Paralysis is overpowered.

[sector24]

K is by no means the only one with a "unique" style of persuasion. It's basically a staple of the internet to make grandiose claims, stereotype arguments and people into classes. Everyone should be held accountable for their poor style, but at the same time no one should be singled out. So just for fun, here are some internet logical fallacies:

1) If A is B then A is not C
I call this the female transitive property (jokingly of course) because it's the essence of the "does this dress make me look fat?" joke.

Basically when a girl asks you if this dress makes you look fat, she has trapped you into losing an argument before you even answer. If you say yes, then you are an idiot and deserve what you get, but if you say no, the female transitive property states that while "this" dress does not make her look fat she incorrectly infers that a dress exists that does make her look fat, hence she is fat and you're a jerk.

Logically speaking, the relationship between A and B has nothing to do with the relationship between A and C, but oh so frequently this is a common tactic used to win arguments or at least provide a situation where there are only losers.

2) If A is not B, A is C
Sort of the inverse of #1, and uses the same logical fallacy. This is the "if paralyze is nerfed in any way it becomes useless." Not that I'm poking fun at K, because he has a valid point; he just uses an exceedingly poor argument to demonstrate it. It would be like if you were at a job interview and you wanted $124,000 a year, and your future employer countered with $68,000. "$68,000?!? That's the same as $0! You're a jerk!" Well no, you start high, they counter, you negotiate. Maybe paralyze would become suboptimal, but I think a formula could be derived that was less than a current number but still viable. So we start with paralyze lasting the whole battle, counter with open ended d6, and negotiate. But if you don't want to negotiate, this is a quick way to end the argument. If the argument lasted any longer I'm sure someone would have said, "anything more than oe d6 is overpowered" and used the same fallacious argument in the opposite direction. (Again, I don't mean to offend and honestly I think some people get way too much crap for their style of persuasion, especially from people who use their own fallacious tactics in return.)

3) If A is not B, recalculate until A is B
When logic is not on your side, why use logic? Instead, of reading the other person's post and addressing their argument, just reword your argument and post it again. This is a great tactic for forcing your adversary to lay all their cards out on the table. They counter the same argument with basically every unique counter argument they have, and you haven't tipped your hand in the slightest. Your original argument doesn't even have to be good, you just need some discipline and tenacity.

If A is not C and B is not C, A is B
This usually stems from a 3-way argument in which A makes a reasonable argument, but then B (who agrees with A) makes a less reasonable argument. A clever person will not address A specifically, but will say that A and B are both arguments against C and since B is wrong, everything that has been said so far is wrong. I have to be honest, this is the best fallacious reasoning ever and it works all the time. Try it!

So the delicious irony is now you get to read this post and show how fallacious my examples are, thereby making me look oh so foolish. Have fun!

[K]

Originally Posted by sector24

2) If A is not B, A is C
Sort of the inverse of #1, and uses the same logical fallacy. This is the "if paralyze is nerfed in any way it becomes useless." Not that I'm poking fun at K, because he has a valid point; he just uses an exceedingly poor argument to demonstrate it.

This is a strawman argument for those watching at home. My argument has been exaggerated because it is then becomes easier to refute.

My argument was: "Considering that any nerf on the duration of the spell would make it useless against regular armies, and it can be easily countered anyway, any change might as well be a straight deletion of the spell. Simply put, not having a spell on the casting list is better than having a useless spell." When taken into context with the proposed reductions that were extremely drastic, this argument's only flaw is that someone could counter argue that an average of three turns of Paralysis that people were proposing would NOT make it useless against regular armies OR that it might be a good thing for it to be useless against armies (though to be fair, NTJedi had an incomplete proposal that may not have been as drastic).

My argument has then been exaggerated into "if paralyze is nerfed in any way it becomes useless." This argument is completely unreasonable and very simple, and so it is easy to dismiss. It completely ignores my point that the proposed reductions would make the spell useless against armies and with the nominal effect it would have an SCs it might as well be removed.

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There is a big difference between a generalization and a stereotype. A generalization allows for exceptions, while a stereotype does not. For example, the generalization that "the sun comes up every day" is a form of support for an argument that the sun will come up tomorrow, but it would not disprove an argument that tomorrow the sun will not come up.

The people advocating nerfing Paralyze have only used arguments that involved removing the spell's negative effects on SCs. Therefore, as a general rule and based on the available data, people who want to nerf Paralyze are also advocating strengthening the role of SCs. This does not mean that exceptions don't exist or that those exceptions would disprove the general rule.

Considering that the generalization was not part of my argument but was more an a rhetorical observation, calling attention to it is actually an attempt to distract from my actual argument.

My apologies if this has caused any offense. I'm learning that logic and formal argument has no place in the internet and that people will never forgive you for using logic and math to prove that their beliefs are transparent or just plain wrong.

From now on, I'll stick to info-dumps for newbies to the game.

Cheers.