Today, if you walk outside my house, the air will be about 18°F. Some might complain about this being “too cold”, but after last week, I don’t mind at all. I’m calling it “balmy”.
So with this heat wave hitting Chicago, I’m pouring myself some rum drinks with bananas and umbrellas in them, oiling up, kicking back and asking you to have a little fun with today’s Afternoon Inquisition.
Today, I want you to refute the statement above yours using a logical fallacy. Your final conclusion may be true or false, but your reasoning leading to that conclusion must be faulty.
First up can refute anything I’ve said above. Ready……….. GO!
@Elyse: A good friend of mine, who’s a chemical scientist and has an IQ of 178, says that temperatures never go below 32°F in Chicago.
By balmy you are calling the weather crazy. Since the weather has no mind to speak of it cannot possibly be crazy, but you may be for calling it so.
—
Dr. Strawman
@Steve: You clearly don’t understand the transcendental one-ness of the Essential Precondition of Being as it relates to winter temperatures in Chicago. You and your friend are both clearly unqualified to comment on this topic until you’re willing to address, line by line, my 2000-page treatise, which is available for sale on my website.
The Nazis also relied on “chemical scientists” to murder many many people with their “rockets”. Do you really want to trust one of “Them”? I live in Chicago and last week was “barbarically cold”.
@davew: Prove that the weather has no mind. I have yet to see anyone provide any proof of this. Until you can show me real evidence that the weather does NOT have a mind, I maintain that it does.
@pavoreax: But I’ve heard from lots of different people that they’ve seen the weather acting in totally mindless ways. Just last week, a farmer in Arkansas reported that a gust of wind went to third base with his wife, and it was totally random. All those eyewitness accounts have to add up to something.
Oskar Kennedy must be related to John F. Kennedy and therefore suffers from a liberal bias. Therefore, his “eyewitnesses” should be locked up in Guantanamo.
@Oskar Kennedy (LBB):
85% of the people in Arkansas disagree with that farmer. That farmer is clearly a lunatic.
@Oskar Kennedy (LBB): But how many millions of people say every day something like “This sure is some crazy weather we’re having”? If so many people say it, surely there’s something to it, so the weather must have some sort of consciousness.
@MarlowePI: I can’t imagine the weather having consciousness, therefore it clearly doesn’t.
@MarlowePI: Yes, it does. The Intelligent Designer tells it what to do.
@Oskar Kennedy (LBB):
The eyewitness accounts are either worthless, or they are the most unimpeachable true source ever. I can’t believe you would say that a man in Arkansas is unimpeachable.
Therefore, the accounts are worthless.
@Saganist: Yes, well, by your gravatar you are obviously a child slave trader and thus everything you say is immoral and wrong.
@pavoreax: It’s a false dilemma. Being an extremist with regard to weather’s mind harms both sides of the argument. Don’t be a child. Every grown up knows that it’s the golden mean that should be pursued.
@myself: People have been trading children as slaves for thousands of years. Who are you to say anything about it?
@Knurl: Yeah, but folks who have studied the subject disagree on many details about the identity of this Intelligent Designer, so he (she, it) is clearly completely made up.
@Oskar: my Intelligent Designer said he exists, so he’s not made up.
@Oskar Kennedy (LBB):
But you’re a bald bastard! Intelligent Design is just a conspiracy created to distract us from the truth that the cast of Lipstick Jungle orchestrated 9/11.
@RoaldFalcon: That Arkansanian farmer has special knowledge that can’t be measured or tested by science, so we just have to believe in his word.
You’re all a bunch of fools being deceived they the mainstream puppetmasters. Go ahead, prove me wrong.
@Elyse: I read in a very, very old book that the cast of Lipstick Jungle isn’t smart enough to orchestrate a sandwich, let alone a global conspiracy. They couldn’t possibly have done 9/11. It must have been aliens.
Because only some would call it cold, not most, it’s not cold. Regardless of the actual temperature, the most amount of people thinking the weather is a certain way determines the descriptor. So, it’s balmy. You win.
