u/JerseyFlight

It’s interesting that Hegel reveals the Logic behind the curtain before he launches into his exposition of “pure being” and “nothing.” Hegel admits, from the outset, he literally says that “the beginning is logical,”* and with emphasis!

But he then goes on to follow an imaginary path of “Pure Being,” and tries to construct “logical” categories from it? That is, Hegel just pretends like he’s at some supernatural ground of a starting point called “Pure Being,” a starting point wherein nothing else exists, including the logic he is using to say that nothing else exists.

—The Laws of Logic? Well, his imaginary starting point is beyond these laws, simply because that’s what Hegel believes he imagines. Of course, he imagines no such thing, because imagination already requires the laws of logic, every thought he has is framed and structured by this logic. But what he does do is deceive himself (and others) and throws logic into a strange, quasi-religious context.

Because Hegel’s purpose was to write a logic, instead of expounding what logic actually is, Hegel ended up writing something that is very close to a fairy tale. Hegel’s logic begins like all fairy tales: Once upon a time there was Pure Being.

One cannot start at a fairy tale and end at reality. If the foundation is an imaginary "Pure Being" that supposedly precedes the Law of Identity, then every category Hegel "derives" from it is equally imaginary. He is building a skyscraper in the clouds; it looks impressive from a distance, but it has no anchor in the ground of actual existence.

*“The beginning is logical in that it is to be made in the element of thought…”

(Science of Logic:“With What Must the Science Begin,” A. V. Miller translation)

Now, Hegel himself was very precise and accurate in his use of words (but he still smuggled his meaning instead of establishing it). But Hegelians, that is another story.

We must invent a term for their particular style of Gish Gallop. I suggest “Hegelian Verbosity.” They introduce new term after new term after new term, all in an attempt to evade being refuted by logic. They hide behind a vague and jargon filled wall of terms, what we will now coin as, “Hegelian Verbosity.”

This can be used generally, it doesn’t only apply to Hegelians, just like the Gish Gallop doesn’t only apply to “Duane Gish,“ who it is named after.

Hegelian Verbosity is a rhetorical technique in which a speaker introduces a continuous stream of abstract, specialized, or newly coined terms (often loosely defined or shifting in meaning) in order to obscure weak arguments, evade direct scrutiny, or create an impression of depth and rigor. Like the Gish Gallop, it overwhelms an opponent, but it does so through conceptual density and terminological proliferation rather than sheer quantity of claims. It can be applied broadly to any discourse where jargon, abstraction, and semantic drift are used to deflect clear analysis, rather than clarify it.

I was able to make use of this algorithm for various things. Not so much anymore. Why? Because it has now been programmed to introduce unnecessary complexity. You can’t get it to stop. In order to even get it to a baseline of reflecting accurate comprehension, one has to go through several prompt cycles— and it keeps on adding content that was never asked for. It has repeatedly gaslit me (ingeniously) and constructed straw men (which it recognizes doing when they’re pointed out). It never used to be like this. It’s red herring after red herring. This is a fallacy machine now.

Other LLMs do not require this tedious back and forth just to get to a baseline.

What it has clearly demonstrated to me though, is the danger of LLMs infiltrating society with sophistry.

Res maximi momenti est ut liberi pueritiam sanam habeant.

The most important thing is that children have a healthy childhood.

That’s it. If this was actually treated as an axiomatic premise, it would transform the world.