Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: shut up, he explained

The Great Martini doesn’t permit his complete unfamiliarity with Sextus Empiricus get in the way of his expressing a demonstrably incorrect opinion about Boghossian’s clear-cut violation of Sextus’s Sceptical teaching of “suspension of judgment”:

He hasn’t seemed to run afoul of this yet — I just started reading the
Kindle version. Sextus advised suspended judgement but didn’t preclude
the assertion of claims, that seems to be how his skeptical philosophy
would be conducted. As far as I’ve gotten, Bog affirms Dawkins’ 1-7
level of belief, that Dawkins only claimed a 6, and that the definition
of “atheist” he wants to use is a person who doesn’t believe there is
enough evidence to confirm the existence of God. I’m sure he’s not
going to spend the entire book holding to strict suspension of judgement
(I mean the entire purpose of the book is to weaken the societal
influence of religion, which implies a judgement), but at least he seems
to be aligning himself with the skeptical stance from the beginning.

This is completely and utterly wrong. Boghossian has done nothing of the sort. Do you want to know why I am so openly contemptuous of so many people who are fairly intelligent and sound more or less reasonable? Do you want to know why I am inspired to describe myself as a superintelligence? The reason is that it often feels as if I am the only intelligent individual who writes these days who ever bothers to take five minutes to actually read the bloody material upon which I am intending to opine. I don’t know if it was TGM’s intent to defend Boghossian or if he simply happened to miss the obvious, but either way, it is readily apparent that he doesn’t know anything about the Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus.

Scepticism does not mean “I am dubious about X.” It does not mean “I am going to convince you that X is better than Y”. It does not mean “I will only believe X if there is sufficient evidence to justify it”. It means: “I have no opinion about either X or Y, and if you assert that X is better, I will argue that Y is better in order to produce a contradiction of equal weight and thereby allow me to suspend my judgment.” What virtually no one who talks about skepticism seems to understand is that for the Sceptic, suspension of judgment is not the method or the initial approach, it is the objective. If Boghossian was a genuine Sceptic, he would have presented an argument for the primacy of faith over reason to his atheist audience.

TGM is disputing this: “ Boghossian’s very stated purpose is in direct and explicit
opposition to everything Sextus Empiricus advises, beginning with
“suspension of judgment”.”

In the fourth sentence of Chapter One, Boghossian explains his purpose:  “The goal of this book is to… help [the faithful] abandon their faith and embrace reason.”

So, already we know that the Fifth Horseman clearly has an opinion on at least two things. Faith is bad by nature. Reason is good by nature. That this is a correct summary of his opinions on the two matters is confirmed repeatedly throughout the book. Now let us turn to Sextus Empiricus and the Outlines of Pyrrhonism.

Sextus: “He who is of the opinion that anything is either good or bad by nature is always troubled…. But he who is undecided, on the contrary, regarding things that are good and bad by nature, neither seeks nor avoids anything eagerly, is therefore in a state of tranquility of soul…. The Sceptic… rejects the opinion that anything is in itself bad by nature. Therefore we say that the aim of the Sceptic is imperturbability in matters of opinion.”

Boghossian reveals his clear-cut opinions concerning faith being bad by nature and reason being good by nature. He is not even remotely imperturbable with regards to either matter of opinion. Therefore he is not only troubled, but his very stated purpose is in direct and explicit opposition to the heart of what Sextus Empiricus teaches. Which is exactly what I stated in the first place. Boghossian can’t possibly be said to be “aligning himself with the skeptical stance from the beginning”, not when he is expressly violating the very aim of the Sceptic.

And, in doing so, the Fifth Horseman shows himself to be a fraud, given his risible attempt to claim the intellectual mantle of Sextus Empiricus. As it happens, I very much doubt that Boghossian has ever read anything Sextus wrote that isn’t on Wikipedia.

DH had a much more informed take on Boghossian’s little book:

This has all the hallmarks of petty atheism which has as its main feature a
stunning lack of scholarship and education. One of the main
attractions of the RC church is that despite all the many faults, and
theological questions I may have, the long and ancient history of
scholarship remains unbroken. Whatever you think of any given Pope,
it’s unlikely that anything he ever wrote would be so filled with rote
unverifiable garbage.

Oh, we haven’t even gotten to the juvenile, self-serving definitions of terms such as “faith”, “hope” and “atheist” yet. It is a stunningly dishonest little book and is unlikely to impress anyone with an IQ over +1SD who reads it with an open or critical mind.

