I credit VD for clubbing me in to this from the economics and political perspective (BigBear as well) and Michael S Heiser from the spiritual perspective.
Many things become more clear in understanding them when you realize it's not a binary issue. From money to sin to God's love for word play and quadruple extenders.
Since we're discussing binary thinking, or at least thinking that involves convenient shortcuts, I'll offer this example as a sedevacantist Catholic:
"If you don't recognize the current guy running the Vatican as the Pope (now Leo XIV, but could apply to anybody back to 1958), you don't recognize the Papacy and are a schismatic".
I'm not sure it's strictly speaking binary thinking, but it certainly involves a similarly simplistic thought process. "Are you saying there have been no Popes since 1958?" No, I'm not necessarily saying that... just that *these seven particular guys* can't have been Popes because they're heretics and non-Catholics. "Well then, how do you expect this situation to be resolved?" I don't know... all I do know is that non-Catholics can't be Pope, but a clique of anti-Catholic Enlightenment liberals have invalidly usurped the Papacy.
What's so hard to understand about that?
And here was I thinking that heretics or non-Catholics don't fit literally the first qualification of being the Pope. Silly me. Guess I'm not "nuanced" or "broad-minded" enough.
The solution to your apparent paradox is easily resolved if you read and obey Matthew 23:9.
1900+ words of handwaving at www.catholic.com about evil protestants neglects to address the fact that none of the Orthodox churches use such a term, either, and these churches were flourishing while the one in Rome was hanging on by a thread, which means that the protestants are in agreement with the orthodox churches which were founded by various apostles.
Understand that the Roman church is badly tainted with Roman pantheism due to a couple of centuries of being an underground movement which was viewed by the authorities as seditious and subversive, and so therefore retained Roman pantheistic practices as a cloak to not get unwanted attention from Roman authorities.
No other Christian church has been so badly corrupted that it is unique in the fact that it even has a term for the phenomenon of "anti-[leader]" in common use for centuries, because so many of the "infallible" leaders chosen by the selection process were obviously evil men. Such as the recently deceased homosexuality advocate.
This is not to say that there aren't good Christians in the Catholic Church. For example, Archibishop Carlo Maria Vigano. But then, he was excommunicated for telling the truth and refusing to recant it.
Hamas is bad therefore the IDF is good. If you like Chevy you shouldn’t like Ford. Coke or Pepsi. Catholic Church got corrupted therefore Reformed Theology must be right. Etc, etc, etc. From every part of life whether the mundane or the metaphysical binary thinking pervades choices and herds people in certain directions. It is amazing how much people can’t see outside these binaries.
It’s the academic rule the Enlightenment has bequeathed us. Everything fits in a box. Without it, fields like sociology and psychology might not even exist.
Binary thinking has badly corrupted Western thought from theology to economics to medicine.
It’s especially a problem when people think like this when it comes to human nature.
One of the essences of the Enlightenment Philosophy is that Science surpasses Christianity.
This of course, flies in the face of the fact that the Scientific Method of ascertaning truth was LITERALLY developed, EXCLUSIVELY, by Christian Men. (*)
(*) I LOVE throwing that into the face of arrogant atheists who claim that Christianity opposes science. For humble atheists (when you can find one), it's a good step for leading them towards Christianity.
It's quite frustrating to see how what was once a Christian endeavor got hijacked. It's not a surprise then that science has all but ground to a halt in the West and become so corrupted as well. I heard the other day that Russia has developed a vaccine that helps cure cancer and will be releasing it to the public for free. Now, I have no idea on whether this is true or not, if it's effective or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true. I do know some Swedish guys developed a laser that will burn away certain colon cancers. But, they won't sell or distribute the patent because they are greedy. The Chinese government who ignores patents, took the machine and developed their own versions. One version will burn away breast cancer cells and then you just eliminate them as you would normally eliminate bodily waste. No surgery or chemo. This would never be permitted in the West.