As I look out my window in New Orleans, I can tell that it is obviously not 18 degrees. I must accecpt my own experiences over those of others, outside sources, or past history. so Q.E.D., I’m not buying it.
(P.S. Rum + Ginger beer = Stormy Weather, a great drink on a warm day like today.)
@Oskar Kennedy (LBB):
Aliens? Oh come ON. Seriously? I’m wearing a hat. It can’t be aliens.
OMG U R SO DUM… i can’t believe u… the only way to get past the cold whether is to read TWILIGHT THE BEST BOOK EVARR!!!!!!!1111!!!!! Edward and bella hav the greatest luv and it keeps them warm no matter WHAT!!! STAY INSIDE AND READ TEH BOOK OR ELSE !!!!!!!!1111!!!!
@Elyse: The thing about hats is that they make babies cry. And I’m not bald, it’s just a nickname. Why do you hate sandwiches, Elyse?
Hats don’t make my baby cry, therefore hats don’t make babies cry.
You know who else makes babies cry? Hitler.
That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
@Joshua: babies are jerks and they deserve to cry. Hats for everyone!
Colin, just because you don’t cry with hats doesn’t mean that hats don’t make babies cry.
(straw man)
@Colin M: According to both The Discovery Institute and the Pope, our intelligent Designer knows more than yours does.
Oh, you’re claiming *that’s* the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard. Next you’ll say that Quantum Mechanics is the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard, then Evolution, then the disease theory of medicine. By the time you’re done with your so-called “skepticism” we’ll all die of plague in a new Dark Age. Is that what you want?
@Colin M: My aunt’s brother in law’s friend’s son once wore a hat, and it made him cry all day, therefore all hats make babies cry.
@LOLkate: Either hats make babies cry, or they don’t make babies cry. Shouldn’t we err on the side of banning hats?
I have a B.S. in meteorology and I got my law degree from Princeton. Can anyone else here say that? No? I thought not. I think I know what I’m talking about here.
So, you’re telling me that you buy the 18 degree weather theory? Just two days ago, the prediction was 17 degrees. So, which is it? This story changes so often, I don’t understand how you can just accept the official sotry… But hey, all I’m doing is asking questions.
Now, I’d love to go into this deeper, but I have some clients waiting.
@greenishblu: Oh, there’s plenty of evidence for the 18 degree weather theory, my friend … if THE GOVERNMENT wasn’t systematically CONCEALING all the EVIDENCE, and DISAPPEARING every WITNESS.
Hesitations 23:17 says “And thus saith the Lord, Because your Els offend me, I shall curse thee with great cold, yea all the sons of the Hinterland.”
Hinterland, of course, was the anglicization of the ancient Penisian for the northern eastern region of the middle west of Scrotumia. Scrotumia is prophetic language for the United States as revealed in the Revelation of Maron, and the Book of Sean.
@Joshua: You know who else thought it was “balmy” out? Hitler!
Man, that works for everything…
@Kimbo Jones: That’s just what Hitler wants us to think.
@greenishblu: Tee hee. I know exactly who you are. And if they show up and say “whoa, that’s not what I’m like” without any of us having identified them, that’ll be telling indeed…
@Kimbo Jones:
I’m not listening to anything you or greenishblu have to say until your identities have been confirmed by Dr Steve Novella, in his office.
@Elyse: I’d nominate this for COTW, but the topic will be so out of context I dunno if it would win. Lol.
@Elyse: I can’t trust Dr. Novella’s assessment until he swears that he has stopped writing Phil Plait/P.Z. Myers slash fiction under an assumed name.
Lots of people read Plait and Myers. Therefore Dr. Novella can’t be trusted.
“All Cretans are liars.”
“I am a Cretan.”
:-D
@greenishblu: Dammit you stole mine but I’m gonna do it anyway.
