Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] [ATTEND] How to act on LKML

James Bottomley
2013-07-24T16:23:17Z

On Tue, 2013-07-23 at 21:38 -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-07-23 at 18:26 -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
>
> > I think it's not in the original fallacies because they come from Greek
> > rhetoric and the Greeks believed dialectic: the taking opposite
> > positions and arguing them thoroughly. It's only with the advent of
> > Western European political systems that we're conditioned to seek
> > compromise without rigorous examination. This actually makes argument
> > to moderation one of the most effective rhetorical tools in use today
> > for discrediting an opponent's argument without actually addressing it.
>
> What? Really? You mean the truth doesn't lie in the middle between
> evolution and creationism?

Well, you jest, but actually Intelligent Design is usually presented as
a false compromise between the "extremes" of evolution and creationism.
If you listen to it's proponents, the rhetorical device they use to
argue for legitimacy is precisely an argument to moderation.

James