Have you read Stefans neew book?

Oh my dayz bluds

it is a book for children..

This is from some educational book for children with mental disabilities right?

I don't understand what he is trying to say, is he saying deductive reasoning is bad because the premises that has nothing to do with deductive reasoning are bad?

He's showing how bad premises and logical fallacies can lead to wrong conclusions.
So je's giving examples of bad deductive reasoning. It is not an attack on deductive reasoning.

I'm 90% certain that Stefan has lifted most of this book from year college philosophy guides to formal arguments.

it doesn't help that he has a deductive error and a false premise in his first example. it becomes unclear what he wants to talk about.
and if he wants to talk about false premises he should name the section as such, not "examples of bad deductive reasoning"

His errors are so basic that I can't tell if he's trolling or if he's really this bad at logic

And Noam Chomsky even bothered losing his time with this mongrel.

He's an ancap turned crypto-fascist. He ca't into logic.

You can make two kinds of mistakes, starting with wrong assumptions, and working with these assumptions in illogical ways. The first example has both types of mistake together. The second seems to argue in a logical way: If kind people are socialists (for the sake of the argument), and Bob is kind, then Bob is indeed a socialist. It is only the premise that is wrong. I don't know how the book continues after that. If the author points out that it is only the premise in this example which is wrong and not the logical operation, then I don't see what's supposed to be lulzy about it.

please post more pages, OP!

If he did that he wouldn't have fucked it up so badly

Tbf Noam responds to anyone and everyone, he's second only to Holla Forums in taking the bait constantly

kek, he's described as a self-published author in wiki.

can it get more embarrassing than that?

At some point he was even described as "self-appointed philosopher".

this is what his own people says about him:

The first example is "correct," it's supposed to show faulty reasoning. The second is "wrong," because it should have the same error as the first, but in fact it is sound reasoning.

that cover is fantastic

Does anybody actually have a pdf of this shite?

His definition of the Argument makes no sense whatsoever.

Here is the book.

Destiny, a liberal streamer, pointed out how Molyneux got this page wrong:
hooktube.com/watch?v=hRMgH9p-1So

so is the entire book just a wikipedia article?

Friendly reminder that his book is #1 in political philosophy on Amazon:
amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/157460011/ref=sr_bs_0_157460011_1

Pics are some childhood stories from Stefan's book On Truth:
cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/books/OnTruth/On_Truth_The_Tyranny_of_Illusion_by_Stefan_Molyneux_PDF.pdf

No, Wikipedia articles are usually pretty accurate. That page gets its main point wrong. If all kind people are socialists as the premise states, then Bob is indeed a socialist if he is a kind person, since being a socialist is a requirement of being a kind person under the initial premise.

The followup to that bob page is exactly what I expected Stefan to write yet somehow even dumber than what I expected
He physically cannot go five minutes without sperging out over welfare and socialism

why are right wingers brainlets?

Just skimming over it, it literally looks like "Spooky Idealism: the Book". It constantly goes on how The Argument (why not just say reasoning) is contrary to violence yet of course as an ancap he's completely incapable of realizing that all interactions between the propertied and the non-propertied is inherently violent. And what is with the quasi-redditspacing? It seems like almost every paragraph is just a couple sentences.

Also here's a nice piece of slave morality:
not an argument. Resenting reality is one of the very definitions
of immaturity. Growing up is learning not just to accept what you cannot
change, but embrace it.

Well Holla Forums, which are you?

Gotta pad out those pages to seem smarter.

Reminds me of the humans vs orcs shit.

What the hell does that mean? A positive statement? A positive effect on your life? That very fucking statement is sophistry.

Stefan "even libertarians think he's an idiot" Molyneux
mises.org/library/molyneux-problem

Holy shit he literally hasn't even read Mill. In On Liberty Mill specifically states that the Liberty Principle doesn't just apply to preventing actions that infringe on freedoms or the common good, but inactions as well. He argues that it is perfectly in keeping with the Liberty Principle to force somebody to do something if their inaction is detrimental to the freedom of the society.

This is the literally on the same level as a teenager reading Ayn Rand's wikipedia article and basing their entire worldview on it.

