| Re: If you had to recommend ONE book...
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Originally Posted by djtoast  Absolutely: reasoning can be spurious if it's based on suppositions which are untrue; here though the "should" in "If you want to carry on an arguement based on the spurious notion that people on the internet should qualify statments of opinion so as to avoid confusing you..." is something that couldn't ever be established one way or the other - the "notion" is a preference or opinion or whim, which can't be shown to be wrong - so where can the "untruth" come from that makes it spurious?
I'd say this was analogous to "refute" versus "deny."
ON topic (gasp) Bill Bryson: any really, even if you've not been to or planned to visit the place in question they're very entertaining and just a little informative too. | You could say that expecting people to always do so is unrealistic. Yes, it's a preference or opinion but one which (any reasonable person must expect) is unlikely ever to be realised. So you could say the notion was kinda spurious in that sense.
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If Schrodinger had a cat, it would definitely be dead by now. | 
