Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: a reason to not vote

I think we can all agree that blame for the present parlous state of the nation clearly lies with JartStar:

I had some fun today with some of the guys at work about voting. They
asked me while we were on break who I was going to vote for and I
explained that I no longer vote. The looks on their faces were priceless
and when they inquired why I offhandedly explained that I had voted my
entire life and things have steadily gotten worse, I feel bad about
that, and my voting has made the country worse. I then apologized to
them all for what I had done and the three out of the four of them went
into near hysterics.

The Israeli Jew proclaimed it would be better for
me to show up and vote randomly than not vote, and one of the two Indian
immigrants tried to pull me aside to explain that I wasn’t really the
problem.

So this is my new reason for not voting when people ask: The state
of the country to a large degree my fault and I’m stopping now before I
make things really bad.

It’s definitely a more entertaining excuse than relying on reason and being forced to endure a monologue on how Mitt Romney will preside in a TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MANNER than Barack Obama, even though the extent of their actual policy differences appears to be that Romney is slightly more enthusiastic about Israel, Wall Street, and gun control while Obama is slightly more enthusiastic about Saudi Arabia, immigration, and feminism.

Of course, as I have conclusively proven, there is absolutely no chance that your one presidential vote makes any difference at all.  None at all.  Either that one vote will not make a difference to the outcome, or in the extremely unlikely event that the outcome of the state vote rests upon your one vote, the courts will render it void by pronouncing their own verdict on who won the “election”.

The argument for random voting being better than not voting is informative, though. Such a position would indicate that to the person who holds it, the preservation of the illusion of democracy is more important than democracy itself.

Mailvox: an alternative mechanism

Stephen J. takes a logical approach in arguing for evolution by natural selection:

While this question is going to sound snarky, I can only ask our host to
believe it is meant as a genuine inquiry and hope it is answered.

1) Let us take as evidentially established the fact that species which existed in the past now exist no longer and are extinct.

2)
Let us take as evidentially established the fact that not all species
now extant existed at all times throughout the history of organic life;
if nothing else, we know for a fact Homo sapiens did not.

3)
Therefore, it must be possible for species which did not exist to come
into existence by some mechanism, just as species which do exist can go
extinct by any variety of mechanisms.

4) If it is a fact that
new species can come into existence while others go extinct, by what
mechanism other than evolution through natural selection are these
species proposed to arise, and does that proposed mechanism explain more
of the observed evidence than TeNS?

I don’t think it sounds snarky at all.  In fact, this is one of the first rationally competent attempts to defend evolution that I’ve ever seen presented on this blog.  Let’s look at his postulates and his logic and see where it leads us.

1)  I concur.  We know from historical documentary evidence that there are species that previously existed and are now extinct.  We can also infer from fossil evidence that there were a number of other species that previously existed and went extinct prior to the historical record.

2) I tend to agree and am willing to concur here for the sake of argument and on the basis of Occam’s Razor.  We certainly believe that homo sapiens sapiens did not exist from the beginning of the history of organic life on the basis of our current understanding of the geological and fossil records, but we cannot say that with the same degree of confidence that it is a fact in the sense that we say the Dodo is now extinct.  The problem is that there appear to be an increasing number of indications that the current geological and biological timelines are not going to hold up to future evidence, the claimed 521-year half-life of DNA being one of them.

3)  I concur, assuming (2) holds true.

4) Intelligent Genetic Manipulation is the mechanism that I propose.  And yes, I believe that explains more of the observed evidence than TENS, since IGM is a scientific proposition, a readily observed action, and a successful predictive model, whereas TENS is a philosophical proposition, an unobserved process, and an unsuccessful predictive model.

Now, this does not provide any basis for assuming the existence of a Creator God, or even declaring that TENS did not actually take place.  The logical fact of the matter is that even if TENS can be conclusively demonstrated to have taken place in various species, which has not happened despite more than 150 years of trying, that doesn’t necessarily mean the process was sufficient to produce Man.  If one contemplates the biological differences between ape and man, the vast leap in cognitive capacity taking place in a relatively small sum of generational cycles from the proposed common ancestor in comparison with the timelines supposedly required for other, less complicated evolutionary changes, the logic suggests – though it does not prove – that some degree of purposeful genetic manipulation has likely taken place at various points in the origin of the species and the development of homo sapiens sapiens.

