Now I’m sure clever folks can think up justifications for such preferences. But as with the common preference to redistribute money but not grades, I expect few folks could quickly come up with those reasons, even though most embrace preferences. This again suggests that the clever reasons some offer are not the actual reasons most folks support such biases.As always...it's not a bad assumption to make that your opponents, your friends, and yourself all get opinions first, and justifications second. Of course 100/100 people will agree with me about their opponents. 3/100 people will agree with me about their friends, and 0/100 people will agree with me about themselves. How odd.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Robin's newest line
It's not conceptual new, but it's fabulous phrasing:
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5 comments:
I agree entirely with this post's idea.
[ Begin pedantry ]
But! The phrase "how odd" struck me as obviously disingenuous. So obvious, in fact, that I know you're only doing it for rhetorical emphasis. That said, actual surprise is so useful as a mental tool for recognizing when you're learning something, that muddying it - even rhetorically - might introduce confusion.
So, you generally ought not pretend to be surprised by things you actually expect.
[ end pedantry ]
Fiddlemath,
Thanks. I will ponder your idea.
[Explanation, not disagreement]
I've never been much of a writer...but always a talker. When I was young, I learned how to talk (effectively) by reading..and so my normal speech sounded like a book, with clauses, and qualifiers.
Later, I turned into a teacher, and worked for at least 10 years on tuning my own mental systems to explain stuff to folks verbally.
Even now, my writing is an attempt to sound as I do while speaking. Drier sarcasm appears not to translate well. Emphasis on words is poorly done in writing as well...hence my incessant caps-ing, bold-ing and such.
[/Explanation]
Again thanks...I will consider.
The insincerity of the left is obvious. Almost everyone, including most republicans, for example Newt Gringrich, endorses politically correct views, because of the pressure to adopt them, including the politically correct view that such views are freely chosen, and that there is no pressure to adopt them.
As a test for sincerity, I always employ the following incredibly obscure and minor point of left wing doctrine, because it is easy to prove false, and because not one person in a million has any emotional reason for believing it, other than fear of being punished for heresy or desire to conform, so anyone who refuses to reject this this trivial point of left wing doctrine is insincere.
Before 1972, science history was that Darwin's big idea was natural selection. The idea that species that resembled each other had a common ancestor preceded Darwin, and Darwin's big idea was to explain how one blade of grass could become the mother of many species.
After 1972, natural selection was deprecated, so credit for for the idea that species families resemble each other because of a common ancestor was given to Darwin, to avoid the inconvenient necessity of chiseling his bust off the walls of Ivy League biology departments, which adjustment of history necessitated denying that Lamarck proposed it.
And no matter I what I quote from Lamarck, no leftist, no academic, and even very few moderate republicans, will utter heresy on this point.
Event though they never heard of this point of doctrine until I raised it, upon discovering it is a point of doctrine, they will rather stick with doctrine than their lying eyes.
James,
If you are a leftist yourself, congratulations...
If you are, as I suspect, NOT a leftist...then you've managed to place yourself in the 100/100 people who think their opponents are reasoning to opinions, not from truths.
James,
And welcome to the blog.
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