Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: understanding the exotic

TPB-01 postulates an inability to understand the mental exotics of Voxkind in a series of comments I have abbreviated for focus:

”I mean, sure, I see someone on the street, I have no idea whats going on in their minds. Yet there is the possibility of recognition, of understanding through communication.”

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is a common human illusion of believing they do indeed have a lot in common with a random other “human”

You see someone on the street. He has a wiring not unlike that of Bundy (naturally so), and what then ? You don’t have the benefit of understanding – you will never understand each other. If you’re lucky, you’re just a boring bit of scenery to him. If not, you’re fresh meat. You can communicate with him alright – but what possible understanding could you achieve ?

Or maybe it’s someone like Vox, living in his very own private reality which is besieged by demons (and not some fancy-shmancy metaphor demons, the real shit – supernatural evil and all that jazz). Unless you also have a worldview that includes invisible horned douchebags, what possible understanding could communication bring?

Well, *some* degree of mutual understanding is possible with distinctly inhuman agents, like say, wolves, and human “mental exotics” like Vox (We have painstakingly established that Vox’s model of reality includes exotic paranormal entities and a constant low-intensity conflict with said entities, and I am reasonably sure that Vox understands that I find such a world model, as well as agents who sincerely subscribe to it, highly comical.)

The same understanding that is possible between an individual who is aware of the existence and purpose of x-rays and one who does not. Or, to take a more extreme example, between blind and sighted individuals. Communication might be difficult, though not impossible, concerning certain matters, but that leaves the vast realm of human reason, emotion, and behavior still on the table. I have no problem understanding either your attitude or your belief system; you don’t actually have any problem understanding me, your problem is accepting the possibility of my belief system.

Which is fortunate for you. Once you find yourself in the presence of sufficiently naked evil, you will likely find yourself more open to the possibility.

Actually, I do have a problem understanding you, since your peculiar belief goes well beyond anyone’s ability to demonstrate/prove .
A sighted person could contrive numerous means to demonstrate existence of light-based detection systems to the blind (much like sighted humans have managed to build systems for detecting neutrinos, a task for which human sensory system is radically unfit).

Yes, we do have a “degree” of understanding – you “understand” that I happen to have a grievously inaccurate model of “reality” that is characterized by an absence of “demons”. I happen to “understand” that you happen to have a grievously inaccurate model of “reality” that is characterized by a presence of “demons”. Unless I invent a way to somehow “disprove” unfalsifiable entities 😉 , or you invent a demon detector I can replicate and use to go find some horned invisible doucheroos, there is no way we could advance understanding beyond this boundary.

I strongly doubt that you would bother to demonstrate a protocol that would reliably permit me to detect demons, though of course I am quite eager to listen if you do.

“Why not? Surely your imaginations are not so limited as to make it impossible for you to postulate how your thinking would be modified by personal experience of some aspect of the religious supernatural! Whereas you see Vox-kind as crazy, Vox-kind merely sees you as something akin to colorblind.”

I can totally imagine living in your Lovecraft County – after all, I called it “Cool Lovecraft county”.

Now, I doubt you can actually “argue me into your Lovecraft County” (unless there’s a demon detector in your pocket, or something) and thus there is a fundamental limit to how well I can understand your position, let alone predict your further activities.

Imagination can only go so far in modeling the behavior of someone who faces a radically divergent “reality”.

I am pretty sure both you and me would have a lot of trouble really understanding someone who sincerely believes that Republican party is actually lead by disguised space aliens hellbent on conquest, while Democrats are time-travelling cyborgs from a dystopian future.

“Actually, I do have a problem understanding you, since your peculiar belief goes well beyond anyone’s ability to demonstrate/prove.

Why? We all harbor peculiar beliefs that go well beyond anyone’s ability to demonstrate or prove. Perhaps you believe your dead grandmother loved you. Perhaps I believe my brother is the nicest person in the world. Perhaps we both believe in human equality. None of these things can be demonstrated or proved any more than the existence of demons and none of them need inhibit understanding.

You might point to a letter that your grandmother wrote. I claim that it’s a forgery. I might point to the behavior of the dead Miami face-eating cannibal. You claim “cocaine psychosis”. Repeat as needed.

In any event, your conclusion simply doesn’t follow from the premises. And the existence of a working demon-detector would not make my position more intelligible, it would make it correct. The concept is perfectly intelligible already and has been understood for thousands of years. Nor is the claim of demonic unfalsifiability correct any more than the rings of Saturn were unfalsifiable prior to the invention of the first telescope powerful enough to see them; even setting aside the fact that there is considerable evidence for the existence of demons, TPB-01 has presented a temporally limited technological argument that is intrinsically invalid from the perspective of proper Popperian falsifiability. This is hardly uncommon, as I previously pointed out the flaws of such arguments in TIA.