@truthwalker: COTW
I have a PHD from Miskatonic University. My thesis was on temperature fluctuations caused by Cthullu’s exhalations as filtered by the old ones when they pass through a colour out of space. Obviously I am the only person in the entire world qualified to comment on this. Elyse you should have contacted me before you even made this AI. I have a patent and a copyright on temperature. It was of course quite warm last week but is now unbearably hot. I will allow that a person who doesn’t know how to think skeptically might not understand this. Oh, by the way I have an IQ of 1000 so I am the smartest person I know.
No true Tam o’ Shanter makes babies cry. Now, will someone mention bacon so we can post a link to Scalzi’s Canonical Bacon Page? kthxbai. =^..^=
I made a banana pina colada on Saturday in honor of the 6″ + 6″suprise! storm we got in Boston. I then made Thai food while listening to Bob Marley.
@themadlolscientist: bacon
@Steve: I disagree with your high IQ friend.
I’m a native Chicagoan, and I remember in the winter of 1980(?), we had a Canadian cold front go through that sent the temperature into the minus double digits Fahrenheit. It was so cold that my car’s battery overflowed and froze solid to the car frame.
Perhaps a check of the NWS database for O’Hare (Better yet, Meig’s Field, which was in the Loop on Lake Michigan when it still existed) is in order? ;-)
It’s 63 F outside right now. A little chilly but not too bad.
@themadlolscientist: Scalzi’s Canonical Bacon Page is a sham because it fails to include chocolate fudge pop tart bacon sandwiches, making it incomplete and therefore completely false.
@Steve: Dude, that is just gross.
@Steve: Does it have Deep Fried Bacon, though? Beer-Battered Bacon, perhaps?
@Steve: But is is a sham wow? That’s important.
@Kimbo Jones: I posit that there is no such things as a sham wow. There are only real wows. To call a wow a sham is an insult to wows everywhere. You’re not a wow-hater, are you?
Please release my comment from moderation! What about free speech?! Elyse is a dictator and a tyrant!
@Steve: I have photographic evidence of the existence of sham wows. An expert in photography (they took a whole weekend course for their certificate!) examined them and confirmed they were authentic. The sham wow is a little hard to make out in the shadows, but it’s there.
@Masala Skeptic:
Whatever. Ur momz a tirint and a dick tater.
@Kimbo Jones:
my acupuncturist said that the only way to find a shamwow is to channel your qi into a real wow and if you focus hard enough you can see the sham inside the real. serious. my roommate in college used to do it. then she died mysteriously. and in the mirror it said “your qi is shamwow” in blood.
I don’t even know what that means but it was totally creepy and then the Ouija board went missing and a bunch of cats died.
@Elyse: Please. Like I’d believe anything you said. I’d never take the word of a poopyhead!
@Masala Skeptic: You know who else was a tyrant and a dictator?
@Oskar Kennedy (LBB):
Edward from Twilight!
@Oskar Kennedy (LBB): Give me an H! Give me a…
@Elyse: You know, I heard that if you stand if front of your bathroom mirror and say Shamwow three times in a row you will see the shamwow appear in the mirror but if you turn around it won’t be there. Someone I met at a party told me that someone they used to know totally knew someone who died when they did this. Man, just creepy.
@Elyse: Edward from twilight makes baby jebus cry.
@Gabrielbrawley: Somebody I met recently informed me that your associate from the party tends to drink too much, and wears sandals with socks, so I wouldn’t trust his information.
@ TurboFool: Surely it’s wiser to wear sandals with socks than to go barefoot? Surely anybody can see that someone who walks around barefoot all the time is less worthy of our attention than someone who wears sandals and socks?
@Marsh:
I wore sandals with socks once, and the next day I lost my job. Clearly, wearing socks with sandals leads to a rise in unemployment.
@ JSug: Jesus quit carpentry at 30 and after that he never worked again, and he did pretty alright for himself. If unemployment worked for him there’s no reason why it can’t work for you.
and because unemployment works for you and jesus, it can work for all of human society, therefore we should all get unemployed
@David_Plumb: You may have just hit on the basis of Bush’s faith-based economic plan from 2000 – 2008… ;-)
@Kimbo Jones: I’d like to wish Sham Wow for my real friends and Real Wow for my sham friends.
