My experiment with using formalized logic was a failure. You simply don't understand it, and points I was trying to make went over your head. At least after your last two posts I can see that you have read and considered what I said, so I was misunderstood, not ignored.

Lottery examples and last multiple posts were my attempts to explain concept of validity and soundness and what they mean in a formalized logic context, they were applicable to other debates only so much as to show that generalized rules, if agreed on, can be applied to all arguments of this kind. It is clear that I wasn't successful, so posting comprehensive write-up outside of any debate is now on my to-do list.

In plain language - my objections to your argument isn't that elections weren't, couldn't, probability next to zero of tampering, but that you could not draw conclusions you did with a mere possibility of tampering. If you said something like; "Given election tampering occurred and it was of sufficient magnitude, then elections were stolen" I would not have objected to it. Yes it is semantics, but it is important to get semantics right because of how easy it is to drop MIGHT for CERTAIN and go on pretending nothing changed. The very article I linked is a result of this kind of faulty generalizing. I have hard time believing that 49% of any group, even GOP voters, would believe something so off-the-wall like elections were CERTAINLY stolen, but this is how they responded to survey question.

Last edited by sini; 12/16/12 08:22 AM.
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