The pond wanted to ease into the reptile world slowly this day, with some good news ...
Oh dear, wait on a second, hang on a mo, suddenly the pond was tossed into a world of doubt, uncertainty and fear, and open to any conspiracy theory that happened to be passing by ...
The pond has absolutely no idea where this feeling came from ...
Graudian away here, but what an expert fraud and liar he's been, and on so many other fronts too, far too many to list here, but speaking of fronts, on we go, with the sudden discovery that deep down the beefy Angus and his mob really do care enormously about climate science and all that stuff ... and suddenly projections are real and credible, and we might yet be saved by recalculations ... (ongoing) ...
But hang on, hang on, that's damned unfair. SloMo has already spoken eloquently of his ambitious climate plans, and should be given priority ...
Ah well, never mind, not to worry, what a funny world it is, how times change, and now on with the reptile job of putting lipstick on a lump of coal ...
Saved by the Citroën Ami! Or perhaps renewables ... or something or other ... or perhaps even the war with China, which still proceeds apace ...
And so to another war, with the savvy Savva ...
Say what? No retreat? No surrender?
Perhaps she could attach a cartoon? The pond has always thought that cartoons make ideal pacifiers and peace-makers ...
Sure, it was a clunky segue, but Boris had been mentioned in the climate war, so why not drag him into the war on the ABC (the pond would like to start its own war on the ABC, because if it hears that syrupy song about being one just one more time, there won't be one telly left in the house) ...
By golly, the savvy Savva knows a lot about what Ita is expected to say ... but the ghost of Richard Alston loomed into the air, though whether the pond or Fletcher should take fright is a moot point. Decades ago, what a warrior he was, and he was still turning up in the reptile pages, a dedicated fighter ...
What a Captain Ahab he was, always chasing that white whale and dreaming of what he'd do to it when he finally caught it.
It sometimes seems to the pond that talk of a wider, diverse picture is code for paranoia, and a desire for a luxurious authoritarian lifestyle where politicians are left alone to play in peace in their playpen of choice ... and what do you know, invoking the ALP as some kind of blessing in the war as fellow warriors is just a reflection of the infinitely stupid way that some politicians carry on ...
Won't be pretty? Of course it will be pretty. Please, savvy Savva, at least acknowledge that SloMo knows how to reward the ABC and the world at Xmas, and always comes with a peace offering ...
Put that in your child's Xmas stocking and watch them dance for joy ...
And so to a final war ...
It will be noted in the tree-killer edition front page that the reptiles were mainly intent on stirring trouble with comrade Bill and coal-loving Joel - when the war on the ABC isn't enough of a distraction, there's always Joel ...
But it seems that there was talk of a peace treaty on that other front, and the lizard Oz editorialist was on hand with some sage advice ...
Frankly the pond isn't that keen on talk of pulling back from the war, of retreating from that great hoary world of "greater workplace flexibility", long favoured code for "how to screw the workers, and save heaps on the KY jelly at the same time ...."
Xian should be prepared to die in the battle, like any good Republican ...
Yes, this is what the pond does, this is what the pond is ... report on the reptiles, live for nothing, and buggered if it will die for something best left to the movies ... and perhaps Xian blinked at the arrow hovering in the air ...
So there's another grand fuck-up, but relax, there's always the war with the ABC, and these days there's plenty of coal for everyone.
Now all the pond needs to do is congratulate Xian for a job well done, and award him an infallible Pope to round out the day ...
A little off theme, but - Catallaxy is carefully listing the nutjob minor cable/youtube broadcasters in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, that trumpet every ephemeral hearing or filing that, the broadcasters claim, will re-establish Donald J Trump as the President of the Untied States of America.
ReplyDeleteNot that the Catallaxy is doing this as any kind of a public service - its main contributors clearly live in daily hope that this filing, this hearing by minor committee of state legislature, or that sworn affidavit - will bring their little dreams and fantasies to fruition, and they can continue getting some jollies from clips of Melania’s heels.
There is the odd commentator suggesting that it will come to nothing, but, as befits a site claiming to be wholly libertarian, and absolutely committed to free and wide exchange of opinions - most of the other commentators take extra time to catechise the heretic as a moron, and invite it to f… off.
The approach of this pack of DWAGS to these electoral matters is similar to its approach to claims that the climate is warming faster than can be accounted by known natural cycles - they won’t accept it, but their reasons differ, and widely.