TPB-01 responds:

Well, I find it kind of remarkable that when you proceed to illustrate possible exchange between two agents disagreeing in regards to allegations of a poorly documented deceased person, you kind of make my point for me.

There is a distinct “understanding horizon” at work here, running along a number of allegations regarding the deceased relative, and claims related to those. Same goes for allegations regarding “human equality” (whatever the fuck that is…)

Consider the case of nice fellow who thinks that both US parties are run by “Secret Inhumans”, specifically conquest-crazy space aliens for Republicans and creepy cyborgs from the future for Democrats. We can establish *some* degree of understanding (at least, we can find out hypothetical person’s weird beliefs and establish an understanding in regards to the fact that we disagree with him and he disagrees with us), but there’s only so far we could go. When imagining ourselves in his shoes we will only muster a distorted projection reflecting neither his actual state nor our own (kind of like imagining yourself as participating in a battle and actually participating in a very real fucking battle are two different things), and same would be true for him (assuming he ever bothers to try imagining what our worldview feels like).

Same of course goes for unverifiable and unfalsifiable assertions regarding dead relatives.

Human equality… well, for starters it would be nice to define it in a way that does not summon Captain Obvious 😉 then see if anything approaching a framework for pragmatically assessing various such “claims”. I find it entirely plausible that there is as little chance of understanding between you and hypothetical “equality fellow” in regards to this vague “equality” thingamajig as between you and me in regards to the existence of supernatural intelligent forces scheming to affect the world in some manner.

[Insert Top Gun quote here]

I have the feeling that even if Chelm hadn’t already accused me of anti-semitism, someone else is bound to by virtue of the extreme ease with which I will show the erroneous aspects of his arguments. After I disputed what he described as “the danger of the alternative right”, Chelm doubled-down and attempted to bolster his position as follows:

The other day I wrote a post about an exchange I had with Vox Day on his website Vox Popoli. I made a rhetorical mistake by referring to some of his more hotheaded anti-semitic commenters as “Amalekites.” Vox took this to be a credible and realistic threat of violence against his readers… which I believe reveals more about Vox’s thinking than mine. You can read his post here and my response here. If you didn’t read the post, additionally, I had the nerve to described him as dangerous, because his blog is a great example (in terms of quality) of a group of web sites of the “alternative right” (or alt-right) which, among other things, seeks to create an intellectual basis for a more socially acceptable anti-semitism….

So, this is what Vox did in today’s post. There are so many errors and accusations in it that to try to refute them all in one shot would require a long rambling… boring… post. In advance, he is slamming me for doing exactly what he is inviting me to do. So here is how I will approach this… I will list the accusations below (paraphrased) and over the course of the next few days, I will refute them one by one.

So many errors that he can’t possibly respond to them all right now… that sure sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But it’s not actually a Fighting Withdrawal, as Chelm proves himself to be more than the usual handwaver in actually troubling to list seven of my purported charges and declaring that he will respond substantively to them. Unfortunately, he’s already provided some indication that he’s not going to be able to respond effectively to them, given the prelude provided above.

First, I absolutely did not take his reference to “Amalekites” to be “a credible and realistic threat of violence” against anyone, least of all my readers. I understood it to be simple rhetorical exaggeration, which Chelm himself subsequently admitted, as he was using the term to refer to what he described as an “irrational Jew hater” in the modern sense. In fact, my very first response to him was “I think you exaggerate quite a bit. How do you define “Amalekite”? Most people here neither curse nor care about Jews.” I subsequently added: “Given the historical metaphor, calling someone an Amalekite strikes me as giving the less metaphorically astute a perfectly understandable justification to not only hate Jews, but commit violence against them. So, you may wish to rethink the use of the slur.” At no point did I ever take it as any sort of threat, much less a credible and realistic one, nor would any reader of this blog ever believe that I am so intellectually humble as to number myself among “the less metaphorically astute”. I not only understand, but have frequently pointed out on this very blog, that metaphors are not reality.

Because Chelm is incorrect about how I interpreted his rhetoric, he is necessarily incorrect about what that interpretation reveals about my thinking as well. It should be readily apparent that if there is any projection taking place here, it is Chelm projecting his own fearful tendencies upon me, since I don’t believe there is any threat posed by him whereas he has already openly referred to me as “dangerous”.

Now to the question whether my blog “seeks to create an intellectual basis for a more socially acceptable anti-semitism”. There are 10,667 posts on this blog, dating back to 2003, precisely 118 of which have any reference to Jews. And many of those 118 posts aren’t concerned with the Jews as such, but rather, are related to Biblical references as part of discussions of atheism or Christian theology. So, given that less than one percent of the posts are even potentially related to what Chelm describes as an objective of this blog is an exaggeration so vast that it borders on outright falsehood. I assert, to the contrary, that it is the actions of Jews such as Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Chuck Schumer, and Eric Cantor that are actively providing the basis for that socially acceptable anti-semitism in America that he fears. Perhaps Chelm has forgotten that I live in Europe, where there is simply no need to create a more socially acceptable anti-semitism because far more virulent forms of anti-semitism are already quite socially acceptable here. For example, I find it hard to imagine that Americans would refer to any political leader as a “sale juif”, as Sarkozy was often called.