China DOES have a patent system. Any patent with a patent number beginning with CN is a patent registered with the Chinese government's patent office. And they enforce their patents against foreigners.
The just don't recognize any patent systems in any other country has having the slightest iota of legitimacy.
We should have let Japan have their way with China.
On the other other hand, it is also true that mathematical certainty is, by its very nature, "binary." There is no middle ground between "correct" and "incorrect" when positing a mathematical equation. It balances, or it doesn't; it is correct, or it is incorrect.
If someone were to try to convince me that 2 + 2 = 5, I am under no obligation to pretend that is correct. Nor would I pretend there is any controversy, nuance, or discussion about the correctness of 2 + 2 = 4. "Binary thinking" is not an inherent logical fallacy. It is false when it is used where it doesn't apply.
Yes, but you are either correct, or incorrect. All you are demonstrating here is that someone who accuses me of "binary thinking" for calling out their incorrect answer is wrong in doing so. There is no third possibility, outside of "correct" or "incorrect," and in that regard every mathematical proposition is yes/no, 1/0, or however else you want to put it.
There is no such thing as “more” or “less” wrong. Either the equation balances, and ergo is correct, or it doesn’t, and ergo is incorrect. There is such a thing as closer to or farther from a correct answer, but the difference is philosophical rather than factual.
You would never survive a day as a working engineer.
You develop an amplifier circuit, and your calculations show that the resistance to perfectly balance the equation has a value of 5507 ohms.
However, the only resistors that you have available have the following marked values: (where 10^N means 10 to the Nth power, where N is an integer)
1.0 x 10^N
1.5 x 10^N
2.2 x 10^N
3.3 x 10^N
4.7 x 10^N
6.8 x 10^N
You can use up to two resistors and put them in either series of parallel.
NO combination of 2 resistors is going to get you exactly 5703 ohms.
Oh, and on top of that, none of the resistors specified are exactly what they are marked ... they're all +/- 20%. That resistor marked 2200 Ohms could be as low 1740 Ohms, or as high as 2640 Ohms. And when the device is put together in the factory, if the schematic calls for a 2200 Ohm resistor, the worker is going to grab one randomly, and put it into the circuit board, and it's going to get soldered in.
You might say, "Well, then lets use more accurately marked resistors!"
You can get more accurate resistors, that are say, accurate to within 1%, so that the 2200 resistor is between 2178 and 2222 Ohms, but they're going to cost 100x more than the +/- 20% resistors that your engineering manager has told you to design with.
Now, choose which resistor or resistor's your going to use in place of the 5703 Ohm resistor which your design calls for.
Why? Because it's going to be a mass-produced item, and keeping costs down is important because if the cost of each of hundreds of components is too high, then the product won't sell, because nobody will buy it for the minimum price needed for the company to make a profit.
And the resistors get sold and delivered as being "well, it gets marked with this value, because that's the CLOSEST value in this series. The
This is only one example of where a little wrong vs tremendously wrong matters. Because very few people really care if the volume control on the radio is amplifying the audio signal to EXACTLY 20x the voltage coming out of the demodulation circuit. All they care about is that it goes from barely audible with headphones, all the way up to REALLY LOUD.
4700 +/- 20%, or 6800 +/- 20% is perfectly acceptable EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT 5703.
Or you can DOUBLE the cost and put two resistors marked 11000 ohms, and HOPE that, when put in parallel, they come to about 5500 ohms. But again, you just spent 2x as much money (and circuit board space) and you're still likely to be under by more than 200 ohms.
Oftentimes, we don't know WHAT the exact number are under any specific circumstances, unless a LOT of time, money, and laboratory resources are designated to obtaining precise values. And in actual use, say, of a car, with analog control systems, we can only hazard a guess.
Look at how many gasoline engines ran on carburetors, designed and adjusted using nothing more than "turning the needle valve to this position provides the smoothest operation."
