Tag: philosophy

Dissecting the sceptics I

I’ve been asked in the past to explain how go about breaking down and critically analyzing an argument and how I am able to so readily spot the flaws it contains. Since Delavagus has demonstrated that he is no more able to discuss and defend his views of Pyrrhonism than Sextus Empiricus, albeit without Sextus’s excuse of having been dead for 1,802 yearsfound the time to respond to my two questions, his two posts on ancient scepticism will serve as an ideal specimen for this example. I’m not going to do it all at once, however. This will be an ongoing series over the next few weeks in order to keep the argument digestible since most of you have no reason to be familiar with the ancient source material. But I can assure you that it’s really not very difficult stuff so long as you look past the fluff of the vocabulary.

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

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

Now, in his post To Know Our Unknowing, Delavagus describes himself thusly: “My name’s Roger Eichorn. I’m a friend of Scott’s, an aspiring fantasy novelist, and a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Chicago. My primary area of specialization is ancient skepticism, particularly the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus.”

So what does this tell us? He’s educated, he’s inexperienced, he’s at least moderately intelligent, he’s a wannabee, he’s a larval academic, and like most would-be novelists, he’s probably got at least a bit of a superiority complex. Moreover, he chooses to frequent a place that we know to be run by a confirmed intellectual snake. We also know, given the subject matter, that there is a textual authority to which his arguments can be compared and held accountable. So, the answers to the three questions are: factual, yes, and no. It’s a factual argument written by someone who probably knows what he’s talking about and is potentially at least a little intellectually dishonest. And since he’s an academic of sorts, we know to look for the word games, in particular the definitional bait-and-switch of which they are so very fond. At this point, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I smell a rat, only that I believe there is a high probability that a rat or two will soon present itself. So, I read the post paying particular attention to any definitional ambiguities or unwarranted leaps of logic.

In this post, I’d like to discuss one of Scott’s favorite themes—human stupidity—in relation to Pyrrhonism. Scott focuses, and for good reason, on the growing scientific (that is, empirical) evidence to the effect that humans are stupid, stupid creatures. Much of this work is cutting-edge stuff, largely because of recent technological advances that have (as Scott likes to say) broken open the ‘black box’ of the human brain. Even so, there’s a sense in which the findings Scott brings to our attention are merely the latest chapter in a long story, a story that goes all the way back to the ancients.

Sextus Empicirus himself based many of his arguments on empirical evidence. Though, of course, his ‘evidence’ was not the sort of thing that would pass muster in a modern scientific context, I believe there’s every reason to think that, were he alive today, Sextus would be at least as fascinated by the growing body of evidence concerning human cognitive shortcomings as Scott is—and moreover, there’s every reason to think that he would have made potent use of this evidence in his skeptical dialectic.

However, Sextus did not think that we require empirical evidence in order to arrive at the conclusion that we’re all idiots. That conclusion, he thought, can be arrived at purely a priori, that is, while lounging in our armchairs and merely thinking through our knowing. Let’s see how this works.

The question is this: What, if anything, do we know? Knowledge is generally taken to be justified true belief.* (This is a twentieth-century formulation, but the thought goes back at least to Plato.) On the one hand, there are beliefs—all sorts of beliefs, many of them batshit crazy. On the other hand, there is the way things actually are (truth). How do we assure ourselves that a belief reflects how things actually are? We do so, the thought goes, by justifying that belief.

* = Those with a philosophical background might at this point protest, “But what of Gettier cases?” I’m going to ignore Gettier here, partly to keep things simple, but also because I think Gettier’s problematization of the standard conception of knowledge fails, that its failure has been demonstrated numerous times, and that epistemologists should just move on already.

