I really find it difficult to believe that Liberals/Democrats actually BELIEVE the tripe that their news/columists print.

How could anyone expect something different from Obama than what has been delivered. He is what he was. "Present" describes his political experience.

Ignoring someone's work experience and their RESULTS because decades ago they did not finish college is pretty lame. This is problem with Hillary for my tastes - no RESULTS except for glib statements and skirting out of bad situations w/o finishing them in a definitive manner.

Not finishing school hurts you in the first few years but after that your own work ethic speaks for itself.

Mike Rowe takes this on, and credentialism in general,in this link:

https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/944287745581369:0

Moneyshot:
Here’s what I didn’t understand 25 years ago. QVC had a serious recruiting problem. Qualified candidates were applying in droves, but failing miserably on the air. Polished salespeople with proven track records were awkward on TV. Professional actors with extensive credits couldn’t be themselves on camera. And seasoned hosts who understood live television had no experience hawking products. So eventually, QVC hit the reset button. They stopped looking for “qualified” people, and started looking for anyone who could talk about a pencil for eight minutes.

QVC had confused qualifications with competency.
Perhaps America has done something similar?

The whole piece is worth the time to read.

"I don't short the science; I just find ways to translate it so it's understandable."

- and we love you for it!

Before the baby boomers few people could afford to go to college, so it had a lot of status. A lot of the baby boomers went to college and that status still held over (yay momentum). Now the millenials are growing up and having kids. As far as I can tell they are really split on the college issue. Those who are capable and competent only value technical degrees. Even then ability is more important. While those who can't do much really love credentiallism. Both 'what school did you go to' and 'who are your parents' types.

Walker is a Republican so his college experience should be explored.

Obama is a democrat and his college records are sealed. Millions of dollars are spent keeping them sealed. Anyone who asks about Obama's college transcripts is called a racist.

Especially for your fields of personal fascination (if not intellectual interest), it's silly to pretend that not having a degree is a superpower.

Science, in particular, is the shit. Schoolgirl boasting doesn't count for dick.

Check out the 1958 "Teacher's Pet" sometime with Doris Day and Clark Gable.

From the IMDb:

"The New York Evening Chronicle's City Editor James Gannon is a stubborn self-made journalist that has not even concluded high-school and believes that the business is to be learnt working in a newspaper office and not in college. He also believes that the fact is important but not the why behind the story. When he is invited to be the guest lecturer in the night school journalism of E. Stone, he wrongly believes that she is a man and sends a non-polite letter to her explaining the reasons why he does not want to waste his time. However his boss Lloyd Crowley gives direct orders to him to attend the class. Instructor Erica Stone reads Gannon's letter for the class and he pretends to be a student to humiliate her to her class. However, they feel both attracted by each other and Erica believes that Gannon has a great potential to be a journalist. When Erica dates the talented Dr. Hugo Pine, Gannon goes to the same restaurant and disputes Erica's attention with Dr. Pine. Gannon and Erica fall in love with each other, but how will Erica react when she learns that her student is the notorious Gannon?"

Plenty of great lines, such as "Experience is the jockey. Education is the horse." Or when Gannon admits he could barely spell when he started in newspapers.

One younger male character is also a high school (?) dropout - so in that sense, you might say the movie isn't quite representative of today - but back then, just getting INTO college was less essential for a good future anyway. However, as some have pointed out, for men at least, even today, there are still many stereotypically male professions that pay well and don't require college degrees.

Also, in the Sunday, March 30th, 2014 comic strip "Curtis," the 11-year-old rattles off, to his dad, a list of celebs who never finished school - but almost all of the more recent ones were COLLEGE drop-outs (which doesn't get mentioned), and Curtis is not at all the college-bound type.