Mailvox: frying the pig

Not content with the crashing and burning of his political wise man act, Porky dives into the boiling oil again:

Porky: I’m not surprised that the libertarians here are falling over themselves
to praise the leftist for coming up with a hi-tech version of the Jew
badge. Funny how they hate the NSA for creating dossiers on citizens
minding their own business, but they drool like Pavlov’s dog at the
thought of being able to have a dossier on any complete stranger. As I’ve said previously, libertarians are the pupal stage of authoritarians.

VD: As we’ve all observed previously, you’re an idiot.

 Porky: Yet here you and the ilk are… giddily peeing your pants at the thought of spying on some stranger’s magazine subscriptions. ie:
Josh, who never lets me forget that libertarians “just want to be left
alone” yet salivates over the idea of an internet dossier on private
citizens.

What Porky is clearly failing to take into account is that the system DH is creating is actually a technological recreation of the virtual one that is already in place in the government, in the universities, and in the big corporations.

All of the blackballing and stigmatizing goes only one way. The Left forcibly keeps those of the Right out of its organizations and institutions while the Right blithely permits leftists to infiltrate and suborn those that remain to it. The Right doesn’t realize this, in part because it keeps creating new ones, then losing control of them within a generation or two. Or sometimes, as in the case of Facebook, within a few weeks.

Opposing the idea that small private companies should have the same ability to defend themselves from infiltration by their political enemies that the giant left-leaning institutions do is little different than advocating gun control for the people while the government and police remain armed.

The Right has very little to fear from the proposed service. Everyone who is even remotely outspoken is already banned from employment with many, perhaps even the majority of existing companies in America. The persecution is real, even though it is passive, reactive, and remarkably gentle in historical terms. Keep in mind that I have not only been expelled from the SFWA for a single tweet, (an infraction of the sort committed by no less than 60 other current members), but I have experienced contractors told by major NGO’s that they would lose their contracts if they continued to work with me. The Left is playing hardball while the Right isn’t even aware that the game has begun.

So, like the Jews of the European ghettos, we of the traditionalist Right have no choice but to work with each other since no one else wants us around. We have no choice but to work harder, to work smarter, and to make ourselves more valuable than those who persecute us. And we can do that, because working harder and smarter has always been our strength; we are the builders. But how can the ants hope to build up new institutions if the moment they begin to succeed, their organizations are infiltrated and co-opted by the grasshoppers who are opposed to everything they believe?

We need to know that the prospective employee is a self-appointed activist who boasts of having no morals and a predilection for attacking those with whom he disagrees. Pajamaboy is hardly going to bring that up when he’s applying for a job now, is he? We need to know that the girl trying to sell us computers is a fire-breathing Jezebelle who believes all sex is rape. We need to know that the professed libertarian is heavily partial to left-wing entertainment. We need to know that the student applying for seminary is a radical homosexual whose primary interest in the priesthood is access to altar boys.

Above all, we have to bypass the corporate gatekeepers and take our case directly to the people. We have to become the very populists they fear. They will call us names, they will call us Nazis, they will call us fascists, they will call us a hundred other names that don’t reasonably apply to us. That doesn’t matter, because we have two things on our side that will always triumph over their vast edifice of temporal power: our faith in God and our acknowledgement for objective Reality.

As always, Porky is arguing in favor of despair, surrender, and unilateral disarming on the part of the Right. Perhaps this is because he is short-sighted, perhaps this is because he is an agent provocateur, or perhaps he is simply an idiot. It doesn’t really matter, all that matters is that he is wrong.

DH explains:

I see this as exactly what VD is talking about. I can work really well with libertarians. I can work really well with populists. But I can’t work well with GOP true believers. If you spend your working day listening to Shawn Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and thinking they are the greatest thing ever, it’s over. We are not going to work well unless it is quite literally a work-for-hire remote employee contracted position. Same thing with Glenn Beck. If you are real Glenn Beck believer, it’s probably not going to work out. I certainly can’t have you interacting with my clients and risking going into hysterics about whatever he was talking about the radio today. Oddly, almost the same thing is true of Rachael Maddow fans. If you are an activist liberal firebrand it’s probably not going to work out. In the real world Obama is a failure and everyone knows it. I can’t have you representing to the world otherwise. And what’s a good way to find this out? If I know you’ve posted 8,000 messages to TheBlaze.com, or Glenn Beck’s forums, if you’ve re-tweeted Rachael Maddow 500 times, those are great indicators you won’t fit in.