Now, far be it from me to argue with the assertion that humans are stupid, stupid creatures. MPAI, after all. That being said, do you spot the first error? We’ve barely gotten started and already we find a questionable word game being played with “evidence”, as well as irrelevant musings on what would fascinate Sextus and an unjustified belief claim concerning how Sextus would have made use of modern scientific evidence. The latter, we will eventually see, is particularly ironic, but at this point it’s neither here nor there. Perhaps, like the gentleman with the 190+ IQ, Sextus would instead spend his days looking at pictures of unclad women, repeatedly taking IQ tests, and writing jokes. We don’t know, and more to the point, we don’t care. But what this very usefully tells us is that Delavagus is not a rigorous thinker and he is liable to going off on irrelevant tangents and making groundless assertions concerning things he can’t possibly know.

Of course, the second error is not only readily observable, but is the very sort of error towards which we anticipated he would be inclined. He practically highlights it for us, as he writes “Knowledge is generally taken to be justified true belief.” Weasel words such as “generally”, “basically”, and “pretty much” are always red flags, particularly when they precede something as important as the definition of an argument’s foundation or central subject. So is “justified true belief” really what knowledge is? Let’s turn to the dictionary.

Knowledge
Origin: 1250–1300; Middle English knouleche

1. acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition: knowledge of many things.
2. familiarity or conversance, as with a particular subject or branch of learning: A knowledge of accounting was necessary for the job.
3. acquaintance or familiarity gained by sight, experience, or report: a knowledge of human nature.
4. the fact or state of knowing; the perception of fact or truth; clear and certain mental apprehension.
5. awareness, as of a fact or circumstance: He had knowledge of her good fortune.
6. something that is or may be known; information: He sought knowledge of her activities.
7. the body of truths or facts accumulated in the course of time.
8. the sum of what is known: Knowledge of the true situation is limited.
9. sexual intercourse.

As should be clear, Delavagus’s definition of knowledge isn’t a valid one in common usage, but instead represents a different concept altogether. His statement is provably incorrect, as knowledge is quite clearly NOT “generally taken to be justified true belief”. I tend to doubt Sextus Empiricus is considered to have logically proven that Man cannot have sex, even if, as per Tucker Max, the average philosophy student at the University of Chicago has about as much experience of sexual intercourse as he does with riding unicorns. But the important thing is that Pyrrhonism, or more properly, Delavagus’s argument in defense of Pyrrhonism, has no more connection to the other eight definitions of “knowledge” than it does to sex. This tenth definition would be fine, of course, (perhaps it could be termed “knowledge in the philosophical sense”), so long as Delavagus subsequently avoids attempting to switch from “justified true belief” to any of the nine definitions provided by the dictionary. He hasn’t done so yet, but due to his attempt to pass off his own definition as a general one, we now know to be on guard for the likely switch to come.

As for his dismissal of Gettier, who showed that there are instances of justified true belief that are not knowledge and therefore it is not correct to attempt equating knowledge with justified true belief, Delavagus’s handwaving and appeal to the authority of his own opinion only underlines his previously identified lack of intellectual precision. But since he doesn’t attempt to deal with it, we have no need to do so either other than to point out that he readily admits to ignoring this known objection to a key foundation of his argument.

Subsequent sections
Dissecting the skeptics II
Dissecting the skeptics III
Dissecting the skeptics IV
Dissecting the skeptics V
Dissecting the skeptics VI
Dissecting the skeptics VII
Dissecting the skeptics VIII

Related
Exposing the False Skeptic
The “Skeptic” Confesses

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.

Science and the problem of the hammer

Stephen Law not only points out that science is fundamentally incapable of answering many questions and solving many puzzles, but that it wasn’t even involved in one of its landmark “experiments”:

KEY POINTS ARE:

(i) this is not a puzzle that can be solved by empirical research.
(ii) It’s a conceptual puzzle that requires a conceptual solution. It’s a puzzle that takes armchair reflection to solve.

So not every puzzle is a puzzle that is best solved by empirical investigation. Some of the deepest and most baffling puzzles can, in fact, only be solved by armchair reflection.

In fact, all sorts of interesting discoveries can be made from the armchair. Mathematical discoveries, for example, can be made from the armchair. They can be achieved by pure thought alone – without doing any data collection or laboratory experiments.