Unfortunately, I can't find a direct link to the strip - but here's a bit more about the subject):

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.comics.strips/lenona$20curtis%7Csort:date/rec.arts.comics.strips/ICLpb6jP5_A/WWU_925OwTsJ

College students aren't necessarily better off, in terms of their mental makeup, than when they went in. Especially these days. Outside of the business, accouting and STEM areas, a whole lot of graduates are mal-educated; they have been taught a bunch of stuff that isn't true, and they have been conditioned to have a grievance/etitlement attitude. Most of those graduates would have been better off, and the society they live in would have been better off, had they not gone to college. Yes, some of them will make a lot of money. But they'll do so through non-productive activities, thanks to family and political connections. And they will be miserable human beings. The far greater number of them will be working in fast food.

The shame of it is, there was a time when liberal arts majors had good job prospects. Companies prized some of them as managers and leaders. Many of them did good work as professional writers (not just novels; could be ad copy, user manuals, or securities prospectus documents), historians (most large companies used to have a company historian), public relations, lobbyists, and public persuaders and debaters of varioius sorts, to name a few things. But starting in the '60s, the leftists either killed most of these jobs or dumbed them down to the point where nearly anyone can do them. Further, the injection of leftist views into the curriculum greatly devalued the education, in the eyes of employers. (There was the '70s sterotype of the brainless liberal-arts major interviewing for a job, and saying "I want a job where I can work with people!" in a Sesame-Street-worthy voice.) So now, their only real employment prospects are in academia and DMV-level government, and there's only so many of those jobs to go around.

The reality is, I actually have an advantage over those who have Ph.D.s. It's that I can be transdisciplinary in a way they can't -- immersing myself in research across disciplines. (A Ph.D. demands a narrow focus.)

This is an odd picture of what Ph.Ds do in today's world. Some of them have a very narrow focus, but others work very broadly. The same thing can be said about your comments concerning writing. Especially in my field (astronomy), public outreach is a huge part of our jobs and many of us are very skilled at conveying cutting-edge science to the broader public. (And you don't know how hard that is until you sit down and watch Diane Sawyer take your press release and use it to claim that the Hubble Space Telescope "took a picture" of an exoplanet while holding up an artist's impression, because you couldn't get her harried staffer to listen long enough to explain it.)

Do I think you need a Ph.D to do what you do? No. I do wonder at times if you would be so quick to make absolute pronouncements (e.g., concerning diet) if you had ever worked with data yourself and understood how much uncertainty and interpretation goes into analysis--engineering this ain't. In the end, though, I think this is a matter of personality more than expertise; certainly, I'm equally amazed at the certitude of some of my colleagues.

Astra is correct. You don't have the math skills to *vet* a study.

And even people who do have the math and statistical skills to vet a study, suffer from so much cognitive bias, that all the skills in the world often won't save them from it.

I have a history degree. One of the best courses I had in college, was called Historiography and Historial method.

This is short for how to *vet* journalism. Since all history starts out as a first or second hand account of an event.

That course formed the basis for my highly developed BS detection system, and I know a lot more subject matter experts than I did back then.

No journalist who is not also a subject matter expert has the skills to adequately translate highly technical information into pablum for the masses.

As Astra says, too much is lost in translation. Journalists are entertainers, and not subject matter experts, and while the Wall Street Journal is still hangin in there, the New York Times has pretty much destroyed any remaining respect I might have once had for the profession.

Let's say you're an accounting manager filling an open position. You yourself suffered through four years of college to get an accounting degree and then passed the CPA exam. You could probably do your job just fine with a two-year degree and no CPA, but you spent all that money and time getting credentials so you would look better on paper.

In your position, are you going to say, 'It was so stupid that I had to sit through all this, and I'm going to do my part to try and change things for the better by hiring accountants with two-year degrees,' or are you going to say, 'If I had to suffer through that misery and spend all that money, so will the people I hire?' When you hire people who jumped through the same silly hoops you did, it almost validates your own decision to jump through them.

So this credentialing thing perpetuates itself in that way.

And if you don't think an accounting manager can do their job with a two-year degree, consider that most people used to do precisely that. When the Baby Boomers were young, everyone didn't go to college, but people made into the ranks of company management anyway.

My mom remembers working for a large company where almost none of the senior managers had college degrees. It was while she was there that they started requiring it, but of course that requirement was only applied to new people - existing management was grandfathered in. It was just a tool to weed out candidates when the supply of human labor began to exceed demand - a trend that has continued now for decades.

