I think there’s a contingent of people who think nuclear is really, really cool. And it is cool. Splitting atoms to make power is undeniably awesome. That doesn’t make it sensible, though, and they don’t separate those two thoughts in their mind. Their solution is to double down on talking points designed for use against Greenpeace in the 90s rather than absorbing new information that changes the landscape.

And then there’s a second group that isn’t even trying to argue in good faith. They “support” nuclear knowing it won’t go anywhere because it keeps fossil fuels in place.

Scotland has really good wind power, anyway. Between that, nuclear, and a few other renewable sources, you guys are down to 10% fossil fuel energy use. So don’t worry about solar.

But other than literally all that, what are you on about?

Woosh

Partially. Not really. Page Rank instantly obsoleted every other search algorithm in existence. Nobody was able to get high quality results right at the top so consistently. The ad-free part was a bonus, at least for a while.

While I understand the sentiment, US veterans are in many ways victims of the capitalist system themselves. At 18 years old, they’re pressured by family or school administration to go into the military. They may have grown up poor and have no viable career path once they leave high school. College is a pipe dream. Combine that with recruiters who will use every high pressure tactic in the book and outright lie to get you to sign (“sure, you can get leave later on to be the best man at your friend’s wedding”). All this is happening before they’re legally allowed to drink, and they certainly haven’t finished developing into their adult self.

They go off to the military. Most will get through with nothing more traumatic than boot camp (which can be pretty traumatic) and some shitty food, but some will die, and others will be injured or have PTSD.

Keeping those services and improving them is part of cleaning up our mess. So is dismantling the capitalist system that creates more of those veterans.

Really? You accept that they happened, they are bad, and we should work towards a better society where that doesn’t happen regardless of what coat of paint the government puts over their actions?

A lot of that heat comes from decay of radioactive isotopes deep in the Earth. Still spicy rocks.

“Lost in Vietnam”? Oh, no, they were saying much worse than that. It used to be that if you suggested the US lost Vietnam that you were “insulting the bravery of the troops” or some shit like that. It was only after the War on Terror became unpopular that you could say the US lost Vietnam (because, you know, it did) without some jackass wingnut bringing out the faux patriotism.

The DoD itself spent $820B in 2023. To get over $1T, you also have to include veterans benefits, like the VA hospital system.

The full bill for Vietnam started coming 20 years after the fact as all those veterans got older and started heavily using the benefits they were promised. From the start of the War on Terror, we’re about at that same point right now. So unless the plan is to rug pull those benefits from people who really need them, then there’s going to be a huge bill coming that no amount of efficiency trimming can ignore.

If Democrats did the rug pull, Republicans would cry bloody murder. If Trump did it, they will cheer him on while veterans suffer.

The current structure of the credit doesn’t get used up like that anymore. Tesla vehicles are still eligible. Musk thinks removing it would hurt competitors more than him.

Since much of that can be shown by simply quoting things Trump says verbatim, what are you on about and why are there so many random bold words?

Given that the first commercial nuclear power plants in the US were coming online in the late 1950s, that’s entirely possible. Steam trains were well on their way out by then, but there were still a few hauling freight around.

Fun adjacent fact: even when the British Empire had moved off of wind sails and into coal, those coal ships didn’t have the range to possibly cover the entire Empire. Coal stations were setup around the world, and the coal had to be transported by sail. The previous technology helps get the next generation technology going.

But why call that out at all? Why not call out an actual fallacy built inside a reducto ad absurdum argument (assuming there is one)? The poster way up the stack did not clarify at all. They posted “reducto ad absurdum” as if that was the end of it.

I said early on:

There might be some other logical fallacy at play. Slippery slope is a common one in cases where people cite reducto ad absurdum. But why not cite the actual fallacy rather than the one that isn’t a fallacy at all?

Yes, you can use reducto ad absurdum arguments in a fallacious way. That’s true of literally any kind of argument, so it’s pointless to say that. Point out the actual fallacy or don’t.