We can also RULE OUT certain hypothesis from the comfort of the armchair.

Suppose an explorer claims to have discovered a four-sided triangle on their travels. Should we mount an expedition to go and check whether this momentous claim is correct? Of course not. We can figure out, from the comfort of our armchairs, that no such triangle exists. Triangles, by definition, have three sides. So a four-sided triangle involves a contradiction. It cannot possibly exist.

This is a rather obvious example. It’s obvious that four-sided triangles are ruled out conceptually. They involve a logical contradiction. But sometimes what is ruled out conceptually is NOT so obvious.

Aristotle claimed that objects of different mass will fall at different speeds. A large, heavy metal ball will fall faster than a small, light metal ball.

Back in the late 16thC, Galileo proved that Aristotle was wrong. Some say he did this by dropping two balls off the top of the leaning tower of Pisa. The two balls landed at the same time. Neil Armstrong did the experiment with a feather and hammer on the Moon

But actually, Galileo probably didn’t perform that experiment. He actually performed a thought experiment – one that he describes in his book On Motion. And of course thought experiments can be run from the comfort of ones armchair.

Galileo reasoned like so…

Imagine two balls, one heavier than the other, connected by a string. Drop this system of objects from the top of a tower. If we assume heavier objects do indeed fall faster than lighter ones (and conversely, lighter objects fall slower), the string will soon pull taut as the lighter ball drags on and slows the fall of the heavier ball. But the system considered as a whole is heavier than the heavy ball alone, and therefore should fall faster than the heavy ball on its own. So Aristotle’s theory, just like the claim that there exists a four-sided triangle, generates a contradiction. Galileo could establish that it is false from the comfort of his armchair.

True, this is a scientist doing a scientific thought experiment, but it illustrates the point that highly significant discoveries can indeed be made from the armchair.

Of course, philosophers need to be scientifically literate. Scientific discoveries can be of philosophical relevance. But, at heart, philosophy IS an armchair discipline. And it is none the worse for that.

Philosophy is about conceptual investigation and clarification. Philosophers make conceptual discoveries. I have illustrated how they tackle conceptual puzzles – puzzles that the scientific method just isn’t equipped to solve.

They also probe what we take for granted, our common sense assumptions, sometimes with dramatic results. Philosophers may reveal that what we believe has quite shocking unacknowledged consequences, for example.

This can lead to important breakthroughs. Particularly in moral philosophy. Many of the most important developments over the last couple of hundreds years or so have come about because of philosophical reflection – questioning of, and thinking through the consequences of, some of our most basic moral assumptions and principles.

So philosophy, it seems to me, is not just fascinating, it is also hugely valuable. Blah blah…

Richard Dawkins thought the mirror puzzle and solution was science not philosophy (really? – the last two papers I read on it were in philosophy journals, and I cannot imagine they’d be published in a science journal as they were purely conceptual and involved no empirical claims). Richard wondered why what I do is labelled “philosophy” at all. It’s just thinking, he said.

It’s been conclusively demonstrated that Richard Dawkins doesn’t know much about history, theology, or philosophy. But I have to admit, I find it remarkable, bordering on astonishing, that he apparently doesn’t even know what philosophy is. No wonder he doesn’t believe in God, he doesn’t even believe in philosophy when it is being performed right in front of his face.

It is also becoming increasingly clear that due to their enthusiasm for science, the scientific-secular faithful is like the proverbial man with the hammer, always searching for a nail.

Mailvox: Why they hate

Feminists absolutely hate this blog, although not for the reasons they claim. It’s not because I hate women, because I don’t, or because I openly display contempt for women, although I do. It’s not because I’m afraid of strong independent women, because I don’t fear unicorns either, or because I don’t believe in sexual equality, even though I don’t.

