Locke said:
Oh, I see. I'm wrong, but you can't explain why. Right. Just for future reference, you should try debating yourself sometime, if you actually have something valid to add.
I'm shaking my head in utter disbelief at this statement. I did explain why. You used fallacious logic. Generally speaking fallacious logic does not an argument make. I didn't want to go through your logic in detail because it's incredibly patronising. However, if you absolutely insist that I pick apart everything which doesn't make sense. Every error in logic, every missing causal link, every misrepresentation and every failed engagement... then I will. (But I warn you now... there is a lot.) I will try to explain things as I go along so that you're able to improve your argumentation skills.
As a side note I have indeed "tried debating." I was a competitive debater on the national circuit for over 6 years. I was the teacher of the advanced strategy class at university for it for 2 years. I trained gifted school children both as a coach to my old school and headed up the schools judges in the west midlands for both the Oxford and Cambridge schools competition. I've spoken in public grand finals where professors and doctors have come up to me after the debate to congratulate me on giving what they felt to be the best speech. Believe me, I'm very well versed in debating. I don't add this to brag... it's more context to let you know that I'm not just posturing, I do know what I'm talking about.
The first immediate thing that stuck out about what you were saying is that you were using fallacious logic. There are two types of logic you can use to connect statements. First is deductive logic. (An appropriate example would be: Rom means romantic. Com means comedy. Therefore rom com means romantic comedy.) Deductive logic is the most common type of logic which suffers from logical fallacies. An example of such a fallacy is "Men have two legs. Eve has two legs. Therefore Eve is a man." You've used an inductive logical fallacy. An example of inductive logic would be "The sun has risen every day in the past. Therefore, the sun will rise tomorrow." An example of an inductive logical fallacy would be "it has rained yesterday. Therefore it will rain tomorrow." There is also another type of inductive logical fallacy, whereby the initial data has no relevance to the theory posited. So that would be "The sun has risen every day in the past. Therefore it will rain tomorrow."
The problem I picked up from your early post was thus:
Locke said:
And pretending that there is any significant amount of people who take rom-coms seriously for use in relationships is like claiming that cops use "The Terminator" for training purposes.
It's a sarcastic take on trying to show the absurd extension of logic. Unfortunately, in doing so, the extension itself is an inductive logical fallacy. We need to translate it into what it is saying, rather than what it is not saying in order to make sense of this. Essentially this is saying "the cops do not use the terminator for training purposes. Therefore nobody would use a rom com as an influence on their approach to relationships." There's no evidentiary comparison between the two. Cops training programmes have no relevance to personal or emotional choices on the part of an individual. In essence it's a bit of a wasted sentence because it says nothing of any value for either side.
Locke said:
You could just as easily claim that there are men who's views on violence have been distorted by action movies and video games, and what woman would want to go out with a violent man? I was just playing "God of War", I don't have the sudden urge to chop someone's head off. In fact, you could replace rom-coms with any genre and come to the same conclusion, if you really wanted to.
This is a mixture of a logical fallacy combined with misrepresentation and a failed engagement on the argument. Let's start off with some context: there have actually been documented cases where men have played too much of a violent video game and then committed murder as a result. (There was
someone in the UK who played Manhunt too much if I recall correctly.) The causal link used by scientists in this is that these violent video games provide a rewards system or positive reinforcement for simulated violent behaviour. This affects the brain and then the endorphins released for simulated violent behaviour are also released for small scale, real life, violent behaviour. That is how the leap is made from simulation to reality. Once that's made the positive reinforcement of the violent behaviour is either stopped by police arrest on the minor incident. Or it escalates because they've had the endorphin release from the minor behaviour. However, it is suggested that this will only affect a minority because the leap from simulation to reality is considered unlikely. (Note unlikely, not impossible. The factor that differs between those who have made the leap and the majority who haven't, is the way the minority become obsessed with it. However they believe it to be a loaded gun theory for the moment. The obsession loads the gun, but some other factor triggers it. They're not sure what yet.) The reason I'm putting this context around video games is because you leap from movies to video games and they are very different. Video games have interaction, while movies do not. This is a key difference in terms of brain function and learning capability. (Simply put: we learn better by doing.)
