Tag: mailvox

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.

Mailvox: writing advice

AD has a few questions about the business:

I am a fan of your writing, both fiction and non-fiction, and own three of your books. I have thought about writing both fiction and non-fiction on topics that I think have not been written on or I am just ignorant of such books existing, and I want to write these books. I still think that my writing skills have a long ways to go before I can turn out a book that I would feel happy about (and just to clarify, I am not looking to earn a living via writing, there are just some books I must write). Let me just list my brief questions in a list:

1. Are sample chapters worth sending to publishers?

2. What are some pitfalls people should avoid (both non-fiction and fiction)?

3. If you could mention one or two resources that will help someone write either non-fiction or fiction work, what would the resource(s) be?

4. What do you think of self-publishing or using a publisher for your work?

5. If one uses a publisher, how would one make the book available for free or a very low price?

6. What have you found to be the best three ways to advertise your book?

First, I’m pleased to see that AD has the common sense to pursue writing as a past time and isn’t thinking that it’s a practical way to make a living these days. In answer to his questions:

1. Yes. The usual submission consists of three sample chapters. Even if you send a complete manuscript, there is almost no chance anyone is going to read the whole thing anyhow. Nor is it necessary. When I was doing the slush pile reading for a SF/F publisher six or seven years ago, I usually had a sound basis for rejecting a submission within the first three pages. Those who can’t write, quite clearly can’t write. And most people can’t write.

2. The biggest pitfall I’ve had to deal with is the feeling that one’s work has to be tremendously brilliant or original in order to be good or successful. No one actually gives a damn about such things except other writers and the writer himself. The Tolkiens and Ecos are the rare exceptions. I agonized over attempting to fit the story of Summa Elvetica to the philosophical structure, couldn’t manage to do it, and was subsequently bemused to find that absolutely no one noticed, much less cared, about what was arguably the most structurally original fantasy novel in years… and the only reviewer who even commented on the philosophical argument actually mistook it for a real one from Thomas Aquinas. The main focus should simply be on writing a good story with interesting characters, everything else is window dressing.

3. Obtain a book or two that is directly relevant to your general subject and will give your book solid depth of detail. TIA would have been much less effective without An Encyclopedia of Wars. In the novel I’m currently writing, I’m making heavy use of various letters and speeches by Cicero and other Romans.

4. Electronic self-publishing is now without question the way to go. In fact, I’d originally intended to self-publish Arts of Dark and Light, and it was only because I was contractually obligated to offer it to Marcher Lord due to its connection to Summa Elvetica that I ended up, to my surprise, publishing it through them.

5. Negotiate it in the contract. That’s why my ebooks are much less expensive than most. I made it clear to all three of my publishers that I wanted the price to be 1.99 and not the full price or 9.99 that most publishers at the time were charging. When the EW ebooks are released, hopefully next month, they’ll most likely be priced at 1.99 as well.

6. I am not the correct person to answer this question, as I think I have done a very poor job of advertising them. Pretty much all I do is write a reasonably popular blog and showcase a cover or two on the sidebar. Judging by the results, this isn’t ineffective, but also is not the best way to go about advertising one’s books.

Mailvox: considering self-correction

Azimus is interested in the possibility that science is not, in fact, self-correcting.

Experimental replication, in the very rare instances it is actually performed and is successful, is nothing more than auditing. There is no substantial difference between one scientist re-running another scientist’s experiment and one accountant re-calculating another accountant’s books. In other words, science isn’t self-correcting in any meaningful sense even in its ideal form.”

Interesting thought. Tilting a little in the direction of a “let’s have a definition war” argument, but an interesting thought. By that yardstick would you call the market, or engineering self-correcting?

Very well, we can certainly do this the methodical way. Rather than risk a definition war, I will first ask Azimus for his definition of “self-correcting” before I answer his question about the market or engineering being self-correcting. I’m not avoiding his question, it’s only that as I’ve pointed out before, depending upon how one defines “self-correcting”, science is either NOT self-correcting or else it is TRIVIALLY self-correcting in the same manner that practically every human activity is.

