nations to the contrary not withstanding; how opinions that differ only in a few subtle and obscure points altogether beyond human comprehension can nonetheless disturb public order if one of them is not authorized to the exclusion of the others… It would take me too long to prove that, however odious the triumph of force over human minds may seem, since the only fruits of its conquest are dissembling and, consequently, degradation; however contrary it may seem to the spirit of gentleness and brotherly love enjoined by reason and the authority we most revere; it is still necessary and indispensable
This was enough to pass the Neapolitan censor, but in 260 years I do not know anyone who has read that chapter and believed that Beccaria thought heresy should be a crime. He just refused to say that heresy should be legal.
Under Communism, writers learned to summarize the best arguments for a position, then denounce it with a cookie-cutter party-line teaching.
This is similar to but not the same as irony, sarcasm, or litotes. A summary of a book or thinker and a weak criticism can be superficially sincere, even if the author has a hidden agenda.
This is related to crit-hype, where a critic accepts the premise that a new technology will be almost godlike rather than asking whether that is true and whether the real dangers are in the present. Since 2019, American chatbot companies have been telling reporters that their next product might be too dangerous to release. Then they release it anyways and look for a new reporter who they can tell the next version is even more powerful.
Edit: This is connected to all publicity is good publicity, but is deliberate. The average person responding on corporate social media and thereby promoting the thing they hate in the algorithm does not know what he does, but this tactic is a deliberate attempt to spread an idea or a thinker without endorsing it.
Lastly, this is related to the attention economy, another concept which I do not understand (I would expect an attention economy to reward dense, high-quality information, but many people just want to hang out online with someone articulate and energetic). We would all think it odd if Kat Connor accepted a challenge to a MMA bout from a spotty fifteen-year-old, and there is something just as odd if a professor of computer science at UWaterloo agrees to debate an anonymous account which says obviously P = NP but has never even released a preprint.
I come from Internet culture. The way social media works makes my skin crawl. In our culture, if an idea is bad you make an exhaustive book or website explaining all the ways it is bad, but in social media culture, it is a red flag that your career is funded by posting angry attacks on other social media figures that send your viewers to their content. One reason why I am at a loss this decade is that I have not found a way to respond to this new environment and still be me or someone I would like to be.
You damn someone with faint praise by saying mildly positive things about them. What should we call the reverse, where you share an idea or thinker then make a half-hearted criticism? I am off to do something outside with other people but maybe the Internet can help.
(scheduled 13 June 2026)
#bonusPost #crossPost #InternetCulture #modern #rhetoric #sophistry #stateOfTheWeb -
MARCUS: How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!
[Quotus enim quisque philosophorum invenitur, qui sit ita moratus, ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat? qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae putet? qui obtemperet ipse sibi et decretis suis pareat?]Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Tusculan Disputations [Tusculanae Disputationes], Book 2, ch. 4 (2.4) / sec. 11 (2.11) [Marcus] (45 BC) [tr. Peabody (1886)]More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/cicero-marcus-tulliu…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #cicero #character #hypocrisy #philosopher #philosophy #practicewhatyoupreach #pride #reason #selfawareness #showingoff #sophistry #truebeliever
-
MARCUS: How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!
[Quotus enim quisque philosophorum invenitur, qui sit ita moratus, ita animo ac vita constitutus, ut ratio postulat? qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae putet? qui obtemperet ipse sibi et decretis suis pareat?]Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Tusculan Disputations [Tusculanae Disputationes], Book 2, ch. 4 (2.4) / sec. 11 (2.11) [Marcus] (45 BC) [tr. Peabody (1886)]More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/cicero-marcus-tulliu…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #cicero #character #hypocrisy #philosopher #philosophy #practicewhatyoupreach #pride #reason #selfawareness #showingoff #sophistry #truebeliever
-
is there an established term in rhetoric for trying to spread an idea by criticizing it half-heartedly? Praising by faint damn? #rhetoric #communications #sophistry
-
CW: NSFW, GenAI
“Modal Collapse”
#bigboobs #bigbreasts #boobs #breasts #caption #chastity #cleavage #chastitycage #chastitydevice #chastitycaption #chastityslave #modallogic #modal #philosophy #glassesgirl #glasses #freewill #femdom #femaledomination #dominantwoman #mistress #dominantfemale #domination #femdomcaption #dominantgirl #dominatrix #keyholder #breastfetish #keyholdercaption #sophistry
-
Irish coffee, 3 position on it.
1. Being sure that coffee with a shot of Irish whiskey in it is better than drinking the whiskey straight.
2. Thinking that it can never be known whether a shot of Irish whiskey that is being drunk would have been better mixed into a coffee. (Agnostic)
3. Drinking Irish whiskey, sure that it would not be better in a coffee. (The spiritualist position)
Which somehow leaves 1. to be twisted into "atheism".