Moreover, being a libertarian, even a nationalist libertarian, (which I would argue is logically one and the same), I simply do not adhere to the concept of collective identity that genuine Judenhassen requires. I have previously blogged on the topic of anti-semitism here.

Concerning the seven charges listed, I shall wait for his promised refutations before adding anything further. I will, however, note that his characterization of numbers 2, 4, 5, and 6 are inaccurate and he should probably look at them more closely or they will be as easily and conclusively dismissed as his “threat of violence” claim was. And as for 7, he can rest assured there are plenty of non-Jews for whom a mere 60,000 African criminals would also be a bargain.

And finally, I suspect Chelm will want to comment upon some recent and related events in Israel, in which Sudanese migrant workers were attacked by a large and angry mob which also broke store windows and searched passing vehicles for suspected migrant workers to beat up. One wonders whether he will be able to draw any obvious historical parallels between yesterday’s events and European history.

Mailvox: why flaunt IQ?

NorthernHamlet doesn’t understand why I flaunt – not flout – my intelligence:

How would one describe that you trot out “superior IQ” during conversations, even while you acknowledge that neither you nor many of your readers think the criteria for it is legitimate?

First, I wouldn’t say that IQ is totally meaningless or even illegitimate. It clearly measures something real and objective; you will try in vain to discuss anything even remotely intellectual with an individual possessed of a 50 IQ, and I have yet to see someone with an IQ of 100 that I consider, upon the basis of non-IQ related factors, to be more intelligent than someone with an IQ of 150. That being said, it is clearly an imperfect measurement, and it can even be misleading as two people with the same IQ, one stronger on the verbal side and one stronger on the mathematical side, can look either much smarter or much more stupid than the other depending upon the subject.

Ironically enough, I’m a very good example of someone whose measured IQ score tends to significantly underestimate my relevant intelligence in my primary areas of interest because I am so handicapable when it comes to spatial relations. Anyone who has seen me packing a car or even a suitcase would be justified in thinking that I should qualify for special parking privileges, and probably three spaces at that. On the other hand, my ability to recognize patterns and generate useful predictive models from them has been considered to be rather remarkable by many. Am I a retard or a genius? The IQ score is an ineffective metric because it alternatively answers both and neither, depending upon the perspective.

(My answer, of course, is neither. I don’t believe genius is denoted by IQ or any other quantitative measure, but rather unique and significant intellectual accomplishments.)

Long before I wrote my first WND column 11 years ago, I recognized that the arguments presented by the Left, especially those that were blithely accepted by the Right, seldom amounted to more than crude appeals to intelligence. We’ve seen it on this blog time and time again, most recently in the recent series that focused on the dissection of the skeptics. Their main argument, indeed, their only real argument, is “don’t argue with me because I’m smarter than you.” It’s often couched in terms of academic credentials, but since universities no longer provide educations, but primarily serve as intellectual brand markers, credentialist-based arguments are simply slightly modified version of the same position. The reason a Harvard PhD trumps one from Auburn University isn’t because there is any legitimate reason to believe the Harvard PhD has received a better education, indeed, in at least some fields it can be easily demonstrated that the reverse is the case, but because Harvard places more stringent IQ requirements on its applicants. An appeal to academic status is mostly an appeal to intelligence, once-removed.

This is, of course, why the Left repeatedly cites study after study, many of them fake, showing that Blue state residents possess higher average IQs, why Democratic presidents are smarter than Republican presidents, and so forth. It’s all they’ve got. And so, when I flaunt my official, Mensa-approved, readily observable high intelligence in their faces, it removes from them their only rhetorically effective argument by virtue of their own metric. In other words, I’m simply playing by the rules of their game that they have established. Notice how few on the Right, even if they are highly intelligent academics with hard science PhDs, take any exception to my assertions of superintelligence, especially compared with the way the Left instinctively reacts to it rather like vampires to holy water. Of course, since they can’t convincingly claim that I am not every bit as intelligent as they are, they have no choice but to resort to the customary claim of craziness. The path that Delavagus recently trod was not only predictable, it was inevitable, as we’ve been witnessing exactly the same responses to exactly the same stimuli for more than a decade now. One could quite credibly write a paper on it with a larger sample set than one often sees in the social sciences.

