Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Arguments are like freight, with the people hearing them & passing them on to the next, like weigh stations.
Some unpack the freight and cross-check the manifest. They make a stink if something’s missing, or if something is riding along that shouldn’t be there. They go through it line by line with a marker. Double and triple-check the scales. Evaluate. Subtract. Compare. Confront.
That’s what you’re supposed to do. Confront. It isn’t necessary to be rude, but this is why we associate “argument” with “arguing.” There’s supposed to be some of that happening. A little bit of a back-and-forth, with some I-don’t-think-so mixed in there. A little friction is okay. Shows people are using their noodles, applying the concepts, seeing where things go. Unpacking the freight.
Others just let the whole truck, or boxcar, pass on through, padlocks left dangling, seals intact…
Now, some of these arguments are weak. They will survive someone passing them on through, without inspecting, but they will not survive a breakage of the seals followed by a proper inspection. If an argument is weak, and someone opens it to inspection, analysis and critique, it will be stopped.
What we have lately is a state of affairs in which the weigh stations, in large number, are closed. Far too many miles coming & going without anybody stopping and properly inspecting. Nobody’s being pressed to set the brake, dismount, open the bay, or account for the cargo or the manifest. The boxcars just roll on through from one weigh station to another weigh station. Getting replicated, and then picking up speed.
It’s a consequence of our silos. People live in their silos, consuming “news” from their silos, listening to speeches formulated for their silos. The biases of the speechwriters and of the consumers all lean in the same direction, so there’s no incentive to unpack. And so people don’t. The trucks and boxcars just keep rolling, padlocks dangling and seals intact, and the quality of the arguments continues to degrade.
Fallacious thinking abounds. Oh, we have our apple-polishing college kids with their lists of fallacies. They use those to yell “Strawman!” anytime they hear something they don’t like, and that’s pretty much all they do with it. That’s very far from running any sort of quality check, accepting strong arguments or rejecting weaker ones. The weak arguments are all over the place, because people are only pretending to know what they look like, but they’re not actually checking. Haven’t opened a padlock in months or years. Just letting things roll through from station to station…only stopping things on occasion, not based on quality issues, but rather when they’ve figured out they don’t like where it goes.
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