Laws of Power

Got this list while using stumbleupon.

A Wikipedia article stating Robert Greene's 

48 Laws of Power.

They are true, most of the time.

These 'laws' are not absolute mind you.

I must learn number 4 by heart, 

I tend to talk and moan about trivial things,

I need to shut the hell up hahaha.

1. Never outshine the master.
2. Never put too much trust in friends; learn how to use enemies.
3. Conceal your intentions.
4. Always say less than necessary.
5. So much depends on reputation. Guard it with your life.
6. Court attention at all costs.
7. Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit.
8. Make other people come to you; use bait if necessary.
9. Win through your actions, never through argument.
10. Infection: avoid the unhappy and unlucky.
11. Learn to keep people dependent on you.
12. Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim.
13. When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interests, never to their mercy or gratitude.
14. Pose as a friend, work as a spy.
15. Crush your enemy totally.
16. Use absence to increase respect and honor.
17. Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability.
18. Do not build fortresses to protect yourself. Isolation is dangerous.
19. Know who you're dealing with; do not offend the wrong person.
20. Do not commit to anyone.
21. Play a sucker to catch a sucker: play dumber than your mark.
22. Use the surrender tactic: transform weakness into power.
23. Concentrate your forces.
24. Play the perfect courtier.
25. Re-create yourself.
26. Keep your hands clean.
27. Play on people's need to believe to create a cultlike following.
28. Enter action with boldness.
29. Plan all the way to the end.
30. Make your accomplishments seem effortless.
31. Control the options: get others to play with the cards you deal.
32. Play to people's fantasies.
33. Discover each man's thumbscrew.
34. Be royal in your fashion: act like a king to be treated like one.
35. Master the art of timing.
36. Disdain things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best revenge.
37. Create compelling spectacles
38. Think as you like but behave like others.
39. Stir up waters to catch fish.
40. Despise the free lunch.
41. Avoid stepping into a great man's shoes.
42. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.
43. Work on the hearts and minds of others.
44. Disarm and infuriate with the mirror effect.
45. Preach the need for change, but never reform too much at once.
46. Never appear perfect.
47. Do not go past the mark you aimed for; in victory, learn when to stop.
48. Assume formlessness.

Logic 102

At dahil mahaba-haba ang primer ko patungkol sa Logic,

gumawa ako ng part 2 mwahahaha.

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Fallacy: is a type of argument that may seem to be correct, but that proves on examination not to be so.

Fallacies of Relevance: rely on premisses that may seem to be relevant to the conclusion but in fact are not.

• Argument from Ignorance (ad ignorantiam) - a proposition is true on the ground that it has not been proved false or vice versa.
• Appeal to inappropriate authority (ad verecundiam) - the premisses of an argument appeal to the judgement of some party or parties having no legitimate claim to authority in the matter at hand.
• Argument against the person (ad hominem) - an attack is leveled not at the claims being made or the merits of the argument but at the person of the opponent.
• Appeal to emotion (ad populum) - careful reasoning i sreplaced with devices calculated to elicit enthusiasm and emotional support for the conclusion advanced.
• Appeal to pity ( ad misericordiam) - careful reasoning is replaced by devices to elicit symnpathy on the part of the hearer for the objects of the speaker's concern.
• Appeal to force (ad baculum) - careful reaoning is replaced with direct or insinuated threats to bring about the acceptance of some conclusion.
• Irrelevant conclusion (ignoratio elenchi) - premisses miss the point, purporting to support one conclusion while in fact supporting or establishing another.

Fallacies of Presumption: mistaken arguments arise from reliance upon some proposition that is assumed to be true, but is in fact false or dubious, or without warrant.

• Complex question  - asked in such a way as to presuppose the truth of some assumption buried in that question.
• False cause - when one treats as the cause of a thing what is not really the cause of that thing; when one blunders in reasoning that is based upon causal relations.
• Begging the question (petitio principii) - one assumes the premisses of an argument the truth of what one seeks to establish in the conclusion of that argument.
• Accident - when one applies a generalization to an individual case that it does not properly govern.
• Converse accident - when one moves carelessly or too quickly from a single case to an indefensibly broad generalization.

Fallacies of Ambiguity: formulated in such a way as to rely on shifts in the meaning of words or phrases, from their use in the premisses to their use in the conclusion.