Is the appeal to intelligence game nonsense? Of course it is! This is where and why I part company with the modern philosophers. Since true belief is true regardless of whether it is justified or not, whether it is known to be true or not, whether it is even believed or not, it is entirely possible for the 50-IQ retard to be correct and the 175-IQ statistical genius to be completely wrong, regardless of whether the former can even begin to reasonably articulate his beliefs or not, let alone justify them. Indeed, the history of the 20th century is riddled with example after example of the false beliefs to which the intelligentsia subscribed that were rightly rejected by hoi polloi. The reason is that tradition is more than the democracy of the dead, it is also the cumulative intelligence of the centuries. It takes considerable intelligence, intellectual humility, and usually, significant temporal and technological advantages to correctly supersede that cumulative intelligence. No doubt that is why even the most brilliant of the ancient skeptics demanded that custom and traditions be given their due.

Mailvox: God and the post-game

01 asks about the conflation of Christianity and Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis:

Okay, this is interesting: appears Vox here is some kind of simulation-solipsist, actually. And to think I thought he’s some kind of christian…hehe… Vox, would you care to answer a question ? If your simulation hypothesis is, in a general sense, correct (that is, universe is a simulation, and religious rules are supposed to be a factor by which the system selects AI programs that are “fit” for some unknown external purpose), what exactly makes you believe that simulation-designer is granting a happy future existence to those who abide by the “in-universe” rules he set, and not vice-versa (sinners go to “data haven / a better employment”, pious ones are tortured eternally or deleted)?

Is there any reliable way to tell that sim-op isn’t actually preferring AIs who see the author of “religious rules” as “crazy lying fucktard”, and deleting everyone else as soon as they “in-universe die” (or worse)? It’s not like you can have out-of-simulation knowledge of sim-op’s goals, can you?

I not only don’t see any conflict between the simulation hypothesis and the concept of a supernatural Creator God, to me it appears obvious that there is no way of reasonably distinguishing between the two from the human perspective. What leads me to believe the assurances of the “happy future existence” is that they are contained in the same game manual that contains the various reliable predictive models of human behavior provided in The Bible. I don’t know that I would necessarily describe it as “a happy future existence” so much as “the next level”, though. The interesting question to me is if Eternity is static as most Christians assume and Platonic Form theory would suggest, or if it is dynamic and it will be possible to fall from grace in that level too. I tend to incline towards the latter view, but it’s just an impression, not even an opinion.

I don’t think there is any way of meaningfully performing in-game testing of post-game results. The manual itself could be a deception, delivering on its in-game promises while deceiving with regards to its post-game ones. I touch upon this in TIA. For example, if Moloch were the sim-op aka Creator, then abortionists would be ministers and Hitler and Mao two of the saints. We can’t have out-of-game knowledge of anything because we are in the game. But to me, the important thing is to realize that you are playing the game regardless of whether you want to play it or not, whether you believe you are playing it or not.

Wängsty doubles down again

His posterior still clearly giving him an amount of pain, R. Scott Bakker keeps desperately trying to come up with a means of attacking me while avoiding the direct engagement that will expose him as the intellectual fraud he so clearly is:

Vox, it appears, has decided to wage a war of attrition, to keep throwing his cherries until people turn their bowls upside down. I’ve decided to oblige him. But since it stings my vanity knowing the self-aggrandizing way he’ll inevitably spin this, I figured I had better lay out some reasons, as well as discharge an old promise I made regarding the uses of abuses of arguing ad hominem.

Vox literally believes, if you recall, that he really is the winner of the Magical Belief Lottery. You might be inclined, on a occasion, to think that he is simply having one on, but I assure you, when he says things like, “Of course, I am a superintelligence, so the fact that [delevagus] been studying it for years whereas I read Sextus once on an airplane meant that it really wasn’t a fair contest,” he genuinely means it.

At this point, I’m inclined to simply take him as ‘Exhibit A’ of human irrationality. Some, in the jungle that has overrun the comment thread on the previous post, have suggested that I’m ‘running scared’ and the fact is, I am. But from what he represents, not what he ‘argues.’ Vox is what you might call an ‘epistemic bombast’–self-described. He literally believes he has the most powerful three pound brain in the universe. That, in my books, counts as delusional.

One thing I was always big on in my teaching days was what I called the ‘minimum condition of rationality.’ Once you realize that reason is primarily argumentative, as opposed to epistemic, you realize that reason is just as liable to deceive as to reveal. So the question you always need to ask yourself in any debate is whether you are the victim of your own ingenuity. You are more apt to use you intelligence to justify your stupidity post hoc—to rationalize—than otherwise. And that’s a fact Jack.

Thus the crucial importance of epistemic humility. Rational debate is impossible with epistemic bombasts simply because, as more and more research shows, reason is primarily a public relations device, a way to snag other three pound brains, and only secondarily epistemic, a way to snag the world. It is quite literally impossible to convince an epistemic bombast of anything on theoretical subject matters lacking any clear, consensually defined truth conditions.

