Linked by Phoenixfire159 on Wed 6th Dec 2006 02:39 UTC
Thread beginning with comment 188575
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RE: Only Refute That Which Needs Refuting
by wirespot on Wed 6th Dec 2006 16:04
in reply to "Only Refute That Which Needs Refuting"
I second that. "Reductio ad absurdum" doesn't even mean what he thinks it means. It means contradicting a hypotesis (on purpose, even if you know it's absurd to do so), in order to show that the inverted alternative would be impossible and therefore the original hypotesis must be correct. It's a mathematical problem-solving method which can help when you have enough data to contradict the negated problem but not enough to prove the normal problem.
He thought it means to contradict yourself, which it doesn't.
Edited 2006-12-06 16:07






Member since:
2006-01-28
This article means well, but you dignified with a response a piece of writing so willfully ignorant, so poorly written and so illogical that the best thing was to ignore it.