@Gabrielbrawley:
You call yourselves skeptics, but really, you’re all just Wow denialists.
@Marsh:
Lazy bearded magical people are the reason that the economy is failing right now. He gets nailed to a piece of wood and people worship at his feet, while whenever I have a nail pierce me all I ever get is another bill for a tetanus shot that I can’t pay for thanks to these “messiah” people. pfft, so much for fair and balanced…
@Tim3P0:
Tetanus is a vaccine. You have autism. I have mommy instincts. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I do.
@Elyse: Yeah but you were also vaccinated so you too have autism…and don’t know what you’re talking about.
There are no such things as vaccines. What the government overlords pass off as vaccines to the sheeple are just genetically designed illnesses to keep us from living for hundreds of years.
The proof for this can be found at any reputable web site that mocks the mega-bucks drug companies. Further proof can be found in the Holy Bible where every important person lives for many hundreds of years.
Those of you who doubt any of this are just unable to fight off the affects of the drugs that the food industry regularly fuses into every bottle of soda, water, and energy drink.
WAKE UP PEOPLE! Fight the power before it’s too late!
@MathMike: Mathmike is clueless and should know better. It’s been my experience is that everyone who claims they have Autism only thinks that because their mom told them it so and the only time babies cry is when a monkey puts a high hat on them at the precise moment of the vernal equinox which can also cure your warts. But this is not that big of a problem because what only makes your baby cry just makes him stronger.
@James Fox: You are a superstitious moron. Everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows that babies cry because of the sin into which they are born. No sin, no cry. And that’s why the baby Jesus didn’t cry in the manger, even though it is very cold at Christmas time and that hay had to be at least a little bit pokey and scratchy.
@James Fox:
Baby’s only cry because they KNOW man. They know the truth of our submission. Autism is nothing more than adverse reactions to chemical control.
I think your forgetting the greater Biblical perspective here. This is all a post darwinian response to the condition of man. Once you make people believe that they came from monkeys, getting them to think hot is cold and cold is hot is easy.
Please, visit my churches website if you have any questions. I’ll be praying for you.
P.S. And don’t forget the homosexual conspiracy.
There’s no such thing as homosexuality in nature. I checked! I remember reading something about microbiological science, and it didn’t say anything about homosexual bacteria. Therefore,since bacteria are the most basic of all life forms and we’re all made of bacteria, there are no homosexual people and thus no homosexual conspiracy.
But there is homosexuality because guys make me hard.
Oh wait, logical fallacy, not phallic logic.
@The 327th Male: Sounds like you’ve created a false dickotomy.
@The 327th Male & @Oskar Kennedy (LBB):
No true Skepchick reader would wait until the 85th comment to bring up boners.
@The 327th Male:
and COTW
@Elyse: I’ve had COTW three times now. My trio of imaginary prizes – I keep them on my imaginary prize shelf – means that only I am qualified to judge who is a true Skepchick reader.
Aw, come on. I should totally get COTW for calling Penisian the language of Scrotumia
Neither you nor anyone else should *try* to get COTW. If you do, you’re teaching our children that this kind of behavior is OK. If we start them down that path…who knows where it will lead. Pre-marital sex…marijuana usage…gay marriage! Let’s bring God back into America and rebuke these terrible abominations.
@LadyMitris:
Bringing God into america? If it wasn’t for Jesus selling laced marijuana, his followers wouldn’t have had their psychedelic visions during their pre-marital orgies where Paul woke up spooning Peter and then to hide their feelings they had someone write up that vague line in Leviticus about homosexuality. Therefor, by God coming back to America, prop 8 would be gone and we all would be having more dope-smoking hot “Goddy-Style” sex.