This is why some cognitive psychologists are now arguing that rationality is quite independent of intelligence.

So what then is the measure of epistemic humility? How can you tell whether you should trust yourself, let alone your interlocutor?

Well some interlocutors, like Vox, make things easy for you. Vox is a self-declared epistemic bombast. As such, given that you accept that science is the best tool we have ever devised for sorting—even if only contingently—fact from fiction, you can write him off as a serious interlocutor.

In other words, you can safely dismiss him on ad hominem grounds.

He’s certainly desperate to do so. This is little more than another attempt to justify his own cowardice in failing to either answer my questions or accept my invitation to a written debate concerning his claims regarding the importance of Uncertainty and the intrinsic dangers of Certainty. His argument that he can safely dismiss me on ad hominem grounds, much less do so convincingly, doesn’t hold up, however, not only because it is a logical fallacy, but also because it is based on a complete falsehood. Wängsty is such a shameless liar, can anyone wonder why I repeatedly call him out for being such an intellectually dishonest charlatan? I don’t believe, literally or otherwise, that I possess “the most powerful three pound brain in the universe”. I’ve never claimed anything like that. I’m not the smartest one in my extended family and I wasn’t even the second-smartest in a house I shared with three other guys after college; both Horn and Big Chilly test out higher than I do. But I am a superintelligence nevertheless, and I do believe, with considerable evidence to justify that belief, that I’m observably more intelligent than Wängsty and his fellow wannabe PhD, Delavagus. This quite clearly, bothers them, as it appears to offend their sense of multiversal order that someone who does not share either their left-liberal ideological orientation or academic credentials could actually be more intelligent than they are.

Of course I genuinely believe it wasn’t a fair contest between Delavagus and me. Is there anyone who read the Dissecting the Skeptics series who did not? If so, do speak up and share your reasoning with us.

It is amusing, to be sure, that Scott asserts I am delusional while being simultaneously dumb enough to lie about things that anyone can easily check and confirm to be false. And it is even more amusing that he insists on a “minimum condition of rationality” while apparently failing to be aware that in the aforementioned unfair contest, Delavagus’s argument attacked human reason and asserted its self-refuting nature.

Scott is running scared and inclined to simply take me “as ‘Exhibit A’ of human irrationality” because I have consistently exposed his cowardice, his dishonesty, and his inability to argue his way out of a paper bag. He’s desperate to avoid direct engagement because he knows that what I will do to his arguments will make what I did to those presented by Delavagus look merciful in comparison. People have been telling Wängsty nearly from the start, eight months ago, that he had gotten me all wrong, but he keeps doubling down again and again on his original position… because you are a complete fraud when it comes to your Uncertainty Doctrine.

But as all the long-time readers here know, I won’t hesitate to continue beating the dead horse that is The Prince of Wängst until there is no longer so much as a maggot wriggling in the corpse. By the time the white flag flies, absolutely no one will take any of his claims seriously, mostly because he’ll have stripped every last vestige of intellectual integrity from himself.

Mailvox: evolutionary ideology

Anonymous Conservative writes of an amusing spin on the “science says conservatives are crazy” theme:

I’ve done a ton of research into the linkage between r/K Selection Theory in Evolutionary Ecology and political ideology. The short of it is
ideology looks like it’s just an intellectual expression of the underlying psychologies motivating r/K behaviors. Obviously, this likely speaks to the mechanism by which our ideologies evolved. That ideology and r/K behaviors are both related to the same DRD4 gene, and that the brain
structures which govern these behaviors is also the same also raises interesting questions about their evolutionary linkage.

This material is pure gold, if you’ve ever wondered why our species has this psychological divide within it. It even answers where exactly
Liberals came from, given their obvious reduced ability to function in what we often call “the state of nature” (ie a K-selected, competitive
state of nature – they would thrive in an r-selected stated of nature, where competitiveness is disfavored).

I’ve run this work by liberals, and it devastating to them, on a visceral level. They do not want to be the bunny-rabbit people, embodying a prey
species psychology within a highly K-selected, competitive species. I posted for a bit at TED, very benignly on this, just to test my
presentation in a hostile, more Liberal environment. I got the feedback and insight I needed (every liberal abandoned any thread this was posted
to), and then I left for six months. When I went back every one of my postings referencing this had been quietly deleted, despite the fact I
purposely was hyper-civil and cited everything I asserted. I don’t think they’ve ever done that to anyone else. Liberals are horrified by this
work, and the implications which naturally arise from it.

