House of Eratosthenes

This has the potential, in fact the very high potential, of turning an open, rational, free exchange of well-thought-out ideas into an incoherent shouting match, which may be desirable if you figure out you’re about to lose in the former but not in the latter. No one really wins a shouting match, which means no one really loses at one either.

“You’re a towel!”

You know the old saying: If the facts are on your side pound the facts, if the law is on your side pound the law; if both are against you, pound the table. These days, concepts that used to be simplistic, rugged and indisputable, like “facts” and “law,” have been yanked back into the realm of things that must be debated endlessly.

I think the update we need is something like this: Call out the evidence when the evidence is on your side, and place great weight upon the popular consensus when it agrees with you. If neither is on your side, then yank the trolley off the tracks. Go for chaos, hurl some insults, say a bunch of silly stuff, move the conversation down into the gutter.

I was noticing this while discussing something with a #NeverTrump guy, again, on the Hello Kitty of Blogging. I suppose the reason I’m noticing this is because it’s inconveniencing me, and it’s inconveniencing me because I’m actually interested in what they have to say. I know President Trump doesn’t have a perfect score when he predicts what’s about to happen, or plies the citizenry with his interpretations of what did happen, so I’d like to hear the details when someone calls him a liar. And I’m not automatically dismissing it by any means. But, I notice, automatic dismissal is what I run into when I merely ask the question…which seems odd, to say the least.

And this has become a pattern with the #NeverTrump crowd. You ask them to explain themselves, you get static. An innocuous question like “What’s the most egregious lie Donald Trump has ever told?” nets you all this useless conflict, when it seems like you should be able to get back a reasonable answer from which a rational back-and-forth discussion may ensue. Seems they’ve calculated such a thing would not work to their advantage.

So based on all I’ve seen, I conclude the following. The new three-point has taken the place of the older one, since we’re living in a post-metaphysical culture now and “facts” are no longer “facts.” But, furthermore, the three-point has become a two-point, since in a post-metaphysical culture, “evidence” doesn’t mean anything either. Two and two make nine, and you’re a towel!

It’s bigger than Trump, or #NeverTrump. It’s swollen to consume everything. Wade on in, ignore any “evidence” and just state your opinion. If you pick up that the popular consensus goes along with that, crow in victory, that’s all the “right” or “correct” you need. You win. If not, then shove the conversation in the dirt. Hurl some insults, which are bound to be recapitulated…and you win again. Or at least, you get a stalemate.

Our infatuation with the scam that is higher education, has brought us here. The kids who are currently experiencing, or anticipating, their ivy-league years think of these thoughts they’ll be properly credentialed & permitted to have, as complex compared to the thoughts they’d have if they wore steel-toed work boots. And they’re probably right. But complexity is just one meaningful attribute. An even more meaningful consideration is whether the idea is falsifiable, and so many of these college kids seem to be beginning one year after they end another one, again and again, without pondering anything that’s falsifiable. Nothing testable. And so there’s no “must,” as in — one of my favorite examples — “This bolt head must be 12mm, because it’s too big for my 7/16″ and too small for my 1/2″.”

Even when they’re ready to ridicule whoever doesn’t go along — in fact, I would say, especially when they are so ready, and willing — there’s no test, no way to know for sure. And it seems, no one has ever explained to them that if there’s no way to know for sure, there’s no call to denigrate the intelligence or reasoning capacity of someone who disagrees. Or, for that matter, someone who merely asks to know more. Or hesitates to go along. They slept through that lecture. But still want to be taken seriously.

And then they layer more nonsense upon the nonsense that was there before, whatever it takes, to avoid losing the argument. Arriving at the right answer has nothing to do with it after awhile. It’s all about winning. And scolding.

Related: The Dumbing Down:

What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! No sense of history. No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity…

I hope you’ll overlook my prejudice and discrimination in not patronizing the hyperlink to ANYTHING Facebook, Twitter,You Tube, et cet. .
- CaptDMO | 01/16/2018 @ 08:26
[…] Non•flict (n.) A bunch of nonsense you say to generate conflict. House of Eratosthenes […]
- Let's Review 31: Non•flict Edition - American Digest | 01/16/2018 @ 11:36
Con • Sense works also.

As always, good stuff, Morgan.
- tim | 01/16/2018 @ 13:24
The source of the bang the table quote is F. Lee baily
- Fai.Mao | 02/02/2018 @ 05:01
I’m positive Bailey was responsible for proliferating it, but the Q.I. article reports it has been traced to a statement made with he was 1 year old. And further than that…
- mkfreeberg | 02/02/2018 @ 07:17

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I Made a New Word LXXIVMonday, January 15th, 2018

I Made a New Word LXXIV
Monday, January 15th, 2018