Summations Only

I don't get it. What's more head-on than showing how a counterexample is false?

I didn't say they were trying to get rid of unemployment. But again, another way of saying this is that they're being outcompeted for X amount of jobs because they're the candidates with the least experience (i.e. none). If you change that, if you increase their experience so that someone else is the candidate with the least experience, then you've not helped anybody at all, you've just re-arranged the deck chairs on the Titanic.What's the use of that? Sure, there's a small benefit in "unemployment cycling", but you're literally creating a situation where now we're just passing around the same number of jobs. Why bother, when you could put people to work by addressing the situation that caused unemployment in the first place? But again - how does "now and again" work without a system of rotating unemployment? Where do the openings come from? And how do you get people to sign up for a system of rotating unemployment? You'd have to force them. That's why I accused you of supporting such a system; it's the necessary logical consequence of your notion of "working now and again is better than permanent employment" and I guess I just sort of assumed that you had thought ahead that far. Because it's something the "unpaid work" model simply doesn't address.

Following someone on a ride-along isn't "doing unpaid work for free."And, of course, what's number 5 on that list? What's the only list item that actually refers to getting experience, which is what we're talking about? Why, it's:

quote:

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Practice to get experience. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Always having your camera handy will enable you to take photos in different places and of different subjects.

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Can you pick up some helpful tips from watching the pros work? Absolutely. But experience comes only from doing. If you want experience as a photographer, it comes from taking pictures. It doesn't come from coffee runs. Even your own sources say so.

Hey, Xong, what is it you do?

Your source doesn't refer to fetching coffee or carrying camera bags, so presenting it as corroboration for your position that you can learn photography by fetching coffee is a misrepresentation. They literally just mean follow a photographer around and watch him work - not to be his gopher. Because we're talking about sources of experience. That's the context. You presented, as a corroboration of your position that you can get experience as a photographer by fetching coffee for photographers, a source that you represented as saying that you can get experience by fetching coffee for photographers.But you misrepresented the source. It doesn't lend support to your position; it lends support to mine. The way you get experience as a photographer is to take pictures. You might pick up some tips by watching a photographer work. Neither of those things is going to happen when you're busy fetching coffee, answering phones, carrying gear. Now you're misrepresenting me and misrepresenting CS. As you can see in the material you quoted, CS referred to getting experience as a photographer by following one around and making Starbucks runs. See, it's right there in what you quoted:

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You could follow around a photographer and get them coffee n'stuff without getting paid but get the invaluable experience of watching how they do their job and better your own performance so that you can end up getting paid to do it.

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But no. You can't get experience that way. You can get tips. Tips aren't experience. If you want experience as a photographer, even your own source agrees that the only way to get it is to take pictures, like a photographer. Yes - CS did, as you quoted, and you agreed. That's the position you adopted and it's the position I've been arguing against. Even your own source supports my position in that regard.No surprise, of course, that you want to retreat from it, but the very least you could do would be to have the decency to say you've changed your mind. I promise, I don't keep track of these things - I'm not notching a battleaxe every time someone I'm talking to comes around to agree with me. Generally I forget about it as soon as it happens. But when people try to pull the fast one you're trying to pull now - "oops, I defended a position that's actually kind of dumb, now I'll just pretend like I was defending something else all along" - I bite in and I don't let go. I don't understand why people haven't yet learned that doing that with me is always a bad idea. It never works out well for them - they always wind up looking like idiots. You're about to. Why not just admit that the notion of getting experience by fetching coffee for photographers is actually kind of stupid? An additional misrepresentation. I never said there was no value. I said that you couldn't get work experience that way. That's the position you're now pretending you've always held. Why not just admit that you've changed your mind, and we can just drop the whole thing?

Let me just stop you there, because the way to address the unemployment of these 10 people is to have an economy that can support jobs for 110 people, not 100. Let's not pretend like that's impossible, because it's actually quite easy. But when I described a situation where "everybody takes their turn in unemployment", you told me that's exactly what you weren't proposing. But now you are proposing it. So we're back to my original question - why is anyone going to voluntarily "go into the unemployment queue"? Guess what happens when I'm at my job and it's my turn to go on unemployment - I'm not gonna. I'm going to stay at my position so that I can keep getting paid. And my company is going to want me to keep doing that because they've invested a lot of time and effort in training me to do my job, and it makes no sense to start over rom scratch with someone new just so someone else can earn a paycheck. I understood the rudiments of your point from the beginning, Mod. I've always understood that you were proposing a system where we cycle the employed through the unemployed "queue" so that everybody has a chance to work for a while. But when I asked you how you expected anybody who already has a job to agree to such a system, you told me I didn't understand it. But now you've come back with the exact system you said you weren't proposing.Like I said, I thought you had thought through the consequences of your position, and that we were on the same page. You're about to catch up with me, I think, but could you hurry it up a bit? But jobs don't come and go. If you have a job, you try to keep it. If a company hires someone, they try to keep them around. Employment is sticky. So if it just happens like gravity, Mod, where are all these long-term unemployed people coming from? How can you say that unemployment cycling is as inevitable and non-voluntary as gravity, and then turn around and claim that we need to set up a system to promote it? Why do we need to promote something that, according to you, you can't stop from happening?You're not making any sense because you're not thinking through your position. You're just adopting a pose of reflexive disagreement with anything I say.