Let’s go back a few steps in the thread. The response was simply “Reducto ad absurdum” as if that explained it right there. Except, that’s not itself a fallacy. It might be used in a fallacious way, but simply stating “Reducto ad absurdum” does not point out any fallacy what so ever.

And that’s my whole point. People use the term in a muddy way that takes away from a tool.

If they’re guilty of hyperbole or slippery slope, then say that. Lumping in reducto ad absurdum takes away from a very powerful and useful tool of formal logic. Overloading the term makes understanding more fuzzy, not more clarifying.

Not inherently, no, but it is when used fallaciously. Like in this case.

It never is. There might be some other logical fallacy at play. Slippery slope is a common one in cases where people cite reducto ad absurdum. But why not cite the actual fallacy rather than the one that isn’t a fallacy at all?

Or maybe don’t. Generally, logical fallacies are better used to pick apart your own arguments rather than tossing them in other people’s faces.

Just like deliberate hyperbole is not a fallacy when used skillfully and transparently to underscore a point, it’s the context and the delivery that decides whether something is a valid reducto ad absurdum argument or a reducto ad absurdum fallacy.

Nope. There is no such thing as reducto ad absurdum fallacy. I challenge you to find a citation otherwise, because I can cite a lot of stuff that talks about its use as a tool of logic and does not mention fallacies what so ever, or does so only as part of connected information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum - “In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for “reduction to absurdity”), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for “argument to absurdity”) or apagogical arguments, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction”. The word “fallacy” does not even appear on the page except as a link to “See Also - Argument from fallacy”.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/reductio-ad-absurdum - “reductio ad absurdum, (Latin: “reduction to absurdity”), in logic, a form of refutation showing contradictory or absurd consequences following upon premises as a matter of logical necessity.” Fallacies are only mentioned further down the page as connected information.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reductio ad absurdum - “1) disproof of a proposition by showing an absurdity to which it leads when carried to its logical conclusion 2) the carrying of something to an absurd extreme” Again, no mention of fallacy. It’s a tool to disprove something.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/cgi-bin/uy/webpages.cgi?/logicalfallacies/Reductio-ad-Absurdum - “A mode of argumentation or a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd conclusion. Arguments that use universals such as, “always”, “never”, “everyone”, “nobody”, etc., are prone to being reduced to absurd conclusions. The fallacy is in the argument that could be reduced to absurdity – so in essence, reductio ad absurdum is a technique to expose the fallacy.” Note that last sentence. Reducto ad absurdum is about exposing the fallacy, not creating one. This on a web site that’s all about logical fallacies, and they ain’t saying it’s a fallacy.

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dnp/frege/reductio-ad-absurdum.html - “The Proof by Contradiction technique that we just described is a special case of a more general reasoning strategy called reductio ad absurdum. (Translate this literally as, “reduce to absurdity”.) We can use this more general strategy in everyday rhetoric as well as in mathematics”. Again, no mention of fallacy.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/69916/is-reductio-ad-absurdum-a-fallacy - Top level response explicitly says it’s not a fallacy.

Edit: a few more to pile on.

https://www.quora.com/Which-type-of-fallacy-is-reductio-ad-absurdum-Whats-its-definition-example-how-it-works-in-real-life-situations - Top level response explicitly says it’s not a fallacy.

https://www.thoughtco.com/reductio-ad-absurdum-argument-1691903 - "Like any argumentative strategy, reductio ad absurdum can be misused and abused, but in itself it is not a form of fallacious reasoning. A related form of argument, the slippery slope argument, takes reductio ad absurdum to an extreme and is often (but not always) fallacious. " Here again, the argument might be making a fallacy, but reducto ad absurdum is not it.

Reducto ad absurdum is not a logical fallacy if that’s what you’re getting at. It’s a very important logical tool that happens to be a Latin phrase with a similar cadence to Latin names of logical fallacies. People on the Internet mess this up all the time, and it’s become a pet peeve of mine.

I don’t think OP is right–there’s lots of different layers to issues like this that can be explored–but not because of that.

There are issues that come up in niche cases. If you’re using git bisect to track down a bug, a non-working commit can throw that off.