There was a man from Kentucky
In writing he had been unlucky
Try though he might
Each thing was a blight
And his OLLI pals told him, "It's yucky!"
Monday, July 28, 2014
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Fallacy #10 - Slippery Slope
Fallacy #10 - Slippery Slope
This is an ancient fallacy. If you don't kick Moses and his followers out of Egypt, pretty soon we will all forget completely about King Tut. If you let Moses and his followers settle in Israel, none of us will be able to sell our houses for kindling.
This is an extremely modern fallacy. If you allow same sex marriage then the next thing will be armadillos mating with opossums, and we won't be able to handle the roadkill with bulldozers.
Who will pick the cotton? Who will build the roads?
The thing about the slippery slope bogus argument is that it has to leap over all of the intermediate possibilities. It presupposes that there is an unalterable straight line from the act, A, to the cataclysmic absurdity, B.
The person who plays the slippery slope gambit is probably on a pretty slippery slope himself. He has gone to a gunfight armed only with a knife. And no matter how clever is the first argument, it is usually a signal that there are only very thin arguments left. I take a slippery slope argument as an admission of weakness.
But it is amazing how sticky these slippery slopes can be. The state police here in Kentucky rode this broken down hobby horse for many a year, if you allow the growing of hemp we will not be able to identify illegal marijuana patches from our helicopters. Decades of misinformational grease had made the slope doubly slippery.
It is easy enough to say, don't fall for slippery slope arguments, but that sort of discipline will not keep your ignorant fellow citizen from falling. They have been taught at every turn, at every intersection with the collective, that mere survival is solely dependent on seeing every possible slippery slope. Fly, fly, fly away, and don't ask questions.
This is an ancient fallacy. If you don't kick Moses and his followers out of Egypt, pretty soon we will all forget completely about King Tut. If you let Moses and his followers settle in Israel, none of us will be able to sell our houses for kindling.
This is an extremely modern fallacy. If you allow same sex marriage then the next thing will be armadillos mating with opossums, and we won't be able to handle the roadkill with bulldozers.
Who will pick the cotton? Who will build the roads?
The thing about the slippery slope bogus argument is that it has to leap over all of the intermediate possibilities. It presupposes that there is an unalterable straight line from the act, A, to the cataclysmic absurdity, B.
The person who plays the slippery slope gambit is probably on a pretty slippery slope himself. He has gone to a gunfight armed only with a knife. And no matter how clever is the first argument, it is usually a signal that there are only very thin arguments left. I take a slippery slope argument as an admission of weakness.
But it is amazing how sticky these slippery slopes can be. The state police here in Kentucky rode this broken down hobby horse for many a year, if you allow the growing of hemp we will not be able to identify illegal marijuana patches from our helicopters. Decades of misinformational grease had made the slope doubly slippery.
It is easy enough to say, don't fall for slippery slope arguments, but that sort of discipline will not keep your ignorant fellow citizen from falling. They have been taught at every turn, at every intersection with the collective, that mere survival is solely dependent on seeing every possible slippery slope. Fly, fly, fly away, and don't ask questions.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Bad Ideas
Lily Tomlin posed the difficulty, "I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else."
The same could be said about a jillion bad ideas. United Nations?
Allying with Joseph Stalin? The TSA? The NSA? The Iraq War. Don't
you worry that the current incarnation of POTUS is thinking about or
being lured into something else? But we should not fear ideas, rather
we should fear the implementation of bad ideas. Ideas are of such a
constitution that about 97% of them should go away, and then 97% of the
remainder should be rethought. The trouble is that too large a number
of idea people become enamored of their own ideas -- they will see them
to rotten fruition come hell or high water. The second trouble is that
there are too many people who seek fame and fortune by saying yes --
congress people come to mind. It is no short-term skin off their noses
if they implement stupid ideas -- they will be history before history
catches up to them. The most important part for us voluntaryists is
that we regard ideas as potential good, but we see that a good deal of
weeding is necessary to a garden. A rule of thumb: if any idea needs
much coercion, or worse, enforcement, it is likely a horrible idea.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Chicory
My poem read two weeks ago:
Chicory
When I was very small the world was full of unnamed flowers and other wonders,
When I was a boy the time was full of play,
When I was a teenager the life was full of me,
When I was a young man the space was full of a new family and work and intent,
Now that I am an old man the mornings in the summer are full of beautiful blue chicory flowers
Fallacy #9 -- Texas Sharpshooter
If you want to start a war, this is an industrial strength logic fallacy, the Texas Sharpshooter. The name comes from the idea that someone can shoot three or so bullets into the side of a barn, then go and paint a bull's-eye to contain the bullet holes. When I was younger, in art class and faced with the blank page yips, I used to just do a non-descript doodle, then I would dress it up with a face, body, and appendages. Sometimes it looked OK.