The real reason they hate this blog, and fear it, is because they understand on some level that it is convincing. A ruthless commitment to logic and truth tends to be persuasive over time because the human mind can only stand so much cognitive dissonance before it either begins to break down or accept the observable truth. And there is nothing that feminists fear so much as women being exposed to the unvarnished truth and seeing through the vast accumulation of the Sisterhood’s many lies.

SarahsDaughter comments:

The worst challenge to our marriage occurred three years ago. Looking back at it, I am so disappointed in myself that leaving him entered my mind. And again I was reminded that my replacement was out there. They (the replacements) are quite eager to proclaim their availability. In a desire to fix our problems, I went to a psychologist. He completely agreed with me, offered no valuable advice, and creeped me out. My husband suggested I start reading this crazy, misogynist (my words, at first) blog (VP). Really, I’d like to tell you that my faith, relationship with God, profound books, and wisdom made the difference in how I deal with conflict. I’d be lying. It was because of men and women on VP speaking of logic and shaming the irrational nature of women that I began a journey to root out feminism in my thoughts and truly understand and accept the vows I made before God.

While I don’t write this blog for anyone but myself, I’m always pleased to hear that others consider it to be in some way beneficial to themselves as well, particularly when it helps them break out of the intellectual chains that have been holding them mentally captive. We all have them. We are unthinking Republicans who believe God blesses the USA despite its corporate abjuration of Him, we are equalitarians who believe in many equalities that have never been observed in the wild or in captivity. We are science fetishists who have never noticed that there is no method in the peer reviewed madness. We are progressives against progress, feminists without femininity and Christians who believe Christ sins for us.

But whatever the chains are, they can be broken.

I am under no illusion that I am always correct. But the challenges that others offer, particularly the serious and intelligent challenges, help me continually refine and strengthen my positions, which is why I particularly appreciate those critics who are able to force me to rethink my assumptions as well as my conclusions. And as for the anklebiters and those who harbor vehement hate for the blog, I would only be concerned if such intellectual cripples admired it.

You’re not alone

I’m a little hard on Team Calvin and their insistence that there is no free will. But perhaps they will be reassured by the fact that they have an intellectual giant in their corner, as Sam Harris has announced that his new book on the illusion of free will is forthcoming:

I briefly discussed the illusion of free will in both The End of Faith and The Moral Landscape. I have since received hundreds of questions and comments from readers and learned just where the sticking points were in my original arguments. I am happy to now offer my final thoughts on the subject in the form of a short book, Free Will, that can be read in a single sitting.

The question of free will touches nearly everything we care about. Morality, law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, feelings of guilt and personal accomplishment—most of what is distinctly human about our lives seems to depend upon our viewing one another as autonomous persons, capable of free choice. If the scientific community were to declare free will an illusion, it would precipitate a culture war far more belligerent than the one that has been waged on the subject of evolution. Without free will, sinners and criminals would be nothing more than poorly calibrated clockwork, and any conception of justice that emphasized punishing them (rather than deterring, rehabilitating, or merely containing them) would appear utterly incongruous. And those of us who work hard and follow the rules would not “deserve” our success in any deep sense. It is not an accident that most people find these conclusions abhorrent. The stakes are high.

It will certainly be interesting to see if his contortions in attempting to hold responsible helpless puppets sans free will are similar to those produced by The Responsible Puppet and others.

The tragedy of the mid-witted

It is truly remarkable what the moderately intelligent consider to be markers of superior intelligence:

I was a terrific little snob who thought she knew everything, and subsequently, I was about to learn a great deal.

As soon as I started, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately, the other cocktail waitresses were quick to make suggestions. My first night on the job, a fellow shot girl offered practical advice. “You have to be a little cold,” she explained. “Make them feel like you’re doing them a favor by letting them buy shots.” But it’s difficult to maintain a Queen of Sheba demeanor while trying to rub globs of green glitter out of your eyes. Instead I became a level of friendly you typically only see at Disneyland, if Disneyland reeked of vomit and spilled appletinis. I doled out shots as people in cartoon costumes offer hugs. The manager would point out that I wasn’t being sexy enough, which was surprising, because I was wearing 6-inch heels and less clothing than I ever had.