How, precisely, can anyone reasonably argue with that? Conversely, if you are a true blue Real American in the Hannity sense, do you really want to be dependent upon the Maddow retweeter? Those of us whose views are already public have nothing to fear from this sort of thing because we already deal with it on a daily basis. Seeing the playing field leveled and applied to everyone on both sides hardly seems unfair.

Mailvox: The Fahrenheit Registry

Anang laments his inability to continue supporting authors who are his political enemies: 

As an author you
obviously want your works reaching the widest possible audience without
sacrificing your own creative vision. At the same time, I believe an
author’s ideology, his Weltanschauung is
reflected in his works. I’m a new and proud male American citizen. Why
should I pay my good money to read or watch something that ignores and
insults my gender, my politics or the things that made me want to be an
American?

 It’s
a little sad actually, having discovered I think this way. It means I
can never enjoy some of the most creative artists currently living. I
threw away my collection of Naomi Novik’s fantasy books after I realized
she was a local party volunteer for John Kerry’s 2004 election. All her
meticulous research into creating an alternate, fantastical history of
the Napoleonic Wars was just to insert leftist ideology and harp on
social justice/race theory/gender inequality.

It’s
a very lonely feeling, to know you are cut off from nearly every work
of popular entertainment and art if you wish to avoid propaganda-filled attacks on your existence. I suppose that is why most men watch
sports.

I knew Novik’s books fell completely apart upon the visit to Australia, (never managed to finish that one), but I didn’t realize there was a sound political reason for it. I think Anang forgets that there are actually many excellent writers who support and sustain the Western intellectual tradition; the fact that they have been exiled by the Left’s gatekeepers doesn’t mean their works don’t exist or can’t be found. In fact, increasing the exposure and awareness of Blue SF/F writers is one of my objectives in the coming year.

Perhaps it would be helpful to maintain a political registry of SF/F writers so we can permit those who don’t wish to financially support their enemies to avoid doing so. This doesn’t mean one has to avoid reading them entirely, of course, as The Pirate Bay, LibGen, and other sites have far more books that one can hope to read in a lifetime. For example, here is LibGen’s list of the current SFWA president Steven Gould’s books, in the unlikely event that anyone feels any pressing need to read them. As an added bonus, I can tell you that the SFWA absolutely hates and fears those sites; the idea that people can download their books for free seems to bother them considerably more than simply being ignored.

Never mind that there is no evidence indicating that pirated books actually harm an author’s book sales. As I’ve noted, about one in five free Amazon downloads turns into a purchase of A Throne of Bones, which is why I’d love to give away more than the 21,760 copies that were downloaded in 2013.

My thought is that one can rate an author in terms of “noviks”, in honor of Anang’s epiphany.  10 noviks would indicate an author that conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, and traditionalists should avoid at all costs on the basis of his anti-civilizational beliefs and activities. On the other side, 10 “kratmans” would indicate a staunch defender of Western civilization. Here are a few suggestions for the scale:

Naomi Novik: 5 noviks
China Mieville: 9 noviks
Charles Stross: 7 noviks
Larry Corriea: 8 kratmans
JRR Tolkien: 10 kratmans

I leave it to the rest of you to provide the ratings. I shall merely post them as they are added.

Mailvox: the Flat Gene Society

Physphilmusic inadvertently reveals the inner fascist that lurks within most cultural liberals:

I guess that is the root of our disagreement. It’s not that I don’t think genetics plays a significant role (although concerning exactly how much I probably disagree with you), it’s that if I adopted your strategy, I see no reason to stop at merely discriminating against blacks. Why not eugenics altogether? Your concern about genetics logically leads to this. You advocate measures which are effectively indirect, long-term forms of eugenics. But if you have no qualms about hurting a few people’s feelings, why stop there? Why not support the sterilization of people below certain IQ levels?

A focus on feelings is a reliable hallmark of those with no moral core at their center. The idea that opposing forced desegregation is necessarily indicative of hatred, much less a secret desire for genocide, is not only irrational, but exposes the ravenous, immoral beast at the heart of modern left-liberalism.

Observe the twisted left-liberal logic. First, there is the determination to deny reality. The genetic differences between the various human population groups either exist or not. The intellectual and behavioral limits imposed by those genetic differences either exist or not. And while for the last 50 years it has been de rigueur to claim that there are no genetic differences between various population groups, or that any differences are meaningless, advances in human genetics mean that is now the genetic equivalent of belonging to the Flat Earth Society.