I’m not talking about Intelligent Design, but rather intelligent editing.  And the interesting thing is that IGM should be an increasingly falsifiable concept as genetic science continues to improve.  Only recently have we learned that junk DNA serves a purpose; even though we have sequenced various genomes, we haven’t yet understood how the code works or fully comprehended the various ways it can be manipulated.  As our understanding grows, we should be able to develop an ability to recognize patterns that indicate purposeful alterations in the code have been made.

Now, I realize how crazy this probably sounds, especially in light of my argument that Man cannot easily distinguish between God, god, demon, and alien.  But that is where Stephen’s reasonably sound logic takes us. 

Mailvox: education and the evolutionist

MD regurgitates the common mantra of the evolutionary faithful:

You are an educated man and know as well as me that evolution has been verified in countless experiments.  I agree that the precise details of the mechanism are still open to debate.  Since you are essentially making money out of the poor uneducated civilians of your own deeply divided culture, I expect that this E-mail
may not make it to the multitude.  Until then, any
pretensions you have as a serious philosopher – until you spell out your
objections to the actual EVIDENCE of evolution, must be viewed
suspisciously.  Being an intelligent fellow, I know you know this already; hey ho.
First, I note what appears to be a popular use of the adjective “countless”, which in its most common usage apparently means “zero”.  A few days ago, I noted how spin is the hallmark of the weak argument; when someone uses the word “countless” it is often a flashing sign of where a little research will probably prove fruitful.

Second, it is because I have educated myself on the subject over the years that I am aware that there is not a single experiment or study that verifies evolution by natural selection.  Richard Dawkins very nearly admits as much in his homage to the faux science, The Greatest Show on Earth.  Strictly speaking, evolution by natural selection is not even truly scientific, because it is first and foremost a logical argument, which necessarily renders it philosophy rather than science.  At this point, there is less actual scientific evidence for it than for my hypothesis concerning the neural atypicality of atheists.

This isn’t the first time such a claim has been made. Last time, I even asked for any scientific papers that supposedly contained such evidence; after reading the first ten on the list provided, it was readily apparent that none of them contained any such thing and the individual who provided the list of papers had simply done a search for references to “natural selection”. But, for example, showing that guppies become smaller under certain predatory pressures and that this result is “consistent with evolution by natural selection” is very, very, very far from evidence that the guppies have evolved into something other than a guppy.

As I mentioned over one year ago, “I have read seven of Richard Dawkins’s ten books, two of Stephen
Gould’s, a random assortment of books by other authors including Charles
Darwin, Marc Hauser and Daniel Dennett, around 50 published papers
which relate to natural selection in some way, and more than 20 years
worth of magazines such as Natural History and New Scientist.  This doesn’t make me any sort of expert on the subject. But I should think it tends to indicate that I am not completely
uninformed about it. And it’s certainly ironic to be repeatedly
accused of ignorance when not having read any economists from Turgot to
Tobin or theologians from Tertullian to Craig ever seems to prevent
credentialed Cult of Darwin members from opining authoritatively on
economics or theology.” 

How many of the champions of evolution who claim I don’t know what I’m taking about with regards to evolution can claim to have read as much on the subject?  How many have even read On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life? And how many of the biologists who don’t hesitate to spout off on economic matters can claim to have read even half as deeply in the field of economics?

I have repeatedly spelled out my objections to evolution and the actual evidence for it.  First, the evidence doesn’t exist.  Second, the historical timelines that purportedly support it are dynamic.  Third, evolution is a complete failure as a predictive model.  Fourth, it is scientifically and technologically irrelevant; where is the evolutionary engineering.  Fifth, theoretical epicycles are increasingly appearing.  Sixth, it is a repeated failure as an explanatory model.  Seventh, there is a long track record of scientific fraud attached to it.

I have no pretensions of being a serious philosopher.  Quite the contrary, I am merely an intellectual dilettante who takes even his most cherished beliefs with a grain of salt.  But even if I did have such pretensions, my skepticism concerning the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow would not be a strike against me, it would be a mark in my favor. Regardless, I have no problem with my opinions and assertions being viewed suspiciously. If you can find the flaw in the argument, that’s great. Point it out to me, I won’t hesitate to agree and either revise or recant the argument, so long as the flaw is actually there.

