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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: February 25th, 2025

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  • I think you don’t understand this fallacy. Here’s an example.

    Person A: “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”
    Person B: “But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge.”
    Person A: “But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”

    In this case, Angus actually is a Scotsman, but the person making the claim suggests he is not by using an altered definition based on their argument instead of the commonly accepted definition. The logic is circular.

    This situation is akin to the following:

    Person A: “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”
    Person B: “But my uncle Andrew is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge.”
    Person A: “Your uncle Andrew is a third generation US citizen, descended from one Scottish immigrant grandfather, who makes this ancestry a substantial part of his identity despite having little knowledge of Scottish culture beyond ‘bagpipes, kilts, and haggis’ and what he has seen in movies.”

    It this case, despite identifying as a Scotsman and utilizing some elements of Scottish culture, by the commonly accepted definition he is not a Scotsman, even in part. Therefore, any observations of Scotsmen based on Andrew are likely incorrect.

    For your situation, given there have never been true socialist countries, only mixed systems, it strains credulity to believe that your experience with a mixed system is representative of a true socialist state, just as my experience with labradoodles is unlikely to be representative of Golden Retrievers or poodles.