How would you describe the flaws in some binary arguments?

Christ Cried

Christ Cried

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Take "Everything in the universe is either a potato or not a potato" for example. While technically true, it's unbelievably retarded but difficult to argue against. What would you say the biggest flaw in that statement and those like it would be?
 
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You really can't but i would say ask them when doses a potato stop being a patato. Like you can have french fries is that a potato or not a potato? French fries are fried chopped patatos. How about chips or maybe even a loaded potato? They will have their own interpretation and you will have yours. It always comes down to semantics with binary statements like that.
 
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That one side (not a potato, 99.99999999% of everything that exists) outweighs the other (a potato, 0.00000001%), and that makes its use as an observational tool incredibly limited from the start, like any of these descriptors. Why would you want to argue against that statement, though, and in what context would anyone use it to prove a point?
 
raymond said:
There is no flaw, the statement is true. Any flaws that result come from your flawed interpretation of the truth.
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Not entirely.
It is also possible that the satement is false and all of every thing in the universe is a Potato, but our small human brains are unable to see the true glory of the potatoverse and so we make up non-potatoes to cope with this reality.
 
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In this specific instance where it is being asserted that "everything in the universe is either a potato or not a potato", it is incorrect as there are more variables than merely the potatoness of an object. There are animals, fruits, vegetables, other starches, and even among potatoes varieties of different potatoes. To state that there is only one absolute quality that truly matters is ludicrous. What is more likely the argument to be made is that of sin or evil or good or some sort of variety, which is a large array of absolute qualities. Something that is an absolute quality can be broken down into a simple yes or no. The human comprehension of absolute qualities is incredibly shallow. Take our understanding of color: what makes yellow yellow? There are many different ways to get to something that is, as far as we can comprehend, yellow. But what is absolutely yellow? There cannot be a singular, perfect, absolute quality that is yellow as the concept is too broad in scope, it is too relative. Yellow is a relative quality, comprised of an array of variable absolute qualities.

What's really happening is that there is a misconception or intentional misconstruing of this concept on either yours or the person who asserts this part. As far as I'm aware, this is an ancient argument. I know that Plato asserts that everything, like say a cup or a chair, has a "perfect form" that exists in the superior realm of ideas and the variations we see are just flawed recreations of the inferior realm of reality, and that Aristotle critcized him for it, but I'm by no means educated on the subject.
 
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Christ Cried said:
Take "Everything in the universe is either a potato or not a potato" for example. While technically true,
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Fuck yeah, autism contest.

It's only "technically true" if you assume the axiom of choice. You need a choice function that picks one of

{ potato, not potato }

for every object in the universe. (While it is possible that there may only be finitely many physical objects in the universe, assuming no eternal inflation, there are clearly infinitely many objects total. For example, it is easily seen that there is an uncountably infinite number of distinct imaginary potatoes.)
 
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I suspect that OP is having difficulty reconciling the "everything is relative" and/or things like "everything is a spectrum" with logic itself. Even a simple example can demonstrate the flaw with those modes of thinking, for example, binary code itself is binary. Beyond binary code, there is great value in having a clear difference between IS and IS NOT, whether that be POTATO and NOT POTATO or HOTDOG and NOT HOTDOG.

There has been a general assault on discrete categorisation and that assault is much like cooking the books; it's a way to prevent people from seeing what's going on. It what helps some people sell transgenderism to the public and even some of the intelligentsia.

When you eliminate categories, when everything is relative, you can justify anything that's inane. I suspect OP rebels against the idea of rejecting that there's value in binary categorisation of at least some things, as OPs way of looking at the world would come tumbling down like a house of cards if he admits that, yes, there is value in saying that a tomato is not a potato.
 
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Faber said:
Fuck yeah, autism contest.
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Autism contest? I'm in.

It's only true if you accept the premise of the argument; everything is either 'specific object' or 'not'. You can basically detroy the argument by asking "But what is a potato, what constitutes as a potato? The size, taste texture flavor, DNA, does it have to grow in the ground, does it have to be grown in a specific place, does it have to have the ability to become french fries etc." It's not until the person gives you an exact ideal of the object you can argue it, and then usually there are contradictions when you get to levels that specific.

You will eventually "win" the argument as whoever your talking to gets sick of your shit and leaves.
 
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Newfriend said:
You can basically detroy the argument by asking "But what is a potato, what constitutes as a potato? The size, taste texture flavor, DNA, does it have to grow in the ground, does it have to be grown in a specific place, does it have to have the ability to become french fries etc." It's not until the person gives you an exact ideal of the object you can argue it, and then usually there are contradictions when you get to levels that specific.
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You're clever but wrong.

You're conflating two different questions:

(Q1) "Is it true that there exists a definition of 'potato' that includes (at least) all actual physical objects universally recognized as 'potatoes' and that every object in the universe either does or does not meet?"

(Q2) "What does this definition look like'?"

Just pointing out that Q2 has no answer that is obvious or easily expressed in a human language does not prove that Q2 has no answer at all. In other words, it does not prove that the answer to Q1 is negative. I can postulate that every real, non-imaginary human currently alive either is or is not Newfriend, even though I have no idea what Newfriend looks like and would not recognize Newfriend if we ever actually met.

Even if you could prove that the answer to Q2 is not knowable even in theory, you would not have proven that the answer to Q2 does not exist. Mathematics and metamathematics (yes, that's a thing) are full of answers that we know to exist but that we also know we will never actually possess.
 
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Faber said:
You're clever but wrong.

You're conflating two different questions:

(Q1) "Is it true that there exists a definition of 'potato' that includes (at least) all actual physical objects universally recognized as 'potatoes' and that every object in the universe either does or does not meet?"

(Q2) "What does this definition look like'?"

Just pointing out that Q2 has no answer that is obvious or easily expressed in a human language does not prove that Q2 has no answer at all. In other words, it does not prove that the answer to Q1 is negative. I can postulate that every real, non-imaginary human currently alive either is or is not Newfriend, even though I have no idea what Newfriend looks like and would not recognize Newfriend if we ever actually met.

Even if you could prove that the answer to Q2 is not knowable even in theory, you would not have proven that the answer to Q2 does not exist. Mathematics and metamathematics (yes, that's a thing) are full of answers that we know to exist but that we also know we will never actually possess.
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My argument wasn't about some metaphysical definition of potato universe, my point was you would have to agree on the exact definition of potato and there's almost always ways of being a pedantic cunt about the whole thing. Until the actual answer to Q2 is learned the statement "Everything in the universe is a potato or not" doesn't actually make sense under scrutiny. Obviously because it's not supposed to since it's more of a 'lulz teh random' statement.
 
I've put a bit more thought into this personally. If I had to describe my issue with the argument, I'd say that I feel that it is vacuous.
 
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I think binary arguments like that are fine when they're objective. It's subjective moral binary arguments that are the problem. For example, "Either you're pro-abortion or you hate women."
 
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