Would Molyneux fit under the classic definition of a pre-socratic Sophist? It really seems like he would, he's effectively peddling fake wisdom that seems like real philosophy. I suppose he's not arguing however he's paid to do, but still.

Pre-Socratic Sophists were just paid teachers, they weren't necessarily deceptive or wrong. Molyneux is just a Sophist in the conventional sense: a clever person who uses rhetoric and pseudo-logic to convince people.

...

This is a look into the mind of the people who cry tears of sadness over the death of Western civilization. This is what goes through their heads upon hearing the word "philosophy".

>When I started getting into philosophy - through the works of Ayn Rand originally

The first picture isn't even strictly philosophy.
The second one strikes a few alarm bells in my mind, even outside of the fact that he just fucking makes unsubstantiated claims and leaves them there.

Do you think he posts here?

A poster here once send him an email and he replied. Does anyone have that saved?

Okay, I'm falling for his unintentional bait.

The second picture is just flat bullshit.

Ignoring the fact that the third statement isn't even completely sound, do we have objective verification that reality is consistent and rational? Because that is a fucking enormous statement there.

nevermind that the idea of a Rational universe is entirely dependent on how you define rational, which Stefan doesn't bother doing here.

(checked)

Well strictly speaking, this crap isn't philosophy at all but rather a cargo-cult version of "Western culture" as filtered by the porous mind of a rightwinger.

That second pic is the entire chapter, by the way. As are these 3 pics here.

>since some people must be providing the jobs

replying with the counterexample is not an argument,
not an argument.
not an argument,
Thank you Stefan for teaching me what is and isn't an argument

But that's fucking wrong. There is nothing wrong with making a theory that is localized. We only have information that is available to Earth and the various circumstances that we can create or experience.
Physics theories are just superseded by universalized theories that explain everything a localized theory does.
This is dunnung-krueger levels of ignorance.

This is what ancaps actually believe. Bonus meme, the two philosophers that Stefan references throughout the book were in favor of a living wage. I guess they were irrational sophists.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage#History

What did he mean by this?

Also
""inequality is bad" is not an argument, it is a statement of mere personal preference: "I do not like inequality."" is an argument, and it is fallacious.
A man who commits murder out of desire to murder but agrees that it is something that is bad may well argue "Murder is bad, but I like murder."

Now that you bring it up, another term he repeats ad nauseam through the book like a mantra is "empiricism". In the chapter called The Argument and Empiricism, he argues that philosophers shouldn't just debate abstractions, but change empirical reality, via people's behaviors. Sound familiar? It's the only sensible part I've seen so far, even if it's written horribly inelegantly.

The most pertinent question is why you idiots waste time with Molyneux. Are you feeling validated? Guess what - nothing has changed and you're laughing about it. ffs

If this man had the philosophical integrity to actually come up with coherent arguments I get the feeling he'd also be running into the same problems Russel did too.
top kek

What in the fucking world is this

Maybe you a taking leftypol a bit too serious?
Laughing about Molymeme might not bring about communism, but it sure can be amusing.

I don't understand, these seem valid. Is there a context I'm missing? Is he saying that they are valid but the premises are wrong?

Now I wish we had a do_you_know_where_you_are.jpg with Hoxha and Stirner.

This is basically how to achieve nothing 101. You are wasting time mocking a 2nd rate advocate the right doesn't even take seriously.

Assuming that the premises are correct in all cases, (which i'm not sure is even assumed here) they're not valid because the conclusions don't follow from the premises.
1 doesn't say all kind people support the welfare state. It's a really bad example, because if "all" is inferred, then this one is correct.
2 doesn't follow because while all welfare state supporters are kind, not all kind people are necessarily welfare state supporters.
3 is another "not all kind people" but otherwise I'm struggling here.
4 I can only assume is drawing a distinction between "opposing the welfare state" and "wanting the results of such" because otherwise I think this is valid.

>6 “If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, 7 of the gods of the people which are all around you, near to you or far off from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, 8 you shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him; 9 but you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. 10 And you shall stone him with stones until he dies, because he sought to entice you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 11 So all Israel shall hear and fear, and not again do such wickedness as this among you.

