On Wednesday 17 Dec 2008 7:34:41 pm Venkat Mangudi wrote: > ashok _ wrote: > > Its more practical attempting to provide safe drinking water than have > > a security checkpoint to save a shopping mall or teach a policeman how > > to swim. > > Fair enough. Agreed. But consider this, if all the people who need safe > drinking water are killed by anti social elements or war, what use would > the water be? Not that we are not entitled to safe drinking water. One > assumes that the people living in India (over a billion of them) are > actually able to find water to drink.
The point really is that since far more children die of malnutrition in India than of road accidents why bother trying to improve road safety until nutrition is improved. This argument in a word is stupidity and an attempt to change the subject and take the discussion on to a different line which is a fact in itself but has no bearing on the original discussion. In most discussions this would be plain trolling. I have actually mentioned this tactic in post I made in my blog. I quote, along with a link http://cybersurg.livejournal.com/2008/03/08/ > The metaphorical torn shirt versus open fly argument is a description of > the interaction of two people, let me call them person A and person B. > > Person A points out to B that his shirt is torn. > > Person B retorts, "So what if my shirt is torn? Your fly is open" > > Notable in this argument is that the open fly of person A will in no way > mitigate or change the fact of B's torn shirt. Person B speaks of the open > fly as though the open fly somehow compensates for and justifies his torn > shirt, and might successfully divert the subject of discussion away from > the fact that his shirt remains torn. > > This sort of reaction again is seen with reference to religious > fundamentalism. An apologist for a fundamentalist will react to accusations > of fundamentalism by pointing out examples of everyone else who is a > fundamentalist of any type. The argument is specious because the fact of > one group's fundamentalism is in no way changed or improved by the fact > that another group is faulty or wrong in some way. Both are wrong, but the > argument only serves to divert attention away from a topic of discussion. shiv
