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Comment by rkeene2

2 years ago

So to continue the analogy, if the staple gun is broken and it requires you to do more than a working (but non-existent) staple gun BUT less work than doing the affixment without the broken staple gun, you would or would not use it ?

But nobody said they wouldn't use it. You said that. You came up with this idea and then demanded other people defend it.

I don't know why "critiquing the tool" is being equated to "refusing to use the tool."

I don't like calling something a strawman, because I think it's an overused argument, but...I mean...

  • I didn't come up with it nor ask anyone to defend it. I asked a different question about usefulness, and about what it means to him for something to be "broken".

    My point is that the attempt to critique it was a failure. It provided no critique.

    It was incomplete at the very least -- it assigned it the label of broken, but didn't explain the implications of that. It didn't define at what level of failure it would need to be to valuable.

    Additionally, I didn't indicate whether or not he would refuse to use it -- specifically because I didn't know, because he didn't say.

    We all use broken tools built on a fragile foundation of imperfect precision.

I think you are missing the point. If I do use it, then my result will be a broken and defective product. How exactly is that not clear? That's the point. It might not be observable to be, but whatever I'm affixing with the staple gun will come loose because its not working right and not sinking the staples in deep enough...

If I don't use it, then the tool is not used and provided no benefit...

  • It's not clear because it is false and I believe I can produce a proof if you are willing to validate that you accept my premise.

    Your CPU, right now, has known defects. It will produce the wrong outputs for some inputs. It seems to meet your definition of broken.

    Do you agree with that premise ?

    • One has nothing to do with the other. There's no rule about all broken tools because they can be broken in different ways. What's so difficult about my hypothetical? I laid it all out for you.

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