>12 “If you hear someone in one of your cities, which the Lord your God gives you to dwell in, saying, 13 ‘Corrupt men have gone out from among you and enticed the inhabitants of their city, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods”’—which you have not known— 14 then you shall inquire, search out, and ask diligently. And if it is indeed true and certain that such an abomination was committed among you, 15 you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it, all that is in it and its livestock—with the edge of the sword. 16 And you shall gather all its plunder into the middle of the street, and completely burn with fire the city and all its plunder, for the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever; it shall not be built again. 17 So none of the accursed things shall remain in your hand, that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of His anger and show you mercy, have compassion on you and multiply you, just as He swore to your fathers, 18 because you have listened to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep all His commandments which I command you today, to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God.
biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy 13&version=NKJV

I'd be pretty interested in the psychoanalysis of Molyneux.

Nobody here is ever going to achieve anything. You're taking the internet way too seriously. If you want to make a difference, volunteer for a charity or something.

This is charity, in the actual sense of the word.

Christians will argue 'muh New Covenant' to that.

Meanwhile you're Achieving Something by criticizing fat autists on the internet on a chanboard for mocking a second rate autist.

Truly an example for us all to follow.

We know, user. Relax. Nobody here has any illusions that even our most illuminated threads will change the world at all. We're here to deb8, commiser8, tr8 information and 'ave a giggle m8. And besides, there's absolutely nothing we can do to advance socialism in the real world either, these days.

Perhaps some people participate in this thread without intending to 'achieve' anything?

If one you stops being a useless meat bag, I'd say it was worth it. Again, the very definition of charity.

I'm specifically going to keep this thread alive for the sole sake of drawing in others to make them waste their time, then.

What a rebel. You are truly showing me.

1 I did infer that

2 you're right, I fucked up there. This is definitely invalid.

3 I actually did infer all here as well

But is such achievement empirical? Because otherwise it's not a The Argument.

I still want to know what's invalid about #4 there. Inferring "all" into 1 and 3 make them valid, 2 is the only one that is completely invalid due to the way it's written. I am honestly struggling to see what is invalid about 4 beyond "bob opposes the welfare state but might not want poor people to starve despite it being a direct consequence" in the same way someone could want to play with matches but not want to get burned.I guess.

Absolutely

Tbh as a christian some old testament laws are absolutely based

I have now read that passage in context and can say that Stefan Molyneux does not point out the difference that only the premise part is wrong in the second example. Here is what according to him is supposed to be a sound argument:
beliefs.
policies tend to increase.
I would rate that rather meh. It isn't obviously bonkers, but there are jumps in here, it isn't really a sharp and crispy argument. Consider this, even if point 1 and 2 are true, to take for granted that an increase in atheism will go along with an increase in leftism is to take for granted that the correlation continues to hold, and what the argument has established is merely that, a correlation, not a causation or any guarantee that these two aspects will rise together if one them rises; and the second issue with his claim is that what people vote and what policies are implemented are actually two different issues in what people in mainstream usage call democracies. (If Molyneux has a different usage of the word democracy, harking back to the ancient Greeks, I am very much okay with that, but you have to spell it out.) Follow-up "clarification" by the author:
But that's quite a bit different from the atheist lefty thesis in that you can take as snapshot of the Danish population at the given moment and you are making a statement about that, there is far more uncertainty in the former argument. He then "clarifies" further:
>People often reject a claim of association by chanting the mantra that correlation does not equal causation. However, if you review the syllogisms above regarding atheist leftism, you will note that no causation is stated. If you do not make an argument for causation, your argument cannot be rejected for failing to prove causation.
Indeed, how could anybody destroy your argument if you don't have an argument to begin with. Really makes you think.

So it's not an ==Argoument==

that's not from this book, is it?

Not even his family can stand Mollymeme.

...

he's like a little kid, he doesn't even understand the concept of morality.
almost as if he read Ayn Rand as a kid, didn't grasp it and is now stuck in the world he envisioned as a child

I kinda want to make him read this turd to see him tear it apart but I'm also afraid he might have a stroke.

He, like most ancaps, has an incredibly inconsistent and shallow view of ethics. Admittedly so do most people, but at least they don't create deontological rules like the NAP that they base their political beliefs are.