It quickly became clear that I was not the first literate person to don a miniskirt. Sometime during that first week, I was hiding in the backroom reading Margaret Atwood. I was sitting on the counter next to baskets of party mix because my feet hurt, which they did for the entirety of my shot-selling career. One cocktail waitress swept in, asked what I thought of Atwood’s novel “Oryx and Crake,” did a tricky little analysis where she compared it to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” mentioned some other female dystopian writers I’d never heard of, and then went out balancing a tray of shots on one hand.

As ridiculous as it sounds, that was the first time I became aware that clever people are buried in every nook and cranny of life. It is astonishing that no one pointed this out to me sooner.

As we often see on this blog, those who possess above-average intelligence and trouble to occasionally read newspapers and magazines tend to genuinely be under the erroneous impression that they possess superlative intelligence. But while having an IQ between one and two standard deviations above the norm is unusual, it is hardly rare, and in historical terms it is distinctly pedestrian.

The astonishing thing about Miss Wright’s confession isn’t that she was clueless and solipsistic little snob, but rather, that she still appears to believe that she is highly intelligent on the basis of familiarity with the works of a trivial and silly science fiction writer with a poor grasp of history. If she had any brains at all worth noting, then she wouldn’t have needed someone else to point out that clever people are everywhere; in addition to the ease with which this can be observed in the material world, even a basic knowledge of intelligence statistics would indicate that this must be the case.

If this erstwhile pirate wench had simply noted that Mensa, with its 130/132 IQ floor, potentially represents the top 2 percent of the population, she would have known that there are some 6.2 MILLION Americans who are significantly above the “read a book” level that she sets as a significant benchmark.

The difference between the mid-wit and the genuinely intelligent is usually fairly easy to identify. The mid-witted individual tends to compare himself to those below the average and concludes that because he isn’t like them, he must be a genius. The genuinely intelligent individual compares himself to the great minds of the past – with which he is familiar, having experienced many of their works – and concludes that for all his intellectual superiority to the great mass of relative retards presently surrounding him – he is nothing particularly special. The tragedy of the mid-wit is that he lives in a world that simply doesn’t exist and is constructed flimsily out of his unimaginative imagination due to his failure to either observe the real world or think about it. His is is a very plain and simple world, and because he is not only comfortable in it, but important in it, he reacts with fear and hostility when he is forced, for one reason or another, to confront the fact that it does not exist.

Intelligence doesn’t concern name-checking authors nor does it consist of being literate or even well-read. And even if one has been granted unusual cognitive capacity by the grace of God or the roll of the genetic dice, it remains little more than potential until one proves that one can actually do something, preferably something worthwhile, with it. Just as the mere fact of height doesn’t make one a basketball player, the mere fact of high intelligence doesn’t make one a genius, a philosopher, or anything else except a statistical oddity.

Genius is neither a state of being nor the possession of potential, it is the completion of material intellectual accomplishment. Mozart had enormous musical gifts, but even such a prodigy would not have been a genius had he not troubled to take the time and effort required to compose his music. Newton had one of the most astonishing minds ever possessed by homo sapiens sapiens, but he would not have become one of the most awe-inspiring geniuses of history had he never stopped to think about his casual observations of the material world. Genius is not born, it is self-created.

I suggest that before you can reach a place that requires effort, you must first realize that you are not already there.

Equality vs Science

I have a suspicion – actually, I know beyond any shadow of a doubt – that the author of this cartoon is a reader of this blog:

And that’s why I support women’s rights and gay equality. If everyone isn’t equal, then nobody is.

Interesting…. See, I only believe in things that science can prove. So I don’t believe in the existence of any kind of equality.

Equality is not like that! Of course science can’t prove the existence of equality, because it doesn’t exist the same way as atoms and other real physical phenomena. Just like we smart people know that IQ differences don’t exist, we also simply know that equality just exists.

