2019-06-22 First draft 2023-05-07 It’s not just about the law. It’s not just about the law: “Is the result of the addition even? Is it odd?” is a foolish question.
- law is a collection of rule. Once the [specific factual] is clarified, it can be discussed and a determination can be made as to which rule coverage applies to that point. (In the case of this figure, for simplicity, the two choices are OK or NG.)
Often, however, we see cases where the questioner abstraction the facts on their own and ask, “Is this pattern OK or not? Legal experts can only answer that question with, “It can be OK or NG. The only way to answer that question is, “It depends on what the specific facts are.
When consultations take place on social networking sites on the Internet, there are often people who start saying OK or NG to this ambiguous question with self-serving fact-finding (assuming that the facts must be this way).
Sometimes the OK group and the NG group start debating each other, but it is natural that they come to different conclusions because their premises are based on different factual findings, and they are just wasting their time playing the debate game but not building anything up, and they want to make themselves look smart and feel like they are useful people. People hungry for approval are competing with other hungry people for it.
- If the premises are different, it is only natural that the conclusions will be different.
- Discussions with discrepant premises do not build anything up.
- People hungry for approval compete with other hungry people to take it from them.
Unfortunately, on social networking sites, “people who make loud assertions on topics that cannot be asserted” stand out. However, discussions by people who make arbitrary factual assertions based on the above process are not very useful, even if they seem confident and trustworthy at first glance.
The same is true in science and medicine, but experts do not make confident statements about questions that they cannot assert, so it may appear on social networking sites as if those who make confident statements are the experts.
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