[kwlug-disc] Non-tech reference, but may be useful by tech co.

[Mikalai Birukou]

> With logic like this, we won't have honest discussion on anything, and
> we can kiss our culture goodbye.
>
> I find the term "extremist" completely unhelpful.  It tells you nothing
> but that they are a potential enemy (or depending on your position,
> a potential ally).  Therefore, the article is doing exactly what it
> is preaching against.

But this term is being thrown left and right, hence we need a way to 
call bs, when it is used in a counterproductive way. Let's imagine that 
after non-results or no new phenomena at LHC you think that 
super-symmetry and super-strings should be left alone, may be dropping 
concept of fundamental spacetime. It is an extreme idea, cause it 
deviates from common practice. It may turn out to be a good idea. But 
you may be labeled an extremist. How do you push back this ad hominem? 
Being nuanced about the term.

This reference ( 
https://patternresearch.com/laird-wilcox-on-extremist-traits-the-hoaxer-project-report-pp-39-41-3/ 
) is definitely not a complete work, which I think is useful, cause it 
shows that extreme views/ideas are something that we can talk about, 
while extreme forms of expression is what makes lives unbearable.

>   Quoting:
>
> 	2. NAME-CALLING AND LABELING.
>
> 	Extremists are quick to resort to epithets....
>
> In some ways that article reads like a list of argument fallacies. :-)

Cause it really is. Fallacies are used to pump us and to blind us. I've 
just heard about ideas vs expression extremas from Belarusian podcast. 
People there, just like people under Franco, just like people under 
Mussolini, people on the ground are pushed into extremes that later on 
are called common fascism.

I've heard the following phrase: "Propaganda is a calculated attack on a 
complexity of human mind."

All those fallacies come from how brain/mind work.

> I took that class in college, and it was useful.  Studying logic and
> logical fallacies is likely more useful than framing things
> in terms of characteristics of "extremists".

Five years after I left the university, I went through two, I discovered 
"logical fallacies". Ever since, I ask why isn't it a required course 
that is taught in the first year.

I can read English translation of On Sophistical Refutations 
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sophist_refut.1.1.html but I can't 
parse Russian translation. I do have a conspiratorial bias on this 😠 .