"Rich Ahrens" wrote in message
. net...
on 9/7/2008 2:28 PM Jim Logajan said the following:
Rich Ahrens wrote:
on 9/7/2008 1:04 PM Jay Maynard said the following:
On 2008-09-07, Rich Ahrens wrote:
And Bertie has been posting in aviation groups since 1998, as a
simple Google search will turn up. He even posted in RAP on 9/11:
Has he been a flaming asshole troll for that long, or did he just go
over the edge recently? (And no, I'm not about to dredge up that
sewer on my own.)
A false dichotomy

Well ... Jay did not use a dichotomy - that I can see. Rather, his
question made a presumption: that Bertie is a flaming asshole. The
question was when did he become one. The distant past and the recent past
are not normally considered dichotomous - merely a subjective matter.

A false dichotomy is an instance of a bifurcation fallacy and falls into
the category of fallacies of presumption. A bifurcation fallacy is
committed when someone is asked to choose between two options when there
is at least one other option available. Jay clearly presented two options
and asked me to choose. In this case there is at least one other option:
that Bertie is not a flaming asshole troll. This clearly meets the
definition.

An answer to Jay's question doesn't appear to yield anything useful,
though. At least not that I can see.

On that we agree.

Wow! Great big words, little bitty pecker.