That being said, if there is a book on the subject of evolution that an evolutionist feels is missing from my education on the subject, then by all means, I encourage them to send me an epub.  I will read it.  I may even review it.  Of course, there is always the possibility that in doing so, I will point out the obvious errors it contains.

Mailvox: defenses of dishonesty

RobertT writes:

So anyone who has ever worked for wages at an hourly wage is inherently
dishonest? That makes sense. How else do people get paid, except for
their time? That concept is as old as time itself. Service businesses
aren’t selling a product, they’re selling their time. And they generally
get a contract before doing anything just to make sure there are no
misunderstandings. This is how I work and my clients worship the ground I
walk on.  I don’t think much of attorneys either as a group, but maybe this is a little bit over the top.

No, there is nothing inherently dishonest about working for wages at an hourly wage.  But there is a fundamental distinction between ““billable hours” and fees charged “based on the time they’ve supposedly put in rather than concrete results” and working for hourly wages.  The distinction is based on the difference between wages, which are paid by an employer who has the power to provide oversight and manage performance, and fees, which are paid by a client who is completely at the mercy of the fee-charger.

Fees of this sort are deceptive because they are based on a fundamental falsehood, which is the labor theory of value.  They are primarily the result of government intervention in the economy, which creates artificial shortages that permit the government-protected fee charger to force the client to purchase the fee charger’s time rather than the service he actually wishes to charge.

Fee chargers often resort to a deceptive defense, by claiming that they must charge for their time because they don’t know exactly how long it will take to provide the service.  This defense is belied by the fact that products and services in markets permitted to be competitive are delivered despite the fact that their time-cost is unknown.  For example, when I sign a book contract, I don’t know how long it will take to write the book anymore than a lawyer knows how long it will take to resolve a legal case.  I therefore assume part of the risk; the longer I take to write the book, the more my compensation per hour will be reduced.

The fee charger, on the other hand, not only structures the arrangement so that his client assumes all of the risk, but also leaves the client at his mercy because the only hard limits on his time cost are his conscience and the client’s solvency.  Even if the fee charger has a conscience and bills the service in the actual amount of time required to perform it, this doesn’t change the fact that the nature of the structure is intrinsically corrupt.

Logos doesn’t even attempt a defense, but tends to concur:

I’m a lawyer, and I admit that I hate just about every lawyer I’ve come
into contact with. I’m still naive enough to try to make good arguments
and win cases, but lawyers I work with abhor the possibility of closing
a matter early or letting me get credit for winning it (I even have to
fight to sign my name on my own work product, which is damn good). It
makes me sad because we are supposed to be in a noble profession that
fights for the rule of law against all who would threaten it, especially
government.

I actually have an amount of sympathy for those lawyers who entered the profession without understanding its corrupt and corrupting nature.  Neither pre-law nor law school really explicate the truth for them, but rather give it to them in small doses so that only the most perceptive law student could put into any kind of coherent perspective.  One of my best friends is a lawyer, he was fired from his first law firm due to his unwillingness to bill nonexistent hours, and he is generally a man of good conscience.  But even he sees the problematic aspects of the system.  Those individuals of good will who chose to become a lawyer may well be bothered by the genuine hatred and disdain which so many people feel for them, but then, no doubt there are nice, good, honest bankers too.  So long as he is an officer of the court, a lawyer is a sworn agent of the legal system and cannot credibly disassociate himself from it.

And finally, robwbright attempts to get lawyerly, which is always unwise when dealing with a superintelligence armed with facts and logic, at least outside the courtroom.

Now, Vox said something I find a bit ironic.  “if one doesn’t know
the difference between written law and case law, and understand how the
latter trumps the former, it’s not even possible to have an informed
opinion on the issue.”

Vox, if you’re going to rant about
something, at least get the terminology right, or YOU risk appearing as
if it’s not even possible for you to have an informed opinion about it.

By
“written law”, I assume you mean statutory law. However, that’s not a
normal/common way to say/describe it, because case law is also most
certainly written. Perhaps I misunderstand your meaning of “written
law”, but that’s not my fault, as your term “written law” is not
precise. Common law might be referred to as “unwritten law”, but that’s
not case law, either.

