Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site alice.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!alice!ark
From: ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: arguments
Message-ID: <4498@alice.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 17:03:51 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.4498
Posted: Tue Oct 29 17:03:51 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Oct-85 07:37:54 EST
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 61

In thinking about my recent exchange with Dick Pierce (teddy!rdp),
it appears to me that what I am trying to say and what he is hearing
are two quite different things.

What I have been trying to do is to distinguish between the form
and content of an argument.  To invent an example from a different
domain, let's consider the following statements:

	"XYZ cassette decks are lousy."

	"XYZ cassette decks are lousy because they use non-standard
	 recording equalization.  Therefore their tapes are incompatible
	 with other machines."

	"I don't like XYZ cassette decks."

	"I don't like XYZ cassette decks because their recordings
	 sound distorted to me compared with the original."

If you make one of the four statements above, your claim might be true
or it might not.  I might choose to believe it or I might not.  These
two states (truth and belief) do not always go hand in hand.  To see why,
let's look at each statement in turn.

The first statement is an unsupported assertion about a (mostly) objective
situation.  For the sake of this discussion, let's drop the "mostly"
and assume that either XYZ decks are lousy or they aren't.  Now,
your statement has absolutely no supporting evidence.  Why should I
believe or disbelieve it?  Perhaps you know a lot about these matters
so I should accept your authority.  But I probably don't know nearly
as much about the extent of your expertise as you do.  So don't be
surprised if I take such an unsupported assertion as really meaning:
"Person X thinks XYZ decks are lousy, no reason given."

Statement 2 is much better: it presents supporting information.
Unfortunately, that supporting information is itself unsupported.
If you told me where you heard about the equalization problem, I
might be able to check it out for myself if I cared.  As it is, though,
if I want to verify your claim I must redo all the research myself.
Unless I'm passionately interested in this issue, I'm unlikely to
bother.  I'll put much more trust in your statement if you include
information like: "I know the EQ is different because I made this
test using that test equipment and my results were..."

Statement 3, if made, is almost certainly true.  That is, if you say
you don't like XYZ cassette decks, you probably don't.  But that doesn't
give me much to go on in deciding whether or not I like them.
De gustibus, etc... Now if I know your tastes well, that will give me
a basis for prediction.  But if I don't, all bets are off.  Moreover,
the discussion is effectively ended unless you can answer my obvious
question: "Why don't you like them?"

Statement 4 is again much better.  Now, at least, we have something to
discuss.  You say you think it sounds distorted, I can go listen to it
and say "it doesn't sound that way to me," you can say "Did you try
music with triangles and cymbals?" and so on.

The point is that if you believe something but do not tell me why,
you should not expect me to automatically believe it too.  If you
know something but do not tell me how you come to know it, do not
expect me to have the same confidence in that knowledge as you do.