If you learn a few tricks of logic and debate, you can refute the obvious, and defend the ridiculous. But one thing I did learn after years of studying advanced logic theory is that proficiency in argument can easily be used to overpower others, even when you are dead wrong. Majoring in logic is not the kind of thing that makes people want to talk to you at parties, or read your essays. However, I fully suspect you’ll get more than just entertainment value (“Look, Scott is stupider than we thought!”) out of what I have to say on this topic.Success at defending bad ideasThe monty python argument sketchI’m not proud to admit that I have a degree in Logic and Computation from Carnegie Mellon University. So if nothing else this essay serves as a kind of personal therapy session.

I feel qualified to write this essay as I’m a recovering smart person myself and I’ve defended several very bad ideas.

Why does this happen? How can smart people take up positions that defy any reasonable logic? Having spent many years working with smart people I’ve catalogued many of the ways this happens, and I have advice on what to do about it. We all know someone that’s intelligent, but who occasionally defends obviously bad ideas. It can be seen being used in the early PS2 & Xbox demo builds, but in all subsequent builds and releases, the string remained blank.įeMain.bin ews contains the first three paragraphs of Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas, an essay written by Scott Berkun. There is an unused string with the ID DE8A05EF that's meant to display on the main menu.

The codes that are in a smaller font written in the same row only have any effect if the code above it is active. DrawCircle and DrawBox are normally enabled by default on the previous generation release. Each option's effect can be seen individually here, except for CB4PhysicsManagerDebug::DrawVehicleAsHull which is exclusive to this version.

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