LOL. You are assuming your premise in your conclusion. And then ignoring all the data. Just to get the result you want to save face.

What does “incapable” mean? physically or logically? too improbable to credit or probability formally of zero? — you cannot assume to know except by reference to usage, so quoting a dictionary proves nothing as to you point, since none of those entries answer the question.

And then (conveniently) you ignore nearly a hundred contrary examples in the dataset, the very evidence of usage you have to reference to interpret the dictionary entries, yet those scores of examples show even your circularly presumed premise is false: people routinely use “incapable” and all like words to mean too improbable to credit and not to refer to logical impossibilities, and countless examples in the dataset make this clear. Again, without your circular presumption that nearly everything everyone says using these words is false, which would indicate your failure to comprehend usage. Which at this point has to be deliberate.

You clearly are therefore a disingenuous troll. No honest intellect would attempt such a lame argument as this.

Oh do stop digging this hole. Impossible, even in the “universal English idiom”, means the opposite of “possible”.

Two minutes googling:

Merriam-Webster
incapable of being or of occurring

The Free Dictionary
Incapable of having existence or of occurring.

Cambridge
If an action or event is impossible, it cannot happen or be achieved

Collins
Something that is impossible cannot be done or cannot happen.

Dictionary.com
not possible; unable to be, exist, happen, etc.

There are, of course, other uses, including “insufferable”. 🙁

Um. This isn’t new. I never mean impossible as logically impossible, anywhere in my writings or lectures or conversations about anything, unless I specifically say so—as with almost all other speakers of English.

When humans mean specifically the narrow subset of logically impossible, they say so. Anyone competent in English ought to know this. You can confirm the fact by Googling “impossible” and checking the first one hundred entries and seeing if any of them that don’t say specifically that they mean a logical impossibility, likely actually mean anything other than “too improbable to credit.”

If you go around assuming otherwise, you will be incapable of comprehending most human speech. Which is a folly much to be pitied.

I tend to assume someone who fails to grasp basic universal English idioms is not actually incompetent but is only being a disingenuous troll. But if incompetence is the mantle you’d rather claim, I’ll grant it.

That’s fine then. All my queries are answered: you find it too improbable to believe, which you express as “impossible”.

And that’s not at all too improbable to believe.

“Richard, is it possible that monkeys might evolve gendered responses to cooking pots or police cars in their absence?”

Funny how people alter reality. My response was that I have already presented the reasons why this is impossible (as in: too improbable to believe), and that your attempts to invent a just-so story has no evidence in its support and contradicts the evidence that exists, and therefore is pseudoscience. I have yet to see any reply. Playing with equivocation fallacies over what the word “impossible” means does not a reply make. Scientific impossibilities are not logical impossibilities. And you ought to know that. So ought any competent person.

@Pepe Lopez, thanks for that support.
I was surprised to see a notification in my email, as this all had a nice neat line drawn under it nearly two years ago. We were, apparently, “done”.

It was, in the final analysis, a very minor issue. I expected it to be dealt with by a response something like, “OK, maybe I overstated that,” or “Yes, I didn’t think that through completely.”

The contested (negative) claim ought to be quite obviously flawed, but Richard either cannot see it or pretends he cannot (I suspect the latter). Repeating that I do not address “all the evidence” is irrelevant, and dismissing discussion of the “impossible” proposition as pseudoscience is both evasive, ignorant and insulting. I can think of several scientific hypotheses now given high confidence that would never have been discovered if scientists hadn’t got beyond the critics’ claim, “it’s impossible!”

If I reduced the point to a simple question – “Richard, is it possible that monkeys might evolve gendered responses to cooking pots or police cars in their absence?” – I doubt any clear answer would be forthcoming (when a yes or no are the only options).

I’m not sure how he’d respond to, “Richard, is it reasonable to claim a negative as certain, and thus dismiss its positive hypothesis as ‘pseudoscience’?”

He might point out that he used the phrase, “…to assume so…”, which would be technically correct, but this would also require that the theorist who proposed the possibility is “assuming” it to be true rather than merely discussing hypothetical propositions, as scientists generally do.

An opportunity was missed, because it’s a fascinating idea. It seems likely (to my mind) that virtually no evolutionary response could evolve unless novel objects were first recognised as like something else, to which a response has already been established. Most natural objects are heterogeneous anyway, requiring classification according to certain characteristics, so this mental process must already be functioning.

Perhaps there is good research on this already. In the modern era, it would be trivial to place animals in situations they could never have experienced, with completely novel objects, and test whether they respond in this way, ‘classifying’ an experience according to similarities to those they habitually encounter.

But no, judgement has been passed. This is “impossible” and to suggest it is “pseudoscience”.

What a trivial – almost merely editorial – error for a ‘critical-thinker’ to be blatantly obviously irrationally dogmatic over!

LOL. I did not evade anything. I correctly pointed out that all he did was make a bunch of stuff up with no evidence. And that is what you find convincing. That’s now the story of you.

The rest of us act rationally and expect science to be empirical. We don’t cater to making shit up to force facts to fit a pet theory. Especially when that ignores the actual data.

You have written a dozen verbose and repetitive comments now, after being told a dozen times to address all the evidence converging on my conclusion, not just this single issue of evolved monkey play salience, and to only address the latter with science, not shit you make up.

You still don’t do either. A dozen strikes at bat, not a single hit.

I’m done. And so are you.

Okay then. Science, if you like.
Is your contention, “it is impossible for monkeys to develop gender-typical responses to things they’ve not seen before,” a scientific one? Is it a hypothesis?

Actually, I don’t give a proverbial monkeys.
Answer the question. HOW DO YOU KNOW IT IS IMPOSSIBLE?

Less wordwally. Just for you. 😀

Oh, but I must just share this I found on the web (abridged)…

The Principles of Critical Thought:

Questioning information rather than merely receiving it (trust but verify).
Constant skill applied to all knowledge and belief (not to be compartmentalized).
Must be applied to yourself as well as others (self-question, self-test, self-critique).

Update your beliefs when evidence goes against them.
Restate all your beliefs as probabilities; then justify those probabilities
(or change them if you can't).


https://www.richardcarrier.info/CriticalThinking.html

Time to rewrite this:
1. Ignore all criticism, even in the context of general support. Insult, twist, obfuscate, lie and cheat to avoid having to rethink or even mention the contested point.