This is your task. -
Irish coffee, 3 position on it.
1. Being sure that coffee with a shot of Irish whiskey in it is better than drinking the whiskey straight.
2. Thinking that it can never be known whether a shot of Irish whiskey that is being drunk would have been better mixed into a coffee. (Agnostic)
3. Drinking Irish whiskey, sure that it would not be better in a coffee. (The spiritualist position)
Which somehow leaves 1. to be twisted into "atheism".
This is your task. -
Arguing with the devil never does any of us any good.
He has had 5,000 years of practice.
He knows all the weak spots.
© -
#Knowledge is #justified #true #belief. That definition is about 2500 years old, and although #philosophers have been trying to come up with a better definition ever since, no one has. All claimed counterexamples are #sophistry.
A lot of my fellow #scientists and/or #atheists have trouble with the word "belief" because they associate it with faith—which in turn can be defined as belief *without* justification, or whose truth is unknowable. But it's really a lot simpler than that.
If I walk inside dripping wet, and someone asks me if it's raining, and I say it is because I've just been out in it, then I'm stating my belief. What you believe is anything you can honestly affirm if someone asks you, "Is such-and-such true?"
Belief can be simple and immediate or complicated and long-term. It can be trivial or profound. It can be true or false, justified or unjustified, testable or untestable. The honesty, that's the key. Knowledge, a proper subset of belief, has a much higher standard.
The above is an extended way of saying that if someone begins a loaded question with an aggressive, sarcastic "Did you know ..." then you are amply justified in truly believing they're full of shit.
-
#Knowledge is #justified #true #belief. That definition is about 2500 years old, and although #philosophers have been trying to come up with a better definition ever since, no one has. All claimed counterexamples are #sophistry.
A lot of my fellow #scientists and/or #atheists have trouble with the word "belief" because they associate it with faith—which in turn can be defined as belief *without* justification, or whose truth is unknowable. But it's really a lot simpler than that.
If I walk inside dripping wet, and someone asks me if it's raining, and I say it is because I've just been out in it, then I'm stating my belief. What you believe is anything you can honestly affirm if someone asks you, "Is such-and-such true?"
Belief can be simple and immediate or complicated and long-term. It can be trivial or profound. It can be true or false, justified or unjustified, testable or untestable. The honesty, that's the key. Knowledge, a proper subset of belief, has a much higher standard.
The above is an extended way of saying that if someone begins a loaded question with an aggressive, sarcastic "Did you know ..." then you are amply justified in truly believing they're full of shit.
-
As I have always been convinced that abuse of Words, has been the great instrument of Sophistry and Chicanery — of party, faction and Division in Society.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter (1819-03-31) to J. H. TiffanyMore info about this quote: wist.info/adams-john/36295/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #johnadams #equivocation #ambiguity #chicanery #deception #language #meaning #persuasion #rhetoric #sophistry #talking #terminology #wordplay #words #definition -
HECUBA: The clear actions of a man,
Agamemnon, should speak louder than any words.
good words should get their goodness from our lives
and nowhere else; the evil we do should show,
a rottenness that festers in our speech
and what we say, in capable of being glozed
with a film of pretty words.
There are men, I know,
sophists who make a science of persuasion,
glozing evil with the slick of loveliness;
but in the end a speciousness will show.
The imposters are punished; not one escapes
his death.
[ἙΚΆΒΗ: Ἀγάμεμνον, ἀνθρώποισιν οὐκ ἐχρῆν ποτε
τῶν πραγμάτων τὴν γλῶσσαν ἰσχύειν πλέον:
ἀλλ᾽, εἴτε χρήστ᾽ ἔδρασε, χρήστ᾽ ἔδει λέγειν,
εἴτ᾽ αὖ πονηρά, τοὺς λόγους εἶναι σαθρούς,
καὶ μὴ δύνασθαι τἄδικ᾽ εὖ λέγειν ποτέ.
σοφοὶ μὲν οὖν εἰσ᾽ οἱ τάδ᾽ ἠκριβωκότες,
ἀλλ᾽ οὐ δύνανται διὰ τέλους εἶναι σοφοί,
κακῶς δ᾽ ἀπώλοντ᾽: οὔτις ἐξήλυξέ πω.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Hecuba [Hekabe; Ἑκάβη], l. 1186ff (c. 424 BC) [tr. Arrowsmith (1958)]Sourcing, notes, other translations: wist.info/euripides/77262/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #euripides #hecuba #actions #evil #excuse #glibness #persuasion #propaganda #rationale #smoothtalker #sophistry #wordsanddeeds
-
On nonsense: Forms thereof, falsifiability, pseudoscience, bullshit, youth culture, and other craziness
I'd begun worrying about the resilience of truth and countermeasures to bullshit particularly online well over a decade ago.
