The policies go today to CalPERS’ full board of administration, which will likely approve them. The new accounting methods would force CalPERS, which has $87 billion in unfunded liabilities, to send bigger bills to the 2,200 state, local governments and school districts in the system to pay down those obligations.

For example, the state and schools would see their payments increase from a combined $5 billion or so in fiscal 2015-16, when the smoothing policy takes effect, to more than $7.4 billion five years later. That is a 49% increase and loss in safety.
Even without the accounting change, agencies would face higher rates under the current policy.

Man

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/17/5347672/calpers-change-to-hike-contributions.html#storylink=cpy

The closure of the children’s pool at Lovers Point is only the beginning of fund raising and increased property taxes that will be necessary to pay for these big pensions. Get ready for many more fund raisers, increased rents, and higher taxes, unless the voters approve this ballot item in November.

There are several questionable actions that need to be studied before he leaves. There was the 2002 pension increase that was possibly prohibited by Govt code 7507 and the debt limit, a million dollar per year raise that looks like it may have violated the debt limit, pension bonds that possibly violated the debt limit (and were a separate scandal), the costly fire merger, the 2009 deal with the POA to avoid a 10% salary reduction that was to take place in a few months, the trashing of the citizens pension reform, the questionable management of the pension law suit, ignoring the pension committee report and all of this information. You can’t make this stuff up.

Wikipedia was forced to do the same thing “Wikipedia bans anonymous contributors to prevent libel”.

I’ll take your article paragraph by paragraph. You start off especially badly:

On the other side is an anonymous blogger hiding under the name “Skeptico” who disputes my Analysis.

That is attacking me personally rather than my arguments. That’s ad hominem. Probably a poisoning the well ad hominem, since you start your post with it in an attempt to smear me in the eyes of a new reader. Not a great start in an article about fallacies.

No matter which elements of this debate you end up agreeing with, when you complete this article you should come away with a better understanding of several important, deep and sometimes subtle or confusing logical fallacies. So here we go.

No you won’t. Not until you’re read my rebuttals.

“Skeptico” is like a Neutrino – Interacts Only Rarely and Weakly

What a lame, low blow. Pathetic. And you paint yourself as the honest debater, valuing rationality and being willing to accept where you are wrong? Who do you think you are fooling?

It is because of Skeptico’s refusal to read the primary document he disputes (my Analysis),

Not refusal. I did read it and it was even worse than the “six fallacies” post. I identified three additional falsely called fallacies in my post where I wrote how you Incorrectly Call Logical Fallacies.

much of what I’ve written directly responding to his comments, or to answer respectful clarifying questions — that I have ceased responding to his fallacy-filled Blog replies awash with incorrect and misleading claims.

When he has responded to something I’ve written, he has demonstrated he doesn’t even try to understand how my points could be valid.

Vacuous assertion – you are just describing yourself.

That’s not responsible discourse trying to reach a rational or reasonable conclusion, that’s just arguing. Its also contrary to the Principle of Charity, which means roughly – giving your opponent’s work the full chance to be understood as valid.

Again describing yourself.

Here’s an example of a Skeptico logical fallacy while refusing to answer a directly relevant clarifying question.

Contradiction-fallacy

Skeptico claims all meaning in Eisen’s GMO article is “crystal clear” (January 2) –

Skeptico: “What [Eisen] says, to me, [about all meanings in Eisen’s article, including the terms “Safe and “Science] is completely unambiguous and crystal clear”

Yet later he writes (January 8) –

Skeptico: “No. I didn’t “claim to know what [Eisen] means by those terms “Safe” and “Science”,”

Unfortunately for all of us, those two Skeptico claims directly conflict.

You’re just being silly. I felt his sentence was clear enough. That doesn’t mean I know for certain exactly what definition he gave to each word.

Using a Distraction logical fallacy called Appeal to Hypocrisy (or Tu Quoque), Skeptico claims that just like the article I analyze I don’t always define “science” when I use it.

Er, no.

Did you really think you could catch me out that easily? Funny thing is, I knew you would fall into the trap of calling a Tu Quoque. Another fallacy name learned but not understood. And so again, instead of trying to understand what I was trying to teach you, you jumped on Tu Quoque as another way of arguing, trying to win. But you failed, as I will now explain.

