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Re:Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989) by jamesbritt on Wednesday February 24, 2010 @01:44PM (#1148711)
" If you don't believe me, just find a liberal arts major and talk for 10mins. He/she will be dumbstruck that you think otherwise. A common example with such people is how Newton's theory was "wrong" and Einstein's theory "corrected" it, clearly showing there's no absolute truth."

What I've often seen is a sort of "convenient relativism" about truth.

I've known people who, for some things, claim there's no real truth, it's all relative, you cannot prove or know anything, etc. (Which makes me wonder how they know you can't know anything, or why, if it's all relative, my belief in an objective universe is not just as valid as any other belief.)

And they'll occasionally toss this charge at matters of science. Yet in their day-today life, they happily take aspirin, ride elevators, use electricity, and put gas in their cars, all with the belief that these things will follow a known and predictably consistent behavior.

Re:Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989) by netcan on Thursday February 25, 2010 @01:21AM (#1150142)
Behind this is a whole world of subtle (and less subtle) fallacies.

For example, uncertainty does not mean all options are equally likely. I'm not sure if this has a name. Agnostic fallacy?

Re:Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989) by jamesbritt on Thursday February 25, 2010 @04:46PM (#1151665)
It reminds me of the "slippery slope" argument, which tries to equate any action in some direction with the worst possible outcome. But it's based on the idea that people cannot make reasonable distinctions along some axis. All grays are equal in their view.
Re:Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989) by netcan on Sunday February 28, 2010 @06:13AM (#1156749)
There is some validity to slippery slope arguments, especially in common law systems.