I don't recall ever bringing in logic.
Logic should be brought in in any debate.
The use of the word logical in logical extremes refers to expected or natural endpoint of a premise.
Note however that no such endpoints are set or alluded on, nor are there, in this case, any 'natural' endpoints, as I have demonstrated with increasing the amount. There is no indication that 10000 or 30000 or 50000 or 80000 or 100000, etc. would constitute a 'natural endpoint'. If there is no natural endpoint (if there ever is such a thing, because 'natural' is a rather ambiguous term), then one would have to set one, or indicate one, which wasn't done. Even if it was done, one would still have to indicate why the used reasoning would logically fail if that endpoint was reached. (aka, why for instance, 100000 would get you more money than asking for 80000, but why asking 120000 would not get more money than 100000; it seems, given the premise, a very strange and difficult thing to logically argument with any validity why at a very defined amount the logic/reasoning used would suddenly not apply anymore. Rather it is more reasonable to conclude the original claim was incorrect.)
In and of itself there is no true/false notion behind it. I also have not tried to argue on the topic of 'the more you ask the more you get' since the person who originally presented it fell into the trap of presenting an oversimplified position which is too easy for the otherside to pick apart on the details.
That usually happens to oversimplified positions, and rightfully so. It then comes to the poster to rectify or adapt his position in a way that it becomes plausible, or at least, that it *does* make sense. If, however, one holds on to it regardless, than naturally it gets disregarded as being invalid, because the logic applied show the inherent contradictions, and thus the failure, in the reasoning/claim used. I say the reasoning itself, and not the details, because, as I've demonstrated, the inherent failure in the claim was not due to the details (for instance, in what amount is used), but rather in the used tenet itself.
I do however take issue with your position as a whole, since it is based on the notion that 30,000 euros is too high a goal, and any support you bring to bear rests on that notion, a personal opinion of yours. While people might not realize it, this particular point cannot be proven one way or another until after the campaign is over so everyone started arguing around the original point of disagreement, resulting in the giant mess I see right now. At this time however the debate is moot as the team spent a fair amount of time thrashing out the details of the campaign over a course of months and the campaign has already started. Whether there is any validity in the points raised so far will be judged based on the outcome of the campaign.
I find myself largely in agreement with your post. (Mostly because it DOES use logic
). It's true I can't know for sure that 30000 is an excessive amount to ask or not; I already indicated this in my former post. Could be I'm wrong and 30000 is a reasonable amount, indeed. As I understand it, this is your stance, and as of yet, your stance is as valid as mine. (We only are going to know for sure when the campaign ends in 2012, and see how much a gap there is between the donations one has got and the 30000 that was asked.) Note, however, that this stance has not been adopted by the original poster (and the one after that); there, it was implied they actually also thought the amount was excessive, but they tried to counter that by saying this was needed, because you then get more. The two viewpoints are different, and while logic demonstrates the latter to be highly unlikely, your stance has as much validity as mine, at least for the moment.
That said, I'm not making that claim without any logical argumentation neither. It is reasonable to assume, that most people familiar with the project will have seen the donationbar by now, and most that wanted to give, have already given. This means the bulk of what you will get, with the current 'marketshare' of people, has already been accrued and it is going to drop from now on. Nothing what I say here seems unreasonable or illogical, me thinks. Furthermore, the validity of what I say could easily be checked if one uses all the data of the donations, and plot it on a line and analyse the distribution-pattern on a time-axis (with a graph, for instance), that has been donated as of yet. You would then clearly see if the donations are steady and stable, climbing, or already dropping after they have had their peak. I'm fairly confident it's the latter, but one could always prove me wrong this way, of course.
This does not entirely exclude the possibility 30000 could be reached, I agree. Maybe some billionaire will come along and donate 20000 in one go, for instance. This, however, is not very plausible or even likely, so one would be hard-pressed to take this as a valid expectation of how one would reach that goal/bar. A bit more reasonable, would be to enlarge the 'marketshare' of people knowing about the project. This could be done by a persistent and highly mediatised PR campaign, for instance, when 3.15 comes out. This is possible, true, but seen the past history, all former releases, press-releases or PR/media-campaigns were only very moderately successful in gaining much 'marketshare' and peek interest with large amounts of (new) people (and thus, potential donators). Certainly not in the amount that would be needed to reasonably get to the 30000 euro goal.
Thus, unless some generous millionaire-patron comes along or one really makes an effort in PR-campaigning in 2012 (a slashdot may help in this case), I do not think the goal is even remotely attainable. Some corroboration (or rebuttal) for this stance could already be gained from the statistical analysis of the donation-data, as I said.
Though it seems more than a few days, in regard to that page...