So yes, there absolutely IS such a thing as "more wrong" and "less wrong."
Take a car from the 1960's or even mid 1970's, of which the engine is controlled by a carburetor, which feeds it a fuel-air mixture.
WRONG: The car is difficult to start due to an overly rich fuel-air mixture at the low RPMs of when the only thing turning the engine is the starter motor.
MORE WRONG: The engine overheats and requires a complete overhaul, including replacing or re-manufacturing the now warped cylinder heads, because the air-fuel mixture is overly lean, leaving not enough unburned fuel in the cylinder to absorb heat, turning sensible (detectable by a thermometer) into insensible heat (not detectable with a thermometer) due to the effect known as "heat of evaporation".
In engineering, one thing we try to do is design systems so that as one thing get out of specification and forces a result in one direction, another thing get out of spec in such a way that the result is to forced in the other direction, stabilizing the system and keeping it performing acceptably for a much longer time.
This is further expanded on with the concept of negative feedback systems, which are VERY stable. As one thing goes out of spec and causes behavior to trend away from the desired behavior, another thing is deliberately adjusted to an "out of spec" position specifically to counteract the first thing that's wrong so precisely that an observer can't even tell that a component is out of spec.
This is why nonbinary thinking is so essential.
When the Romans built the aquaducts, do you think they had advanced measuring equipment to get reading so that they could calculate water flow rates?
Of course not.
They guessed.
Sometimes.
Sometimes, they didn't even guess. They just made systems that would stop the flow under certain conditions, and they STILL didn't know the numerical values of anything.
This is how the real world works. It's only been since the 1940's that we've had precise measurements of much more than length, volume, weight, pressure, and time.
Perhaps another way binary thinking manifests itself is when people feel inclined to choose between X and not-X. True, most people get caught in the trap of feeling that the only two alternatives are X or Y and they must choose one of them, but I've seen people reject one alternative in favor of literally anything else, sensical or nonsensical, that is not that alternative. Maybe this is the line of reasoning behind things described as a "lesser of two evils"?
Two fallacies play into this, sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both.
There's the fallacy of the false dichotomy "If you don't want to vote Republican then you must vote Democrat" [there are more than two choices. Why is the presumption that only 2 choices exist? The very existence of various "3rd parties" proves that there are more than 2 choices.]
The fallacy of the excluded middle (either the extreme in one direction or the extreme in the other direction.
Example that involves both: -- "If a I can't afford a brand new car for myself, my wife, and my high school and college-age children, then I shouldn't buy any."
Obviously there are other options besides buying a brand new car for each driver in the family, or buying zero.
I appreciate how Vox occasionally puts a disclaimer at the top that long time readers already know this. Would have been useful this time. Also every bear should know this by heart. Anyhow the problem of binary thinking is worth going over for the newcomers.
Your argument was that the modern feminist approach to living was wrong based on some of your last few posts. Therefore you said that meant the more traditional female approach to living is the best option. You didn't mention any other option for women in the discussion. That seems pretty binary.
You're literally too stupid to be taking part in the discourse here.
Do you not see that YOU are the one engaging in binary thinking here? Feminism is absolutely and utterly wrong; it is societal suicide. I said nothing about what the best option would be, you simply assumed that on your own.
You're so trapped in your binary thinking that you can't even imagine anyone else isn't.
In "hedonisms hell". You said returning to traditional roles for women in society was the "only solution that realistically had a chance of succeeding".
Which obviously isn't binary, the implication that there are multiple options is right there.
For example, the USA could remove all rights from women entirely and make them actual property as in parts of the Islamic world. That would be better than feminism, but it's not realistic in the West.
Women being incentivized to voluntarily return to their traditional roles is the only realistic solution, but since it probably won't happen and too many women are too stupid to see the macro consequences of their actions, US society will collapse along with all the other liberal, democratic societies.