And no, case law most certainly does NOT
trump statutory law in any court in which I have practiced (2 states, 7
counties, District Court of Appeals, State Supreme Court, Federal
District Court and Court of Appeals).

Given that robwbright quite clearly understood the precise distinction I was making between the two distinct types of law, a distinction that the average layman does not even know exists, this is nothing more than a shallow attempt at rhetorically undermining my point while appealing to his own authority.  I used the term “written law” because I am not addressing an audience of lawyers here, and there is absolutely no need to resort to legal jargon in order to make clear the difference between the statutory laws that are written and passed by the elected legislatures, (which is what most people understand the law to be), and the non-laws that are the set of existing rulings which made new interpretations of law and can be cited as precedent, and which the lawyers in the system agree to mutually pretend are “case laws” possessed of a standing intrinsically superior to the legislative laws.

The fact that robwbright’s objection is a trivial and deceptive one can be shown by the U.S. legal jargon “black letter law”, which means “well-established case law”.  After all, statutory law is printed in black letters too… so how can anyone possibly know what “black letter law” is?  It could be statutory law, it could be case law, it could be regulatory law, right?  If we are to accept his lawyerly logic, we must assume that any judge or lawyer who uses the term “black letter law” risks appearing as if it’s not even possible for them to have an informed opinion about it.  I trust this demonstrates how feigning ignorance and confusion is a counterproductive means of attempting to rhetorically undermine an opponent, particularly when one is attempting to establish oneself as a trustworthy authority.  Henceforth, I will use the terms “legislative law” for “written law” or “statutory law”, and “interpretive rulings” for “case law”, in the interest of precision and clarity.

He then appeals to the authority of his own experience in claiming that interpretive rulings do not trump legislative law in any court in which he has practiced.  However, I have personally witnessed interpretive rulings repeatedly trump legislative law in several Minnesota and Federal District Courts, and there are no shortage of similar examples I could cite.  But since I cannot expect to win competing appeals to personal experience with a lawyer on this subject, I will have to do better than that.  Which, as it happens, is simple enough, based on logic and legal history.

Being a lawyer, robwbright must know that interpretive rulings always trump legislative law at the court’s discretion, otherwise it would not be possible for “the set of existing rulings which made new interpretations of law and, therefore, can be cited as precedent” to be so often used by the Supreme Court and other courts for the purpose of overturning legislative laws.  If we are to accept his reasoning, it is impossible for a legislative ban on abortion to be overturned… except by a subsequent action on the part of the relevant legislature.

Mailvox: certainly self-comlimentary

BB affects to be surprised:

I found this site by accident. This discussion of evolution is certainly on a low level for a site that is so deeply self-comlimentary. I am always surprised that people refuse to accept biological evolution because of its supposed implausibility, yet easily accept the idea of spontaneous human appearance. God, in this view, did not need to develop, but just “is.” The plausibility of God goes unquestioned. Said another way, the argument is that man evolved is unsupportable, but the idea that God is and was forever, self-conceiving, is logical.

By the way, I believe in God.

I suggest you apply the same argument to God and man. But I readily admit that doing so will not answer the Question that you and I both have. The old question of something out of nothing.

Color me dubious.  An affectation of disinterest, followed by a nonsensical naked assertion, followed by a complete strawman.  And notice how quickly the “defense” of evolution rapidly transitions to its scientific plausibility to a philosophical attack on God.  What I find amusing is how the Neo-Darwinian faithful continue to insist that evolution is every bit as probable no matter how much the necessary complexity is observed to have increased. 

The recent recognition – long expected by me and others – that genetics are much more complex than previously understood and that junk DNA is somehow involved in the process, to say nothing of the toppling of the “tree of life”, all significantly increase the improbability and necessary time scales of evolution by natural selection.  And yet, there hasn’t even been any attempt to account for these additional complexities, partly because evolutionary biologists are both relatively innumerate and logically challenged, but mostly because the so-called science is little more than an article of willfully blind faith.

Mailvox: the big questions

LA queries:

I had a question–do you have an opinion on the movie Airplane!?
 The
humor on this movie has always escaped me.  I’ve always found many
comedy movies to be fairly stupid but I can always suspend disbelief,
put aside logical problems in a decent sci fi or comedy movie, and find
some way to enjoy the humor even if it isn’t my normal cup of tea.
 But this movie has always been the one film I cannot stand.
 Anyway,
a friend that reads Vox Popoli and I were having a spat about it and it
made me curious if you enjoyed it or if you ever saw it, and whether
you care one way or another.

