a good hiring campaign ad could be : do you want to occupy a position which was once occupied by Albert Einstein ?
A good ad campaign may help, but I doubt it will win the day. It isn't like patent examination is an easy job. It is actually quite difficult and may be one of the mentally toughest domestic jobs in government. So if someone offers a software engineer 20K more to work for a private company, why wouldn't they do it?
I'm sure you know this, but Einstein worked for the swiss patent office. He did it because no one would give him a job in academia. This illustrates my point quite well, which is, the patent office is the choice of last resort for many applicants.
I think Einsteins problem with getting a job was that he didn't like the politics of academic institution. When he finally got a job in academia he said, "I've now joined the guild of whores."
Another interesting fact is that Einstein's art unit at the swiss patent office was in clocks. This was the time period of the railroads and there was a lot of development in synchronizing time between trains. Had Einstein not been working at the patent office, he may never have fully baked his understanding of relativity.
The very link you cite has a conclusion that supports anonymouse's position.
Understanding logical form and validity is important for proper argumentation. Although we have an intuitive grasp of logical form and validity, we can learn more about it and improve our understanding. Learning formal counterexamples not only helps us to improve our understanding of logical form, but it also helps us learn how to prove that certain arguments are logically invalid.
As you can see no where is it stated that merely having an example that is opposing the initial argument is in itself an argument. It can help an argument, especially it it's a formal counterexample and it's logical, but "One counter-example does not an argument make." I have no idea if the comment he was responding to did more than simply state one counterexample, but that doesn't appear to be your argument.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by umrk_lab
a good hiring campaign ad could be : do you want to occupy a position which was once occupied by Albert Einstein ?
A good ad campaign may help, but I doubt it will win the day. It isn't like patent examination is an easy job. It is actually quite difficult and may be one of the mentally toughest domestic jobs in government. So if someone offers a software engineer 20K more to work for a private company, why wouldn't they do it?
I'm sure you know this, but Einstein worked for the swiss patent office. He did it because no one would give him a job in academia. This illustrates my point quite well, which is, the patent office is the choice of last resort for many applicants.
I think Einsteins problem with getting a job was that he didn't like the politics of academic institution. When he finally got a job in academia he said, "I've now joined the guild of whores."
Another interesting fact is that Einstein's art unit at the swiss patent office was in clocks. This was the time period of the railroads and there was a lot of development in synchronizing time between trains. Had Einstein not been working at the patent office, he may never have fully baked his understanding of relativity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
One counter-example does not an argument make.
Actually, it does. You should re-train Logics 101.
Here: http://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/logical-validity-counterexamples/
Happy to oblige.
The very link you cite has a conclusion that supports anonymouse's position.
As you can see no where is it stated that merely having an example that is opposing the initial argument is in itself an argument. It can help an argument, especially it it's a formal counterexample and it's logical, but "One counter-example does not an argument make." I have no idea if the comment he was responding to did more than simply state one counterexample, but that doesn't appear to be your argument.