The Bilirubin Question

Megs:

Heads up, folks, there's a new level of stupidity at the front of what might pose as logical reasoning; or perhaps what is more likely is that it was already there and I momentarily attempted to grapple with it (only momentarily because, after all, there is very little point pressing the matter if the other party is irritably close-minded).

Just now, in the car on the way home my mother was telling us about someone who has a son who has had a history of being mentally unwell, and on the side apparantly, somehow, managed to finish middle school being, frankly, very sucky at English*; in the way you or I would finish third form here and go to Taiwan or China and be no better off at it than the kids there.

So I expressed my surprise at how unusual this was and I went on to suggest that the boy may have/have had dyslexia. I mean, it could have gone undetected because who knows how they detect this sort of thing if the child's reading Chinese as opposed to English. (Don't know how it works but would like to know.)

Anyway, it was a statement which my father firmly rejected.

1. Very well; so I asked, "How can you be sure? Was it also he had bad speaking skills in English* too?"

2. And he said, "No."

3. So I said, "Then why can't it have been dyslexia?"

4. To which he had no answer.

Okay so it went from me wanting to understand the situation into something really circular and idiotic; steps 1 to 3 repeated and he said, "Why would you ask such a stupid question if I can't prove that it wasn't dyslexia?"

(Insert Steps 1 and 2)

And then he replies, "Why are YOU so sure it is dyslexia?!"

"I'm not sure that it's dyslexia, I'm asking you why you're so sure it isn't!" Honestly, falsifiable statement defended needlessly much?

And apparantly it's a stupid question. He said, "That is a stupid question. If I said you must have mental issues and you said you don't, how can you be sure that you don't?"

rgkuyegfkawfb awet... like what the fuck?

And he goes on with this attack saying just because I've done one year of Med (sic) don't think I know everything about this condition (FYI, dyslexia wasn't covered in OLY1) and basically stop acting like such a smartass.

o_O

If you came up to me today and said, "Oh, so and so's baby has yellow skin!!" And I, assuming you didn't mean that the child was Asian, might say, "He may have abnormally high levels of bilirubin!"

...you couldn't very well say, "No he doesn't!" with no other explanation.

Well I guess you could, but that would be the most idiotic thing ever.

Anyway I haven't had someone try to make their point to me in a more stubbornly stupid and ineffectual way than today, and I live with my sister. I stopped retorting far sooner than I would have liked, but there is no need to argue frivolously against inexhaustively stupid reasoning.

Other than a not so much frustrating as a bewildering end, my weekend was great :D Centre + very Asian pre-wedding party + 1km of running + Henry's + Big Bang Theory + half of the Whole Ten Yards (the Five Yards? haaaahaha. I have to finish the rest of that movie!)




*English actually being Chinese.