If I'm going to be able to participate usefully on discussions on here I need to have this sorted out for me.
My neighbor plays his music real loud at night.
He also throws his trash into my yard at times.
A co-worker has claimed he's a nice guy.
He is not acting like a nice guy, in fact he's acting like a jerk.

DS seems to say my argument is refuted by something like -
- he may have a dying, almost deaf mother who likes music to fall asleep by.
- she may have a severe allergy to mold and because he must be by her side constantly he only has time to toss the garbage as far away as possible.
Those have " ..any chance" , therefore my argument is DS refuted.

Is that correct? Can I refute an argument by pulling random stuff out of random orifices? I think DS has this confused with some black swan stuff, but I'm listening.

There is a bug here, because if you can show him one way this is wrong - then it is refuted.

hahahah beaten to the punch

Evidence he's a jerk -
a) I have the actual physical garbage in my yard.
b) I have recordings, or you can come over and listen directly, of the late, loud music.

Evidence he's a nice guy-
a) he MAY HAVE a deaf, dying mom, etc.
b) she, if she exists, MAY HAVE an allergy, etc.

'may be' beats actual, and not just weakens it but defeats it, "refutes" it.
that seems delusional to me, so I'm really struggling with his point.

I suspect that DS is referring to deductive arguments. Since the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises, you can refute such arguments by showing even the possibility of the conclusion being false when the premises are true. The possibility of black swans did not refute the correctness of the inductive generalization that all swans are white. However, the reality of even a single black swan does.

Your conclusion that he is acting like a jerk not a nice guy, seems ok to me. If you were to have said, "He is a jerk" then I might say "Probably, but if there is a set of circumstances that could compel this behavior perhaps you should reserve judgement."

Just my opinion of course.

Either Original Position is right or DS is wrong.
Sadly I think DS was just being sloppy, rather than wrong.

Assumption: Only jerks play loud music a night.

You argue that since it is a fact your neighbor plays loud music at night, he therefore is a jerk.

If your co-worker accepts your assumption he cannot refute you.

I think what Sklansky is saying is if you can't prove your assumption, you can't prove your argument. All one has to do to defeat your argument is show there is at least one hole in your assumption.

In the other thread I don't accept the implied assumption that an all loving God must by His own nature prevent natural disasters. If atheist are unwilling to stand on that assumption they look silly trying to argue that an all loving God must not exist because natural disasters happen. If atheist continue to stand on that assumption after it is shown false, they also look silly.

So, they charged me with speeding. They said they had evidence. I chuckled because I knew I had a rock solid DS/Stu defense.
"Your honor, it is plausible that the radar gun was malfunctioning at the time. Sorry they wasted your time, bye."

My take - Preponderance of evidence arguments aren't defeated by tid-bits of counter evidence and even solid counter evidence only weakens them it doesn't refute them. Similarly, "what if" counter evidence is just thrown into the weighting, it doesn't refute.

We hang people when there are endless "what if" counter evidence that should save them by DS/Stu rules.

Yeah, that was a pretty terrible DS quote that only makes sense in math. Everything else already has a chance of being wrong built in.

In the case of a traffic infraction we can reasonably place probabilities on the happenings of certain events. We know quite a lot about the circumstances of traffic infractions.

How do you go about placing a probability on the happenings of an action of God? I don't think you could even make an educated guess without first having some direct knowledge of how God acts(i.e. observations).

A person who claims there is absolutely zero evidence of Gods existence is not in a position to then say he would know how God would act if God does exist....but atheist on this forum do this all the time.

But I ADMITTED that "refute" was a bad choice of words except in a technical sense. Why does this thread exist?

Cause your name is in red and you wrote some books.

And "technical" was a bad choice of words except in a wrong sense?


(I didn't know you had backed away from it though. So this thread probably shouldn't exist)

Because your argument depends on it? if we take 'refute' out, what's left?

if "are refuted" doesn't mean refute, then why shouldn't they use it as evidence against the "loving god exists' claim? The fact theists may come back with "what if it causes x happiness down the road" is not much of counter to dead bodies and suffering before our eyes.

your correction where you defined your use of 'refute'- how does that fix it? That was the problem with it in the first place.

Because you havent yet admitted that you left out deductive.

This is what happens when you try to mix probabilistic and deductive arguments.