I really wonder what it's going to be like in another thirty years. Are half of the people in the world going to be on some kind of welfare? I sure am glad I didn't have kids. I don't think they would have much of a future. As a growing population of people competes for a shrinking pool of jobs, I can't imagine people's standard of living will do anything but continue to decline. And if the filthy hordes manage to reach ten billion, we'll probably have killed off so much of the rest of the world's life by then that things such as seafood will be completely off the menu.

Don't have kids. Adopt, if you must, or if you need something to cuddle, get a dog.

Crid,

How much college is applicable to governor or president as a job? After all, most of the people we elect are lawyers but many of our best lawmakers are not.

Astra is turning into something of a hero for me, not least because the moniker Astra actually has something to do with physics and science instead of spiritual cheese.

Thanks for asking— Ours would be a richer, kinder, more sexually-fulfilling planet were I consulted more often:

> How much college is applicable to governor
> or president as a job?

You askin' me? I don't care about college. But that understates it... I don't care about brains. Mere candlepower is not what I admire most in anyone.

Voters flatter themselves by imaging that they can discern, remotely whether someone is "smart enough for the job"; pandering media nourish this presumption. Of course this pattern is seen on campuses, but roars across the American psyche nowadays. Paradoxes are disregarded: Bush got better grades at Yale than Gore got at Harvard, then got a Harvard MBA, yet Gore's presumed to the be smarter of them.

"I don't short the science; I just find ways to translate it so it's understandable."

Love it. That was a big part of my job for six years. I translated highly technical clinical research study protocols and investigator brochures into 5 to 10 page, double spaced in 12-point type informed consent documents that could be quickly read and easily understood by 8th graders. Then I sat down with prospective study subjects and explained the details of the studies to them. Not easy, but enjoyable and satisfying work. Second most interesting job I've ever had.

Progressives and leftists are enormously impressed by credentials, infatuated by celebrity, and practically worship status.

? No. I do wonder at times if you would be so quick to make absolute pronouncements (e.g., concerning diet)

I don't read dietary studies. I am able to identify who can be relied on to vet them and I make "pronouncements" about what I've read.

"You don't have the math skills to *vet* a study."

You don't have the sense to know that you can't see into my head or have a sense of what my "math skills" are.

Sorry -- I didn't realize it was "assholes come out with assumptions day," or I would have dressed up.

Researchers tell me over and over that I'm the ONLY journalist/author who gets their work right. Also, when I don't understand the math (medical studies with a fuckton of data can be a problem -- but I rarely have to read those), I annoy the hell out of the researcher until I'm sure that I do understand it.

Also, there's a great deal of publication bias in medical studies (meaning that drug companies don't publish results that don't sell their products), which makes making any sort of realistic assessment much harder.

But I read social science studies, and thanks, I can read the math just fine and have a nice stats-clopedia recommended by a professor friend that I use when I have trouble parsing something.

And yes, even math geniuses are prone to bias. A discussion I have with the math genius friend who coaches me on study methodology.

Oh, and a bit of shoddy thinking, Isab, is assuming that I can't possibly have the knowledge because "Journalists are entertainers, and not subject matter experts." Rude assumption and wrong, in my case. (I'm not a "journalist," really, anyway.)

About "math skills": no one has to have a doctorate in mathematics or statistics in order to recognize when an assumption or postulate in a study is incorrect.
Many mathematics and statistic experts are chauvinists and bigoted about their profession, but, by way of analogy, one does not have to be a jockey to recognize when the horse is not winning.

Even if most people are so proud of themselves that they are reluctant to recognize when they employ a fallacy, it is still possible to observe and avoid them.

Jumping on Walker because of his lack of the "proper" credentials is not unlike jumping on Palin because she didn't read the "correct" newspapers.

Liberals will always find something to claim that their political opponent isn't "one of us."

"I am able to identify who can be relied on to vet them and I make "pronouncements" about what I've read."

This isn't *science*. No one who can do science would call it *scientific*. It is an argument from authority.

