Internet Fallacies

Hello internet! Today we’re going to talk about syllogisms and logical fallacies. 

 

The classic example of a syllogism is: 

 

1). Socrates is a man 

2). All men are mortal 

3). Socrates is mortal 

 

This is simple and straightforward logic, although it is also dependent on the assumption that statements 1 and 2 are true. For example: 

 

1). Socrates is a man 

2). All men are fish 

3). Socrates is a fish 

 

Would be logical, but untrue. Men are not fish, though I’ve known a few mermaid Otherkin who would beg to differ. 

 

 A majestic people

 

However, factual errors are not the only way to mess up a syllogism. Consider the following example: 

 

1). Lassie is not a man 

2). All men are mortal 

3). Lassie is not mortal 

 

This is an example of what we might call a Set Error (more properly, the Illict major); the category of “mortal” includes dogs as well as men.  

 

"I love you, Lassie!"
"YOUR MORTAL EMOTIONS HAVE NO SWAY OVER THE ETERNAL"

 

Of course, in this age of the internet, the above logical errors are not very common. Instead, we must deal with logical errors of the following type: 

 

1). Socrates is a man 

2). All men are mortal 

3). What about women, shit lord? 

 

This is an example of an Off-Topic Error, in which the point of the syllogism is ignored in favor of pushing a political agenda. This type of error is common among those who are only familiar with a single worldview and believe that it is the only truth that matters. For example: 

 

1). Socrates is a man 

2). All men are mortal 

3). Socrates better get right with the Lord before he dies! 

 

1). Socrates is a man 

2). All men are mortal 

3). The White Race that birthed Socrates is being intentionally wiped out by the Jew 

 

1). Socrates is a man

2). All men are mortal 

3). This information only distracts the working class from throwing off the chains of Capitalist oppression 

 

Bear in mind, this logical error has nothing to do with the inherent truth or falsity of the final statement. Perhaps it would be better to say “all humans are mortal.” Perhaps Socrates should accept Jesus as his personal savior before downing a hemlock apéritif. The issue is that whether true or false, these statements have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Being off-topic is not the same as being untrue, though it is the same as being irrelevant.

 



 While these Off-Topic errors should be familiar to denizens of the internet, there are other, more fundamental logical errors that are even more common: 

 

1). Socrates is a man 

2). No he isn’t 

3). Yes he is 

4). Is not! 

5). Is too! 

6). Im blocking u 

7). Victory! 

 

In the Baseless Assertion fallacy, the truth of the statement “Socrates is a man” is never proven or disproven; it is simply asserted. Since neither party is willing to establish any facts about Socrates, each simply Asserts their opinion. 

 

Interestingly, these fallacies function identically when the initial statement is untrue: 

 

1). Socrates is a fish 

2). Uh…no he isn’t 

3). Learn to science, bro  

4). What? This is what’s wrong with you “Socrates is a fish” types. Just because I believe Socrates is a Greek philosopher and not a fish, that doesn’t mean I’m anti-science. In fact, scientists can’t even agree what type of fish Socrates was. Was he a trout? A cod? A perch? The SCIENTIFIC THEORY that Socrates was a Greek philosopher used to be accepted by all scientists: Newton, Galileo, even Einstein admitted it was probably true. Just because Stephen Hawking and Bill Nye the freaking Science Guy say Socrates was a fish DOES NOT overturn CENTURIES of SCIENTIFIC CONCENCOUS THAT SOCRATES IS A GREEK PHILOSOPHER. 

5). U man bro? 

6). HITLE- 

 

"The unexamined life is not worth swimming."

 

Again, the truth or falsity of the statement “Socrates is a fish” is at no point established, or even directly addressed. Appeals to authority or tradition do not prove the truth of a statement – even a true statement!  

 

But again, these fallacies assume an intellectual ferment that rises to the level of disagreement. The most common internet logical fallacies take the following form: 

 

1). Socrates is a man 

2). The cake is a lie 

3). ??? 

4). Profit 

 

1). MFW Socrates is a man 

2). AwwSnap.gif 

3). Share if you think Socrates is a man, like if you think he is mortal 

 

1). BACON BACON BACON 

2). BACON 

3). BACON SOCRATES CHOCOLATE 

 



Philosophy FTW!

 

While the Baseless Assertion at least has the dubious distinction of making claims about reality, in these examples the truth or falsity of a statement is no longer of any importance. Each example is more an ejaculation of emotionally charged syllables than a statement about reality. 

 

Given the downward trajectory of logical fallacies in the internet age, I can only assume that the next generation of logical fallacy will be something along the lines of: 

 

1). Socrates is a man 

2). [Thought criminal injected with a cocktail of euphoria-inducing chemicals] 

3). … 

 

 

Hemlock 2.0 will result in lower losses of human capital

 

The State of the Blog (October 2015)

A few housekeeping items:

1). In the near future, I’m going to be shifting to talking more about pen & paper RPGs and less about video games.