Second, there is the illogical claim that recognizing those genetically imposed limits between various groups must necessarily lead to eugenics. This can only be true if one is operating from an immoral assumption of the right of some central authority to impose minimum capability requirements on the population. Needless to say, I completely reject this notion. The fact that some people are observably incapable of living in an advanced civilization does not justify harming them or treating them as sub-human. There is no reason they should not be able to live in the sort of society in which their predecessors have successfully lived for thousands of years.

Why stop with mere feelbad? Because human beings do not have the right to not experience hurt feelings. It is not possible to construct a legal system, much less maintain a society, on the basis of the avoidance of hurt feelings. However, humans of every genetic melange and intellectual capacity have the right to life, the right to self-defense, and the right to procreate. Segregation may advantage some and disadvantage others, it may cause many to feel hurt and rejected, but it does not intrinsically cause material harm to anyone; billions of people of every creed and color would not have historically self-segregated if it did. Sterilization and eugenics, on the other hand, obviously do inflict a considerable amount of direct and material harm on the individual.

Moreover, segregation is a natural and organic process. To fight it is to literally fight nature. Consider that despite its overall population being swollen by an alien invasion and relentless propaganda cheering the manifold blessings of diversity, London has seen its white-British population fall by 620,000 in only ten years, much faster than any of the experts expected. After fifty years of “civil rights” America is still unofficially segregated by neighborhood, by city, by suburb, and even by state.

Leo Tolstoy wrote about the great tides of human events that are totally beyond any human capacity to control. He used the example of Napoleon at Waterloo and showed conclusively how Napoleon didn’t know what was happening during the battle or even what units were involved in its most critical phases. In like manner, the precise way in which the inevitable reaction to the imposition of mass immigration and cultural invasion is impossible to predict, but no one with any sense of history can reasonably deny it is going to take place.

My opinion is that it would be much better for the governments of the West to align their actions with that inevitable reaction than to oppose it, but I have little hope that will be the case. Many will argue that because the reaction has not taken place yet, it will never happen, but one could have accurately said that prior to every large-scale event in human history.

Cry raciss all you like. It will change nothing. Deny the existence and the significance of human genetics until you turn blue. It will change nothing. Profess your undying allegiance to the religion of human equality with all the fervor of an early Christian martyr. It will change nothing. For as the white liberal aid worker raped in Haiti came to discover, there is no magical incantation that will save you from being out-group when the in-group turns against the outsiders.

The Flat Gene Society is even more ridiculous than the Flat Earth Society. At least those who belonged to the latter had the excuse of correctly observing what they saw with their own eyes. The Flat Gene Society requires ignoring science and history as well as the evidence of one’s own eyes.

Mailvox: clinging to the myth

MS clings to the myth of equality between different human population groups:

I don’t need to base anything on race; the problem with many blacks in America is their culture. A lazy, irresponsible, INFERIOR culture compared to eurocentric “white” culture. If they adopted our culture tomorrow, most of their problems would disappear (IMO).

He’s completely wrong. Africans don’t adopt European culture for three reasons. First, because they can’t. Second, because they prefer their own culture. Third, because Europeans have increasingly abandoned it themselves. Europeans have been trying to force Africans to adopt European culture for more than 200 years. It’s not possible, and more to the point, it’s not their choice.

Think about it. What could be more racist, what could be more culturally imperialistic, than to insist that Africans must adopt European culture? This is even worse than Muslims imposing Sharia on everyone; Sharia at least permits the dhimmi to retain their religion and customs. Why should Asians not insist that Europeans adopt their culture? If we put it to a global vote, I’m quite confident the Han Chinese would win.

Africans have a perfect right to live the way they want to live. So do Europeans. This is why desegregation is not only doomed to failure, but is intrinsically immoral. It is also likely to destroy whichever culture has the longer time preferences.

Remember, there are no shortage of whites, especially overweight, unattractive white women, who genuinely prefer the African culture of living fast, consuming conspicuously, and dying young in a promiscuous, matriarchal society to the European culture of living conservatively and saving to build for the future in a sexually restricted patriarchal society. As with all things economic, these are questions of preferences and time-orientation, not morality or science.