I thought Airplane had its amusing moments, but would not put it in my personal top 25 movies or even top 20 comedies.  I can stand it, but only in short doses; I’ve never been able to watch it all the way through.  Its humor is mostly of the sort that I consider to be too broad-based and obvious to be more than moderately funny even when done right.  I think an element of surprise, or at least unpredictability, is necessary to make something genuinely hilarious, and most of Airplane’s humor is entirely predictable, being based on stupid and unlikely misunderstandings.

As a writer once said that if the plot of your novel is dependent upon your characters being stupid, you don’t have an actual book.  In like manner, I don’t find humor that depends upon the characters being borderline retarded to be amusing.  And if a “humorous” pratfall is somehow involved, I am left colder than cold.  I simply don’t find people falling down, particularly in a theatrical manner, to be be funny at all.  When I see an adult laugh at someone slapping their forehead and falling down, or pretending to faint, I seriously wonder what is wrong with them.

But Airplane! does have its moments.  The “I speak jive” line is funny, although the actual execution of the jivespeak borders on the painful.  The surely/Shirley bit is almost Wodehousean and is done well in a deadpan manner that probably wouldn’t have worked nearly as well for anyone not named Leslie Nielsen.  And the short exchanges between Joey and the Captain are downright quoteworthy.  That being said, I looked at the list of what are supposedly the greatest quotes from the movie and noted that less than a quarter of them actually struck me as funny.

To me, easily the funniest movie ever made is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Other movies that I found to be funnier than Airplane! include Heathers, Weird Science, The Hangover, The Gods Must Be Crazy, The Big Lebowski, Old School, A Fish Called Wanda, Dodgeball, Grosse Pointe Blank, Notting Hill, the first two American Pie films, Stripes, The Pink Panther, and Being There.

Apple’s high water mark

All declines have to begin from a high, and with regards to Apple, it would appear to be all downhill from here.  A few weeks ago, I ranted about the way Apple’s walled garden and forced upgrade approach was being adopted by foolish technology companies.  Two of our four Kobos ended up bricked, both due to the same buggy updated firmware; I could have avoided bricking the second one were I not inadvertently forced into an unwanted update by the computer software.

Apple was able to get away with this very risky strategy due to it being run by a perfectionist, detail-oriented, technofascist.  It didn’t matter if the updates were forced, because anyone working for Steve Jobs was going to be triple-damn certain that the updates would work properly… or at least not contain any fatal bugs.  Now that Jobs is gone, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Apple is running into the same kind of bugs that plague most of the other companies that stupidly tried to imitate it.  I received this email from a friend of mine who was so bold as to update his iPhone to iOS 6:

I updated my iphone to IOS6 last night. New
app appeared called ‘passbook’ which apparently is ‘the simplest way to
get all your passes in one place’ … except it doesn’t connect to the
itunes store. Also I found I had lost
all my playlists from my music … this also happened to a friend but his
have since automagically reappeared … mine haven’t so far!

It’s now been two days and he is still missing his playlists.  Not a big deal, hardly a fatal bug, and yet likely indicative of more serious problems to come in the future.  Meanwhile, Karl Denninger notes that Apple has forced its users to give up Google Maps in favor of its own lower-quality map software.  It’s far too soon to pronounce final judgment, but these recent events tend to bolster my expectation that the second post-Jobs era at Apple is not going to go any better than the first one did.

Mailvox: an uneven match

George: In the end, adherence to divine command theory is the province of lazy minds.

So, in the one corner, we have the irrepressible George as well as the snowflake moralist, INTJ. In the other, we have William of Ockham, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, John Calvin, Immanuel Kant (arguably), and bringing up the rear, Vox Day.

I certainly don’t mind finding myself in the company of such “lazy minds”.

Is evil all you can do?

Greatheart claims that voting is the full extent of his capabilities:

God doesn’t care about my pride, He does care how I conduct myself while on this earth. He will not judge me based on how others treat me; He will, however, judge me on my behavior. My vote is the only weapon I have against the evil at work in this country, so I will use it.

