- Joined
- Feb 28, 2021
They're trying to come up with so extravagant a scenario that they obtain any form of concession - "ok in that impossible scenario I guess" so they can pull the classic tactic of "Aha you concede sex isn't immutable, and therefore if it isn't immutable you've just got a subjectively high threshold for its mutability. Argument defeated.".I'm sure there's some pretentious Latin term for this fallacy, (reducto ad absurdum, maybe, or is that a Harry Potter spell?) where you keep proposing more and more ludicrous scenarios until your opponent is too bewildered to go on, but the more I see it it just comes across like a really weird parody of Monty Python's 'what have the Roman's ever done for us' sketch.
"Okay, so if we could 3D print a female skeleton and replace each bone in my body, rebuild the flesh and organs like Terminator so I had all the physical components, functions and proportions of a woman, if we could recode my DNA to be female, retune my vocal chords to have a woman's voice, wipe my memory and replace it with X years lived experience as a woman...then would you call me a woman?"
It's kinda like the old joke -
"Would you sleep with me for £50 million?"
"I'd consider it."
"Would you sleep with me for £5?"
"Of course not, what sort of woman do you take me for?"
"My dear, we've already established what sort of woman you are, we're just negotiating your price".
Thankfully this sort of tactic rarely convinces pragmatic normies - epistemological philosophy tends to be met with people going "yeah but that's not real, is it?". It's just showboating so the seals in the audience can clap along.


