Honesty doesn't pay :(

[Jack Simth]

Imperator Fyron said:
The only "tactic" used was to say that the basic assumptions used in the thought experiment (mental exercise) were wrong. Anything else was either an innocent switching of synonymous terms, or imagined on your part.

[sarcasm]
Yes, obviously; after pointing out how you do it yet again in a later post - in the same thread, with quotes, mind, that basically anyone can check on - it must be purely imagined on my part. Right. Of course. What other explaination could there possibly be? It must be purely my fault.
[/sarcasm]
Don't get me wrong - I'm sure I'm totally missing a plank in my own eye somewhere. But your speck is getting annoying.

Imperator Fyron said:
Isn't the meat of an argument far more important that sitting there and nit-picking every little word used? We obviously disagree on the merits of the initial assumptions; going into some point-by-point pissing match doesn't accomplish anything.

Ludd said:
"Paris Hilton may disagree with that. "

Well, I wouldn't expect her to understand the subtleties of context.

actually, I AM making a distinction - an important one, even - between punished and Jailed. As evidenced by the fact that I put "criminal" in quotes. It's a token of a fairly arbitrary nature. You say it can't reflect reality? Try this on for size:

Take, for example, a test for illegeal drug use. It's not unreasonable for a test for illegal drugs that is inexpensive enough to be applied to every member of an entire corporation to be 99% accurate (in both directions). The corporation may only have a 1% "criminal" population - users, in this case. Punishment consists of a summary firing. You check 10,000 employes, the expectation is for 99 true positives, 99 false positives, and one false negative. The test indicates that you've got just under a 2% user population (1.98%, to be precise); exactly 1 in 2 positive results are false. If you actually have a 2% user population, then you're expected to get 198 true positives, 98 false positives, and two false negatives; the test indicates that you've got just under a 3% user population (2.96%, to be precise). Just under 1 in 3 of the positive results should have been negative.

There's a reason I put "criminal" in quotes and used "punished" rather than jailed. But you didn't ask why, no request for clairification, nothing of that nature. Just a direct attack saying it's all stupid assumptions. Then when, silly me, I tried to correct you on the basis of logical constructs used, you started missing fairly important stuff and replying anyway. If A -> C under circumstances B, when B is false, obviously, it says nothing at all about C; the logic statement - by definition, mind - doesn't apply. Yet there are situations where B is true, and it does apply.

There's no point in debating you, Fyron. I'm just in the mood to play the fool today.