You don't have the ability or scientific background to do a peer review on the data selection for any scientific study.

And I know what your math and statistical skills are.... You were a journalism major.....

You just latch on to some authority, like a concert promoter who writes a book about Islam, (and self identifies as an expert) and take everything they say on trust.

People with credentials don't like it when un-papered amateurs achieve a comparable level of expertise in their field.

Politicians with law degrees don't like it when non-lawyer politicians with whom they disagree are successful and espouse a valid and coherent political philosophy. They really hate it when the source of their ire doesn't even have a proper college education.

The British chattering classes had a field day tearing into John Major on a regular basis.

Sets a bad precedent. The unwashed masses may start thinking they can have a say in how things are done.

Quite right Conan.

Also, I don't know of any degree plan that effectively prepares you to run a city, state, or nation. The old liberal arts degree may have come close but not one that was minted in the last 40 years.

In a similar vein, there is no effective degree plan for entrepreneurship or business founding. Business majors are trained for middle management. They have a miserable record in successfully starting businesses (especially compared to those without a degree).

> you can't see into my head or
> have a sense of what my "math
> skills" are.

If your life were about statistical truth rather than cheery metaphor, we'd know. See Cosh: Boyfriend does math.

The punishing truth is that the most important scientific meaning cannot be translated, only diluted.

When Sting used to say that his new album was all about Heisenberg, everyone knew he was bullshitting.

I love it how every woman on this site (including myself of course) eventually comes to the conclusion Isab is a fucking cunt.

It greatly satisfies me.

I might be a nutjob and negatively high strung but damn even I don't get that reaction from the ladies.

Earlier iterations:

Amy's attitude about science can be too chirpy. It's not a 100% reliable daylight engine that wipes away disease and feeds the hungry and soothes the troubled. It's as human an enterprise as anything in civilization, including the churches. It's just as subject to corruption, fanaticism and the other mortal distortions. And properly pursued, science is eye-bleedingly demanding... Its best lessons can't be made accessible to general interest readers, especially those who are in it mostly to be condescending to others. Enjoying its metaphors deeply is not the same as fluency in its strictures.

We all like to think we understand the things science has to teach us on the basis of whatever study we've given it. But the condensations we receive from well-meaning specialists are often so accessible because they've been stripped of meaning. The part we don't understand is where they keep the honey.

Swear to God I just found this by hitting the random button at the top of the page.

Swear to God. I'd never lie to you, the blog comment readers.

Wow... just wow...

Amy, I hate to break it to you, but you have an EXTREMELY distorted view of what it involved in terms of training to become a scientist.

I'm going to break down a few points you have made and try to provide you with a reality check.

"At one point, I thought I should get a Ph.D., but Albert Ellis himself, the co-founded of cognitive therapy, told me I'd be wasting my time: "You know what you need to know," he said. And could read and learn the rest without somebody standing over me with a crop."

I hate to break it to you, but he was being socially kind to you.

You do not need a PhD to do the job that you do, and generally speaking PhD programs aren't all that interested in admitting people above a certain age because they are going to devote a great deal of time and effort into someone who isn't necessarily going to be giving back to the field for a long time to come.

Furthermore, if you believe that the experience of a PhD graduate student in science is that of someone furiously reading while someone is riding their ass then it simply demonstrates that you haven't the foggiest clue of what is involved in earning a PhD in the sciences.

First of all, course work constitutes an extremely minor fraction of what is involved (and you need to be self motivated to do it, no one is standing over you with a crop... if you fail to meet the standards no one is going to try to motivate you).

Secondly, what separates someone with a PhD from a science enthusiast who likes to learn about science is that the person with the PhD has to have demonstrated an ability to discover something new... they must add to the body of knowledge.

Someone with a PhD doesn't simply learn what is already known or demonstrated... they have to demonstrate something no one else has and publish it in peer reviewed literature.

This is a distinguishing feature of a PhD that is actually the part that earns you the degree.

No one cares if you can learn all of the literature if you haven't discovered anything new. A PhD thesis isn't simply a book report, it is a public defense of all of the ***NEW*** things you discovered or demonstrated.