2). In the near future, I’m going to be shifting to posting more articles about non-games stuff: translation, theology, and errata.

3). In response to recent rumblings on the blogosphere about overly-vague Codes of Conduct, I am considering instituting some Rules on Commenting. For the record, this is not a response to anyone who has commented here. It is an attempt to make the Rules exceedingly explicit.

Here’s the rough draft:

I am the Rev thy host, who led you out of nowhere in particular.

I. Thou shalt not spam. Well-thought out comments shall not be considered spam, no matter how frequently a person posts. Robo-spamming and copypasta is right out.

II. Thou shalt not post threats of real-world violence or exhortations to commit real-world violence. Comments which are obviously jokes or hyperbole shall not be considered threats of real-world violence.

III. Thou shalt not post pornographic material and thou shalt not post links to pornographic material without first providing a NSFW warning.

IV. Thou shalt not post anything illegal to this blog. The Rev thy host will turn you in to the relevant authorities so fast, you guys.

V. Thou shalt not expect the Rev thy host to give a single crap about any comment which does not fall into the previous four categories.

VI. Thou shalt feel free to post anonymously.

VII. Thou shalt feel free to comment off-topic.

VIII. Thou shalt feel free to disagree with everyone and anyone, including the Rev thy host. If thou expecteth anyone to take thy arguments seriously, thou had best bring thy A-game.

IX. Thou art not owed anything by anyone here. The Rev thy host in particular has a full-time job and a life and shalt prioritize these things over thee.

X. Attacks of a personal nature are discouraged, unless hilarious.

The goal of these rules is not to limit what you can say, but to make it very clear that you will only ever be banned for practical reasons - never ideological reasons.

Cool? Cool.

[OE011] What We Could Do: The Goal

Previous: [OE010] The Game Mechanic: Your Precious Eyes

What We Could Do 

Make games that aren't juvenile pap. 

Ha ha, but seriously. I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that Oedipal dilemmas are the only option for mature, morally thoughtful games. What we need to do is explore our options - Oedipal dilemmas being one of the mostly overlooked options. 

The goal of all this was hopefully to broaden vocabularies and ideas. As spell-check is all too eager to remind me, "Edenian" and "Pandoran" are not real words. By providing some tentative labels, I hope to open up how we think about morality in games. 

There is no reason why morality systems in games have to be terrible, even games with binary moral systems. The answer is not that games should never talk about morality or even that it should be confined to the narrative level. 

Morality, and formal morality in particular, is nothing if not a mutually-agreed upon system. Games, as systems, are perhaps the perfect medium for representing and recreating moral systems for criticism and contemplation. Traditionally narrative mediums such as books or movies can generally only present one sequence of events (the most post-modern examples notwithstanding). By gamifying moral systems, we can examine them from multiple angles.  

Oedipus Rex the play can only recount the events of Oedipus' life from one perspective with one series of events. We weep for Oedipus, but his choices are scripted by the playwright as much as by the gods. Oedipus DX: Jocsta's Revenge the video game might also have scripted dialogue, but it can also have a scripted (that is to say, coded) moral system that allows Oedipus to make alternate decisions within the same moral framework.  

It is this subtle difference between scripting the words of a play and scripting the rules of a game that should excite us. Eve, Pandora, and Oedipus can teach us a lot as stories, but they could have even more potential as games. 

[OE010] The Game Mechanic: Your Precious Eyes

Previous: [OE009] Handlug vs. Tat

The Game Mechanic 

 I am going to define a "video game Oedipal morality system" as one that fulfills the following three conditions: 

1). It must be possible to commit unintended moral transgressions. Gunning down innocents for fun does not count. 

2). These moral transgressions must have real consequences. Simply losing points or having to restart a level doesn't count. 

3). These moral transgressions must be avoidable, not forced on the player as a plot point.  

Unlike Edenian or Pandoran games, there aren’t very many games with Oedipal morality. So we're also going to look at a few games that come close but get no cigar⁹.  

Perhaps the most common not-quite-example is the employer heel-turn trope (ala Bioshock). Your employer, who you thought was a good person, turns out to be a Machiavellian psychopath. All of the early missions, where you thought you were saving the world, were actually part of their Evil Plan™ - and so the second half of the story involves taking your former employer down.¹⁰ 

However, the main characters in these stories tend not to learn any sort of moral lesson at all. The entire tension of the Oedipus story comes from Heroic Morality; from taking responsibility for the results of your actions no matter what your inner intentions were. Passing responsibility for the hero's actions to a scheming third party is little more than a reverse-Pandoran twist. 

