As we tend to know, myoelectric arms are plain junk [link], but as you may tend to “know”, hooks are only for evil people [link]. As you are lead to believe that I am just hallucinating, we could discuss some details of such a perception.
What we are really dealing with is your lack of sufficiently detailed explanations.
These are not asked for, therefore not presented. These appear uninteresting, therefore they are not read. These seem far away, and you cannot relate to them. You feel to be totally free in interpreting things as you see fit. You already have observed something, whatever it is, with your own eyes, and for any reason, you trust these more than anything. The perfect trap is set for you to reassure your own objectively faulty “understanding” of the world of prosthetic arms and as you are also not affected by any of it, you couldn’t care less about that particular level of issue.
Generally, the absence of detailed explanations in an argument proposed as A can lead another person to think that A is wrong. or hallucinated, imagined, biased, evil even, for several reasons, that we know all too well, and that for some more reasons we maybe never think about or that are subconscious.
So:
The following constellation could render A to be true in your view:
B (set of explanations you are willing to accept for any reason) contains statement/s A
The following, more frequently encountered constellation rends to render A wrong in your view:
C (set of all explanations that you are unwilling to accept for any reason) by default contains statement A
The following issues also prevail: I suggest that I am more able than many of y’all are to make correct statements about prosthetic arms that fit my activities. You however, for any reason, will not at all understand or believe that, as in fact you believe that know so much better.
Mostly, you will believe that arm amputees like me are mentally unstable, irrational and whatever else:
D (amputees are mentally unstable and thus cannot explain anything) is contained in B [link,link]
You logically will dismiss this truism, which suggests that people like me know better what is good for us:
F (amputees know well about prostheses) is contained in C
From D and F, you infer that by all things you accept as conceivable (B), you are better at understanding prosthetic arm needs and issues than amputees. You may not say that out loud but that is, deep down, what you truly believe: I know. I have seen your face, heard your voice, see you act and heard what you say, and I watched your actions, too. So you believe hooks are only for evil people and myoelectric prosthesis are the pinnacle of technology advances.
You know for a fact that those of us that wear hooks are intrinsically evil [link]?
To a degree, that – you being lead to believe that – is a designed, crafted and gaslighted/manipulated status that you have achieved. It is, however, mostly (but not only) of your own making, as other evidence has been presented or made available to you, even though you (still?) discredit it (and put in in C).
Lack of Evidence: Without sufficiently detailed explanations, there is no explicit supporting evidence or reasoning to back up an argument. This makes it difficult or impossible for others to assess its validity. People generally trust arguments that are well-supported by data, examples, or logical reasoning and they have a hard time refuting their own visual “evidence”, particularly one that has been “educated” already. Or what they think constitutes that (such as watching movies with amputees that all are mentally unstable). If such is not available, momentary credibility is what you will rely on, obviously at your own risk. What plays greatly into this – into the uneducated perception of arm amputees and prosthetic arms – is the presence of competitive “evidence”, which can be constructed of impressions that seem credible, that impose themselves, that are visually pervasive, but that are not so relevant or that are even irrelevant from an actually educated view.
Seeing me without prosthetic arm on, seeing any arm amputee, seems to create the absolutely pervasive unescapable visual evidence of an intrinsically linked “proof” that by all means one needs to build any hand-shaped contraptions to “fix” this.
While that is a neurological perceptual problem, there is no similarly pervasive evidence that any fool can see that similarly evidences my neck, shoulder or neck pain.
I have a t-shirt that says “it only looks like that” and even though you can also visually take that in, you will have no idea. That is how lack of evidence works here. There is a real lot to explain if need be, that isn’t explained, for any reason.
Credibility Issues: Detailed explanations can help, but only to a degree, to establish the credibility of the person making the argument. When these detailed explanations are or seem to be missing, it can appear that the person trying to provide explanations is not knowledgeable or confident about the topic, reducing their credibility in the eyes of others. Another problem with credibility is that if the amount of information is too large, you won’t believe it, whatever it is. To be credible, it has to be short and redundant, and it has to link to known truths. With arm amputees generally lacking any credibility, mostly due to your deeply engrained ableism [link][link], you will likely not believe a word I say, whatever I say.