"I don't short the science; I just find ways to translate it so it's understandable."

Sometimes you do short the science... just as ALL scientific journalists tend to do.

If you want a specific example of how you tend to short the science it is in how you seem to always mix up general trends with the specifics of a population distribution.

Your way of reporting on behavioral science is akin to asserting that all men in America are 5'10" because the AVERAGE man in America is 5'10".

You do this in an effort to simplify what you are talking about... but something essential is lost when one declares that the average behavior is in some sense universal.

You also have a tendency to misuse the concept of "hard wiring".

"The reality is, I actually have an advantage over those who have Ph.D.s. It's that I can be transdisciplinary in a way they can't -- immersing myself in research across disciplines. (A Ph.D. demands a narrow focus.)"

What are you talking about???

To earn a PhD one must demonstrate expertise beyond that of every other expert in the field along a very narrow range (this would be your thesis topic... no one will know that subject better than you by the time you are done with your PhD)... but you still need to demonstrate an extremely high degree of competence and expertise for the field in general.

Let's put it this way, someone who earns a PhD in chemistry specializing in organometallic synthesis is still going to understand electrochemistry better than just about anyone other than someone who specialized in that particular sub-field.

For someone who claims to hold science in such high regard you sure seem to have a very low opinion of the people who actually generate the new results that you find so fascinating.

You are kind of like those people who read a book by Steven Hawking or Brian Greene and suddenly believe they are a cosmologist.

Get a grip.

"I just love the small-mindedness of people who assume you cannot know anything you didn't spend $200,000 or more getting a degree in.

Have you people not heard of public libraries and the Internet?"

And this demonstrates exactly how I KNOW that you are talking out of your ass.

When you attend a PhD program in the sciences, you get paid a stipend... you don't pay anything out of pocket.

I earned and saved money while I was in graduate school. I didn't pay one cent, and neither did anyone else in any of the PhD programs that were in the sciences.

People do not pay to do research for a university, they get paid from research grants or earn research fellowships from places like the NSF, DOD, DOE, or NASA.

If you know even the slightest thing about science PhD programs you would already know this instead of presuming that you shell out $200,000 to earn that degree.

It is kind of disturbing that you make a PhD program in the sciences the equivalent of an extended undergrad experience where all you do is take classes and pay money.

The reality is that you spend most of your time performing experiments, collecting data, publishing results, and earning a pay check.

Judging by what my youngest made, that would be "earning a very small paycheck." It was certainly not lab hours times minimum wage. Not even close. But free tuition and a decent job after a decade in college.

As long as you don't mind being sent to Australia right away for four months because they asked for you, because they liked your graduate research...

"I love it how every woman on this site (including myself of course) eventually comes to the conclusion Isab is a fucking cunt."

I'll cop to that. But I am a fucking cunt who knows the difference between science and innuendo.

And the great thing about approaching 60 is I stopped caring about what anonymous internet posters thought of me a long time ago.

There is a lot of science that can't be watered down.

Most of what passes for scientific studies in this country is crap especially in the soft sciences.

And it is much easier to poke holes in the methodology of a bad study than it is to construct a good one.

Amy uses the exact same system to find *truth* as the Islamists do.

Which is to find a trusted authority and believe everything they tell her. Amy's Imams are the self proclaimed *scientific* experts.

Does anyone else see the irony in that?

I applaud you Artemis for once again being completely out at sea, all alone in a small boat.

And for those saying science can't be watered down, you are right. Because all great scientists are completely insane. It is to the credit of our society we make use of these people. And the attempt to communicate scientific knowledge should still be done.

I think Amy is eminently qualified to do what she does and I appreciate her careful reading of the science she reports on. What I was pushing back on was the idea that this is something we eggheads in academia are somehow unable to do.

I'm also not sure why I'm an asshole for noting that Amy tends to take a more firm stance on scientific results than I do. As I said, that's a matter of personality, mine and hers.