Sure. But only if the consequence of your example situation is that you get experience. I'm allowed to make an argument that someone in the situation you propose would not get experience, and that therefore your counterexample is a false example. That's not "spinning" anything, that's a direct response to the objection.I get to do that, CS. It's how you respond to counterexamples if, in fact, they don't actually counter your point. As yours did not.If I say that there has never been a female President of the United States, and you say "what about Abraham Lincoln", I get to defend my position by pointing out that, in fact, Abraham Lincoln was not a woman. You would say I was just "avoiding it as something that challenges my position", but the example of Abraham Lincoln doesn't challenge my position, you just think it does because you made a mistake and thought Abraham Lincoln was female (in this example, I know you don't really think that) and the way I'm addressing your objection is by correcting your mistake.That's a direct and completely valid way to address counterexamples to one's position. Why do you think it isn't? Yes, CS. That's how you defend a position. What about this is confusing to you? I'm in the business of defending my own ideas. It's your job to defend yours. It's not my job to use your examples to falsify my position. It's your job to use your examples to falsify my position. My job is to defend my position from your counterexamples. The way in which that is done is that I show you how you're mistaken in the applicability of your counterexample, that you're wrong about some aspect of fact, or wrong about what the example implies, in such a way that it dosen't, in fact, challenge my position at all.The way in which you defend against that attack is to show that you were not mistaken, or wrong on the facts, usually by reference to some third party authority that we've mutually agree is valid. But you've decided not to do that. You've decided to make spurious accusations that I'm doing something wrong by defending my position against your counterexamples. That's the logical fallacy of "poisoning the well." That's exactly how I'm addressing it as something that you assert challenges my position - by showing you that your counterexample is false, and that it doesn't, in fact, challenge my position. I'm not required to accept your counterexample as actually countering anything just because you say it does. It's up to you to make an convincing argument that you've presented a valid counterexample to my argument.Why do you think this is out of bounds, CS? I honestly don't understand. Do you think I'm the only one who does it? We're all doing it. Nobody considers this unusual.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I can only read your words, CS, not your intentions. If you find that your words do not accurately communicate what you intended, then by all means let's work together to help you more accurately communicate.But you didn't even try to do that. I'm forced to conclude that this is a rhetorical dodge, that you're attempting to change your position without admitting it now that you know that it's wrong.Why do people try to do that? Do they think we're not going to notice? Why not just admit that you were wrong? Ok, but the experience of watching someone take pictures is not "experience as a photographer." Nobody would hire you to take pictures at their wedding because you said "I've watched some of the best photographers in the business, I assure you." They'd think you were an idiot. Because that's the position you articulated, and when I told you it was completely retarded to say that getting coffee made you better at taking pictures, you argued with me and told me I was wrong. You told me, in fact, that it was out of bounds for me to disagree with your position that you could get better at taking pictures by getting coffee, because that was a counterexample to my larger position that you can get more valuable experience working for someone else for free than you could working for yourself by just doing it, and that I'm required to accept at face value anything you say is a counterexample. That's a summary of all your messages to me in this thread thus far.I don't understand why you would do that except in defense of the position that you can get experience as a photographer by getting coffee for photographers. Well, great, now you think it's retarded. So you changed your mind.Just say so. I'm not going to hold it against you. I hold against you that you're trying to change your mind and make me look like the bad guy. But that's not something that ever happened. What happened is that PD adopted one position, repeated it when I asked her to clarify, was completely unambiguous, and then decided that she needed to change her mind without anyone noticing. Then she opened a thread to lie about it.It's like how Dronester keep saying that he never said that Obama should close the US Embassy in Iraq, even though he repeated it at least six times. If it's a misunderstanding then why wouldn't PD or Dronester have immediately said "whoops, slow your roll there Crash, you misunderstood me. Let me clarify." If it's a genuine misunderstanding with you now why is this claim of misunderstanding only coming after I've made compelling arguments against your position? If I had actually misunderstood you, you would have noticed immediately.No, there was no misunderstanding, your own replies to my messages prove it. This is about you trying to change your mind after you've lost the debate, and make me out to be the bad guy in doing so. If I had actually misunderstood your position, or PD's, or Dronesters, they would have noticed and said so, immediately. I'm very clear about the positions to which I'm responding.