This is an early compilation of heuristics and resources which came up in discussion elsewhere recently, and may be helpful to others.
Among conspicuous omissions, Aristotle's "Sophistical Refutations" (Sophistikoi Elenchoi in the original Greek), one of the earliest recorded (or surviving) guides to countering bullshit:
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sophist_refut.1.1.html
-
On nonsense: Forms thereof, falsifiability, pseudoscience, bullshit, youth culture, and other craziness
I'd begun worrying about the resilience of truth and countermeasures to bullshit particularly online well over a decade ago.
This is an early compilation of heuristics and resources which came up in discussion elsewhere recently, and may be helpful to others.
Among conspicuous omissions, Aristotle's "Sophistical Refutations" (Sophistikoi Elenchoi in the original Greek), one of the earliest recorded (or surviving) guides to countering bullshit:
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sophist_refut.1.1.html
-
If you want to know why some people are deceptive, ask yourself this #question: how many of their aims can be achieved without employing #sophistry?
-
If you want to know why some people are deceptive, ask yourself this #question: how many of their aims can be achieved without employing #sophistry?
-
Okay, so this is a post loosely about UK and Australian public discourse by Tom Tanuki, pushing back on crackers in the media of those countries attacking an Australian football (in their sense of the word) star because she described a British cop as a "stupid white bastard" and now the reactionaries and racists are all howling about "reverse racism." If you're from the UK, or Australia, that part might be important to you, but it's not really why I'm sharing it.
I'm sharing it because Tom quickly and efficiently deconstructs the reverse racism argument, which you will find deployed by bigots, crackers, and fascists all over the Pig Empire, and exposes it as cynical white supremacist nonsense; and he does so thoroughly:
Concepts covered here include racism's role as a centuries-old tool to justify capitalist extraction, what "privilege" actually means in the context of a white supremacist police state society, the difference between being "rude" and racism, why the common (mostly white) conception of racism doesn't accurately reflect the systemic structures of racism and racist societies, why "just imagine it was the other way around" both ignores that it is in fact "the other way around" already and reveals what crackers pushing the "reverse racism" argument really want out of doing that, how white supremacists steal anti-racist arguments and repurpose them towards white supremacy, and of course why all of this nonsense really is just about buttressing white supremacist structures and reinforcing white supremacy in our society.
Personally, I'm a big fan of simple "explainer" articles that talk about important issues from a left wing perspective; so long as those arguments are done well, and don't ultimately feed people the wrong information and reactionary bullcrap under the guise of "educating the masses." I feel like Tom has more or less accomplished that here, and this might be a good link to keep on hand for the next time your cracker uncle starts spewing "white people are the only truly oppressed group in our modern society" propaganda at you. I doubt he'll read it, but at least then you can stop speaking to him guilt-free.
-
The Unwitting #Trump #Enablers
Distinct from the #Trump #sycophants are the Trump enablers, both witting and unwitting, more serious figures who eschew such crude gestures of devotion in favor of cautious minimizations that obfuscate the truth rather than openly contradict it. There are all too many serious writers willing to oblige, intelligent people making clever arguments that amount to #sophistry..they are an indispensable part of legitimizing his conduct. read free https://archive.is/W3nGY#selection-1017.137-1017.348 -
The Unwitting #Trump #Enablers
Distinct from the #Trump #sycophants are the Trump enablers, both witting and unwitting, more serious figures who eschew such crude gestures of devotion in favor of cautious minimizations that obfuscate the truth rather than openly contradict it. There are all too many serious writers willing to oblige, intelligent people making clever arguments that amount to #sophistry..they are an indispensable part of legitimizing his conduct. read free https://archive.is/W3nGY#selection-1017.137-1017.348 -
@Neil1808
Which does nothing to compensate for your pedantic misrepresentation: "to name them the first inventors is so overhyped".
@Grandalf
#Auspol #FirstPeoples #Sophistry #Argumentation -
@Grandalf
One pedantic interpretation of the series' title might be that Australia's first peoples invented everything. A more rational reading is that they were in Australia first (as in, before the British) and they invented some things.
@Neil1808
#Auspol #FirstPeoples #Sophistry #Argumentation -
@Grandalf
One pedantic interpretation of the series' title might be that Australia's first peoples invented everything. A more rational reading is that they were in Australia first (as in, before the British) and they invented some things.
@Neil1808
#Auspol #FirstPeoples #Sophistry #Argumentation -
@Neil1808
Reciprocating your predilection for facile sophistry:
you imply that Australia's first peoples never invented anything. You can substantiate that, of course.