Two notable, historically significant instances come to mind. Virtually everything that FDR said and did, no matter how oddball or self-serving, had had an ever widening bull's-eye. A specific case, for example, was when he encircled two bullet holes, the one where he told American mothers that he would never send their sons to war, unless it was the last resort, and his announcement of the Pearl Harbor attack, characterizing it as the goad to calling the last resort. Then he neatly included the Japanese-American concentration camps, the promotion of the United Nations, the buddying up to Stalin, and the betrayal of Eastern Europe within the scope of his marksmanship.
The second case involved the entire drumbeat for war against Saddam and Iraq; WMD, hoax evidence, the deck of cards, the aluminum tubes, the yellowcake affair, ad infinitum. In my view, this case arose from an ideological oligarchy who took pages from the books of neo-cons throughout history -- the Judases, the Iagos, the Alexander Hamiltons, all the evil whisperers in the ears of kings.
I also have four cats, who will always act, no matter how ridiculous their behavior, as though the stupid thing they did was exactly what they meant to do. They bear a strong resemblance, in that regard, to Dick Cheney and/or Joe Biden -- neither would renege a lie for love nor money.
The fish tale is another, more human and usually far less damaging version of this fallacy. The size of the fish that got away is whatever will fill the bull's eye. Actually, the artful collection of unrelated facts into a grand lie is the very essence of politicking.
Sometimes this looks OK. It is not until blood and treasure has been spilled in copious amounts that a few critical thinkers begin to see the scam.
If you doubt that this outrageous fogging of good people's minds runs long and deep, think about almost any "New Deal" initiative. Ask yourself, when will the United Nations become obsolete?
-- Jim Carigan
June 28, 2014
Two notable, historically significant instances come to mind. Virtually everything that FDR said and did, no matter how oddball or self-serving, had had an ever widening bull's-eye. A specific case, for example, was when he encircled two bullet holes, the one where he told American mothers that he would never send their sons to war, unless it was the last resort, and his announcement of the Pearl Harbor attack, characterizing it as the goad to calling the last resort. Then he neatly included the Japanese-American concentration camps, the promotion of the United Nations, the buddying up to Stalin, and the betrayal of Eastern Europe within the scope of his marksmanship.
The second case involved the entire drumbeat for war against Saddam and Iraq; WMD, hoax evidence, the deck of cards, the aluminum tubes, the yellowcake affair, ad infinitum. In my view, this case arose from an ideological oligarchy who took pages from the books of neo-cons throughout history -- the Judases, the Iagos, the Alexander Hamiltons, all the evil whisperers in the ears of kings.
I also have four cats, who will always act, no matter how ridiculous their behavior, as though the stupid thing they did was exactly what they meant to do. They bear a strong resemblance, in that regard, to Dick Cheney and/or Joe Biden -- neither would renege a lie for love nor money.
The fish tale is another, more human and usually far less damaging version of this fallacy. The size of the fish that got away is whatever will fill the bull's eye. Actually, the artful collection of unrelated facts into a grand lie is the very essence of politicking.
Sometimes this looks OK. It is not until blood and treasure has been spilled in copious amounts that a few critical thinkers begin to see the scam.
If you doubt that this outrageous fogging of good people's minds runs long and deep, think about almost any "New Deal" initiative. Ask yourself, when will the United Nations become obsolete?
-- Jim Carigan
June 28, 2014
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