Ok Husky, while I did qualify my saying I made you look foolish by saying 'a little' it perhaps went too far.
You were aggressive in your original critique literally calling me a fraud due to my method of argumentation in this case, so perhaps I overreacted in my assessment of you. However, see my next post response to your other aggressive claims
I also assumed you were aware of the various discussions that went into my assumption that Yves had likely been asked (NRD2, Walter, some others).
I was curious how AI would assess our own assessments of each other's arguments. If you are similarly curious you may want to read the following. I bolded the part that I originally objected to. AI agreed with me on that point.
Of course, you may reasonably defend yourself by saying you were unaware of my thinking found in the first sentence:
Please evaluate: Knowing investors typically ask questions of the company to clarify issues of uncertainty, and that there was a lot of speculation about which company the PR referred to and that the answer depended on how one interpreted the PR, I said: "I assume by now he has been asked, and he has not answered. That actually serves as pretty strong evidence that it must be Nokia, although its possible that he has not realized he can answer the question. Although this is an argument from silence, it is a strong one."
Husky said " You start with 'I assume' and finish with it being a strong argument. You can't start a thought with an assumption and then claim it to be a solid argument based on something not said. That whole paragraph is flawed.."
I replied: "Your assessment of my logic is based on the idea that an assumption has no value.There are good assumptions, and there are bad assumptions. When I said it was a strong argument from silence that was based on the idea that my assumption had a high likelihood of being accurate. "
Please analyze how right or wrong Husky and myself are.
1. Your statement (with context)
“Knowing investors typically ask questions of the company to clarify issues of uncertainty, and that there was a lot of speculation about which company the PR referred to and that the answer depended on how one interpreted the PR, I said: ‘I assume by now he has been asked, and he has not answered. That actually serves as pretty strong evidence that it must be Nokia, although it’s possible that he has not realized he can answer the question. Although this is an argument from silence, it is a strong one.’”
What you are doing logically
You begin with an empirical generalization (“investors typically ask questions to clarify uncertainty”) — that’s not arbitrary; it’s based on real, repeatable behavior.
You apply that generalization to the specific case: therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that the person has been asked by now.
You then note that no response has been given.
From this, you infer that the silence itself carries evidential weight — that the lack of denial or clarification suggests the PR likely refers to Nokia.
You acknowledge it’s an argument from silence (a form of inductive reasoning), and you call it “strong” because the assumption it rests on (that he was asked) is highly probable.
Logical type
This is a probabilistic, inductive argument, not a deductive one.
You are not claiming certainty; you are claiming that given the background conditions, the probability of your interpretation being true is higher.
Evaluation
✅ Strengths:
You’re explicit about your reasoning chain and about its inductive nature.
You provide contextual justification for your assumption.
You acknowledge the alternative explanation (“it’s possible he hasn’t realized he can answer”).
⚠️ Weaknesses:
Your use of “I assume” can make the argument sound more speculative than it actually is.
The strength of your conclusion (“pretty strong evidence”) depends entirely on the real-world reliability of your generalization (how consistently investors do ask questions).
In short, your argument is conditionally strong — strong if your empirical assumption is true, but weak if it isn’t.
2. Husky’s critique
“You start with 'I assume' and finish with it being a strong argument. You can't start a thought with an assumption and then claim it to be a solid argument based on something not said. That whole paragraph is flawed.”
What Husky is saying
Husky is objecting that you begin with an assumption and end with a strong conclusion based on silence. To Husky, that looks like you’re building confidence on a speculative base.
Evaluation
✅ Where Husky is right:
If your assumption were unjustified (i.e., you had no reason to think he was asked), then yes, the argument would be circular or vacuous.
Arguments from silence can easily be abused when the silence might have many possible explanations.
❌ Where Husky is wrong:
You did justify your assumption (by appealing to typical investor behavior and the high level of public speculation).
So your assumption is not arbitrary; it’s a probabilistic inference from context — a perfectly legitimate move in reasoning.
Husky’s blanket claim that “you can’t start with an assumption and end with a strong argument” is false in general. All inductive reasoning starts with assumptions about how the world usually behaves. The key is whether those assumptions are reasonable.
Thus, Husky’s critique oversimplifies how inference works; it treats all assumptions as baseless.
3. Your reply
“Your assessment of my logic is based on the idea that an assumption has no value. There are good assumptions, and there are bad assumptions. When I said it was a strong argument from silence that was based on the idea that my assumption had a high likelihood of being accurate.”
Evaluation
✅ You are right.
Assumptions can have evidential value if they are supported by background knowledge or typical patterns (like investor behavior).
You clarify that your argument’s strength depends on your assumption being likely true, which is precisely how good inductive reasoning works.
⚠️ Minor stylistic issue:
To make your point airtight, it would help to explicitly restate why your assumption has a “high likelihood of being accurate” (because of the investor behavior and speculation). That connects the dots for readers less comfortable with probabilistic reasoning.
✅ Final Assessment
Person Correctness Explanation
You Mostly right (˜8.5/10) Your argument is a legitimate inductive “argument from silence” built on a justified assumption. The only mild weakness is rhetorical — the word “assume” sounds speculative even when your assumption is well-grounded.
Husky Partly right (˜5/10) Correct that starting with an unjustified assumption would weaken the argument. But wrong to claim your paragraph is “flawed” when your assumption is contextually supported and probabilistic reasoning is valid. Husky’s critique reflects a misunderstanding of how inductive inference works.
🧭 Bottom line
You are reasoning soundly within an inductive, probability-based framework, while Husky is evaluating your argument through a deductive, absolute lens. In inductive reasoning, good assumptions (those grounded in typical patterns or strong context) are not flaws — they are essential building blocks.
If you rephrased slightly (e.g., “Given that investors almost always ask such questions…” instead of “I assume…”), your logic would read as airtight even to a strict logician.
AI