Okay. So you said theres only one option that has any real chance of working. And all the others are just working towards the same thing in different ways. And said all the others won't work. So I dont see how theirs multiple options here.
Your saying either return to traditional values( and only one way to do that that can work) or face collapse. Where's the other option besides the these two?
Do you know why you don't have a single friend who would risk suffering a hangnail to save your life?
This is why.
You just want to play these utterly STUPID word games, rather than looking for the truth.
There's nothing more annoying than the person with a 105~110 IQ who thinks that because one year, he was the smartest guy in his home room in high school, that means he's a super genius.
You're the male equivalent of the girl who, because she had a one night stand with a 9 (who she mistakes for a 10) who arrived at the party as things were winding down, thinks she must certainly be a 10.
It has nothing to do with something being "okay" or "not okay". Read the article again. If you don't get it then move on, do something else. Otherwise, you're spinning in circles in this comment section.
There are two kinds of thinking, non binary and binary…
Haha, jokes aside I hate binary arguments. The gamma “gotcha” arguments annoy me greatly.
So does free trade theory, the tragedy of the commons, and any boomer explanations of why society works the way it does.
A tactic I’ve used on gammas is to make a stupid argument using binary thinking, then when they take the bait and call it out I immediately seize on the phrase they used. “But just because x is wrong doesn’t mean y is right.” Then every time I catch the gamma using a binary thinking argument I mercilessly remind them of their own statement. It’s usually quite effective.
It’s a silly parable that does not play out in the real world. It’s used as a justification for more environmental laws and bureaucracy. Commons based management is how most humans have thrived.
This is why spoiling the commons is viewed as an act of evil by any functioning human. But the solution is not muh regulation, it is banishing or executing those who spoil the commons.
Oh yeah we see this a ton with men's views of women. Deltas say she's either a Madonna or a Whore, Gammas say she's a slut if she's with me and a whore if she's not. The high ranks tend to judge more case-by-case, or more often don't judge at all.
At William M. Briggs today (https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/academics-say-its-morally-obligatory): The premise is that "meat eating" = "morally wrong." From that erroneous statement, the "academics" posit that pretty much anything they do to stop "meat eating" must be "morally right," and of course now they can justify literally any batpoop crazy idea that pops into their warped brains.
Hence the power of binary thinking, it can be used to justify pretty much anything.
On the one hand, it would be easy to wave this all off as a standard case of lunatics getting paid to fantasize about ways to control human behavior; on the other, after 2020, can we really assume nobody will take this retarded idea and implement it as quickly as possible? On the gripping hand, even if they try, how successful would this plan be, at least for its intended purpose? Unintended consequences, of course, would be legion. The initial premise is binary, but everything that follows or could follow more closely resembles the branching of a tree.
And by their fruits you shall know whether the starting premises were any good.
I credit VD for clubbing me in to this from the economics and political perspective (BigBear as well) and Michael S Heiser from the spiritual perspective.
Many things become more clear in understanding them when you realize it's not a binary issue. From money to sin to God's love for word play and quadruple extenders.
Since we're discussing binary thinking, or at least thinking that involves convenient shortcuts, I'll offer this example as a sedevacantist Catholic:
"If you don't recognize the current guy running the Vatican as the Pope (now Leo XIV, but could apply to anybody back to 1958), you don't recognize the Papacy and are a schismatic".
I'm not sure it's strictly speaking binary thinking, but it certainly involves a similarly simplistic thought process. "Are you saying there have been no Popes since 1958?" No, I'm not necessarily saying that... just that *these seven particular guys* can't have been Popes because they're heretics and non-Catholics. "Well then, how do you expect this situation to be resolved?" I don't know... all I do know is that non-Catholics can't be Pope, but a clique of anti-Catholic Enlightenment liberals have invalidly usurped the Papacy.
What's so hard to understand about that?
And here was I thinking that heretics or non-Catholics don't fit literally the first qualification of being the Pope. Silly me. Guess I'm not "nuanced" or "broad-minded" enough.