I know you like references, so look at the Tu Quoque:

This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that a person’s claim is false because 1) it is inconsistent with something else a person has said or 2) what a person says is inconsistent with her actions.

The fallacy is to say ‘I’m not wrong because you do the same thing’ – ie two wrongs don’t make a right. An example they give:

Peter: "Based on the arguments I have presented, it is evident that it is morally wrong to use animals for food or clothing."

Bill: "But you are wearing a leather jacket and you have a roast beef sandwich in your hand! How can you say that using animals for food and clothing is wrong!"

See? The fallacy is to say ‘it’s not wrong because you do it too.’ If I’d said Eisen didn’t commit a fallacy because, look, you do the same thing, that would be Tu Quoque. But that’s not what I said. I was trying to get you to see that IF you were correct (ie that using “science” was a fallacy) THEN you were committing the same fallacy. I was trying to get you to see that neither of you is using fallacious logic by using the word “science.” And you know that because I wrote:

Do you really want to go down this route, or do you want to consider that maybe this was not fallacious at all? [bold added]

Also, on my own blog post I wrote:

That’s five uses of the word “science.” So Dilworth, according to his own reasoning, employed at least five Ambiguity Fallacies in this one post. (Of course they’re not fallacies, as I explained earlier. But Dilworth must think they are.) Dilworth doesn’t apply the same microscope to his own writing that he applies to the writings of someone he disagrees with. If he did, he might realize no fallacy had been employed by Eisen. [Bold added]

I was trying to get you to see that it’s not a fallacy. You see, if you had really been out to learn, really out to admit any mistakes, if you had really applied the “principle of charity” that you like to quote, you would have seen that. But you’re not and you didn’t. And so you FAIL again.

However, the difference between me and Eisen and Skeptico is that I am always happy to correct my errors

Haaha – as I have shown, and will continue to show below, completely false.

..to help define and explain any terms I use that are unclear. (My use of the ambiguous term “science” is available here.)

First, there were no links to that explanation in your post. It’s a bit much to expect someone to search your site every time a word is ambiguous – if it’s ambiguous, define it right there.

Second, even with that explanation, it’s not clear which definition you are referring to on each occasion. When you say “Eisen’s article attracted me because I’ve been helping work for good science for a few decades” do you mean “science” related to facts or methods or do you mean ““science” related to science as a mode of thinking”? You don’t say and so your page doesn’t help one bit. FAIL.

That’s not the best bit though. This is:

You only just wrote that page, didn’t you David?

Haven’t you heard of Google cache? It lets people see what your site looked like the last time Google crawled it – in your case a week ago. Check the Google cache of David Dilworth’s blog. The narrative is: This is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Jan 25, 2013 04:29:27 GMT- that’s ONE WEEK AGO. And guess what – as recently as a week ago there was no “References” section where science is defined. David Dilworth wrote that in the last week. Your original “fallacies” post was there for almost six months with no explanation of the ambiguous term science. So it wasn’t “available” as you lied. Caught you David, LYING. And that’s not an assertion as I have the proof.

As Google cache gets updated eventually that page without the “References” tab will soon be gone. So I saved the screenshots.

Here is a current screenshot – note the references tab with the “what do I mean by science” sub tab.

Now look at the screenshot of that 1.25.13 cached blog page here. No “References” tab. Oops! You added that page less than a week ago and then  implied was there all along.

Is this really you being “not (very) emotionally attached to being right as evidenced by my willingness to acknowledge I make errors and to correct my own errors”? Or is it you being more interested in arguing than in reaching rational conclusions? Would an honest debater, one genuinely striving for the truth, doctor the evidence the way you just did? Or is that the action of a dishonest person, not interested in what is right but just determined to “win” an argument? This is why you keep making these errors David. You don’t listen to learn. You listen to try to win. And yet you still fail because you are still wrong.

is not my responsibility, I point out multiple conflicting and confusing meanings for Eisen’s use of the terms “safe” and “science” which, as we will soon see, is all that is needed to establish an Ambiguity Assertion Fallacy.

