QuantumG On Poor Analogies (Slashdot)

Or it's like, umm, leaving a hotdog on the front seat of your car in the midday sun.. it just keeps gettin' hotter man.

Ya know, prior to The Enlightenment there was only two forms of argument. The first form was the usual "appeal to your sense of humanity" emotional bullshit argument favoured by mothers and republicans of all eras. This argument usually starts with the five most stupid words you can ever use to start an argument: How would you feel if..

The second form of argument available was the "appeal to analogy" style or, to use a fancy name for it, Case Based Reasoning. That's the kind that summary girl used and you just compounded, where you try to dumb down the situation so people who have never thought anything through in their lives can make a snap decision about the moral standing of a unique and complicated situation.

Following the middle ages we received another kind of argumentive style. Some might call it a "modern" style of argument, but I prefer to say that it is a logical form of argument. This is where you state a number of basic axioms and then using easy to follow rules you present a string of statements which one can follow to arrive at the current situation. For example, you might present the axioms:

People exist in time.

People feel pain.

Pain is unpleasant.

Actions can be taken by one person to make another person feel pain.

Sometimes people can be provoked into performing such actions.

Causing pain without provokation is unjustified.

From these axioms you can easily make the argument that beating people up for fun is not justified. By introducing just a few more axioms you might make the argument that drivers should be licensed to ensure a minimum level of competency in order to prevent unprovoked pain to others, etc.

But hey, feel free to keep making arguments the old fashioned way. After all, it's not like you ever claimed you weren't intellectually lazy. It's not like you're posting on a site where one of the most treasured attributes of the target audience is their intellectual superiority or anything.