Now, I tend to regard all of this evo-psych as a ludicrous joke, especially since I am a confirmed evolutionary skeptic. Because there is so little scientific evidence in support of evolution by natural selection, I conclude it is unlikely to be the mechanism distinguishing the liberal Bunny People from the conservative Wolf People. And, of course, being a libertarian and rejecting both big government ideologies, I have neither a wolf nor a rabbit in that hunt. That being said, this is certainly a potentially useful rhetorical response to the faux-scientific rhetoric so often presented by liberals in a misguided attempt to somehow shame conservatives out of their psychologically inferior ideological perspective. (The very attempt betrays both the intrinsic intellectual flexibility of liberals as well as their inability to understand the other side.) And it certainly explains the way in which liberals are constantly looking to the government as a way to rein in their more successful competitors; because the Bunny People can’t do anything to control the Wolf People themselves, they need to appeal to the Hunter… never stopping to think that the Hunter is just as pleased to shoot bunnies as wolves… and may in fact prefer eating rabbit meat.

Anyhow, if you happen to find this sort of thing interesting, you can read a related paper on it.

Mailvox: the fifty trillion dollar question

KJ offers the opportunity to ask a question of some European functionaries:

The former and long-serving vice chancellor of Germany (Dr Joschka Fischer) and the EU’s High Representative for Common and Security Policy (Dr. Javier Solana) are here… debating the economic situation (and potential solutions). The Spaniard is (in summary) saying the situation is looking pretty shit right now and it could be fixed by Germany “opening up” to the rest of poorer/less-productive Europe (when pressed he confessed that includes offering up more of its – i.e. Germany’s – money).
The German is (in summary) saying the situation is looking pretty shit and what we need is to centralise and consolidate political power in Europe. Lol! 4th Reich anyone!? According to both, the Euro breaking up would just be catastrophic. We can ask questions but I don’t have the heart to ask any. It’s so depressing listening to this glossy, typical politic speak from which no straight answers can be extracted. Do you questions for the German Vice Chancellor or EU’s High Representative?

I wrote back: Yes. Since inflation or default are the only way to escape debt of this magnitude, which is the vice-chancellor’s preference? If you get a second question, ask why the successful bank defaults in Iceland have not been permitted to take place in the EU.

Completely admits that historic 1920s inflation destroyed the German middle class, and admits not a result of market developments but intentionally by German central bank to write off war debt, so accepts inflation is going to have to play its part in the current situation!! Greek default, (and kicking them out), is not an option apparently, not forthcoming as to why other than that it would be “hugely detrimental to the rest of Europe”. No luck on the second question; earlier on he had alluded to “endless lawsuits” and “serious capital restrictions” to anyone taking the opt-out of paying their debts which he implied would make that option not viable. I didn’t hear Iceland mentioned at all.

This lends further support to what most of us here have always assumed, that the central banks and governments will inflate. The question is, can they do so? This is where the question of the nature of money, and if credit is more properly considered money or simply the accounting of money, becomes the 50 trillion dollar question. Nate and I will be debating this in the reasonably near future, but I’ll leave you with this thought: given their performance over the last four years, what are the chances that the core monetary assumption of the central banks and governments is correct?

Mailvox: exposing the false skeptic

R. Scott Bakker asks why I believe his skepticism is nothing more than a pose:

And what is ‘faux’ about my skepticism?

That’s a fair question. I can count seven reasons right off the bat, but it’s hardly a comprehensive list.

1. His skepticism predominantly runs in one direction. This indicates that he isn’t actually a skeptic, he is merely using skeptical tactics as a tool in service to his dogma, his very conventional left-liberal dogma. When he talks about the “need” to challenge those who are certain of various things and the danger their certainty presents, he openly demonstrates his anti-skepticism.

2. He does not construct his arguments on the basis of what other people hold to be true. For example, when he has taken exception to what I have written, he does not exclusively utilize my beliefs, convictions, and assumptions, but instead attempts to criticize them on the basis of his own first-order beliefs. Again, he’s showing that he is a dogmatist, using dogmatic dialectic, not a skeptic using skeptical dialectic.

3. He makes absolutely no attempt to reach suspension of judgment. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact, he repeatedly attempts to judge his interlocutors and place himself in an assumed position of superiority vis-a-vis them. I presume this is why he fears to engage in an actual debate, as opposed to his usual sniping and empty posturing.

4. He does not place competing dogmas in opposition to each other, but rather, attempts to change the discussion to a nonsensical one concerning second-order beliefs. He doesn’t seem to understand that repeatedly asking “why?” and “but how do you know that you know?” is a childish tactic, not a skeptical one.

5. He observably possess little imperturbability or tranquility. By this metric, even I am far more of a skeptic than he will ever be. I can only think of a few authors who are more sensitive and more prone to getting upset over perceived criticism than The Prince of Wängst. That’s how he earned the title in the first place!

6. He assents to many things that are unknown. His confessed faith in science, for example, is profoundly unskeptical.

7. He does not pay any observable heed to nature or the tradition of laws and customs. In fact, he even uses his faux skepticism as an excuse to attack traditional laws and customs as well as those who hold to them.