The solution to your apparent paradox is easily resolved if you read and obey Matthew 23:9.
1900+ words of handwaving at www.catholic.com about evil protestants neglects to address the fact that none of the Orthodox churches use such a term, either, and these churches were flourishing while the one in Rome was hanging on by a thread, which means that the protestants are in agreement with the orthodox churches which were founded by various apostles.
Understand that the Roman church is badly tainted with Roman pantheism due to a couple of centuries of being an underground movement which was viewed by the authorities as seditious and subversive, and so therefore retained Roman pantheistic practices as a cloak to not get unwanted attention from Roman authorities.
No other Christian church has been so badly corrupted that it is unique in the fact that it even has a term for the phenomenon of "anti-[leader]" in common use for centuries, because so many of the "infallible" leaders chosen by the selection process were obviously evil men. Such as the recently deceased homosexuality advocate.
This is not to say that there aren't good Christians in the Catholic Church. For example, Archibishop Carlo Maria Vigano. But then, he was excommunicated for telling the truth and refusing to recant it.
Covid = bad therefor Vaccine = good
"Render unto Caesar" is the ultimate blowup of a false binary by Divine genius.
I still like the one in Joshua. "Are you for us, or for our enemies?"
"No. But as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come."
"Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."
Matthew 12:30
Hamas is bad therefore the IDF is good. If you like Chevy you shouldn’t like Ford. Coke or Pepsi. Catholic Church got corrupted therefore Reformed Theology must be right. Etc, etc, etc. From every part of life whether the mundane or the metaphysical binary thinking pervades choices and herds people in certain directions. It is amazing how much people can’t see outside these binaries.
It’s the academic rule the Enlightenment has bequeathed us. Everything fits in a box. Without it, fields like sociology and psychology might not even exist.
Binary thinking has badly corrupted Western thought from theology to economics to medicine.
It’s especially a problem when people think like this when it comes to human nature.
Note the logical connection between
En-LIGHT-enment
and LUC-ifer
One of the essences of the Enlightenment Philosophy is that Science surpasses Christianity.
This of course, flies in the face of the fact that the Scientific Method of ascertaning truth was LITERALLY developed, EXCLUSIVELY, by Christian Men. (*)
[The Greek root word "Sci-" means "knowledge".
Omniscient = All (omni) + knowing (sci-ent)
Prescient = Pre- (beforehand) + scient (knowing) ]
(*) I LOVE throwing that into the face of arrogant atheists who claim that Christianity opposes science. For humble atheists (when you can find one), it's a good step for leading them towards Christianity.
It's quite frustrating to see how what was once a Christian endeavor got hijacked. It's not a surprise then that science has all but ground to a halt in the West and become so corrupted as well. I heard the other day that Russia has developed a vaccine that helps cure cancer and will be releasing it to the public for free. Now, I have no idea on whether this is true or not, if it's effective or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true. I do know some Swedish guys developed a laser that will burn away certain colon cancers. But, they won't sell or distribute the patent because they are greedy. The Chinese government who ignores patents, took the machine and developed their own versions. One version will burn away breast cancer cells and then you just eliminate them as you would normally eliminate bodily waste. No surgery or chemo. This would never be permitted in the West.
China DOES have a patent system. Any patent with a patent number beginning with CN is a patent registered with the Chinese government's patent office. And they enforce their patents against foreigners.
The just don't recognize any patent systems in any other country has having the slightest iota of legitimacy.
We should have let Japan have their way with China.
On the other other hand, it is also true that mathematical certainty is, by its very nature, "binary." There is no middle ground between "correct" and "incorrect" when positing a mathematical equation. It balances, or it doesn't; it is correct, or it is incorrect.
If someone were to try to convince me that 2 + 2 = 5, I am under no obligation to pretend that is correct. Nor would I pretend there is any controversy, nuance, or discussion about the correctness of 2 + 2 = 4. "Binary thinking" is not an inherent logical fallacy. It is false when it is used where it doesn't apply.
x = 2 + 2
what is the value of x?