TV has had a similar case.
I believe one woman who watched Dexter too much went out and killed a number of people, attributing it to her hero.
Another killed his mother if memory serves. (I've added links to the stories on these from a quick google search. Unsure on the woman since the case seems to be ongoing.) These are people who watch or play to an obsessional level. The idea that having played a little God of War... you're suddenly going to cut someone's head off is not a relevant example because it does not fulfil the criteria of the causal link set out above. It is also possible to refute the God of War example because, as laid out above, video games have an interactive factor which movies do not. The example is therefore irrelevant. You should always try to avoid giving examples which come from a different medium to the one under discussion. It provides the easy dismissal as irrelevant and then places the burden back on you to prove that the example is logically comparable. However that doesn't ensure they can't still demonstrate the example to be irrelevant because of the specifics of the example itself compared to their causal link steps.
You can also not replace rom coms in there, because once again, the causal link is not satisfied. There is a separate causal link between rom coms and the idea that a person has begun harbouring unrealistic expectations of love. So what this does, is it fails to engage with the actual argument and instead engages with a separate point.
Locke said:
There's inevitably a group of people who haven had their views manipulated by movies, but until you have actual numbers, the whole argument is nothing but a generalization. Even if you had numbers, surveys are often debatable.
Now here you concede a point. This can be strategically useful in debating, however you concede exactly what we've been arguing. That there is a "group of people who have had their views manipulated by movies." We're not making a generalisation. Our position was clear from the start. We never suggested there was a significant number... just that they're out there and we have come across them.
Locke said:
BJD did nothing but defend his lame ass statement, and refuses to admit that this is all bullshit anyway. The amount of women who take rom-coms that seriously is about as small as the amount of men who turn violent after watching an action flick. It's a non-issue. I attempted to explain this to you before, and somehow you're not getting it.
Three sentences here. First is a statement. Statements are of little use in debating because they hold no logic or cause. They hold no weight as an argument. The only use is when you either provide context or state facts/truisms. (That being, something everyone in the debate will agree on. For example: murder is bad. However there are no pure truisms in debating. If we take the above example, there are debates where it would become a point of contention as to whether murder is bad or not.) In a debate, opposing factual statements get resolved by a judge. (For example: person A says the table is blue. Person B says no, the table is brown. The judge knows which fact is right and declares that statement to stand.) Stating an argument on the other hand is meaningless on it's own. It's the equivalent of two people shouting at each other that they're wrong. (Example: person A states abortion is morally wrong. Person B states abortion is not morally wrong.) If you take that, it all just keeps going in circles and it's absolute waste of time. As a result such arguments are said to "not stand." Arguments which don't stand, don't need to be addressed because it's a waste of time. (Why argue against something which has no reasoning behind it?) So you need to add some context/factual basis or truisms to these arguments to show that they stand.
The second is a repetition of the previous argument. The third is another statement. No causal links to make the arguments stand.
Locke said:
You are both free to not date women because they don't like rom-coms. I'm free to tell you that there's no actual justification for it.
More statements with no step by step causal link or any logic. I'm assuming these are meant to be contextual to explain the following sentence. (Which I'll examine below.) But the contextual basis you start out with can be summed up as "you can have your opinion and I'll have mine." Resorting to talk of opinions in a debate is probably the worst thing you can do because it implicitly suggests you don't believe your side is right.
Locke said:
Anything you say to the contrary is just based on some imaginary group of women you've made up, and absolutely nothing more. But your buddy BJD doesn't believe in proof, and since you can't even bother to argue for yourself, I'm assuming you don't either.