This raises three questions. First, why does Greatheart think his vote is the only weapon he has? Was the vote the only weapon possessed by George Washington or by the apostles? And does he truly believe God wants men to support what they know to be evil in the name of fighting evil?

Barack Obama is certainly evil. But there is no question that Mitt Romney is also evil, in fact, it is entirely possible that he is more evil than Obama. We know how Obama will govern, mostly in absentia. Whereas neither Mitt Romney’s governance of Massachusetts nor the way in which he violated party rules and used his power to silence dissent at the Republican National Convention indicates he will be a lesser evil than Obama.

Mailvox: a requested arbitration

You know you’re dealing with a very special individual when you find yourself longing for the simple pleasure of swatting away the usual anklebiters. And what is with my critics and their absolute obsession with the human posterior? Anyhow, Corona Rabbit requested arbitration:

CR: I would like to know who deleted the CoronaRabbit posts under “True libertarians won’t vote Libertarian”.

VD: One of the blog administrators authorized to do so, who did so correctly as per the rules I established. It’s not that hard. When you are asked a direct question that is relevant to the topic at hand, then answer the fucking question. If you can’t follow a few very simple rules of this sort, you can’t be part of the conversation here.

CR: How very snappy. If you are not available to act as arbiter, then you should not have conversations on your blog. Or rather, you can, but then please rename your site to: Home Of The Ass Flies: We Suck Asses Daily.

Are you aware that I ASKED you to look at my posts, and those of Josh, in order to resolve this very thing? I stated that I was WAITING for that resolution. Here is the thing, Vox: Josh DEMANDED that I comply with the reply-rule. I saw no need to reply to his bullshit. Still, given his DEMAND, I then asked that YOU make a ruling on whether I was right about Josh being a filthy fucking play-debater.

Surely I am allowed to do thusly? Apparently, it seems, not. More than that, I was not necessary that I respond: my response to his question (the first version, before he changed it) had already been given, before he even asked. But let me give you the sequence: that is, if you actually do give a fucking damn.

[LONG AND TEDIOUS REFRAIN OF COMMENT THREAD]

So do tell me Vox, did I have to answer Josh’s “Question”? Given that before he changed the question, I kind of already had? I was under the impression that the sort of things Josh did were very big no-no’s. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Now. Who the hell erased my last posts? I had classically cursed Nate in the last one, and was rather happy with it. Oh, and bought all the little wockers before the Lord: this is the real world, after all, where the Living God walks around. Read Lev 19 (KJV) for a refresher if you are in the mood.

I was not in the wrong here. Not 100% in the right, fine, but in terms of honesty and truth this was shameful. And do let me point out that Nate, the self-proclaimed Mr Awesome, had apparently read the posts… and then proceeded to proclaim judgement on the side of Josh. Apparenly I had managed to offend his unholiness with my lack of demonic glibness. (The act which led me to, in the absence of ANY fucking arbiter, to bring the Living God into the game.)

I am waiting for a reply. Not that I care, you understand. Not that I think you will act with any more integrity than the animals did. I would just like you to formaly chose the way of the devil. “I like my universe neat,” sayth the Lord.

THE REQUESTED VERDICT

VD: You very much need to learn to stop trying to tell other people what to do in their own house. Josh was correct. You had an obligation to answer his question and instead of doing so, launched an obnoxious and foul-mouthed series of idiotic comments. Moreover, it is utterly stupid to expect any blogger to act as an arbiter 24-7. That is absolutely ridiculous and you should be embarrassed to have even raised the point. Nor does failing to arbitrate between commenters on demand somehow transform a blog into an echo chamber. That doesn’t even make any sense.

It is 100 percent clear that you did not answer a serious and relevant question. You even admit it, you are simply attempting to justify not doing so. You claimed: “I DEEMED IT ANSWER ENOUGH. GIVEN THE CLASSICAL LOGICAL FALLACY JOSH WAS UNDOUBTEDLY KNOWINGLY COMMITTING, I SAW NO REASON TO TREAT JOSH WITH ANYTHING BUT DESERVED CONTEMPT”.

You were wrong. The various other aspects are irrelevant. You still have to answer the question. If Josh was committing a logical fallacy, you should have pointed it out to him, identified the specific logical fallacy committed, and then answered the question.