Korean Job Discussion Forums

[tomato]

All of matter is an illusion.

We can thank the Christian Scientists and the guru cults for this one.
You can talk all you want about atoms and molecules, but I will only tell you that the atoms and molecules are part of the illusion.

A philosophy professor once asked me how I knew that a ghastly ghoul didn't extract my brain when I was a baby and play all the experiences I have had since then.

conspiracy theories

In the United States in the Sixties, the Communists were allegedly infiltrating every social movement and every social service organization.
If a person said, "I don't see any evidence for all this," the conspiracy theorists would only say, "That's because the Communists were so well hidden!"

When Kennedy was assassinated, various conspiracy theories arose.
There was a government investigation, but that investigation uncovered nothing.
But that didn't stop the conspiracy theorists; they merely claimed that the investigation was part of the conspiracy.

That is like the familiar elephant joke:

Why do elephants paint their toenails pink?
To hide in the strawberry patch.
Have you ever seen an elephant in a strawberry patch?
No.
See? It really works, doesn't it!

religion

The Moonies have a dandy buzzword which they use for any objection put forth by a newcomer: "partial knowledge."
Reverend Moon has all the answers, whether we understand all those answers or not.
If they don't seem to make sense, that is because partial knowledge is the culprit.

psychoanalytic diagnoses

You say you're not in love with your mommy?
I only have to say, "Oh yes you are. You're in love with your mommy but you're not conscious of it."

allegations of sexual abuse

This is a favorite among a small group of therapists.
They attribute any and every problem to suppressed memories of sexual abuse.
If you tell me you were never sexually abused, I will only tell you that you don't remember because the memory has been suppressed.

accusations of sexual abuse

Practioners of this art have a dandy escape clause: "You're in denial."

paranormal claims

You can go to the North Pole to find out if Santa Clause lives there.
You can go to Mount Olympus to find out if the Greek gods live there.
But most paranormal claims are not so easily falsifiable, because most paranormal claims are not confined to one particular place.
You would have to explore the whole world to prove that there are no witches, dragons, or unicorns.

extraterrestrial life

We have not explored all the planets in the universe, so we don't know that there is not life on other planets.
Furthermore, we don't know what life on other planets doesn't look like.
They may look like ET, they may look like Robin Williams, who knows.

[laogaiguk]

You forgot

I'm always right
Used by children and held up by the fact that the other sex has cooties or Mom said so.

[Skaborough]

Pardon me... I come from retarded stock, but what are you on about?

[RACETRAITOR]

Can't be proven, can't be tested, can't be disproven. They don't affect me.

The burden of proof is on the hypothesist.

[Axl Rose]

[Ya-ta Boy]

After years of frustration of putting, say, 4 pairs of socks in the washing machine and only getting 3 1/2 pairs back, I decided to ask the invisible pixie who lives in the big drawer under my closet. He/She/It said that a fundamental law of the universe is that washing machine agitators are synchronized with the vibrations of the astral dimensions and random socks get shifted to another plane of existence where they are the highest form of intelligence.

Please feel free to prove me wrong.

[mindmetoo]

My favorite line of argumentation put forward by the UFO people (an argument echoed by rteacher) is:

- science demands good evidence

- we're finding it hard to get good evidence

- we should be treated special by science and not held to the same standards

[Moldy Rutabaga]

I remember these philosophical exercises in college. Some were fun and many were very true. Often we would try to reduce a ridiculous belief into a syllogism.

A: All Mexicans are lazy.
B: But what about Pedro Comacho? He works two jobs and helps out at his church and for charities?
A: Then he must not really be a Mexican, because all Mexicans are lazy.

My favorite was one I worked out for the women in psych class.

A: All men are to some degree homosexual.
B: But I don't feel any homosexual desires whatsoever.
A: Then this proves that all men are somewhat homosexual because you are in denial about it.

Ken:>

[hermes.trismegistus]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[tomato]

Here is a goody which I just ran across.
Speaking of alchemists, the author facetiously comments:

Unluckily for their own credit, all these gold-makers are in the same predicament; their great secret loses its worth most wonderfully in the telling, and therefore they keep it snugly to themselves. Perhaps they thought that, if every body could transmute metals, gold would be so plentiful that it would be no longer valuable, and that some new art would be requisite to transmute it back again into steel and iron. If so, society is much indebted to them for their forbearance.

Mackay, C. [1841] 1980. Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks: 126-127.

That somehow reminded me of a column by Art Buchwald.
Buchwald angrily accused inhabitants of other planets of snobbery for refusing to answer our radio signals.

[huck]

I like to tell this to my elementary students and make them explain why it's not right....

Everyone drinks water.

Everyone dies.

Therefore, drinking water kills you.


Of course, I've heard - supposedly - that if people don't drink water, then they'll die as well, but I think that's just a myth by the water people to make people keep drinking.

[tomato]

That's a post hoc fallacy.
("After it, therefore because of it.")

I like to collect fallacies too.
If you're from the United States, you've probably heard people say,
"It all started when they took prayer out of the school" every time a disaster takes place in a public school.

When Goldwater was running against Johnson in 1964,
he blamed Johnson for the blue whale going extinct during the Johnson administration.

And of course, there was the "Hoover depression" which began when Herbert Hoover was President.

But let's not be too hasty in saying that a later event is NOT the result of an earlier event.
Anthropologists tell us of tribes which don't know that having sex causes babies.
Why don't they know that? Because they don't have a control group!

[huck]

Actually, I've sometimes wondered if maybe some/most people might have a built-in immunity to things like AIDS, but this isn't something that can be checked too easily...

You can't have a control group where you inject people with the HIV virus and wait and see how many people actually become infected.

I guess scientists could take tissue or blood from people and start checking, BUT until they convince me otherwise, I'm going to go with my hypothesis and say that not everyone can become infected by HIV....just like poison ivy, which doesn't affect me, but drives my brother batty.

[Zoobot]

"I'm much more persuaded by the arguments against extraterrestrial life posed through thermodynamics"

Thermodynamics is interesting. A couple Soviet scientists in the 1960's proved that the formation of hydrocarbons in petroleum couldn't happen in the crust because of insufficient pressures using the second Law of Thermodynamics. If this is true, then petroleum probably isn't a "fossil" fuel at all, because life forms rarely get further into the middle of the earth than the crust.