Universally preferable behavior is pointless sophistry at its finest. I'm still not sure how he reaches the conclusion that because a behavior is preferable to everyone that means the behavior is morally obligated, yet somehow positive obligations don't exist (because standards being universal means that they apply to EVERYONE, and not just universally to a specific group, apparently the Hippocratus Oath is a invalid ethical principle because it only applies to doctors), only negative ones. Not only is a standards of ethics that doesn't tell you how you should act, only how you shouldn't, an incredibly shallow and basically pointless one, it also makes inaction ethical; according to UPB, a man who saves lives everyday but has shoplifting as a hobby is a less ethical and objectively worse person then a man who lets people die and never does anything wrong because he never interacts with anyone.

Really, the more I think about it, it seems to me that Ancapism is an incredibly misanthropic and vicious ideology. It reduces decent behavior down to just preferences while putting ideas and abstractions like property over the wellbeing of individuals. None of that would be too bad if it wasn't so fucking spooky and constantly trying to legitimize the status quo while labeling those trying to change it as the immoral.

Stefan's a sophist but he's an incredibly influential one. Having someone educated carefully show how he's wrong and why would be genuinely useful.

What'll be interesting will be seeing if / when any institutions start using this text. Great way to identify ``classical liberal" professors who haven't already made it clear.

Wow his first pic is awesome, I can justify my pedophilia now.

you don't need that. this guy is a libertarian, but a real one, with education and work done. A thinker. Listen to what he says about him: youtube.com/watch?v=cQBdCO_yz10

Youtube was a mistake

Educated and intelligent people have already done that. A lot. It hasn't helped.

Damn that section is garbage. Though I guess these pop philosophers have more of a wide appeal as well as advertising through their other shit. I also guess that leftists are more likely to download their stuff.

amazon.com/Art-Argument-Western-Civilizations-Stand-ebook/product-reviews/B0756QYZ26/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_rvwer?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=critical&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=1

...

dop geg

So this is the power of basic economics

Why are there 60+ 5 star reviews? It's obviously a shit book.

jesus..

fanboys on the first week of publication

Ouch. I wonder if he will ever address that on his channel.

...

What did he meme by this?

Apparently if your Autism Level increases just a few points, you will be far less likely to have egalitarian perspectives. Who knew?

...

Or someone who doesn't give a shit.

If Molymeme's parents made him wear this as a youngster all of this could have been avoided.

...

But that' exactly Holla Forums's stance. You get depressed once you take the "red pill" because you "see the world for what it truly is".

I am always amazed anew at reactionaries' incapability to draw any analogy besides sexual ones.

Make a collage of all the fuck-ups in the book around this face and I promise to post it in every single Molymeme thread on 4pol

This is a flaw in reasoning if we follow Stefans earlier arguments. If women generally have lower I.Q than men, and women generally vote for more egalitarian policies, that does not mean that women vote for more egalitarian policies because they have lower I.Q. Correlation does not imply causation, especially since he doesn't (for example) cite a peer reviewed study where preferences to egalitarian policies can be linked to lower I.Q levels despite gender and class background etc.. Women probably prefer egalitarian policies for a myriad of reasons, most likely relating to their role in society more than anything else

Stefan is a stupid faggot and I don't know why I even bother debunking his "arguments"

I can't handle this classcuckery.

So if someone is acting retarded and I respond to them by saying "You are retarded and here's why" and proceed to give reasons why, my reasons are invalid because starting off with the conclusion is not an argument?

I honestly like his video on the history of our enslavement

This is to go even further beyond

Depreciated theory. Current running scientific theory on biological basis of intelligence is that the ratios of brain mass to overall mass is the important factor.
As I recall this was a theory development from studying birds' abnormally high intelligence for their low brain mass.
Since female humans have lower body mass than males, on average, it serves that the brain would be smaller without significant (or even any?) intelligence loss.

That video was a long time ago friendo.

I'm genuinely confused by what he means. I think he means just that beginning sentence is not an argument, but he says "The Argument" is not valid which means the whole argument, not that one segment, to me.