I will, of course, change my mind the second someone shows me scientific proof for the existence of equality. This is how science works, after all, unlike some primitive religion.

This is why I find equalitarian science fetishists to be so amusing. Not only are they hopelessly irrational, but they observably have no idea that the foundations of their incoherent belief systems are inherently opposed. And yet, this somehow never seems to prevent them from attempting to strike a pose of intellectual superiority.

64 is not “middle-age”

Unless you genuinely expect to live to 128:

So why is there more age anxiety than ever?

The prime culprits, Ms. Cohen asserts, are boomers themselves. As marketers in the cosmetics, advertising and entertainment industries, they have been eager collaborators in the lucrative enterprise of rehabbing the image of middle age. It looks ever “thinner, smoother, sexier, wealthier, happier and hipper.” In fact, middle-agers have never been more powerful, more active or more alluring. But in the dark of morning, when you don’t get up in time for fitness class, does a nagging voice whisper, “You’ll never be as thin as Jane Fonda”?

First, there is no question that middle-age is past one’s prime. 25 to 35 is the prime of one’s life in practically every way. Make the most of it, because it’s definitely downhill from there. That doesn’t mean you can’t do important things or enjoy yourself thoroughly, only that you’re not going to do it as readily or as easily as you do then.

The great thing about youth is its energy and sense of possibility. Those things simply don’t exist to the same extent once one is past one’s thirties. I am far more fit and energetic than most men my age, and to be honest, than most men ten years younger. But it is nothing compared to how I was when I was 25. If I tried to do what was my weekly workout routine for even a single week now, I’m pretty sure I’d end up in the doctor’s office, if not the hospital.

The idiot Boomers are a perfect example of how one shouldn’t approach aging. Rather than deny one’s age, make the most of it. Exploit your experience, make use of what you’ve learned, and occasionally, throw yourself into something to recapture that sense of times gone by.

Last night I was talking with a friend of mine about the new Creative Assembly game, Shogun II, and we were discussing how much we disliked what they’d previously done with Medieval II in speeding up the combat to the point that there is no time to think about tactics, just send all your troops forward in one big rush. We both still prefer the original Medieval to the more recent one.

“It’s ridiculous, it’s just too fast,” I told him.

“We’re getting old,” he said.

I held up the PS/3 mike he’d just given me, which I hope will allow me to encourage at least one sniper to set up a bloody SOFLAM when I’m packing a Javelin and reminded him that I’d racked up a 1.625 k/d ratio and two Flag Attacker ribbons in three BF3 missions without any teamwork by my squad earlier. “We’re not done yet.”

He laughed. “No, we’re not done yet.”

Mailvox: hit me with your best shot

Agnosticon hasn’t delved deeply enough into the archives to understand why things work the way they do:

If a blog is purposed for argument and not just banal discussion, then opposing views are essential for its content. Of course, this would also depend on quality of opposition, and most regulars here will immediately begin insulting self-proclaimed atheists, so it can be concluded that this blog doesn’t really value argument. I think many here are here to socialize with like-minded others. It’s possible that true argument might not be possible due to asymmetry of opinion, although that isn’t necessarily a disqualifier. Conventionally, a “troll” is not just someone who shows up only for argument, rather a person who shows up to derail argument. It would appear that Vox means to argue, since his posts are so often provocative, yet when engaged he often seems too ready just to score a couple points, declare victory, and get out. There are other people here who seem genuinely interested in argument.

Agnosticon first fails to distinguish between legitimate and substantive arguments versus those that are obviously stupid and fallacious in considering whether the Dread Ilk are interested in arguments in general. He seems to be unaware that I have written a book in which dozens of popular atheist arguments are conclusively demolished and have addressed many more on this blog over the past four years, so when yet another clueless college kid shows up and starts spouting off half-understood atheist pablum that everyone has seen before, it is hardly a mystery that he meets with nothing but ridicule, especially when he presents his outdated arguments in an obnoxious and confrontational manner. And why would they be ever be interested in taking such interlocutors seriously, especially when over the last eight years, we have seen this sort of individual lie, move the goalposts, refuse to admit when they are conclusively proved wrong, and otherwise behave in an intellectually unserious manner?

