Re: Has the US gone communist yet? It\'s hard to tell.
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No, you are wrong. Have you ever taken a course in logic? An argument can never be dismissed "for all practical purposes" or otherwise, without analyzing the merits of the argument.
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This is getting old , but I'll try one more way of explaining it.
You are missing the difference between the two sentences I wrote:
1) "Because he's paid by an oil company to deny anthropogenic global warming (and does not do his own peer reviewed research on the topic), his argument against it has to be wrong."
2) "Because he's paid by an oil company to deny anthropogenic global warming (and does not do his own peer reviewed research on the topic), his argument against it is extremely likely to be wrong."
The first is an absolute, and is indeed logically flawed. The other is an educated estimate of the chance something is bogus, and is logically sound, and leads correctly to the conclusion that the argument can be safely dismissed. (i.e., dismissing it could turn out to be wrong, but the chances are miniscule.)
Do you see now?
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