So we should see lower Autism Level men being more egalitarian too right?

From now on the only acceptable argument against Molymeme is: "He's bald and has a small dick so everything he says and does is an attempt to hide his insecurities over his perceived loss of masculinity"
There's literally nothing more to say about the guy.

Jesus Christ this guy is a goldmine of ideological projection

...

60% of people gave this 5 stars though. Is it evne possible to argue with right wingers?

didn't Socrates denounce the actual sophists for charging for their services?

This reads like a fictional book published in the world of a Margret Atwood parody of society.

Yes. Greek Sophists were just paid teachers. Stefan isn't even using sophist like it's normally used, he's just moralistically redefining it.

Why doesn't the second "socialist" example make sense? Why is it a logical fallacy?
If the first premise is taken to mean "all kind people are socialists", then wouldn't that make Bob a socialist if premises 1 and 2 are factually correct?
I don't understand what he means, or i'm a brainlet.

He really couldn't come up with a better cover could he?

Man, this is so God awful I can't even laugh at it. It's so stupid it makes me exasperated and angry, but its pretentious, mock-formal logic format keeps it from being funny. There is literally not a single redeeming quality about this book.

Someone warn KC Green, he's such a bitch he might file a DMCA claim against Molyneux for mentioning his comic strip.

Might as well just spread the PDF.

Like FATAL? Where it would be funny for its sheer stupidity if it weren't written like some kind of serious work on history and science?

Kinda yeah. I expected a The Room, but got a Marley and Me.

You're correct, it's just that the premise of Stefan's example isn't made very clear. We don't know if we're still thinking about philosophical hypothetical situations (where literally all kind people are socialists) or real life situations (where its most likely that kind people are socialists) where people can make faulty assumptions based on what's plausible. Even if he's talking about real life scenarios, despite his previous example about the plumber being a hypotherical one, it would be reasonable to assume that Bob is a socialist since it's what's most plausible.

All of these theories have names and it's what you learn in high school philosophy and psychology, I can try digging out my old textbooks if you want the correct terminology

That is inductive reasoning though, which is that the conclusion may be false, though the most reasonable. He's going on all arguments being purely deductive reasoning, which is a fairly worthless way to run things for any real scenario.

It's not, it's completely logical, that's why everyone is laughing at the picture.

Reading this hurts because I can easily see myself becoming Molymeme if I was just slightly more autistic and injected just a bit more grandiosity into the way I saw my childhood.

lol fuck compared to this wittgenstein is high tier level college philosophy

Technically there is a logical fallacy in 2.3's conclusion (as there could be a category of people within "mean" which neither supports nor opposes welfare), but that probably wasn't the fallacy he intended with that example. In all of his examples, the formulations of his premises are too vague, making judgment of the formal (logical) reasoning almost impossible (e.g. is the "only" a way of implying an "if and only if" statement, or does he mean something else by it?). Looking through his book for a few minutes reveals one of the worst things on reasoning and argumentation ever written, so it should come as no surprise he botches his own examples.

There's no fallacy there, it's just a simple modus ponens.

Absolute STATE of Molymeme. I'm not sure if I should feel for him for getting bullied or if he actually did deserve it.

tbf that happened long before molymeme
he may have tracked the shit into your house, but he didn't make that turd himself

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Okay, I have to say this.

I was thinking about spreading this book in other sites to have a laugh, until it hit me. As it pretends to use the most basic building blocks of formal logic in order to construct and complex idea, an argument, a hypothesis etc., but fails spectacularly about it, it's not only not helping but actively harming the people who read it. Its ridiculous assertions muddle up things the reader already knows, like a noise generator polluting a signal because they share the same frequency.

In other words, this book literally makes you dumber. It's a bonafide cognitohazard. It should be constrained if at all possible.

bump because molyneux is a hack

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I was talking about 2.3 in , actually. Seems like I responded to the wrong person.

Imagine a high school chud reading this and realizing he wants to be a philosopher like Molymeme. Then he walks into day one of college with this book under his arm.

gets mad at le libruls colleges for saying his book is shit, creates a youtube channel to whine about it, gets millions of views
the system works

So like Ayn Rand but at 1/10th the text size.