The election was rigged because - extra ballots were sneaked in; no - it was because some machines were programmed to allocate a majority of votes to Biden; no - it was because traitors in Republican-run states altered the regulations; no - George Soros; no - none of this matters because God is going to intervene because Donald is his guy - and don’t forget to send more money to the ‘Jesus wants our Pastor to have a Gulfstream 700’ fund - click on the box below.
In America (it is difficult to put the initial U, let alone spell out ‘United’ states) that is all to be expected. What I do not understand is why this should matter to Australians, beyond a national smugness that we have better electoral systems.
Don't Wanna, Ain't Gonna - got it this time. If I had more available time, and even the tiniest soupcon of interest, I'd send a lot of "heretical" posts to the likes of Catallaxy, just to see how much of how many "libertarian's" time I could waste by having them "insult" me.
DeleteBut "why this should matter to Australians" is kinda a hard one, ennit. Would it have been like this back in, say, the "overpaid, over-sexed and over here" days ? How many good Aussie girls married 'foreigners' back then and sailed, or occasionally flew, off into domestic bliss and Earthly paradise ?
But it is strange, isn't it, that every time God "intervenes", it turns out exactly the same as it would have if he hadn't.
But yeah, the American ("United" ?) electoral system is an appalling, anachronistic mess, isn't it. And we even had to invent the 'secret ballot' for them, not to mention compulsory preferential voting and a two-level parliament in which a successful polly can be "PM for life" (just ask PIB).
I thought for a moment Chad that you were proposing that the reasons preceded the beliefs. The evidence suggests the beliefs are longstanding but the justifications come and go - they are a bit fragile after all.
DeleteI was listening to some Brexit talkback recently and it was notable that, when questioned closely, the Brexiteers couldn't really explain what the problems were with the EU or what the real benefits of an exit would be. If really run to ground some would admit it was brown people (though Brexit didn't really fix this) or vague feelings of loss of control (ditto).
Since it seems to be almost exclusively older men I wonder if it comes down to general irritation caused by prostate or colon? Just speculating.
Yeah but, Bef, beliefs are always primary and reasons are always secondary (at best).
DeleteThere really is a simple reason for that: you have to learn a heap of beliefs in your life - even before the mountain of 'em we had to learn in school - and if you had to be satisfied with a good and maybe valid 'reason' for each one, you'd hardly ever manage to believe anything.
Just think of one major instance: how you learned your vocabulary even if in only one language. Did you look up and check out the dictionary for every new word - of the 40,000 or so that most folks who have been to school have acquired - that have entered your vocabulary ? If not, how did you come to the 'belief' that you knew/understood a new word's meaning ?
So then we can get to a quite common belief: the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Care to speculate on the ratio of people who believe that to people who have a good reason to believe it ?
You know, even the ancient Egyptians knew that a 3-4-5 triangle gave a right (90degree) angle, but apart from repeated observation (ancient Egyptian buildings do have right-angle corners) did any Egyptians have a sound reason for believing that would always be true ?
And just talking about America's 'anachronistic mess' of a voring system, there's this:
ReplyDelete"The US state of Texas has drawn support from 17 other states in its long-shot bid to have the US Supreme Court overturn President Donald Trump's election loss by throwing out the voting results from four other states."
Oh my my, how devoutly do I hope that Texas and the 17 actually succeed. Four more years !
’tis a consummation
DeleteDevoutly to be wish’d.
Shakespeare was, as so often, ahead of us, GB
It's all about the one party state, Chad, and I guess Will had quite a bit to say about kings and kingdoms which are, BOC, the fundamental one party state. Except for all those revolting princes and nobles, of course.
Deletehttps://www.juancole.com/2020/12/republicans-performing-achieve.html
GB and Befuddled - a continuing epistemological challenge, but good to remind ourselves of it from time to time; promotes humility.
ReplyDeleteWith the Catallaxy clan I have long been amused by their responses to claims that the climate is changing faster than natural cycles would allow. They are united in their 'beliefs' that it is not happening (well, they have long since seen off any commentator who would claim that it was happening in that way) but there are almost as many different reasons offered as there are identifiable individual commentators. These are put forward by persons who hold or have held tenured academic positions in Australian universities, or who have high academic qualifications for which they have been employed, or they have had remarkable success in business, due to their amazing IQs and wide life experience.
But they cannot agree on a single response to the proposition that earth's surface is warming mainly because of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In that case, the belief has spawned a thousand reasons, many of which are incompatible with others. No surprise then that they are going the same way with the proposition that the most recent election in the Untied States - but only the election for President - not for all the other offices open on that day - was rigged. In typical form - they now branch into many many interpretations on how, why, and by whom, that was done, drawing their 'evidence' from a collection of electronic sources that can be readily shown to be dubious if you come back in a couple of days. The 'Kraken', for example.