Right, this is called a false statement. It's where you state something that the other side will refute. I've explained that usually a judge will decide which is right when this happens. (A judge will make a note of a statement which is incorrect in case it is challenged. They call this a false statement. This is different to the previous statements I've pointed out because it is something which can be factually proven wrong. In this case, because we've met such women, we know they exist.) That's why it's a good idea to avoid statements beyond facts/truisms or contextual facts/truisms. We've both said we've met women like this. So what's happening here is we're engaging with your point "these women are imaginary" by pointing out that we've met them, therefore they are not imaginary. This shifts the burden of proof to you, where you now have to demonstrate through logical causal steps why such a woman would never exist. That's a very weak position to end up in. It would have been best to avoid the topic in the first place I think and just conceded that from the start. This is followed by some posturing and asking for proof. I'll deal with that in a minute because you repeat yourself further down.
Locke said:
More pointless posturing.
Locke said:
I'll put it simply for you both, one last time: Prove it! Prove that there's such a large amount of women who take it seriously that you have to worry about it. You can't. Nothing you say matters, because it's all made up. you're both wasting my time.
Okay, here is a misrepresentation. It attempts to engage with the argument by misrepresenting it. Usually in a proper debate, a judge will pick this up and I've seen it cost real debaters the room (sometimes even the competition in the case of one I saw. Someone misinterpreted a strong argument as transferring all governmental financial aid to the provision of sports equipment. They were actually talking about ground based NGOs, a pretty significant difference in terms of wider implications. Much easier to argue against the former, much harder to argue against the latter. Hence why they did it... they thought they were being clever. That's just an aside.)
We don't have to prove that a "large number of women" have this issue. That was never our stance. Our stance was that some women have it, which since you've already conceded the earlier point that some can be affected... that's where the point ends. However, we do believe that we have to take it seriously. The reason for this one is simple: we care about who we get into a relationship with. (contextual truism.) we do not wish to get into a relationship with a lady who has unrealistic expectations of love. (contextual truism.) Some women are affected by the movies (conceded point) and we believe we need to watch out for those women (statement of the argument to be connected) because, no matter how small their number, we do not want to be in a relationship with them. (Causal link back to truism.) I've broken this one down for you to try and help you understand the way an argument is put together. A number of statements which are agreed upon and then you need a causal link to logically connect your argument to this.
You add some more posturing too, but we'll skim over that since it's irrelevant and I'm trying to help here.
Locke said:
And judging someone based on their film choices is shallow and idiotic. I know I've already said that, but neither of you seems to understand.
Okay, this is a statement of argument, followed by a statement/posturing. The interesting one about this argument is that it can be rebutted from two separate angles. Either down the route of "romantic selection is shallow in the first place" or "we've demonstrated earlier why we believe a strangely heavy interest in rom coms could be an issue." If you wanted to strengthen your argument, you'd need to address why it is shallow. Why it is idiotic. Without looking at the foundations of your argument, it will never stand up. It'll just be an assertion. I've explained earlier why that's bad, and provided an example as to how you put together an argument properly. On its basis... it's not a terrible one if you could make it properly. But as I said above, it can be rebutted so it's quite weak.
The thing is, I fully understand what you're saying. And I don't agree with you because I don't believe that there is strong enough logical reasoning behind your assertions. Trying to derail the debate by misinterpreting, and thereby failing to engage with the arguments, is not going to convince me that BJD is wrong. A large proportion of what you write is irrelevant statements, assertions, posturing and so forth. When you break it down... there's not that much to rebut or actually address from my side of the table. Remember that debating is all about coming to the right conclusion. Hopefully the examples and explanations in this post will allow you to express yourself a little better so that you and everyone else will be able to understand whether you're coming to the right conclusion or not.
I'm not entirely certain what your stance is because you appear to be outraged by the misinterpretation of BJD's stance, rather than his stance in itself. Hope it's cleared up now for you.
I wasn't talking about watching them as a simple mindless pleasure or for the comedy or because one is bored.
Do you think women really do believe this stuff? I mean, I have never met a woman who actually does, anymore than I have met a guy who really believes that elves, magic swords and whatnot exist. Not that such women may not exist, just that I haven't ever met one..
