August 03, 2011

August is Weedmonth

A dog, snarling with bared teeth, charges you. You have a heavy stick in one hand and a gun in the other.

Do you …

A. Thwart it with the gun.
or
B. Thwart it with the stick.

There's a distinction to be made between reason and logic. Some might hasten to work logically through to an irrefragable argument for A over B, trusting that reason might prevail in reaching a solution to the dog's threat, so that the matter, succinctly decided, might shine as a beacon of best practice in all such future encounters. Others might contrarily chose to support preference B, no matter what, traditionally favoring a cudgel in hand in every dealing with a dog from the get-go.

In this narrowed window of rational choice an argument might be made. Marshalling all the main and ancillary points required to support positions for or against one or the other of these fundamental choices will take a non-trivial amount of time and effort. N.B.The stipulated dog does not inflict itself, but remains suspended in all respects while this sort of argument runs its course.

Individuals entering into such an argument become attached to, proprietary of, the logical structures the've contributed or endorsed in searching their way through to what they submit is a reasonable end to the matter, and often enough are so willingly invested in supporting the logic that leads them to claims about the fairly decided thing they strive for that they will continue to defend that logic long after it has become abundantly clear that an encompassing view of the list of alternatives to the leading question Do you …,  has not yet been exhausted, with all the explanatory material inserted here in the text merely serving to approximate the effect of the great opening intercessionary salvos of argument arising whenever gun or stick is called for, but which alternatives must at the very least include

C. Trust the fence.

D. Profit!

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