Regarding dietary science, I am completely in agreement that the current "wisdom" on the dangers of saturated fats, cholesterol, etc. is based on poor science. Gary Taubes does an impressive job showing exactly how this field has conducted flawed research. Where I get off the train is in thinking that the low-carb hypothesis has been any better demonstrated. Dietary research is challenging, but the low-carb idea suffers from the same problems with demonstrating causation, handling systematic uncertainties, and obtaining statistically significant, repeatable results. It may be correct; I just don't consider that demonstrated to date.

Because Amy has accepted the low-carb idea, however, she appears to see it everywhere and is quick to say things like how it may cure Hashimoto's thyrodisis based on one anecdotal report. That is a bias but since all humans suffer from them it's hardly assholish to point them out. One might even call it scientific dialogue.

> however, she appears to see it
> everywhere and is quick to say
> things like…

The hips thing went on for years: The impression is not so much much of a principle being housebroken and groomed as of a meme being seized and choked.

" PS a .7 WHR (hourglass figure) is associated with being fertile and in one's childbearing prime, "

An *association* does not get you to valitidy. Causation is the lacking element.

And if waist to hip ratio is such an important factor in sexual attractiveness. How come homosexual men don't respond to it also, with increased sexual interest?

These are the questions a scientific study might ask.

> simply because they aren't the right
> flavor to be acceptable to you.

You're a renegade truth-teller! The Sheeplesphere can't handle you're realkeeping!

("Flavor"=? "Valid"=?)

Cat fight!

Listen-- I never doubted the "validity" of anything. I've no "flavor" of belief about hip parameters. Just saying Astra nailed it with "see it everywhere." I know a lot of unusually-shaped women who are deeply loved.

Like, deeply. Those guys love those women. Feelings like those earn our humility.

MarkD Says:

"Judging by what my youngest made, that would be "earning a very small paycheck." It was certainly not lab hours times minimum wage. Not even close. But free tuition and a decent job after a decade in college."

Yes, a graduate student stipend is not particularly significant.

Prestigious fellowships for example will pay full tuition and provide ~35K on top of that to cover your living and discretionary expenses. Salaries from research grants will run closer to the 20-30K range after tuition is covered.

My point wasn't that graduate students are rolling in it... it is that when someone claims that a PhD candidate in the sciences shells out ~200K for their degree, that individual is talking straight out of their ass.

Basically earning a PhD in the sciences is a little like indentured servitude... you get a small stipend that pays for all of your expenses and at the end you are free to pursue more lucrative career options.

There is nothing particularly controversial scientifically speaking when it comes to heterosexual male mate selection bias toward women with a waist-to-hip ratio in the 0.7 range.

The problem that has occurred on this website is as always a problem with understanding the difference between the average behavior of a population and the distribution of behaviors within a population.

On AVERAGE men prefer women with a waist-to-hip ration in the 0.7 range... just like on average men are 5'10".

The error comes in when one extrapolates from the average to a specific individual or group of individuals who may not represent a statistically average subset of the population.

Some men are 5'5"... other men are 6'3"... some men like women with a more androgynous physique... some men like their women a little more round.

It is for this reason that I have continually pointed out that the science is in fact shorted here.

An actual academic publication doesn't simply report the average figure, it usually shows the plot of the distribution so that the reader can gain an appreciation for how diverse the population happens to be.

People here always get locked into discussions of averages and treat them as either out right wrong, or as universals to be applied to everyone and everything.

Both of these perspectives are fundamentally and tragically flawed.

Keep in mind that despite not having a degree, Walker is not an uneducated illiterate. He left Marquette University one semester shy of graduating with a Bachelor's degree; that's about 4 classes short.

While such an educational shortfall might be disconcerting in a brain surgeon, it is of less concern in a field in which a significant amount of the operational knowledge one needs is picked up on the job and/or is dependent upon non-academic factors.

In other words, Dean's "how well educated is this guy?" and claims that Walker is "unknowledgable" are little more than a political smear campaign.

Next thing you know, Walker's opponents will claim that he is a known homosapien; that he's a shameless extrovert; that while he was in college he regularly matriculated with women; that as governor he practiced nepotism; that his sister was a thespian; and that before he was married he regularly practiced celibacy. The horror!