History has conclusively demonstrated that there is only one way to successfully turn a short-term orientation people into a long-term one: kill off a sufficient percentage of those members of the population group with a short-term orientation before they bear or raise children. This process takes somewhere between 750 and 1,000 years and I suspect that Jared Diamond may have been onto something even though he didn’t understand the full significance of the European geography in this regard. My thought is that the near-continuous warfare between small and competing groups, in combination with their ongoing contact with advanced civilization, allowed the European nations to kill off enough of their short-term oriented troublemakers to collectively develop long-term time orientations.

Remember, the Roman legions didn’t permit their soldiers to marry until AFTER their 20-year term of service was complete.

Not only have Africans not had enough time to go through his process, given when they first encountered European civilization, but they have actually been collectively reverting thanks to the federal and international aid policies of the last 50 years. Neither geography nor law nor even religion are sufficient to convert short time preferences into long ones. Such ideas are mutu, magical thinking akin to the idea that murdering an albino will lead to success in business.

Permitting the barbarians to destroy civilization is not going to benefit either the savage or the civilized in the long-run. The fact that the majority of people in our society cannot grasp this simple fact is, in itself, an indication of the way in which our society has already been barbarized.

Mailvox: dissecting dialectic

ST asks for criticism concerning his attack on a utilitarian argument in defense of punishing Christians who fail to support gay marriage.

I am debating a “Humian Utilitarian” with the moniker Eric The Red (ETR) over at Doug Wilson’s place. I post there as timothy. Two men there, Katecho and Dan have done the grunt work of identifying the materialism of ETR and I consider him debunked, but ETR is an evasive little bastard.

I would like for him to hang himself with his Utilitarian positions. I am not pleased with my work on this and am asking your help or criticism.

ETR’s position is that human happiness is maximized (pick your flavor of Utilitarianism measurement here–average or greatest–it doesn’t matter which) by celebrating gay marriage. Since a Christian  baker’s refusal to bake a wedding cake for a couple of gay perverts detracts from that happiness, it is right to punish the Christians.

I am going to adopt the Utilitarian viewpoint in my  argument as it is ETR’s viewpoint.

ETR likes to change the subject quite a bit when things get tight, so here is his latest example missive where I think an opening lies:

“Perhaps someone can answer my earlier question:  In light of Uganda, how isn’t is the basest and more repulsive hypocrisy for Christians to  complain about having to bake a cake? Take a look at what your fellow religionists have done to gays over the years; you sure have a low tolerance for what you consider persecution in light of your own abuse of gays over the years.”

Since it is topical, I am focusing on the Ugandan law he mentions and ignoring the other accusations for now.

The text of the Ugandan law is here.

Clause 3 specifies the penalty for the horror of an HIV-positive man buggering a child. It is on this clause that I am building my argument (this decision may be a mistake, but I am rolling with it for now).

The Logical structure I have in mind is a simple Conjunctive

P dot Q
where both P and Q have to be true.
If one is false then the conjunctive is false and the argument fails.
Here is the truth table.
P Q  P dot Q
T T   T
T F   F
F T   F
F F   F

Argument P

  1. A Utilitarian desires the greatest “good” for the greatest number of people.
  2. Without children, there are no people for whom to maximize the greatest good, therefore, the good of the greatest number of people warrants the protection of children.
  3. Clause 3 of the Ugandan law specifically penalizes homosexuals in the case of HIV positive men having sex with children. Thereby increasing the greater good.
  4. Clause 3 of the Ugandan law is valid under Utilitarian principles.
  5. The Utilitarian principle of maximizing the greater good requires stigmatizing homosexual behavior

Argument Q

  1. A Utilitarian desires the greatest “good” for the greatest number of people.
  2. Homosexual marriage increases the greater good. (defined as happines, if I remember the thread correctly)
  3. Actions that increase human happiness are to be encouraged.
  4. Actions that decrease human happiness are to be penalized.
  5. Christians who refuse to bake a wedding cake for homosexuals are at odds with Utilitarian principles
  6. Under Utilitarian principles it is a good to punish those who punish homosexual behavior.

Either P is True or Q is True.
Both cannot be true.
P and Q state the same thing
therefore the Utilitarian argument fails.

My take is that this is overkill. Some will recall that one of the first questions I ask myself in dealing with an interlocutor is whether or not he is intellectually honest. Since ST describes ETR as “an evasive little bastard”, we can safely assume that he is not. And since he is presenting a utilitarian argument in favor of a statistically insignificant minority, we can also observe that he isn’t particularly intelligent either.