#Auspol #FirstPeoples #Sophistry #Argumentation -
@Neil1808
Reciprocating your predilection for facile sophistry:
you imply that Australia's first peoples never invented anything. You can substantiate that, of course.
#Auspol #FirstPeoples #Sophistry #Argumentation -
Hope all is well in your respective corners of the Universe.
All things happen for a reason. (Some believe that the reason is "no reason at all, stuff is just random." I don't share that outlook, but I will defend to their death their right to say it.)
Why am I saying this? No reason that I can discern. But there is a reason.
And that's today's lesson: we don't know what the reason is. Ever. We can only do what is right and good, and let the Universe play out.
-
Hope all is well in your respective corners of the Universe.
All things happen for a reason. (Some believe that the reason is "no reason at all, stuff is just random." I don't share that outlook, but I will defend to their death their right to say it.)
Why am I saying this? No reason that I can discern. But there is a reason.
And that's today's lesson: we don't know what the reason is. Ever. We can only do what is right and good, and let the Universe play out.
-
Y'all.
If I said I went off for OVER TWO HOURS about a thing, don't come here and rehash old arguments expecting me to be impressed. Do you know how many religious people still try to use Pascal's Wager to convert atheists? That argument is nearly 400 years old. Using it shows you're unprepared for an adult conversation.
That's not #philosophy. That's #sophistry ad nauseam.
Some of you need to #readMore and #talkLess. Re: #abolishPolice, this is a good start: https://www.mpd150.com/resources/
-
Suppose I shouldn't be surprised that internet search fails to return hits on **not** defending unacceptable arguments.
-
@woozle I was just going to ping you into this thread.
Do your own research (DYOR) seems to me a sophistical retort as typically used. I was just checking to see if Issuepedia had a similar entry, though it doesn't seem to: https://issuepedia.org/mw/index.php?search=do+your+own+research&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go
What DYOR does is:
- Deny the validity of reputable or accepted sources.
- Put all sources on equivalent footing.
- Impose an undue burden on the audience.
- Relieve the source from having to be dilligent, reliable, or credible themselves. "We report, you decide."
Trust is an essential component of any epistomological system. Each individual member cannot individually verify all facts independently. Trust is the extension of belief beyond, but not in opposition to, evidence.
The etymological root of trust is the PIE root *deru- "strong, firm, steadfast", which I find illuminating. https://www.etymonline.com/word/trust
This isn't to say that spot verification or presentation of refuting evidence is unnecessary or bad. Both are good practices. But there's a difference between "question everything" (implied: "at all times"), and "Be prepared to question everything."
Trust saves a phenomenal level of effort, at a small and controllable level of risk. Where trust is found to be unwarranted, it is withdrawn. Those promoting DYOR very often rely on absolutely untrustworthy sources.
#trust #epistemology #issuepedia #dyor #DoYourOwnResearch #sophistry
-
New rule: I refuse to allow people to say "we disagree" when they reject data and evidence.
We are not disagreeing. You are rejecting data. Those are not the same, and if you are communicating with me I will not allow you to conflate the two.
-- Tori Glass
https://nitter.net/ToriGlass/status/1291872390931070981
Over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle (384--322 B.C.) wrote Sophistical Refutations, or as I prefer to call it, "Bullshit Arguments Which Must Die", highlighting thirteen specific methods commonly used to twist logic. Well worth studying even today. Or especially.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophistical_Refutations
Spoiler alert: they haven't died yet.
Tori's 'new rule' isn't among these, but has a name: denial.
(The conflation is listed, that is the first, equivocation.)
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denial
#denial #rhetoric #sophistry #aristotle #SophisticalRefutations #BullshitArgumentWhichMustDie
-
For more on the Sophists, see the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sophists/
I'd also recommend the HoP episode:
https://historyofphilosophy.net/sophists
Audio: https://hopwag.podbean.com/mf/feed/6qa8mu/HoP_014_Making_the_Weaker_Argument_the_Stronger___the_Sophists.mp3References:
J.M. Dillon and T. Gergel, The Greek Sophists (London: 2003).G.B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: 1981).
#sophists #sophistry #philosophy #HistoryOfPhilosophy #podcasts
-
For more on the Sophists, see the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sophists/
I'd also recommend the HoP episode:
https://historyofphilosophy.net/sophists
Audio: https://hopwag.podbean.com/mf/feed/6qa8mu/HoP_014_Making_the_Weaker_Argument_the_Stronger___the_Sophists.mp3References:
J.M. Dillon and T. Gergel, The Greek Sophists (London: 2003).G.B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: 1981).
#sophists #sophistry #philosophy #HistoryOfPhilosophy #podcasts