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I get into the weirdest fucking arguments some times.
This was one of those debates where both sides end up scratching their heads trying to figure out what the hell just happened. I don't even remember how the topic came up, not even whether it was me or somebody else who initially introducted the topic. But I was on some mailing list and we started talking about some guy who ran a cheese shop. The story goes: The guy would get in a wheel of chedder. He would cut it in half, and put a price (say, for the sake of argument $4.99/lb) on one half of the wheel. He would then place the other half right beside it, and post a price of $5.99. And this is the important part, if anybody asked him what the difference was between the two cheeses, he would reply, "The price." And every single time he sold out of the more expensive cheese first, and he would cut the remainder of the cheaper cheese in half, put the two prices on the halves and so on until it was all gone. The argument? Whether or not the man was unethical. From thence evolved a long involved argument with me on the side of him having done nothing wrong, and several other people on the side of him being intentionally misleading and therefore unethical.We didn't resolve anything at all in the course of the discussion, other than to find out that, once again, the way (most) other people think never fails to completely baffle me. And apparently, I them. The way I see it, if he made any claims whatsoever about the two products being different, he was lying. If his signs said, "super good cheese: $5.99" and "stinky nasty cheese: $4.99" he was being intentionally misleading. But he didn't do any of those things - and if people didn't believe him when he told them the truth, that there was no difference between the two, that was hardly his fault. Their side of the argument, if I understand it correctly, was that the very act of labelling the two differently implied that there was a difference. And that because of that implication, of course people were going to think that he was actually lying when he told them they were the same. "Well then, they're dumb." was my conclusion. I don't think that went over too well. In retrospect though, I don't think it would be stupidity so much as a desire to trust the written word. The instinct to believe that if it's written down it must be true is something you see pretty much every day, especially if you hang around on the internet. Then I made the mistake of saying that the people who bought the pricier cheese are probably the exact same people who purchase the name brands of drugs over the identical generic version because the name brands are "better". The folks I was arguing with instantly insisted that name brands are better, and the discussion dissolved completely. To this day, when I feel my eyes glazing over into the sense of utter bafflement at what the hell somebody is talking about, I mentally file it into a big folder marked "cheese". Last Updated July 18 2004.
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