Where ST went wrong was in permitting ETR to beg the question. ETR asserted, apropos of nothing, that “human happiness is maximized by
celebrating gay marriage”. I would have attacked that point and demonstrated his argument to be based upon a false foundation rather than taking the much more complicated approach ST adopted.

Also, Argument P is legitimate, but somewhat convoluted. Steps 2 and and 5 are weaker than they could be. If I were to rewrite Argument P, it would be as follows:

Argument P2

  1. A Utilitarian desires the greatest “good” for the greatest number of people.
  2. Actions that increase human happiness are to be encouraged.
  3. It observably makes the majority of Ugandans happy to see homosexuality criminalized.
  4. Under Utilitarian principles it is a good to criminalize homosexual behavior.

This accomplishes the same result and in a much more straightforward action. Better yet, it forces ETR to go back and defend the question that had been successfully begged if he is going to object to it. Of course, the entire argument is stupid on its face; Utilitarianism is nothing more than the democratic fallacy and has been known to be bankrupt for more than a century. The fact is that ETR is not going to be convinced of anything or stop presenting his dialectically false arguments simply because they have been shown to be false and philosophically outdated. His objectives are entirely rhetorical and akin to that of Pajama Boy, which is “to make the opponents feel terrible about themselves”. Now, recall that in most cases, the opponent’s objective is based on his own vulnerabilities. And that points the way to effective victory.

Because the Left is usually limited to the rhetorical level, it is useful to take a two-step approach of first dialectically crushing the opponent’s pseudo-dialectical argument, then to rhetorically rub his intellectual inferiority in his face along with any other obvious psychological weaknesses. (This, by the way, is why the Left is so reliably inept when they attack me; they seldom bother to try to understand their enemy.) However, since the dialectic aspect is only relevant in that it lays the foundation for the subsequent rhetorical assault, it is best to keep it as simple and easy to follow as possible.

Mailvox: starting out in SF

CR asks for some advice concerning science fiction:

Hey man… so I’ve never been a fan of science fiction involving elves and dragons and all that so I’ve never given a science fiction book a try. The only scifi movies I’ve watched are the ones that could conceivably be true at some point, such as Oblivion, Europa Report, Moon, etc…

You’re probably one of the most intelligent people I know of and you certainly seem to be a fan of this genre… since I have some free time on my hands over the holidays, can you recommend a starter list of sci fi books? That whole Quantum Mortis series looks interesting… what’s the correct order to read them in?

With regards to Quantum Mortis, I recommend reading A Man Disrupted first, then Gravity Kills. As for elves, dragons, and science fiction, I should first point out that elves and dragons are typically indicative of fantasy, whereas rocket ships, scientist progagonists, space empires, and future technologies are indicative of science fiction.

The distinction is an important one, even if all the major science fiction organizations and awards refuse to recognize it. The fact is that Fifty Shades of Grey is every bit as legitimately science fiction as A Game of Thrones; it is certainly pure fantasy.

In answer to the question, this would be my SF starter list, listed in order of recommended reading.

  1. Nightfall (short story) by Isaac Asimov
  2. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  3. Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinlein
  4. Flowers for Algernon (short story) by Daniel Keys
  5. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  6. Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan
  7. Neuromancer by William Gibson
  8. Dune by Frank Herbert
  9. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
  10. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

If you can read through the first five books on the list and find yourself to be largely indifferent, then science fiction is simply not for you. Upon re-reading three of the best-regarded SF series, however, I have to conclude that it may actually be the underrated Giants trilogy by James P. Hogan that is the height of science fiction achievement to date, combining as it does physics, evolution, creation mythology, and the great secular dream of a united Man take his first steps out into the wider universe.

It was fascinating to discover how much better I liked Dune Messiah and Children of Dune as an adult. They’re not epic like Dune was; Herbert literally turns the usual “show, don’t tell” mantra on its head by refusing to show anything at all of Muad’Dib’s jihad. But I think some of the two books’ subtleties are lost on a teenager, as well as the full scope of Herbert’s incisive commentary on failure and human tragedy.

Mailvox: improving dialectic

JB asks how he can improve his ability to debate:

Do you have any recommendations on reading material for improving one’s debate skills? I am aware of the most basic premise being the ability to reason, followed by a willingness to suffer defeat in repeated efforts. I am good at debating, but studying what you have posted, as well as other’s responses shows me that there is room for considerable improvement on my part. I am passably familiar with Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and Aristotle; the last of whom is cited considerably often on Vox Populi but I am interested in learning more. What do you feel are the best books to study on this? Can it even be learned through books or does one have to simply fight it out personally and learn by doing?