To which Azimus responded:

As I read your post, it struck me that the definition of “self” is scaleable. In your accountant example, accountant #1 may not be self correcting, but if accountant #2 audits #1 as part of a departmental auditing system, the accounting department is “self correcting.” In the same way an engineering firm has a green-horn doing most of the design work, which is then reviewed by a 5yr+ experienced PE who examines the work and makes corrections. The greenhorn is not self correcting, but scaling the word “self” to be the engineering firm, would the firm not be “self correcting”?

A marksman firing at a target makes allowances for distance, elevation distances, windspeed, etc. His first shot misses. He interprets the fall of the round and hypothesizes the wind was stronger than he allowed for and he adjusts accordingly in the second shot hitting the target. Is this self correcting?

Since there is no argument on the word “correctiong”, The battle line seems to be drawn along the word “self”. I see it as scaleable and will define the term thus:

Self correcting: an entity is self correcting if it contains a mechanism by which error is identifed and eliminated.

Very good. So, Azimus has chosen the option by which we must ultimately conclude that science is TRIVIALLY self-correcting. He is correct, and in his examples given, the auditing department, the engineering firm, and the marksman would all be considered self-correcting.

But from both his definition and his examples follow three obvious questions. They are:

1. What is the entity of science?
2. If there is no successful replication of a scientific experiment, and therefore no self-correction, is the experiment still science?
3. Since scientific reliability and authority claim is based on its self-correcting mechanism, how is science any more reliable than any other entity that possesses its own mechanism for self-correction?

I’m sure we shall all await his answers to those three questions with interest. In the meantime, I owe him a direct answer to his previous question: yes, the market and the engineering discipline are both self-correcting by his definition provided. The market self-corrects incorrect corporate valuations. Engineering self-corrects technologies that do not work and structures that do not stand.

That touching faith in science

I thought it was interesting to see that one of Wängsty’s commenters, Cornucopia, still erroneously clings to a blind faith in the “self-correcting” nature of science:

In the operational sense, does it really matter whether science is intrinsically or extrinsically self-correcting? The study you alluded to previously was done by confirming the results of scientists by scientific means. It’s not as if somebody sat down with a Ouija board and confirmed or refuted scientific findings or had them fed to them by revelation. If you happen to be basing your claim that science is not intrinsically self-correcting on something as superficial as who happens to be funding the effort to confirm it, I think you’ll just engaged in a cheap slander against the process of science.

He missed the point. Science isn’t self-correcting by any sense that doesn’t apply equally well to any number of other non-scientific fields. Peer review is nothing more than editing. Experimental replication, in the very rare instances it is actually performed and is successful, is nothing more than auditing. There is no substantial difference between one scientist re-running another scientist’s experiment and one accountant re-calculating another accountant’s books. In other words, science isn’t self-correcting in any meaningful sense even in its ideal form.

And, of course, as was demonstrated in the paper I cited, most “science” is not performed according to the ideal form, and even when it is, it often turns out to be unreliable. Even the best, “gold standard” science has been reported to be 89 percent unreliable, as a matter of fact. It must also be pointed out that if scientific error is identified by non-scientists who aren’t engaged in science, then the correction cannot be considered extrinsic self-correction because it is not self-correcting in any sense.

One might as reasonably claim that crime is self-correcting because the police sometimes arrest criminals.

And while I find it strange to have to point this out, my argument about the unreliability of science is absolutely not based upon an appeal to a genetic fallacy of who happens to be funding the science, although it is worth noting that the intrinsic unreliability of modern science does create the opportunity for a significant amount of undetected corruption.

Mailvox: the divine metric

G asks a question that is much easier than many who ask it suppose it to be:

I was brought up in a Presbyterian church and settled in Church of God (national headquarters to boot). I have been a staunch believer and keeper of the faith for well over 30 years. I have begun to question why the Bible is the Truth. I’ve spoken with members of more than a few faiths (and others without faith) & as we know they all KNOW their God is the true & powerful force in the universe, all galaxies, clusters, solar systems, planets, but most significantly our lil inhabitable asteroid. I was raised a Christian and the only way to get to the promise land is through Christ. Allah and others have a different plan for the ultimate prize. Folks are dieing and have killed for gods that their parents told them was real and true. Why am I blessed to have parents that taught me the “right” religion. My Jewish pal & atheist pals are more than pleased with what they have been taught.