This makes it plain that there is a myriad of possibilities.
However, only one is correct.
The True value of X is a set with exactly one element: 4.
The False values of X are a set with an infinitely infinite set of values which excludes only one number 4.
Yes, but you are either correct, or incorrect. All you are demonstrating here is that someone who accuses me of "binary thinking" for calling out their incorrect answer is wrong in doing so. There is no third possibility, outside of "correct" or "incorrect," and in that regard every mathematical proposition is yes/no, 1/0, or however else you want to put it.
Compare the following statements.
2+2=5
2+2 = -543354.334543l5 i
Which is MORE wrong?
There is no such thing as “more” or “less” wrong. Either the equation balances, and ergo is correct, or it doesn’t, and ergo is incorrect. There is such a thing as closer to or farther from a correct answer, but the difference is philosophical rather than factual.
You would never survive a day as a working engineer.
You develop an amplifier circuit, and your calculations show that the resistance to perfectly balance the equation has a value of 5507 ohms.
However, the only resistors that you have available have the following marked values: (where 10^N means 10 to the Nth power, where N is an integer)
1.0 x 10^N
1.5 x 10^N
2.2 x 10^N
3.3 x 10^N
4.7 x 10^N
6.8 x 10^N
You can use up to two resistors and put them in either series of parallel.
NO combination of 2 resistors is going to get you exactly 5703 ohms.
Oh, and on top of that, none of the resistors specified are exactly what they are marked ... they're all +/- 20%. That resistor marked 2200 Ohms could be as low 1740 Ohms, or as high as 2640 Ohms. And when the device is put together in the factory, if the schematic calls for a 2200 Ohm resistor, the worker is going to grab one randomly, and put it into the circuit board, and it's going to get soldered in.
You might say, "Well, then lets use more accurately marked resistors!"
You can get more accurate resistors, that are say, accurate to within 1%, so that the 2200 resistor is between 2178 and 2222 Ohms, but they're going to cost 100x more than the +/- 20% resistors that your engineering manager has told you to design with.
Now, choose which resistor or resistor's your going to use in place of the 5703 Ohm resistor which your design calls for.
Why? Because it's going to be a mass-produced item, and keeping costs down is important because if the cost of each of hundreds of components is too high, then the product won't sell, because nobody will buy it for the minimum price needed for the company to make a profit.
And the resistors get sold and delivered as being "well, it gets marked with this value, because that's the CLOSEST value in this series. The
This is only one example of where a little wrong vs tremendously wrong matters. Because very few people really care if the volume control on the radio is amplifying the audio signal to EXACTLY 20x the voltage coming out of the demodulation circuit. All they care about is that it goes from barely audible with headphones, all the way up to REALLY LOUD.
4700 +/- 20%, or 6800 +/- 20% is perfectly acceptable EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT 5703.
Or you can DOUBLE the cost and put two resistors marked 11000 ohms, and HOPE that, when put in parallel, they come to about 5500 ohms. But again, you just spent 2x as much money (and circuit board space) and you're still likely to be under by more than 200 ohms.
Oftentimes, we don't know WHAT the exact number are under any specific circumstances, unless a LOT of time, money, and laboratory resources are designated to obtaining precise values. And in actual use, say, of a car, with analog control systems, we can only hazard a guess.
Look at how many gasoline engines ran on carburetors, designed and adjusted using nothing more than "turning the needle valve to this position provides the smoothest operation."
So yes, there absolutely IS such a thing as "more wrong" and "less wrong."
Take a car from the 1960's or even mid 1970's, of which the engine is controlled by a carburetor, which feeds it a fuel-air mixture.
WRONG: The car is difficult to start due to an overly rich fuel-air mixture at the low RPMs of when the only thing turning the engine is the starter motor.