UPDATE – Cornucopia makes some fascinating admissions concerning the supposed skepticism of the Three Pound Brain gang:

I don’t know of anyone here who has used skepticism in such a way as “we cannot know for sure that water boils at 100 deg.” If that is actually true, nobody here really gives a damn. As far as I now it’s usually limited to categories of moral certainty and things like that, where skepticism may really could have an impact for the better. There’s the Hitler example and the Breivik example. What good might have come if these men had continued to second guess themselves and not convinced themselves they were sure of what they believed?

Maybe you’re generalizing a little too much, in which case I can see why a lot of what’s been said might seem hypocritical. True, a lot of people here are probably to the left of center, which by Phrrhonism standards is probably an off limits opinion. Oh well.

While it may be true that no one there uses skepticism in such a way, all that objection serves to do is prove my point that no one there is a philosophical skeptic. The attempt to limit skepticism to the categories “of moral certainty and things like that” is precisely why I am both mocking the TPB gang for its intellectual incoherence and condemning it for its intellectual dishonesty. There is absolutely no basis in skeptical philosophy for anyone to attempt to limit its scope to the realm of morality; the very idea that “skepticism may really have an impact for the better” on phenomena is itself intrinsically anti-skeptical! Cornucopia is admitting exactly what I accused Scott of doing: utilizing the pretense of skepticism in service of his own dogma.

He brings up two examples, Hitler and Breivik, and asks what good might have come of it if either man had been less sure of himself. Conversely, what if the Wehrmacht generals possessed more certainty, stopped second guessing themselves, and deposed Hitler before the Austrian Anschluss? That would have brought about precisely the same hypothetical good… never mind that preventing World War II and the Holocaust cannot be considered by the skeptic to be an abstract good in the first place. And what if the Norwegian left had been less certain about the good of multiculturalism and not permitted massive third world immigration? That, even more definitely than uncertainty on Breivik’s part, would have prevented the slaughter on Utoya island.

Does everyone see what I did there? That is actual skepticism at work. Balancing two ideas that are opposed to each other and thus reaching suspension of judgment. Philosophical skepticism isn’t something that one can simply apply here and there as one wishes to attack someone else’s beliefs. It’s a system, even an agōgē, if we are to believe Delavagus. What Cornucopia and Scott are advocating isn’t merely dogmatic, anti-skeptical, and incoherent, it’s also dishonest and intellectually reprehensible.

Mailvox: various and sundry

First, a prayer request from RS:

I’m a long time reader of your blog and I know the most of the Ilk are Christians and know first hand the power of prayer. I have a friend whose little girl is going through a very rare form of cancer. She is a fiery redhead and now is facing the loss of her hair due to the chemo and radiation. Would you please ask the Ilk to pray for this little one? She is facing this bravely, but her parents are having a very hard time. It would mean the world to her knowing that so many people are praying for her and her family. Her name is Libby and she is seven years old.

BS asks the wrong person about law school:

I’m very intrigued with your musings regarding lawyers. Are there any situations where going to law school is beneficial? I’ve read some law school guidebooks since you started mentioning this and some of them say that unless you attend one of the top-14 schools (Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, NYU, Berkeley, Michigan, Penn, Virginia, Duke, Cornell, Georgetown & Northwestern) then you may as well just forget it and not go to law school as it won’t be worth the time & effort. If a kid were to get into Columbia or Chicago, would it then be OK for him to attend or even then would he need to get scholarship money to make it a worthwhile investment? Let’s assume that if you do not get into one of the aforementioned top-14 schools that it automatically disqualifies you from attending. In your mind what are the scenarios in which it would be enough to make it worth the effort? Is acceptance into the top-14 enough?

Since the supply of lawyers is already excessive, I see no reason to go to law school unless you’re going to a top five school and you have fairly serious connections in the legal world, by which I mean that you’re going to be made a partner barring any major criminal convictions. Merely being able to get into Columbia or Chicago is irrelevant, sans connections you’re still a dime a dozen.

Hermit, meanwhile, inquires concerning calcio:

My oldest son, who is 7, is a month into his first season of soccer. I don’t have a ton of experience in many contact sports, but I did play soccer for a few years when I was his age. His biggest current weakness is lack of aggressiveness. One kid on his team isn’t the best player, but is always on top of the ball and keeps the opponents off. Which, for now at least, makes up for his lack of skill. I’ve tried to implement Game and assertiveness teaching elsewhere in his life, with mixed results. I was considering doing a daily boot camp ala Full Metal Jacket: “This is my soccer ball, there are many like it, but this is mine. Without my ball, I am useless…”, “Show me your war face!!”, or something to that effect. Do you have any advice on this?