As far as the Bible,(noted that I did not do the research myself) tis my understanding that several books were left out or added to the original work? That a group of men decided which books would be in the teachings that the world would learn and preach as the truth. Some say they were guided by a divine hand (no free will?). Also, I know it is a tired argument but I have not ever received a answer that quite satisfies me- the talking serpents, forbidden fruit, adam and eve- who recorded they info,a rib, much of Jesus’ time written about was well after his death (accuracy?). Some things are to be taken litteraly & some are fables – which ones – who decides – each church and divisions within have different interpretations. I seem to get the “He works in mysterious ways & some things we’ll never know”. That is a whole cart load of bison dung. I don’t know- guess im rambling now with errant thoughts but I’m beginning to question my faith as measured by others faiths & those with a lack of a belief in a god or gods. Using Occams Razor, it is pretty well deduced that I well have been wasting my time. I non-trivially pray that I’m wrong and will once again see the light.

First, G reveals that his “research”, such as it is, doesn’t even rise to the level of reading Wikipedia about the major world religions. He hasn’t actually spoken to “members of more than a few faiths”; we know this because only a very small number of religions are even monotheistic and therefore make the sort of claim of God that G erroneously declares they do. Of the five religions with a globally significant number of faithful, precisely two of them believe in a ruling divinity, Christianity and Islam.

And it is a tremendous misapplication of Occam’s Razor to think that it favors atheism in any way. The correct divine metric is to compare the truth claims of a religion or anti-religion with observable reality. Is it true, for example, that the poor will always be with us or was Marx correct and the elimination of poverty is merely a matter of first establishing the worker’s paradise? Does Man have free will, as the Bible teaches, or are two of the leading New Atheists right to declare, like the Muslims, that he does not? Is Sam Harris correct in insisting that religion is the greatest current threat to human existence, and if so, how has it failed to destroy the planet for the previous 8,000 years of recorded human history?

The Bible says “seek and ye shall find”. But, of course, it is necessary to do so in a genuine spirit of honest inquiry. If it is patently obvious to me that G’s “search” has hitherto been superficial and unserious, I tend to doubt it is capable of fooling God. Furthermore, before attempting to wrestle with the queen of all sciences, I strongly suggest G cut his teeth on some easier ones. The fact that he appears to believe that he presently dwells upon an “inhabitable asteroid” suggests that his ability to correctly distinguish between fact and fiction is rather limited.

Mailvox: the benefits of immigration

In which a historical objection is raised:

I’ve read that the two migrations of Greeks into Italy (the first around Cato the Younger’s time IIRC, and the second after the fall of Constantinople) were beneficial for Italian society because of the Greek learning and culture they brought with them. Are these relevant to your thesis about the negative effect of immigration on receiving societies? As an immigrant to Italy, what is your opinion?

Cato the Younger lived from 95 to 46 BC. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC. The Roman Republic is considered to have ended in 29 BC. I submit that this specific example is very relevant to my thesis, insofar as decades of civil war followed by a collapse into one-man dictatorship would generally be considered to be a societal negative.

As for the second wave of Greek immigration, those were Greeks in the Byzantine sense, not the Hellenic. Since Byzantium was still somewhat more civilized than thrice-sacked Rome or the oft-invaded Italian peninsula, this is rather like asking if immigration from the United States to some of the more war-torn African societies would be beneficial. And remember, the difference between Byzantium and the Italian peninsula would likely have been even starker were it not for the Venetian conquest and sack of Constantinople in 1204.

Mailvox: awaiting enlightenment

I am sure we all await, with no little interest, the enlightenment that Freddy, the Calvinist, is sure to shed upon the arrogant, and yet somehow feeble little brains of the “Arminians” here at Vox Popoli:

The Arminians here act just like Jehovah Witnesses. They deny Trinity and the Diety of Christ because they can’t wrap their feeble little brains around those concepts…just like what the fundy Arminians do with the Sovereignty of God. The height of arrogance and intellectual pride.

Well, Freddy, since you have apparently been able to wrap your powerful and enormous, yet humble and not-at-all intellectual brain around the Trinity, the Diety of Christ, and the Sovereignty of God, I can’t imagine that you will have any trouble whatsoever in explicating the true and correct theology of those three concepts, slowly and patiently, for the edification of the less capable minds here.