As I have shown, and will show again below – absolute nonsense. Once again, your own cited link even says this:

Because of the ubiquity of ambiguity in natural language, it is important to realize that its presence in an argument is not sufficient to render it fallacious, otherwise, all such arguments would be fallacious. [My bold.]

Your own link specifically states that ambiguous meanings are NOT sufficient to establish a fallacy. Why do you keep ignoring your own link? Aren’t you demonstrating here that you are the one who is more interested in arguing than in reaching rational conclusions?

… when the responsibility for clarity remains with the original author (Eisen), until he explains what he means by those terms.

Yes, it’s his responsibility for clarity. But your responsibility to demonstrate that a fallacy has been committed. That was your claim; your burden to demonstrate it. Lack of clarity by itself is not a fallacy.

Skeptico is simply wrong to prematurely reverse the Burden of Proof because Eisen made the first claims “there is a war on science” and that Genetically Modified food is “safe.” Next, we’ll see how I first identified the terms as ambiguous, and then correctly concluded they are logical fallacies because their use is ambiguous.

No, you incorrectly concluded they are logical fallacies. Eisen may not have demonstrated “there is a war on science” and that Genetically Modified food is “safe.” Not in that one sentence anyway (which would be ridiculous). But so what? That isn’t what I was saying. What I was saying was: you are claiming a fallacy, so it your burden to demonstrate a fallacy.

All that is necessary to identify this fallacy is to show how “safe” or “science” has multiple meanings in the sentence as it is used. That’s easily done with this embedded Monsanto quote.

Not according to your own cited link. Repetition doesn’t make it right David.

He goes on to claim that for Ambiguity to be a fallacy it must provide a “debating advantage” but provides no evidence, quote, citation or reference to that novel claim. He pretends / imagines I meant Equivocation, which has a different set of rules, rather than Ambiguity which I was using, and which takes many forms that he fails to recognize.

Well we’re discussing logic so I was using logic to try to show you where you were wrong. But of course, to do that you have to be interested in trying to understand. But if you want a link, I see you like Wikipedia:

…equivocation is ambiguity arising from the misleading use of a word…

Aren’t you talking about misleading uses of word? If so, how is that not equivocation?

Also, this is a pretty reliable site:

The following are fallacies of ambiguity:

Equivocation (The same term is used in two different ways)

Amphiboly (The structure of a sentence allows two different interpretations)

Accent (An emphasis suggests a meaning different from what is actually said)

If you didn’t mean equivocation, did you mean amphiboly of accent? (Hint: neither of those work either.) Here’s another site that adds composition and division. Neither of those fit either. What did you mean then?

Here’s another link that may help you understand where you are wrong. Here’s one example they give of the fallacy:

It is said that we have a good understanding of our universe.  Therefore, we know exactly how it began and exactly when.

Do you see what is different from the structure of Eisen’s sentence? If it was just “It is said that we have a good understanding of our universe” then we would still have ambiguity (ie what exactly does “good understanding” mean?) but no fallacy. What makes it a fallacy is “Therefore, we know exactly how it began and exactly when.” With Eisen’s quote there is no “therefore…” leading to a different meaning of the word. THAT MEANS THERE IS NO FALLACY. Which is what that link goes on to say:

Ambiguous phrases are extremely common in the English language and a necessary part of informal logic and reasoning. As long as these ambiguous phrases mean exactly the same thing in all uses of phrase in the argument, this fallacy is not committed. [My bold]

Don’t you see? Eisen only used the word once in the sentence. Therefore it would be impossible for him to use the word with more than one meaning. It’s only if there is the “therefore…” (or equivalent wording) with a lead to another meaning, that there is a fallacy. That’s why Eisen’s use is not a fallacy.

That enough citations or references for you yet?

Skeptico’s definition is far narrower than Aristotle’s(2) and is amusingly close to an ad hoc fallacy. The ancient sage wrote that if a sentence can be understood in two ways because of a homonym it is a logical fallacy.

Aristotle now? I see we’re on to argument from authority.

While I read Eisen’s article (many times) and all of Skeptico’s arguments, Skeptico admits not reading my Analysis.

