A stoner has the connotation of someone who habitually engages in smoking. I wouldn't date a drunk, nor would I date a stoner, though I wouldn't have a problem if she indulged in it from time to time as a social activity.

To the OP, make it evident that you don't care for her smoking from the beginning. Don't try to "change her mind slowly or gently--it never works. Trust me on this.

I actually typed out a lengthy response of how to persuade someone and why it is a bad idea to go the "gentle route" in a relationship, but I think it is outside the scope of this thread. If you're interested, PM me.

This is mistaken. The categorical rejection of anecdotal evidence in public discourse is largely because it is unverifiable. For instance, if you made the argument that all crows were black, and I said you were a liar because I just saw a white crow yesterday, my evidence would not be appropriate as useful evidence because it lacks verifiability in the public domain.

This is not, however, a public issue. You are trying to persuade him to accept a different way of viewing things (whether or not you admit that this is your intention--it is the status of the discourse...he is your audience and you are making a persuasive case). Because of this, his anecdotal evidence is not in question as mine might be in the crow example. He knows that his evidence is true. As such his anecdotal evidence holds a subjectively greater weight than someone else's, because it is verifiable.

It is as if I were to claim, "I saw a white crow", and you said, "No you didn't, anecdotal evidence is not allowed". That doesn't change the fact that I saw the crow. You could try and convince me that what I saw wasn't REALLY a crow, or that I was hallucinating at the time, but you can't demand that I reject it because it is unacceptably subjective.



Just to anticipate a few possible responses--no, anecdotal evidence is not highly regarded in scientific discourse, but that is largely because the scientific world is a generally public domain, and as we have said earlier, the two hold different standards for good evidence.

You could also critique anecdotal evidence on the grounds that it runs the risk of being unbalanced by statistical and psychological biases, which would be good criticisms, but would still allow his subjective experience to be relevant to the topic of conversation.

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

Perhaps, but I don't believe that verifiability is the issue here. If you notice, nobody in the thread mentioned anything about knowing "a doctor or a lawyer who smokes" prior to his rejection of all anecdotal evidence. This implies that he knew such arguments are quite common and figured that the conversation would inevitably steer in that direction. Is he calling all of these people liars? Is he implying that high functioning stoners do not exist? The argument is SO common that he felt the need to preemptively address it, but doesn't believe that any such argument is verifiable. Somehow I just don't believe that to be the case. There are plenty of well documented and public cases of very intelligent people who smoke marijuana... would he accept these as evidence or would he reject them as flukes? I'm interested to know the answer.
In this case, I reject it on the basis of misplaced causation.

Well, no I don't think it SHOULD have been, but I feel that is the approach you took, whether that was your intent or not. You claimed his reasoning was poor on categorical grounds, but such a categorical distinction would only apply if taken from the perspective of a public sort of dispute.


Possibly he believes they are liars, and possibly he believes they do not exist. It is also possible that he thinks they are just the highly publlicized, but rare exceptions to the rules.

I'm not really interested in defending his argument, only pointing out that I think your critique of it was in error.
Then you would be challenging the conclusion based on the inference, not the evidence.

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

Don't forget atheism requires faith too.

But let's not steer there.

Why is this relevant?

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

You called a girl a moron for believing the bible.

I called her a moron for believing that the Bible is literally true and that the earth is 10,000 years old, yes.

I fail to see what atheism and/or faith has to do with this. It seems to be you that is "steering there".

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.

Whatever. Look at it yourself and you'll see.

I did. I wouldn't have said "I fail to see" if I hadn't looked.

Maybe you'd like to enlighten me in the miscellaneous thread.

_________________
Lo' there do I see My Father.
Lo' there do I see the line of My People, back to the beginning.
Lo' they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them.
in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.