MORE WRONG: The engine overheats and requires a complete overhaul, including replacing or re-manufacturing the now warped cylinder heads, because the air-fuel mixture is overly lean, leaving not enough unburned fuel in the cylinder to absorb heat, turning sensible (detectable by a thermometer) into insensible heat (not detectable with a thermometer) due to the effect known as "heat of evaporation".
In engineering, one thing we try to do is design systems so that as one thing get out of specification and forces a result in one direction, another thing get out of spec in such a way that the result is to forced in the other direction, stabilizing the system and keeping it performing acceptably for a much longer time.
This is further expanded on with the concept of negative feedback systems, which are VERY stable. As one thing goes out of spec and causes behavior to trend away from the desired behavior, another thing is deliberately adjusted to an "out of spec" position specifically to counteract the first thing that's wrong so precisely that an observer can't even tell that a component is out of spec.
This is why nonbinary thinking is so essential.
When the Romans built the aquaducts, do you think they had advanced measuring equipment to get reading so that they could calculate water flow rates?
Of course not.
They guessed.
Sometimes.
Sometimes, they didn't even guess. They just made systems that would stop the flow under certain conditions, and they STILL didn't know the numerical values of anything.
This is how the real world works. It's only been since the 1940's that we've had precise measurements of much more than length, volume, weight, pressure, and time.
Wall o' text. Be succinct. No one cares about how great engineering is except us engineers.
Perhaps another way binary thinking manifests itself is when people feel inclined to choose between X and not-X. True, most people get caught in the trap of feeling that the only two alternatives are X or Y and they must choose one of them, but I've seen people reject one alternative in favor of literally anything else, sensical or nonsensical, that is not that alternative. Maybe this is the line of reasoning behind things described as a "lesser of two evils"?
Two fallacies play into this, sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both.
There's the fallacy of the false dichotomy "If you don't want to vote Republican then you must vote Democrat" [there are more than two choices. Why is the presumption that only 2 choices exist? The very existence of various "3rd parties" proves that there are more than 2 choices.]
The fallacy of the excluded middle (either the extreme in one direction or the extreme in the other direction.
Example that involves both: -- "If a I can't afford a brand new car for myself, my wife, and my high school and college-age children, then I shouldn't buy any."
Obviously there are other options besides buying a brand new car for each driver in the family, or buying zero.
I appreciate how Vox occasionally puts a disclaimer at the top that long time readers already know this. Would have been useful this time. Also every bear should know this by heart. Anyhow the problem of binary thinking is worth going over for the newcomers.
So true.
Few can resist the allure of a mode of thought that extinguishes uncomfortable uncertainty.
Though to be fair probability is beyond the grasp of a great swathe of humanity, hence the enduring popularity of slot machines.
Haven't you used binary thinking yourself? That seems have been your argument when discussing feminism.
And there it is: "seems"...
Now, precisely what do you think is "binary thinking about my "argument when discussing feminism"?
Your argument was that the modern feminist approach to living was wrong based on some of your last few posts. Therefore you said that meant the more traditional female approach to living is the best option. You didn't mention any other option for women in the discussion. That seems pretty binary.
You're literally too stupid to be taking part in the discourse here.
Do you not see that YOU are the one engaging in binary thinking here? Feminism is absolutely and utterly wrong; it is societal suicide. I said nothing about what the best option would be, you simply assumed that on your own.
You're so trapped in your binary thinking that you can't even imagine anyone else isn't.
In "hedonisms hell". You said returning to traditional roles for women in society was the "only solution that realistically had a chance of succeeding".
Which obviously isn't binary, the implication that there are multiple options is right there.
For example, the USA could remove all rights from women entirely and make them actual property as in parts of the Islamic world. That would be better than feminism, but it's not realistic in the West.
Women being incentivized to voluntarily return to their traditional roles is the only realistic solution, but since it probably won't happen and too many women are too stupid to see the macro consequences of their actions, US society will collapse along with all the other liberal, democratic societies.