The analysis was not in the post where you claimed there were the six fallacies. Your claim; you did not justify it in the article. Even when I found it, the so called fallacies were not clearly laid out. Not my fault if you don’t know the first thing about writing. But I have read it now. And it is appalling. Terrible, long winded pompous writing. And wrong through and through. As I have shown.

He didn’t even read the original article by Eisen.

Another misleading statement. In your original post you wrote “If you enjoy a logical puzzle – before you read my analysis, see if you can identify the sentence with the six logical fallacies.” When I wrote my original comment I meant that wasn’t going to read a 3500 word article just to search for one sentence that you couldn’t even be bothered to quote. I have read it since. So what? We are talking about this one sentence that does not contain six fallacies. But again, you have to try (and fail) to score points rather than understand.

Skeptico chose to first shoot at my logic while admitting ignorance of  explanations and evidence, and now hangs on to his mistaken first impression in spite of overwhelming evidence of his errors.

Describing yourself again.

I identified the “lie” claim as a logical fallacy. Here’s how I evaluated the claim.

Not sure why you are writing about this, or why you wrote 1000 words of so that followed. I agreed that “lie” was an assertion. Seems like you can’t even take yes for an answer.

In this case, Skeptico grudgingly agreed that this might be a fallacy. While I correctly identified the false claim of a lie as a logical fallacy, I erred in identifying it as a Non-Sequitur, when it is really a Proof by Assertion fallacy.

I agreed it was a fallacy. What I said was (1) it is only one fallacy in a sentence, not six, and (2) it wasn’t part of Eisen’s main argument about the proposition, so it was not really worth making an issue of this one unimportant assertion.

For the three logical fallacies we’ve revisited so far of which Skeptico disputed two – all three identifications of Eisen’s fallacies solidly withstood scrutiny.

Only in your fevered imagination.

You ignored the substantial part of my last comment, so I’ll repeat it.

Look at the “you have faith in science” example that you liked so much. A person might read that and go, “yes he does have faith in science – science is a religion.” Now look at “GMOs are safe.” No anti-GMO person is going to look at that and go, “you know, he is right, GMOs are safe.” Why would they? What would be the thought process? It doesn’t make sense.

Show how someone could actually be fooled into believing GMOs are safe when they were not, due to the ambiguity. If you can’t demonstrate that, you have not demonstrated a fallacy. Your claim; yours to demonstrate.

Stop avoiding the issue. Answer my actual  arguments.

Questions For David Dilworth

Questions arising from your arguments:

1) If you really are willing to correct your errors as you claim, why did you try to cover up your use of the undefined word “science” by writing a “What do I mean by “Science?” page and pretend it had been there all along? Isn’t that a sign of someone trying to hide errors, rather than correct them?

2) Now that we know you hadn’t defined what you meant by “science” the numerous times you used it, will you now either (a) admit that your article was full of logical fallacies too, and apologize to Eisen for calling him a hypocrite, or (b) agree that just using the word “science” without defining it is not a fallacy, and admit your fallacies # 1 and 2 are incorrect? Pick one. (Hint: the correct answer is (b).)

3) You claimed that the ambiguity fallacy is not equivocation. But according to Wikipedia, equivocation is ambiguity arising from the misleading use of a word. Aren’t you talking about misleading uses of word? If so, how is that not equivocation?

4) If you didn’t mean equivocation, what did you mean? Alternatives include amphiboly, accent, composition and division. Explain what you meant and how it applies to this case.

5) Why do you insist that all that is necessary to identify this fallacy is to show how a word has multiple meanings, when your own cited link, plus this one and this one disagree.

6) Show how someone could actually be fooled into believing GMOs are safe when they were not, due to the ambiguity. Explain exactly how this could happen. What would be the thought process? If you can’t show that you can’t claim a fallacy.

http://daviddilworth.com/pol/skepticos-absurd-misconstruction-of-basic-logical-fallacies-while-spreading-his-own-fallacy-fog/

http://daviddilworth.com/pol/skepticos-absurd-misconstruction-of-basic-logical-fallacies-while-spreading-his-own-fallacy-fog/

http://daviddilworth.com/pol/skepticos-absurd-misconstruction-of-basic-logical-fallacies-while-spreading-his-own-fallacy-fog/