Entry tags:

fan theories, interrogating from the wrong perspective, my education let me show you it, serious business, taking it too seriously

It's Not Easy Dreaming Green
At discussion forums for George Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire", a mostly innocent OP made a small mistake. You see, one of Martin's characters, Jojen Reed, has dreams that come true, and he calls them his "green dreams." Another character, Prince Daeron Targaryen, has dreams that come true, and he hasn't called them anything as far as we know. OP Kevin Lannister speculated they were much the same thing, then typed the fatal sentence:

He was world reknown for his drunkeness but his "green dreams" seem very un-targaryen to me and after a reread it seems he might have more to do with the story than he seems.

The thread, which has very slight spoilers for George Martin's "A Song Of Fire and Ice" books, stays polite until here, where Mister Manticore is brusque about Daeron's dreams not being green dreams. Another poster Denver jumps in to defend the Original Poster, martialling all the forces of formal logic to put Mister Manticore in his place.

For example,

Daeron: Now, because Daeron hasn't given a titular name to the type of dream that allows him foresight, you are saying that they cannot be associated with Jojen's Green Dreams.

A better route would have been to note that Daeron never actually describes his dreams as green, while Jojen's dreams overwhelmingly need to be green in order to be prophetic.

But even that would not have sated the requirements for a logical negation. The "lack of evidence" regarding any kind of associative connection between Daeron's Dreams (with a capital D, as opposed to his more common, lower case dreams) and Jojen's Dreams (again, capital D for the same reason) does not constitute evidence of a lack.

But using logic on fictional anaylsis just isn't enough.

Denver: You just about e-"bit this guy's head off".

Mister Manticore: I did not. I came nowhere close to any such thing. Perhaps you were fooled by the lack of tone or emotion in my words, and thereby assumed hostility where there was none intended.

Denver:I can't be fooled by something that isn't there. The terseness of your sentences, and your insistence of the OP's to name one possibility of what stupidity may have happened at Summerhall are indicative enough to me.

It's like this:

A) Someone can type a message and generally infuse it with warm and happy sentiment,
or;
Not A) Someone can type a message and generally infuse it with not warm and happy sentiment.*

*:Let's just call "warm and happy sentiment" tact, for convenience's sake. Also, while there may be many other options (such as a statement full of apple pie, or a statement full of feline emotion), but for every positive statement (like, say, Statement A) there is a corollary negative of the same possibility (like, say, Statement "Not A").

Given what your written words are, I cannot prove the A is a viable description of your comments, because there are no actual signs of "A" (i.e., no signs of any tactfulness), which is a necessary condition for proving a positive.

And, I cannot disprove "Not A", since I have no indications of it's opposite (i.e., no signs of any tactfulness).

And since I cannot disprove Not A, but I can disprove A, I would tend to feel that you were more leaning towards Not A than A.

The thread gets increasingly cranky (for example, Saddam Hussein and the UN weapons inspectors are referenced), until Denver scores a huge rhetorical victory by tricking Mister Manticore that he owns logic books.

Mister Manticore: You may wish to consult your books on logic for some more precise term to call it, but that's up to you.

Denver: That's an assumption. :]

Mister Manticore: No, that's a suggestion.

Denver: Again, I hate* to be technical, but it would qualify as a "suggestion" if and only if I could actually perform the actions that have been "suggested." Since I own no logic text books, and only read about it on the internets**, it becomes an assumption. You assumed I had something I didn't.

*: Well, I think you might have noticed, but I actually love to be technical. :]

**: Here's some of the ones of stumbled upon over the past few weeks. THey're good reading material.
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy.htm
http://www.philosopher.org.uk/
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/reasoning/

What mighty contests rise from trivial things!