Given Scalzi’s inept appeals to his degree in alleged rhetoric; possibly this cannot be learned other than by doing. However if there are recommendations that you have for books on rhetoric and debate, I would be interested to hear them. After all, my default setting whenever I am interested in learning more about a subject is to buy multiple books on it; so I am hopeful that you might have some suggestions for reading material.

It’s important to distinguish between learning about something and actually doing it. Although not a basketball fan, I know a fair amount about basketball courtesy of Bill Simmons, a lifelong basketball fanatic. But nothing that I have ever read about basketball has improved my three-point shot.

As Michael Jordan once said after one of his returns from retirement, the best way to get in shape for playing basketball is to play basketball. I run twice per week in the soccer offseason in order to stay in shape, but no matter how good I am about my off-season routine, the first practice of the season is always the most painful.

Reading Cicero and Plato may provide you with some rhetorical and dialectical tools, but having those tools is not the same thing as knowing how and when to use them effectively. Indeed, reading about them while not putting them into actual practice may actually be detrimental to one’s ability to debate; as JB has seen with Mr. Scalzi, it can even contribute to a powerful sense of self-delusion in that regard.

I am a little concerned by JB’s assertion of being “passably familiar” with the four classic figures mentioned. One of the great intellectual diseases of our time is the idea that having heard of something, or knowing a little bit about it, is practically akin to having mastered the subject. So, my first suggestion is that JB actually read the Socratic dialogues, read Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Cicero’s De Inventione. Then read something more modern; here is a nice online guide to The Five Canons of Rhetoric.

This leads to one important guideline: don’t ever claim to know something that you do not, in fact, know better than your opponent expects. A skilled opponent will unmask you faster than you think possible; read my exchange with the atheist Luke for a particularly brutal example of that. On the flip side, I was amused when an online conversation between two evolutionists was brought to my attention, as one was warning the other not to be fooled by my claim to be relatively ignorant about TENS. But I wasn’t playing dumb, the simple fact is that I don’t know biology the way I know economics or the history of video games, so I have to approach the subjects differently.

In my opinion, the best way one can develop one’s debating skills is to practice by regularly taking on the most knowledgeable opponents one can find. Consider, for example, the qualitative difference between my exchanges with Nate, with Dominic, and even with Delavagus with my various run-ins with PZ Myers, McRapey, and Luke. I still disagree with all six of them on the subjects we discussed, but the former three knew what they were talking about while the latter three manifestly did not.

Here is my response to being asked a similar question about 18 months ago, which led to the “Dissecting the Sceptics” series of posts. If JB hasn’t read through it, I would recommend doing so.

“The first question I always ask myself is if the argument is primarily
factual, logical, or rhetorical in nature. The second question I ask
myself is if the author is likely to have any idea what he’s talking
about or not. And the third question is if I regard the author as being
trustworthy or not, or rather, if I believe him to be fundamentally
intellectually honest or not. These three questions determine how
carefully I read through an argument and whether I presume the author is
more likely to make a simple mistake or whether any apparent mistakes
are actually intentional attempts to sneak something past the
insufficiently careful reader in order to make a flawed argument look
convincing.

“The fourth question is what is the author trying to prove? This
question often can’t be answered initially, but I keep it in the back of
my mind for future reference. Once I identify the specific point that
the author is trying to prove, I can track back from it to see if a) his
logic is correct, and b) if that logic is soundly supported. It’s
important to keep in mind that the actual point that the author is
trying to prove is not necessarily the one that he appears to be trying
to prove in the title or introduction.”  

And for those who find McRapey’s argument by appeal to BA in Philosophy of Language from the University of Chicago convincing, it might be educational to read through “Dissecting the Sceptics” andsee what I do to “a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Chicago”.

Mailvox: so the slope was slippery after all

MP is a little bit excited about the new court ruling that declared polygamy bans to be unconstitutional:

Having severed marriage from any cultural traditions and values over the last fifty years, I thought it would be at least five more years before the Feds took marriage to the next step: polygamy. Marry whoever and whatever you like. Marry as many as you want. 

As of now it is not “cheating” to fuck other women when you are already married.  You are merely looking for your next wife.  The courts will have to work out some of the kinks, such as not needing the permission of your existing wife to get married again.