But Leviticus is an Old Testement book, written 4,678 days before the aforementioned Peter/Paul spooning. This of course proves that the disiples of Jesus had a time machine. So did Bill and Ted. Therefoe Bill and Ted are the Disiples of Jesus. Bill adn Ted are also American, proving that America is teh country of God.
@Epicurious:
Pish posh. Your reasoning is beyond flawed. Bill & Ted’s time machine is but a pale imitation of Doctor Who’s. Allow me to elucidate:
EXCITING PHONE BOOTH SHAPE:
Doctor Who: Yes
Bill and Ted: Yes
BIGGER ON THE INSIDE:
Doctor Who: Yes
Bill and Ted: No
Clearly, God favors the British.
That’s not what he told me.
You say “that’s not what he told me”, but clearly, that is exactly what he just told you. God must favor the British by your own argument.
@ everyone:
TOTW!
@sethmanapio: God clearly is French, and therefore cannot possibly favour the British. I give as my evidence: Brie and Grape Baguettes.
@runtime: Oh damn. Now I’m hungry.
I just want to say:
DING! DONG! The wicked Bush administration’s dead!
Well, later today actually, but I’m still pretty stoked.
I need to second @The 327th Male: COTW
Well played, Sir.
Your opinion is obviously of no value since your avatar reveals you as a follower of demons.
@csrster: At least I have an avatar! You have none and so you must be the “they” in “that’s what they want you to think.”
Get thee behind me, G-man!
I woke up this morning and the mirror in the bathroom was broken. Obviously, if I’d slept in and not woken, my mirror would not be broken. The internal rhyme in than line reflects my awesome internal logic.
Still, I can’t see myself living in a house without a mirror :(
you broke it while you were sleepwalking; i saw it with my own two eyes.100% of scientists surveyed agree. Prove me wrong!
PROVE you wrong? Why would I do that? Proving you wrong would imply evidence, and evidence gets in the way of Truth. I mean, Duh.
@Chris Hyland:
The truth will set you free. You will feel better if you tell the truth. Why don’t you write down your confession for me and the District Attorney, and then you can be on your way. Didn’t you say you had a party to go to?
@Chris Hyland:
———
I find it difficult to believe that your sleeping habits can be connected to the state of your mirror, and therefore you must have broken it sleepwalking.
@sethmanapio:
Yeah, well, of COURSE you have difficulty believing it, don’t you — you’re all, like, I’m a SKEPTIC, woo, look at me, not believing in stuff just because there isn’t any EVIDENCE.
God, you’re so CLOSE-MINDED, it’s a wonder you were CREATED in HIS image AT ALL!!!!!!!
@Elyse: Truth, like faith, is just another way of seeing the world. It’s totally man made and so it can’t be trusted to describe objective reality. Therefore, it won’t set you free, any more than devotion to your fundamentalist atheist scienceism.
@Oskar Kennedy (LBB): Who wants to be free, anyway? I want to be part of the flock, with a kindly, divine shepherd looking after me :)
Shepherds look after sheep because they LOVE them (though not in that way); it totally isn’t because they want to fleece them and kill and eat them.
@Chris Hyland: The rod and staff are a comfort to the flock.
@dreamsphere: No the mirror was broken because Chris said Shamwow three times before bedtime.
@James Fox: You mentioned a rod and a staff. Therefore, you are a sadomasachist. Therefore, everything you say is wrong.
@sethmanapio:
Wrong again Seth! Sadomasochists — or at least the doms — are always right, based on the appeal to authority. That’s why we call then “Master.”
@greenishblu: Aha! But since sadomasochists are always wrong, the subs are wrong in thinking the masters are right, and therefore the masters are wrong….
Wait. That was almost logical… wait…
Ah, yes… sadomasochists like leather. So obviously, the mirror was broken in a narcissistic leather admiration session that went bad.
@sethmanapio: What could be so wrong when it feels so right…
@James Fox: It felt right to the Nazis to murder Jews, so actually anything that feels right is actually wrong.
Wait, are we only allowed one logical fallacy?
