brevity
Here are my favorite of the two shortest emails I got in response to LRC3.
The first one deserves its very own page, but I'm combining best and worst in this one post.
I do understand that ALL CAPS can make for a good quick-and-dirty emphasis ... but why emphasize AND? Also, I've been warned about messages that use multiple exclamation points, but what do I do with so many commas? And why are there scare quotes around "in-office"? (And why the hyphen?) Most puzzling of all, I think, is the underscore in do_not ...
OK, enough with the syntax. What do you make of the semantics? I can't do more than guess, but it seems to me this person assumes that only elected officials are allowed to speak with authority. In other words, the unapologetic confidence of my prose presumed an authority not sanctioned by the collective.
Similarly, someone else asked, "What objective criteria do you use for determining what is a 'good parallel', a 'bad parallel', or an 'absurd parallel'? Or do we have to assume your (subjective) criteria on authority?"
How tiring. The implication that verbal logic yields only subjectively valid conclusions is an argument that undoes itself, since any aparent validity to the subjectivity argument must itself be merely subjective. Therefore no one can talk about anything with any confidence.
It's just, like, how you feel, you know?
(Notice also the implicit tie-in to questions of authority: universally valid logic makes natural authority potentially available to anyone with a brain and some discipline; the subjectivists must therefore either banish all authority, or fall back on the coercive variety. Even when they claim the former path, they tend to follow the latter.)
The first one deserves its very own page, but I'm combining best and worst in this one post.
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[Retired professor emeritus (economics) teaching part-time at the University of Arizona.]Good essay on LRC. I liked your analysis. Here is mine.
On the right hand side of the brain most people are instinctively collectivists. I would say about 90%. On the left hand side only about 10% are capable of logical analysis such as that which you discussed. Therefore about 1% of the people are anarchists or libertarians. Call it Ferguson's Law.
Dave Ferguson
http://shurl.org/ferg AND,,,,,HOW did you get "in-office"?,,,,,,,,
It is quite evident that YOU do_not know what you are talking about!!!!
I do understand that ALL CAPS can make for a good quick-and-dirty emphasis ... but why emphasize AND? Also, I've been warned about messages that use multiple exclamation points, but what do I do with so many commas? And why are there scare quotes around "in-office"? (And why the hyphen?) Most puzzling of all, I think, is the underscore in do_not ...
OK, enough with the syntax. What do you make of the semantics? I can't do more than guess, but it seems to me this person assumes that only elected officials are allowed to speak with authority. In other words, the unapologetic confidence of my prose presumed an authority not sanctioned by the collective.
Similarly, someone else asked, "What objective criteria do you use for determining what is a 'good parallel', a 'bad parallel', or an 'absurd parallel'? Or do we have to assume your (subjective) criteria on authority?"
How tiring. The implication that verbal logic yields only subjectively valid conclusions is an argument that undoes itself, since any aparent validity to the subjectivity argument must itself be merely subjective. Therefore no one can talk about anything with any confidence.
It's just, like, how you feel, you know?
(Notice also the implicit tie-in to questions of authority: universally valid logic makes natural authority potentially available to anyone with a brain and some discipline; the subjectivists must therefore either banish all authority, or fall back on the coercive variety. Even when they claim the former path, they tend to follow the latter.)
1 Comments:
Hey now...aren't most people right-handed? Meaning that they predominantly use their left brain? Whereas I am left-handed and a right-thinking free market anarchist. Perhaps it is not enough intuition, creativity, and pattern recognition combined with unguided logic that plagues the right-handed majority! LOL Junk science me thinks.
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