• Equivocation - when the same word or phrase is used with two or more meanings, deliberately or accidentally in the formulation of an argument.
• Amphiboly - when one of the statements in an argument has more than plausible meaning, because of the loose or awkward way in which the words in that statement have been combined.
• Accent - a shift of meaning arises within an argument as a consequence of changes in the emphasis given to its words or parts.
• Composition - committed when one reasons mistakenly from the attributes of a part to the attributes of the whole and when one mistakenly reasons from the attributes of an individual member of some collection to the attributes of the totality of that collection.
• Division - committed when one reasons mistakenly from the attributes of a whole to the attributes of one of its parts or when one reasons mistakenly from the attributes of the individual entities within that collection.

Four Basic Standard-Form Categorical Propositions:

• A propositions - universal affirmative
• I propositions  - particular affirmative
• E propositions - universal negative
• O propositions - particular negative

Logic 101

I miss studying in the university.

My mind was challenged

ngayon its stagnating.

Sigh.

At dahil naghahalungkat ako ng books 

mula sa baul ng kalat sa bahay.

Nakita ko ang Logic Book ko.

Madami din akong natutunan lalo na ang

isa sa mga life philosophy ko.

Na-realize ko na lang ito ng pina-define sa amin ang truth.

This is my version of truth, that there isn't one,

because truth is one's version of fact.

There is no one truth kumbaga, 

it all depends on the perspective.

(walang kokontra gawa-gawa ko lang yan

hindi ako philosopher or logician hahaha)

This is why I tend to take time in deciding,

I look for the pros and cons.

Neutral muna bago ang lahat para makapag-isip.

Ano nga ba ang basics ng Logic,

magbalik tanaw tayo.

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Logic: the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish correct reasoning from incorrect   reasoning.

Propositions: something that maybe asserted or denied; refer to what  declarative sentences are typically used to assert.

Inference: process by which one proposition is arrived at and affirmed on the basis of one or more other propositions accepted as the starting point of the process.

Argument: any group of propositions of which one is claimed to follow from the others, which are regarded as providing support or grounds for the truth of that one

Conclusion:  proposition that is affirmed on the basis of the other propositions of the argument, and these other propositions, which are affirmed or assumed as providing support or reasons for accepting the conclusion, are the Premises of that argument.

Common conclusion-indicators:

• therefore - for these reasons
• hence - it follows that
• thus - we may infer
• so - I conclude that
• accordingly - which shows that
• in consequence - which entails that
• consequently - which entails that
• proves that - which implies that
• as a result - which allows us to infer that
• for this reason - which points to the conclusion that

Common premiss-indicators:

• since - as indicated by
• because - the reason is that
• for - for the reason that
• as - may be inferred from
• follows from  - may be derived from
• as shown by - may be deduced from
• inasmuch as - in view of the fact that

Deductive Argument: is valid when its premiss, if true, do provide conclusive grounds for the truth of its conclusion; one whose conclusion is claimed to follow from its premiss with absolute necessity , this necessity not being a matter of degree and not depending  in any way on whatever else may be the case.

Inductive Argument: one whose conclusion is claimed to follow from its premiss only with probability, this probability being a matter of degree and dependent upon what else may be the case.

Three Basic Functions of Language:

• To communicate information
• Expressive function
• Directive function

Three Kind of Disputes:

• Obviously genuine dispute - in which the parties explicitly and unambiguously  disagree either in belief or in attitude.
• Merely verbal dispute - there is no genuine disagreement between the parties at all and yet there appears to be disagreement.
• Apparently verbal but really genuine - when the parties misunderstand one another's use of terms.

Five Kinds of Definition:

• Stipulative Definition - arises from the deliberate assignment of a meaning
• Lexical Definition - reports a meaning the defiendum already has; if the term being described is not new but has an established usage to eliminate ambiguity.
• Precising Definition - serve to reduce vagueness
• Theoretical Definition - attempts to formulate a theoretically adequate or scientifically useful description of the objects to which the term applies.
• Persuasive Definition - used to resolve disputes by influencing the attitudes or stirring the emotions of readers or hearers.

Denotation/Extension: general term or class term, denotes the several objects to which it may corrcetly be applied.

Connotation/Intension: The set of attributes shared by all and only those objects to which the term refers.

Rules for Definition:

• Should state the essential attributes of the species.
• Must not be circular.
• Must be neither too broad nor too narrow.
• Must not be expressed in ambiguous, obscure or figurative language.
• Should not be negative where it can be affirmative.