I found that the best way was to simply play in the backyard every now and then and have the kid take the ball away from you. Do it slowly at first, then gradually pick up speed. Once he’s not afraid of attacking an adult running relatively fast, he’s not going to be afraid of attacking kids on the ball who are much closer to his size. It’s also useful, when he’s on the bench, to point out the difference between kids going in hard and kids just sticking their feet out. Ender had a terrible game two weeks ago because he was playing very tentatively after missing a few games on top of a week’s break in the schedule for spring vacation. But now that he understands the importance of controlled aggression, he went out last weekend and had an excellent game while marking the opposing team’s best striker and holding him scoreless. In general, the only way to deal with instinctive fears in sport is to expose the young player to them and gradually help them become inured to it.

Mailvox: Sextus say relax

Not being a reader of this blog, Delavagus would have had no reason to know I’d read Sextus Empiricus last October, which is why I’m somewhat more familiar with Pyrrhonian scepticism than he probably assumed. Anyhow, the two questions he presented weren’t difficult to answer, although I leave it to the reader to decide how effectively I answered them.

I’m particularly interested if, after reading [his two posts on ancient skepticism], you still want to charge skepticism with incoherence. If so, (a) what do you think the incoherence consists in? and (b) in what way does Sextus’s argument against peritrope fail?

First, let me point out that I’ve told Delavagus I am quite willing to respond in detail to those two posts on ancient skepticism if he’s willing to allow me to post large chunks of them – properly credited to him, of course – here on the blog so that everyone easily can follow along. But it’s not necessary to go into that level of detail to answer these two questions, although I have to point out that my charge of incoherence was not directed at Sextus Empiricus, the Pyrrhonian school of scepticism, or even skepticism in general, but rather at the professed uncertainty of R. Scott Bakker.

That being said, yes, I do still want to charge skepticism, specifically Pyrrhonian scepticism, with incoherence. In answer to (a), I think the incoherence consists of the inherent contradiction between its arguments and its aims. In Chapter XII What Is the Aim of Scepticism, Empiricus writes: “It follows naturally to treat of the aim of the Sceptical School. An aim is that for which as an end all things are done or thought, itself depending on nothing, or in other words, it is the ultimatum of things to be desired. We say, then, that he aim of the Sceptic is “tranquility of soul” in those things which pertain to the opinion and moderation in the things that life imposes.”

This creates two problems. It should be readily apparent that we can observe here that the Sceptic is claiming knowledge of things that, by virtue of his own philosophical system, he cannot possibly know. If he cannot know that the soul exists, he cannot reasonably aim for its tranquility. If he cannot know what tranquility is, he cannot aim for helping his soul reach that state. If he has no quantifiable metric for the things that life imposes, he cannot know what is excess, what is insufficient, and still less what is that desired moderation. Pyrrhonian scepticism is incoherent as both a philosophy and as a way of life because it is little more than a philosophically offensive weapon that can be trained just as effectively on its own stated purposes as on anything else.

Moreover, it can be shown to empirically fail as well, at least to the extent that it actually exists today. One of the arguments presented by the Uncertainty crowd is that the unquestioning nature of belief certainty is dangerous because it permits people to act freely without remorse or guilty conscience. But what is the most extreme belief certainty if not “‘tranquility of soul’ in those things which pertain to the opinion”? The member of the SS-Totenkopfverbände who was morally certain of the rightness of the Final Solution and liquidated the enemies of the National Socialist regime during the day without losing any sleep over it at night is, by Sextus Empiricus’s own chosen measure, a more perfect Sceptic than the philosophy student who tosses and turns throughout the night wrestling with the troubling question of his own existence. Moreover, in discussing various beliefs with the Uncertainty crowd at Three Pound Brain, (who are not necessarily proper Pyrrhonian School Sceptics by any means), it is readily observable that they possess no tranquility of soul, as they are, by their own admission, deeply bothered by the mere existence of beliefs with which they strongly disagree.

Concerning (b), Sextus’s argument against peritrope fails on three counts. First, he erroneously conflates the subset (his particular philosophy) with the set (all philosophico-rational thought); because there is philosophico-rational thought that is not Pyrrhonian scepticism, all refutation of the latter cannot automatically be taken as any refutation of the former. Second, even if Sextus were correct and charging the skeptic with self-refutation did amount to charging philosophico-rational thought as such with self-refutation, that doesn’t change the fact that since Pyrrhonian scepticism is a subset of philosophico-rational thought, if the charge is substantiated and all philosophico-rational thought is, in fact, self-refuting, then the charge of peritrope against Scepticism must also be correct! It’s not a valid defense. Third, Sextus doesn’t realize that the intended target of Pyrrhonian arguments is irrelevant with regards to its self-refuting nature; it doesn’t matter what he is intending to target when it can be shown that his arguments necessarily also target his own stated aims.

And in conclusion, I note that it is not only the core aims that are susceptible to a valid charge of peritrope, but each of the Ten Tropes that are used to justify Pyrrhonian “suspension of judgment” as well.