If I'm really misunderstanding so many people, Dronester, then why do they only say so when they're losing the argument? Why don't they seem to notice I've "misunderstood" them in my first reply? I'm hardly secretive about what I think other people are saying. I'm very clear about it, in fact.You, PD, and now CS only come up with this "misunderstanding" excuse when you're losing the argument. That proves it's a dodge, and that I was correct in my understanding all along. Jar does it too, which is why it's so pointless to talk to him. Holmes used to be the master of it.

That's a tip, that's not "experience." How would you put that on a resume?"Experience: A photographer told me not to shoot weddings until I had done more work." Get real, people would know you were an idiot. No, there's no experience! How are you people not getting that?"Experience: I followed a photographer around for a while." Nobody would think that you were experienced!This is experience: "Experience: Lead photographer for the Central Animal Shelter commemorative calendar. Two covers of Cat Fancy. Johnson-Rodruiguez wedding. Above-the-fold photographic feature in March 23rd edition of Sun-Tribune-Star." None of that happens when you get coffee. That's experience you get taking pictures. Experience is what you've done. Not what you've watched other people do.I can't understand how this isn't stupidly obvious.

Well, you're lying. If I'd really misinterpreted your position you would have said so, right away.

It can't be what I do because I've never done it. It's what you guys do, when I've made a compelling argument against your position, and rather than even appear to admit that I'm right, here come these charges that "oh, I was misunderstood, you've been arguing against something I never said!"It's a lie, CS; it was a goddamn lie when PD did it, it was a goddamn lie when dronester did it - that's why he's gibbering like an idiot about it now - and it's a goddamn lie when you're doing it, now. All because you people, for no reason at all, think I'm such an asshole that admitting I might be right about even one goddamn thing is just too much.This is the problem that comes up because you all make it so personal. You can't talk about ideas, you have to talk about Crashfrog. It's turned into this because, like PD and Dronester, you think that lying will prevent you from having to admit I was right about something. I don't understand why it's so personal for you. Have I really, even once, been up somebody's ass for admitting they were wrong? I have to do it so often I don't see how I ever could. I'm only up people's asses when they're such chicken-shits they won't ever admit to an error.

But that's literally what we've been talking about this whole time - marketable experience. Experience you can put on a resume. Experience that will help you get a job. So if it doesn't wind up on a resume it's irrelevant to what we're talking about because how are you going to use it to get a job? Yeah, it's a tip. It's going to help you do the job. But what's going to help you get the job is when you say"Experience: Did the wiring for a home addition. Certified as completed to code."because that's experience. So you have a job in the movies now, right?

Sure. And maybe one out of ten thousand of them will get a job as a director.Maybe that "free experience" isn't working out too well for them. Maybe they should re-think the value of the so-called "experience" they're getting for free; maybe they should be out there making movies and actually getting experience as a director, instead.I mean, if you're trying to portray show business as a place where working for free gets you the experience you need to get a desirable job, you really have to deal with the fact that almost nobody in show business is getting the desirable jobs. But you don't. In your mind, the fact that all these film students and comedy writers think the way to get ahead is to work for free somehow proves that it works, but in my mind, the fact that almost none of these film students and comedy writers are actually getting ahead proves that it doesn't.

Come on. Now you're playing word games. Obviously anything you do is an "experience" that you experience, by definition. Sitting at home doing nothing is "experience" in the sense that you're experiencing boredom and idleness.We're talking specifically about marketable experience that is going to help you get your next job. You're making the argument that you can get that from proximity to professional photographers, which you receive in exchange for menial labor.But you've not provided any evidence that you can get real, marketable experience from nothing but proximity. And the way I know that you can't is my own common sense, and what I would ask for and look for if I were hiring a photographer.I'd look for experience. Photographic work that they had done. Publications their photographs had appeared in. Challenging environments they had been able to produce good work in. And I literally could not care less what photographers they had followed around and fetched coffee for, so how could that possibly be "experience" that you could use to qualify for a job? No, it's not, Mod. It's never been what we're talking about. We're talking about experience, real, marketable experience you can use to get a job. That's why we're talking about it in "Unpaid work for the Unemployed." That's why we're talking about it in this overall context of getting a job. Jesus Christ, how did you get the context so wrong, here? How do you put that on a resume?"Experience: I learned the various ins and outs of the trade by watching famous photographers work." People would think you were a complete fucking idiot. Because it's not experience. It's like saying you're an "experienced lover" because you watch a ton of porn. Well, maybe CS thinks he is, but everybody knows that's not how it works.