I certainly look forward to hearing your explanation of how a man can be held responsible for something he cannot do, for how God can simultaneously know and not know the hour, (still less forsake Himself), and to hear your opinion on whether it was God, in His Sovereignty, who personally contemplated the issue before finally deciding how many times your pair of anal sphincters would constrict in the process of your daily defecations over the previous 24 hours. I am also curious to know if you believe a Calvinist, who by his own assertion cannot choose to worship God, will be damned or saved in the event that human action is required for salvation. Perhaps we can call it Jamsco’s Wager, the idea that the Calvinist who claims he is incapable of making a choice has nevertheless made it in the event that he is wrong about his incapability.

We’ve long assumed that Calvinism isn’t a salvation issue, but I am not so sure in this one regard. After all, how can someone claim to have done something they simultaneously claim cannot be done? Perhaps it was this dichotomy, and not his panoply of evil actions, that explains why the Robispierre of Geneva went to his grave wondering if he was not one of God’s Elect after all.

The “Arminian”, after all, needs fear nothing. What is it to him if God laughs at his illusion of ability and tells him, “you did not choose me, my friend, I chose you!” The Calvinist, on the other hand, is once more in exactly the same position as the atheist, in attempting to explain to the Almighty why he did not choose to submit himself to the Lord Jesus Christ when he had the opportunity.

The atheist will say: “It’s not my fault! I didn’t choose to worship you because I didn’t believe you existed!” The Calvinist will say: “It’s not my fault! I didn’t choose to worship you because John Calvin, and RC Sproul, and John Piper told me I couldn’t!”

I’m a little choked up

I’m not sure anyone has ever said anything quite so nice to a humble award-winning cruelty artist. Munson writes:

BRAVISSIMO! (Munson rises from his chair, enraptured, vigorously applauding)

Such nuanced invective! “You’re a maleducated twit, Sigrid.” Channeling James Kilpatrick no less! Keynesian/Mises Institute-man, that Dennis Miller-like slider caught me looking; couldn’t even take a swing at it. You have the precision of a coiled cobra, with much less empathy. In an age that honors meaty roundhouse rhetoric, you show the skill of an AWACS directed surgical strike, killing only those necessary, leaving the rest to their dreary lives of drinking curdling sour goat milk and fucking their grub-like mustachioed women. Your writing is a delight sir. I could not find the post that started the exchange; no matter, the artist rises above his inspiration. And you are no less than that VD.

The true artist creates only for himself, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t take deep satisfaction in encountering those Umberto Eco describes as his Ideal Readers. In case you’re interested, both the art and the inspiration can be found here.

Another commenter, one Odds, notes what makes puncturing academic gasbags so intrinsically worthwhile in addition to the sheer entertainment value provided:

It’s that “intellectual” style of speech that does it. So many kids, especially in worthless fields like women’s studies, think it makes them sound smart. There must be some course for liberal arts children where they tell them, “communication isn’t about conveying your position in the most precise and succinct way, but about illustrating your fantabulous credentials.” Then they end up saying far more than they meant to and it reads less like an original argument than a quote mined from an obscure, little-regarded essay. And deep down, in what’s left of their soul, they fervently hope that no one will notice they’ve presented their ideas through vocabulary rather than through arguments, and that they’ve made no argument at all.

It’s always amusing to see that the worst offenders in the great game of credentialist competition are the larval academics who don’t actually possess any credentials yet. There is nothing wrong with an extensive vocabulary or complicated sentence structure. But it is a grotesquely false to believe that the mere use of either is sufficient to make an argument convincing, and it is contemptible to knowingly use such things to try rhetorically intimidating those who possess dialectically stronger arguments into submissive acquiescence.

I further note that habitual reliance upon rhetorical bullying is a relatively reliable indicator that one is susceptible to such techniques.

Mailvox: a near-first

Oregon Mouse complains:

My husband used to live in Colorado. He took his family out for a small hike and a rock tumbled down out of nowhere and hit his 9 year old on the head. It knocked her out cold but perhaps feminism is the real culprit? How dare a 9 year old girl walk around outside!!

What a remarkable near-accomplishment! And at an even younger age than the famous Grand Canyon hiker! Do send us the link to the international newspaper accounts of her deed!