It's already happening.
Okay. So you said theres only one option that has any real chance of working. And all the others are just working towards the same thing in different ways. And said all the others won't work. So I dont see how theirs multiple options here.
Your saying either return to traditional values( and only one way to do that that can work) or face collapse. Where's the other option besides the these two?
Okay. So what was the correct option you were trying to suggest?
Thanks for demonstrating Uncle John's point.
You've taken "SOME things are not binary" to conclude "NOTHING is binary." which is, of course, a binary conclusion.
Welcome to Club Missing the Point -- population YOU.
Okay. So why is it okay then in that instance?
For crying out loud.
Do you know why you don't have a single friend who would risk suffering a hangnail to save your life?
This is why.
You just want to play these utterly STUPID word games, rather than looking for the truth.
There's nothing more annoying than the person with a 105~110 IQ who thinks that because one year, he was the smartest guy in his home room in high school, that means he's a super genius.
You're the male equivalent of the girl who, because she had a one night stand with a 9 (who she mistakes for a 10) who arrived at the party as things were winding down, thinks she must certainly be a 10.
It has nothing to do with something being "okay" or "not okay". Read the article again. If you don't get it then move on, do something else. Otherwise, you're spinning in circles in this comment section.
There are two kinds of thinking, non binary and binary…
Haha, jokes aside I hate binary arguments. The gamma “gotcha” arguments annoy me greatly.
So does free trade theory, the tragedy of the commons, and any boomer explanations of why society works the way it does.
A tactic I’ve used on gammas is to make a stupid argument using binary thinking, then when they take the bait and call it out I immediately seize on the phrase they used. “But just because x is wrong doesn’t mean y is right.” Then every time I catch the gamma using a binary thinking argument I mercilessly remind them of their own statement. It’s usually quite effective.
What's wrong with the tragedy of the commons?
It’s a silly parable that does not play out in the real world. It’s used as a justification for more environmental laws and bureaucracy. Commons based management is how most humans have thrived.
This is why spoiling the commons is viewed as an act of evil by any functioning human. But the solution is not muh regulation, it is banishing or executing those who spoil the commons.
"But the solution is not muh regulation, it is banishing or executing those who spoil the commons."
Banishing or executing exploiters is an act of regulation.
Can't come up with a coherent system if you don't use words according to their meaning.
It's not regulation. It's revenge.
The commons was destroyed by regulation. Which makes it more ironic.
Oh yeah we see this a ton with men's views of women. Deltas say she's either a Madonna or a Whore, Gammas say she's a slut if she's with me and a whore if she's not. The high ranks tend to judge more case-by-case, or more often don't judge at all.
At William M. Briggs today (https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/academics-say-its-morally-obligatory): The premise is that "meat eating" = "morally wrong." From that erroneous statement, the "academics" posit that pretty much anything they do to stop "meat eating" must be "morally right," and of course now they can justify literally any batpoop crazy idea that pops into their warped brains.
Hence the power of binary thinking, it can be used to justify pretty much anything.
On the one hand, it would be easy to wave this all off as a standard case of lunatics getting paid to fantasize about ways to control human behavior; on the other, after 2020, can we really assume nobody will take this retarded idea and implement it as quickly as possible? On the gripping hand, even if they try, how successful would this plan be, at least for its intended purpose? Unintended consequences, of course, would be legion. The initial premise is binary, but everything that follows or could follow more closely resembles the branching of a tree.
And by their fruits you shall know whether the starting premises were any good.
"after 2020, can we really assume nobody will take this retarded idea and implement it as quickly as possible?"
After 2020, I take nothing for granted.
Academia:
- It's bad to be unhappy.
- Someone made you unhappy.
- Anyone you think did that, it's OK to harm.
- QED
When the Clown World offers the option to either wear the Clown Shoes or a Shiny Red Nose.
Reject both of them.