In the very thread in which Agnosticon commented, we have the example of Dan, who cannot understand that utilitarian philosophy is not “a rational basis in fact”. Does he honestly recommend that such an individual be taken seriously? And if so, how?

The second thing that Agnosticon fails to recognize is that there is substantial proof right here on this blog that I am genuinely interested in argument of a sufficiently high quality. I have zero interest in arguing for the sake of arguing, much less wasting my time on people who are insufficiently intelligent to say anything new or interesting. It’s not a case of scoring a couple of points, declaring victory, and getting out, it is simply about qualifying potential opponents. If a person is incapable of avoiding very basic logical and factual errors, or if it is apparent that they rely upon the usual chicanery such as redefining basic terms and so forth, then there is absolutely no chance they are going to present an argument that I can’t shred with ease. But rather than refusing to give everyone a shot, I prefer to permit anyone one or two opportunities to say something interesting or effective. If they want to waste that opportunity on a trivial drive-by comment or two, that’s their choice.

If they can’t deliver a substantive argument, or if I can identify their glaring mistakes – or worse, intellectual dishonesty – at first glance, then they’re done as far as I’m concerned. I already know how the prosecution will proceed and it’s all over but for the formalities even before it has begun. And really, considering the number of comments and emails I receive, that’s the only way it is possible to allow pretty much everyone who wants one a shot.

So don’t waste it on nonsensical blather if you wish me, or anyone else, to take you seriously. I’m quite willing to give Agnosticon the opportunity to present a case for his Singulatarianism, or what I described in The Irrational Atheist as apocalyptic techno-heresy, even though he has one strike against him for having demonstrated an inability to distinguish between logical and philosophical integrity and logical and philosophical necessity. But if he can’t present one, that’s hardly reflective of my unwillingness to engage in substantive argument.

It’s pretty simple. Right now I owe Dominic my next entry in our ongoing debate on the existence of God. Once that concludes, whenever that may be, I’m sure I’ll engage someone else in a substantive and detailed debate. Debt deflation might be a good one. But I’m simply not going to focus any time or attention on commenters who publicly demonstrate that they have neither the intelligence nor the intellectual integrity to present a challenge that is both substantive and interesting. Of course, the primary purpose of this blog is for me to amuse myself. Everything else is secondary; I’m pleased that some of you find it worth reading on a regular basis, but that’s not its raison d’etre.

RIP Joe Paterno

Thus endeth the saga:

Joseph Vincent Paterno, the winningest coach in Division I football history — a title that will likely endure given the transient nature of today’s relationships between school and coach — was 85. His death came two months after it was revealed he was being treated for lung cancer.

It is to be regretted that a sick old man spent his last three months living in public shame due to a single moral failure of the sort that many, if not most, men in similar positions of authority have made on one or more occasions. If overlooking the transgressions of a colleague is to be considered tantamount to committing the transgression itself, every single member of the police forces across the country should be in jail, if this is the yardstick applied.

On the other hand, the sad last chapter to Paterno’s life is an object lesson that one mistake, of the wrong kind and at the wrong time, is all that it takes to ruin a reputation built up over decades. Barack Obama, no great thinker he, once said that his daughters shouldn’t be “punished” for the rest of their lives for making a single mistake. Setting aside the dubious assertion of whether or not having children is a punishment, many lives are altered in the blink of an eye by a single mistake. Simply failing to look both ways before crossing the road can end a life and affect a dozen others, just to give one example.

So, it’s fair to remember that Joe Paterno wasn’t a saint. But it is not right to pretend that he was some sort of monster, rather than a decent and much-loved man who once failed to live up to his ideals at precisely the wrong time and place.