I used to use the retort "your argument is invalid" frequently in casual conversation, but I recently realized that continuing to use it would require far too much work: analyzing the other person's statement to determine whether it is an argument at all, then if it is deductive, then testing for validity... And in any case, that would take up enough time that the conversation would have moved on by the time I got through that process.
Boarding an entirely different train of thought, Ryan Walters raised some interesting questions about time in his
post from last week. It made me wonder how people began measuring time. What sort of logical process led humans to break down the natural rhythm of sunrises and sunsets into 24 equal parts, and each of those parts into 60 (almost more arbitrary than 24) smaller sections? Or did they go the other way, somehow deciding how long a second was, and working their way up? For that matter, was logic even involved at all?