A problematic thing here to escalate the issues we then get may be that I know that you are likely to think that way. So I may provide very extensive arguments that also lack credibility because they are too much for you. At the current state of things, I can always point to my own blog posts e.g. 5 or 10 years ago stating that “I had told you so long time ago”, and I am factually right, but you never believe/d me. You probably won’t even believe me now, and maybe that defines your risk profile.
However, unless all credibility issues are argued and explained and presented and acknowledged, there possibly won’t be any good reason for you to believe that a disabled person could ever be right.
Conversely, we get suited up representatives of health authorities, insurances, prosthetic companies making commercial stuff and for some reason, it is suggested that we “believe” them.
Perception of Superficiality: An argument that lacks depth and detail might be perceived as superficial or hastily constructed. This can lead to the assumption that the argument is not well-thought-out or based on a shallow understanding of the subject. This also leads to the assumption that one can easily dismiss an argument. When I then hear such and decide to give up explaining, or, worse, give up explaining in sufficient depth but to a degree only, that does not make my argument wrong. Later or in hindsight the protocol may show that I very well explained what was to explain, in short but simple words – then there is no going back to claiming I had not provided the proper explanation back then. That distinction can be very hard to make at first glance.
Ambiguity and Vagueness: An argument without details can come across as ambiguous or vague. The same is true for arguments that you believe to lack details, which can happen because you overlooked them or did not understand them, or did not take care to properly analyze them, or because a person such as me provided the argument in raw form, not reformatted for your personal mental needs. These are important points! When argument key points are not clearly defined, or if you believe some argument key points to be missing, or if otherwise you just imagine your own world, this then leaves room for multiple interpretations, some of which are pure nonsense, overall leading to confusion and skepticism about the argument’s accuracy. If a researcher tells me that “myoelectric prostheses are here to stay” and “I should deal with that”, and I confront him with some bare facts that are hard to deny (e.g. uselessly high failure rate [link], failed Voight-Kampff test [link]), they will believe there to be vagueness.
The fact that there isn’t is not obvious until I word how, in all details, there is no vagueness, but that is not a depth that we ever reach.
Cognitive Biases: People are naturally inclined to be suspicious of claims that lack understandable substantiation. This may trigger cognitive biases such as skepticism or the “burden of proof” bias, where the person assumes the argument is incorrect until proven otherwise. However, an argument can be true, despite you not asking for proof, or, despite you denying proof, it can be true even though you decide to not like it, and it can be true under the aspect that your other interpretation lacks significant aspects or overly weighs aspects that are actually insignificant. I can place proof in front of your eyes and mess with your emotional status by messing with you, by wearing a t-shirt with a funny symbol on it, by crafting any type of cognitive bias – and you will not see the proof I placed there because you are lost, were even seduced to be lost.
Hallucination or Imagination: In the absence of concrete details, people might think an argument is a product of imagination or a hallucination, especially if it seems implausible or far-fetched. Detailed and credible explanations provide a logical structure that can make even unusual claims seem more believable. But the attribution of an argument or fact as imagined or hallucinated is attractive simply because it opens new dimensions for (obviously unorthodox) negotiation.
Comparative Analysis: When comparing multiple arguments, the one with detailed explanations often stands out as more convincing. In contrast, the argument without details, or arguments where you are attaching cognitive biases to the person that argues with you, seems weaker in comparison, leading to the conclusion that it is less likely to be correct.
In summary, detailed rational and understandable explanations are crucial for making an argument convincing.
They provide the necessary evidence, clarity, and credibility, helping others understand and trust the argument. Without these details, an argument can easily be dismissed as wrong or a product of hallucination.
In the context of prosthetic arms and what everyone is after, many significant details are routinely left out or, worse, they are smuggled through right in front of your eyes in a way that you cannot see them.
Providing arguments that are understandable and logical can be a lot of work. In absence of reward, payment or acknowledgment, explanations of sufficient depth and clarity may be the part that remains withdrawn, absent, omitted. Then, the positions of key players or stakeholders may get stuck in a stalemate, or escalate, or derail.