Reminds me, Chad, of back when I was still an active Skeptic and the various 'convocations of the alternatives': generally a sizable get-together of the anti-rational brigades: para-psychologists, extra-sensory perceptionists, cardists, 'alternative medicine' pushers, flat Earthers etc etc. The thing was, if you looked carefully at all of the 'beliefs' on display and on offer, there was a significant proportion of mutually contradictory beliefs being touted and propounded.
DeleteDidn't matter though, it was always basically 'us against them', and we Skeptics were, of course, the primary "thems".
Around here, GB, any discussion about water divining rapidly comes down to twig men Vs wire men. The case made by the twig men is that the material has to have been 'alive' to pick up the vibrations; wire men quite disparaging of that theory, because, stands to reason, it's essentially about magnetism, so - gotta be wire.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, it's been a while, but I kinda vaguely remember that one.
DeleteAnd I also remember G B Shaw and his response to a public address on how the Earth is flat. Shaw listened to all the simplistic and ignorant questions that the audience asked the presenter who, having had years of experience responding to audience inquisition, could easily refudiate the audience's naivete. So he decided to have a little fun and he got up and either was recognised or identified himself, and then stated how the presenter had conclusively proved that the Earth was not round, but that it was oblong (or summat) instead.
So trolling has a long history, and Shaw was subject to the usual insults and death threats.
And if only Google was actually a capable search engine and/or I was a capable Googler, I'd be able to tell you more about that one. Like date and place and what Shaw really said.
But it's fun looking, because you never know what you'll find
DeleteIn the preface1 to his 1923 play Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw asserts, “In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one per cent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true... But why the men who believe in electrons should regard themselves as less credulous than the men who believed in angels is not apparent to me.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys1378
Somewhere or other—I think it is in the preface to Saint Joan—Bernard Shaw remarks that we are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and as an example of modern credulity he cites the widespread belief that the earth is round. The average man, says Shaw, can advance not a single reason for thinking that the earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth-century mentality.
Now, Shaw is exaggerating, but there is something in what he says, and the question is worth following up, for the sake of the light it throws on modern knowledge. Just why do we believe that the earth is round? I am not speaking of the few thousand astronomers, geographers and so forth who could give ocular proof, or have a theoretical knowledge of the proof, but of the ordinary newspaper-reading citizen, such as you or me...
...It will be seen that my reasons for thinking that the earth is round are rather precarious ones. Yet this is an exceptionally elementary piece of information. On most other questions I should have to fall back on the expert much earlier, and would be less able to test his pronouncements. And much the greater part of our knowledge is at this level. It does not rest on reasoning or on experiment, but on authority. And how can it be otherwise, when the range of knowledge is so vast that the expert himself is an ignoramous as soon as he strays away from his own speciality? Most people, if asked to prove that the earth is round, would not even bother to produce the rather weak arguments I have outlined above. They would start off by saying that ’everyone knows’ the earth to be round, and if pressed further, would become angry. In a way Shaw is right. This is a credulous age, and the burden of knowledge which we now have to carry is partly responsible.
http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19461227.html
That is interesting, Bef, thanks for uncovering that.
DeleteShaw's remarks about the average man's lack of 'reasons' for believing the Earth is 'round' do echo what I recall reading about him saying about the audience in the public meeting he attended (and trolled) - my recall is that that Shaw's little exercise did precede the publication of 'Saint Joan' by several years. And indeed as we have been discussing, modern people have much, much more that they have to believe in than medieval people.
Bur as for believing in 'electrons', well, I do: as constructs populating scientific theories that 'explain' the universe. And in saying so, I espouse N David Mermin's distinction between 'explaining' (ie being able to predict the observable behaviour of the universe) and 'describing' (ie stating how the universe really is).
A very great deal of our scientific 'knowledge' rates as a Mermin 'explanation' but very little (if any) rates as 'descriptions'. So if one's 'explanation' of the Earth's flatness is nonetheless adequate to predicting the observed behaviour of the universe, then to that extent it is fine. Not much good for fitting into 'explanations' of how the solar system and its planets formed though - round (ie spherical and just a little like a pear) is necessary for that.
Ooops ooops ooops. Sorry about that DP, but I just went straight to the comment and didn't see that it was you and not Bef. So thanks indeed for finding those GBS references - he's a much more rational chap than I gave him credit for.
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