After all, I can contract to buy a car from one car dealer and contract to buy another car from another car dealer without asking permission of the first car dealer, right? 

And since marriage is nothing more than a voluntary contract between two people, the wife should have no say-so in preventing me from getting Wife #2 … or #3, … or even #4!

What business is it of my old wife to oppress me and prevent me from marrying the (new) one you love?  After all, she has the right to control her body and abort my child, why should I not have the right to marry who I want?

And don’t you Evil Religious Freaks start quoting the Bible or the Koran. We got rid of the old oppressive Christian monogamous “’til death do us part” junk many, many years ago.

At this rate we will have pure marriage-by-contract within 10 years: “Marriage” will be divorced from those Evil Religious Freaks and we will be able to construct our marriage contracts however we see fit!

What a Brave New World we are entering!

Do you know, I can remember when all those homogamy advocates were assuring everyone that the only reason anyone opposed altering the equation Marriage = One Man + One Woman was bigotry and that there was no possible way that changing Woman to Man could lead to changing One to One or More.

“In a game-changer for the legal fight over same-sex marriage that gives credence to opponents’ “slippery slope” arguments, a federal judge has now ruled that the legal reasoning for same-sex marriage means that laws against polygamy are likewise unconstitutional.”

American society is rapidly slip-sliding away, to the extent that it can even be said to exist at all anymore. One may not be able to legislate morality, but it is becoming eminently clear that one can legislate civilization. And barbarism, for that matter. But we may be past the point where civilization can be legislated; it may have to be imposed.

Mailvox: on evidence for gods

Shagrat’s Friend explains his perspective on the distinction between atheism and agnosticism:

[A]theism and agnosticism answer two different questions. Regarding the religions that inhabit the earth (or have done so), X -1 must be false, since they’re mutually exclusive (to the extent that there’s any substance to their claims). If at least X -1 must be false, it’s really not too hard to imagine that X -1 +1 are false. (I’m not going to get into any sort of veridical arguments about the “truthiness” of any given belief system. You want to believe that the New Testament tells a cohesive story that’s internally logical, go right ahead. Just don’t bother me with all the sophistical razzmatazz necessary to explain what exactly happened when Jesus was born or what happened to Judas after he counted his money.)

As for the broader picture, yes, it is impossible to disprove the existence of some hypothetical deity. Yeah, maybe that is who started the Big Bang (if it really happened) or makes the earth spin on its axis and revolve happily around the sun day in and day out or who winds up the clockwork that makes all that stuff happen. Sure, maybe there are some Epicurean entities who spend their existence in solitary blessedness beyond the travails of this mortal coil and outside the ken of us mere humans. So to that extent, I am an agnostic.

But if that’s all “God” boils down to, who cares? I see no rational evidence for the day-to-day involvement of any deity in the regular affairs on earth. You want to believe that the sun stopped shining and an earthquake dumped the dead out of their tombs and they milled around for a while when Jesus died on the cross? Be my guest. Or that God held his nose or averted his eyes at Treblinka or Kolyma? Talk it over with Augustine and Orosius. But leave me out of that argument with all its a priori-isms that are invalid in my eyes.

A few corrections:

(1) It is not true to say that X-1 must be false or that most religions are mutually exclusive. For example, Judaism and Christianity part company on a single claim: that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Most religions make no grand universal claims and both Christianity and Islam, the two great universal religions, comfortably encompass many, if not most, other religions by virtue of their distinction between a sovereign Creator God and the panoply of lesser gods subject to His Will.

(2) There is a considerable quantity of rational evidence for the day-to-day involvement of a deity in regular Earthly affairs. Indeed, this is the core basis for my own Christian faith. The Bible posits that the world is ruled by an arrogant, evil, intelligent, and malicious deity and we have no shortage of documentary, testimonial, and experiential evidence of his existence.

(3) There is no reason to assume that the supernatural is any less complicated, or any less full of detailed variety, than the natural. To repeatedly attempt to boil down a concept as a god, let alone The God, to a simple binary question is so intellectually vacuous as to appear either uninterested or intellectually stunted.

That being said, I can only agree that there is little point in engaging in “all the sophistical razzmatazz necessary to explain what exactly happened when
Jesus was born or what happened to Judas after he counted his money”. One might as profitably attempt to determine Martha Washington’s juggling ability or describe the loss of Alexander the Great’s virginity.