Most importantly, this trope is rarely-to-never used to question the nature of morality. It's used as a cheap twist to pad out play time (reusing friendly NPCs and locations as enemies) or to wearily "raise the stakes." If the hero is preemptively absolved before grappling with the moral questions involved, it says less about morality and more about hackneyed story writing. 

Fable III comes a bit closer. When you overthrow the evil king, you find out that his evil policies were all in place to raise the kingdom's defenses against an inter-dimensional evil. Your efforts to overthrow an oppressive ruler came from a place of good intentions but were actually weakening the kingdom's defenses. The player must make the same decisions as her predecessor - harsh policies that will strengthen the kingdom or benevolent policies that will cripple it. 

Pimping ain't easy, but it is quite profitable.

Passing by the issue that this is an inevitable plot point instead of a conscious choice, the scenario could still have provided a chance to subvert binary morality. But Fable III continues using the same old moral binary, even though the moral picture has entirely changed. A benevolent policy that gets everyone killed is not really benevolent. It's as if Oedipus continued on with Jocasta as if nothing had happened on the basis that he didn't want to hurt her feelings. 

Worse, you can bypass the entire dilemma by donating your own money to the "save our kingdom" fund. Worse than worse, if you enact benevolent policies but don't donate your own money, the game still gives you a morally good ending. Which raises the questions: 

1). Why didn't the old king just explain about the incoming dark god? 

2). Why aren't the citizens voluntarily donating to the "not getting violated by cosmic horrors" fund? 

3). Can the player truly be considered "good" if they enact the benevolent policies but refuse to donate their own money? 

4). Is this morality system really saying anything coherent about morality? 

To answer these questions: plot contrivance, plot contrivance, no, and nothing coherent. 

Braid also comes fairly close. The protagonist hops and bops through platforming levels to save a princess, only to find that she is trying to escape him. The handlug is platforming action, which is moral in the broadest sense. Is it not noble to crush enemies and rescue captured princesses? However, the tat is an immoral action - pursuing the princess against her will.¹¹ 

Despite its complicated time-manipulation mechanics and confusing subtext, Braid's moral mechanics are elegantly simple. More importantly, they are an essential element of gameplay rather than a tacked-on addition. By having an overarching moral framework, in which the main character manipulates time and memory to pursue the princess, each action becomes endowed with moral significance. 

Of course, since these morally loaded gameplay elements are of necessity unavoidable, it is difficult to classify it as a fully Oedipal game. However, Braid provides a clear enough example of what an Oedipal dilemma looks like (intended action and actual result) that I'm willing to let it sit at the cool kids' table. 

Perhaps the only example of a fully Oedipal game is Papers Please, the celebrated bureaucracy simulator. The player takes the role of a immigration officer working at the border checkpoint of a faux-Soviet satellite state. You examine the paperwork of potential border-crossers, look for discrepancies, and finally decide whether to allow or deny entry. 

The game is filled with endless little moral choices - allow a mother with improper paperwork to reunite with her family? Deny crossing to a violent pimp attempting to track down an escaped sex worker? The cases pile up and you're payed by the number of people processed, so agonizing over a moral decision means taking food out of your family's mouth. 

But the most impactful choices are the ones you didn't know you were making. I still remember approving the paperwork of an apparent work-a-day citizen who proceeded to run out into the street and blow herself up. I had unwittingly let a terrorist through, killing innocent people. 

This set up a handlug/tat dilemma worth considering. It was not an objectively evil act that the game forced me to take; it simply allowed me to make a mistake. There was no god to blame for my actions and all of my protestations of innocence could not bring the innocent dead back to life. The border checkpoint closed for the day and I returned to my squalid apartment with my meager earnings, just in time to watch my family stave to death. 

And then it happened again.

Now I have by no means played every video game in existence, so there are likely other examples out there. The point is that it is possible to do Oedipal games.¹² More importantly, it is possible to make games where morality is more than a point system or a series or predetermined plot points. Whether this comes in the form of an Oedipal dilemma or not, the essential thing is that games do have this potential.

Next: [OE011] What We Could Do: The Goal

[OE009] Handlug vs. Tat

Previous: [OE008] The Story: Oedipus

Handlug Vs. Tat

                While most are familiar with Freud’s take on the story, Freud is not the only game in town. Hegel uses the story of Oedipus to illustrate the difference between what he terms handlug and tat (if you thought I would pass up a chance to talk about Hegel, prepare to be disappointed).

                Handlug is the intended action while tat is the actual result. For example, let’s say that I pick up what I think is a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich and take a bite, only to find a tarantula inside. My intended action is eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (handlug). However, my actual action is eating a peanut butter and jelly and tarantula sandwich (tat) because, unknown to me, a big hairy spider has crawled between the slices of bread. I intended to do one thing, but another thing actually happened.