@autotroph: Yeah well you know someone else who liked to kill jews? Hitler! So your an idiot.
But Hitler built great highways! So by extension, everything he did was right.
You know who else liked leather and sadomasochistic sex? HITLER!
… I’ll be in my bunk.
@Merkuto: Since you admitted that everything you say is, quote, “bunk,” I win.
@ MarlowePI: That made me laugh, and hard. So clearly it was a joke. And jokes aren’t serious, so you’re wrong. Jokes about dead babies are also offensive, so you’re offensive and kill babies. Burn in hell you bastard.
@Merkuto: Hey you know who else burned in hell? Gahndi! Because he wasn’t a christian.
@Merkuto: Jokes are very serious because they have punchlines — and punches are very serious things indeed…
And I think I just lost the will to continue playing this — the level of stupidity I expressed there is too much for me, knowing that someone, somewhere, somewhen, actually has argued like that! :(
I was handed a leaflet in town the other day that said, “how do we know the Virgin Birth to be true? Because Mary told an angel … and an angel isn’t the type of person you’d lie to, is it?”
@Gabrielbrawley:
Who says he burned in hell? Did he say it? You know, you can’t trust what any of those people say… you know, them… from that part of the world. He says he’s not a A Rab, but you don’t know, you can’t tell them apart. He’s probably eating his raisins/having mad sex with his virgins right now in Allahville or wherever brown people go when they die.
@Chris Hyland:
Uhh no… an angel isn’t a person. So he would TOTALLY lie.
(and Chris, you’re fired for trying to trick me into being a non-phallic logician)
@Merkuto: Your dead babies are nothing more than straw men that smell of red herring!
“And Chris, you’re fired for trying to trick me into being a non-phallic logician.”
—
But… but … I would never … that would mean I was trying to make you think like a woman! We all know women can’t think, therefore women can’t think.
@James Fox:
You know, these ad hominem attacks on dead babies do nothing to advance the discourse.
@greenishblu: You’re an ad hominem.
@MarlowePI:
You’re about to get a taste of the argument from “Oh yeah?”
ad hominem? As in “to the man”??? Well that’s incredibly sexist and speciesist! I know from that statement alone that you are rapist and flesh eater. Which logically means that you must have a fascination with menstrual cunnilingus. Deviancy in the bedroom proves a deviant mind. You, sir, are sick little monkey and all statements you make may be discounted.
@truthwalker: You clearly are what you claim to abhor and your mother smells of elderberry wine you post-hoc ergo propter hoc monkey pants ad ignorantum !
Well, my baby sister is a rocket scientist, and she says that truthwalker’s mother smells like sour grapes.
It has been more than 24 hours since anyone has posted here, and yet STILL no one has answered the questions I raised in @36 to my satisfaction. Clearly, this indicates that I’m right, that you all are wrong, that you realize you’re wrong, and that you are too prideful to admit it.
I still have not heard from Dr. Steven Novella, whom we all agreed should be able to verify my identity as one of the world’s foremost climatologists. I’ve even been on Fox News. Can any of you say the same?
You call yourselves skeptics, so why am I the only one asking questions in here?
Oh yeah, and all of you are Hitler!
@greenishblu: Nobody who so thoroughly abuses the corpses of expired equines could possibly have the brain power to be a climatologist. Your questions are silly, and I won’t dignify them with an answer.
I’m confoozled. Gabrielbrawley says whatshisface from Twilight makes Baby Jeeebus cry. wet_bread says Baby Jeeebus didn’t cry. Guys, you can’t both be right – unless you both happen to be Fundy Mental Cases. Cuz everything they say in church about Baby Jeeebus is true. Even when it doesn’t make sense.
p.s. Baby Jeebus never pooped his diaper. I know cuz I’m a Preacher’s Kid.
The 327th Male for COTW(!) in spite of the fact that “phallic logic” is a bigger oxymoron than “military intelligence” and “jumbo shrimp.” =^..^=