Just because it’s true that all squares are rectangles, you argued that all rectangles must be squares. (And you did it with so much swagger.)
A surprisingly high % of stupid arguments & fights on Twitter are rooted in a tiny number of fairly obvious fallacies.
Stupid arguments & the fallacies that feed them, a thread:
Just because it’s true that all squares are rectangles, you argued that all rectangles must be squares. (And you did it with so much swagger.)
X says: Successful people aren’t afraid of hard work.
Y argues: That’s BS. I work 90 hours a week at Tech Co and am still stuck in this dead-end job.
Just because you found an exception to a general pattern, you argued that the entire pattern is false.
X says: Venture capital is useful for startups.
Y argues: Not true. Foo’s startup took VC money and they crashed & burned.
Z piles on: I agree with Y. In fact, Bar’s startup did not take VC money and it’s worth a bajillion.
Just because you found an exception to a general pattern, you argued that the exception *is* the pattern.
Just because you did not agree with one small aspect of what someone said, you argued that it makes sense to ignore everything they said.
Just because you found one thing missing in a list of generally useful things, you argued that the entire list is useless.
Just because a thing worked for you, you argued that everyone should do that thing, all the time.
Just because a thing worked for Musk / Bezos / Jobs / [insert your idol], you argued that everyone should do that thing, all the time.
Just because a thing worked for you, you argued that no one should do the opposite of that thing, ever, under any circumstance.
Just because a thing worked for Musk / Bezos / Jobs / [insert your idol], you argued that no one should do the opposite of that thing, ever, under any circumstance.
Just because a good idea wouldn’t work if “everyone did it”, you argued that it is in fact a terrible idea and *no one* should do it.
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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