                Oedipus’ handlugs are meant to escape his prophesied destiny: killing a belligerent old man as he flees his Corinthian “father,” saving a kingdom, and marrying a queen instead of his Corinthian “mother.” His tats fulfill the prophecy: killing his true father, marrying his true mother, and thus bringing down the curse of the gods on the kingdom of Thebes.

Handlug	Tat
Escape the prophecy	Fulfilled the prophecy
Kill a belligerent old man	Killed his father
Save a kingdom	Cursed a kingdom
Marry a queen	Married his mother

                It bears pointing out that Oedipal morality is still binary – Oedipus is horrified at what he has done, as are the gods. Patricide and incest are evil, abominable things, things which cannot be forgiven by the excuse that Oedipus did not know what he was doing. The important point is not what Oedipus intended to do, but what he actually did.

                Hegel refers to this as “heroic morality,” wherein the moral actor takes responsibility for the results of action regardless of the intention behind them. It does not matter to my taste buds whether I intended to eat a peanut butter and jelly and tarantula sandwich or not. Whatever my intentions, the results are the same.

                This sort of thinking was popular among the Greeks, but we can also see traces of it in the Old Testament kosher laws. It does not matter whether or not I intended to touch a dead body (or to be born crippled, or to menstruate); I am rendered impure by actuality, not intent (In defense of old Yahweh, there is evidence this only applies to ritual impurity and not moral impurity - Jeremiah, for one, posits that it is possible to obey all of the ritual obligations and still be morally impure.)

                But there are also key differences between heroic morality and the Garden of Eden. Eve’s choices are explicitly labeled and lead to predictable results while Oedipus’ choices have their “labels” switched. Leaving Corinth seemed like the good choice that would lead him away from evil but ended up leading to his downfall. Yahweh's fruit quiz seems positively sporting in comparison.

                This same difference exists when we compare Pandora and Oedipus. Pandora acts consciously and in line with her desires – the gods may be setting her up, but she wants to open the jar. Oedipus, on the other hand, acts completely out of line with his desires. He is consciously striving to avoid evil, to the point of leaving behind the only home he has ever known.

                There are, of course, overlaps between Pandora and Oedipus. Oedipus exists in a world of fate, where he is destined to commit certain actions no matter how far he runs. We can still argue that Oedipus is being pushed, but Sophocles also uses the story to explore deeper moral dimensions. What is the difference between intended action and actual action? Are we responsible for who we are on the inside or what we do on the outside?

And this is the essential difference between Pandora and Oedipus. The story of Pandora is the story of an action. The story of Oedipus is a story about action.

Next: [OE010] The Game Mechanic: Your Precious Eyes

[OE008] The Story: Oedipus

Previous: [OE007] What We Could Do: The Pushed Pusher

The Blind King of Thebes: Heroic Morality

                The Garden of Eden may be the Origin of Morality for priests and pastors, but philosophers and psychologists are perhaps more inclined to look at the story of Oedipus. While Adam and Eve were given a clear moral choice that left no ambiguity to the results of their actions, the situation with Oedipus is more... complex.

                The story of Oedipus is perhaps best known via Freud’s “Oedipus Complex,” that is, a subconscious desire to murder the father and marry the mother. But let’s go back to Sophocles’ account of Oedipus to see what the story tells us about morality.

"What? Is there something on my face?"

The Story

                Laius and Jocasta, the king and queen of Thebes, were trying to have a child. They consulted the Oracle at Delphi, who told them that if they have a son, he will grow up to murder his father and marry his mother. This didn’t sit well with the two, so when Jocasta gives birth to a son, they abandoned him the wilderness.

                Through a series of wacky sitcom-esque events, the child was adopted by the king and queen of Corinth, who named him “Oedipus.” One day, Oedipus was told that he was adopted and so he went to the Oracle at Delphi to see if this was true. The Oracle told him that he was going to murder his father and marry his mother.

                Oedipus was naturally not thrilled at this prospect and so he ran away from Corinth – and towards Thebes.

                On the way, Oedipus got into a fight with an old man who refused to yield right of way at a crossroads (perhaps the true Oedipus complex is road rage). Oedipus murdered the old man, and in a further series of wacky events involving a Sphinx, ended up marrying the Queen of Thebes – Jocasta.

                Years later, the curse of the gods descended on Thebes and Oedipus went to the Oracle to find out why. It turned out that the old man Oedipus killed was Laius, the King of the Thebes and his father, while Jocasta was his mother. Oedipus poked his own eyes out and Jocasta committed suicide, which I think we can all agree are reasonable responses given the circumstances.

Next: [OE009] Handlug vs. Tat

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