Arty---

Aspy-spectrum, right?

Jus' askin'.

He fervently denies being aspie and takes it as we are on a smear campaign to discredit his points. Same reason it won't reveal it's gender but I think we can all agree he's a dude.

I thought his last post was quite reasonable Crid.

Reasonable, coherent and maybe even true. But the detachment (and history) compel some needling anyway.

He missed several key points but I thought we should encourage him when he moves in the right direction.

If he* tells a genuine joke —one with genuine novelty and thoughtful humility towards the human condition, rather than a lefty's bitter-teen sarcasm— I'll take you both out the dinner.

*Not convinced yet.

Ben,

Generally speaking my observations and statements are astoundingly reasonable compared to the quality of individuals I have to interact with here.

Case in point, you contend that I have made a perfectly reasonable statement... Crid agrees that my statement is reasonable... that it is coherent... and that there is the distinct possibility that I am correct.

All of that said both he and Ppen have decided to attack me anyway without any regard for what I actually stated.

This isn't new or unusual behavior for them.

They rarely if ever deal with the content of what someone has to say.

That being said, there are many times when I get sucked into stupid internet debates with these insufferable idiots because I am always holding out hope that one day they will behave like adults.

A reasonable person would look at what someone has to say and if it is reasonable address it on those grounds.

An unreasonable person looks at a reasonable statement and starts to accuse the author of that statement of having a mental deficiency and starting to discuss the nature of their genitals.

Long story short, it is not always possible to appear reasonable when conversing with unreasonable people.

Both Crid and Ppen have demonstrated themselves to being unreasonable time and time again.

Just the other day in fact I composed another completely reasonable post to which Ppen responded with something like "gross, I actually agree with Artemis".

Comments like that are unnecessary, immature, and detract from progress in a conversation.

These two will never learn though.

Ppen Says:

"He fervently denies being aspie and takes it as we are on a smear campaign to discredit his points. Same reason it won't reveal it's gender but I think we can all agree he's a dude."

As usual you misunderstand Ppen.

I don't fervently deny or validate anything about myself.

What I have been trying to understand all of this time is why any of this is relevant to an internet discussion on a blog.

How exactly would it change how you responded to anything I said if I was on the autism spectrum or not?

How exactly would it change how you responded to anything I said if I was a man, a woman, or a very computer savvy hamster?

This has always been about your discomfort with being forced to talk to someone without being able to easily assign your own stereotypes to them.

I don't particular care about that, that is your problem and it is something you need to handle on your own.

Ben Says:

"He missed several key points but I thought we should encourage him when he moves in the right direction."

First of all, I probably didn't "miss" any key points. When I am very thorough and provide details and comprehensive report on a topic the people here will criticize me for writing too much... now when I purposefully truncate my thoughs on a topic I am being criticized for missing "key points"?

You cannot have it both ways. Comments are either going to be shorter and less comprehensive, or longer and more complete... take your pick.

Secondly, I don't need encouragement from the likes of Crid... and really, you are using a troll as an example of someone who should be encouraging some sort of behavior?

Ben, the most positive thing you could have done in this discussion is responded to what I said by bringing up those "key points" and a way to promote an interesting discussion.

Instead you are pandering to a known troll and licking his boots.

If you ignore him and just engage in a real conversation eventually he will participate or he will get board and disappear.

In any case, I am interested in what additional "key points" you believe needed to be included.

Personally I don't think any "key points" were actually missing and instead you are just pandering to Crid as if to say "yeah... I know he said something reasonable and you decided to pick a fight anyway... but I'm really with you on this ::wink wink::"

In case you haven't noticed, the person who actually could use encouragement to behave properly is Crid.

I think deep down you know this, but you are trying to negotiate the politics of this blog where Crid gets special dispensation to be an insufferable ass.

Artemis,

Past bad behavior is remembered. As you point out about Crid or Ppen. The truth is you rarely make coherent points and often appear to misunderstand what other are saying.

One point you missed is economic. It is not in the economic best interest for the vast majority of Americans to seek a PHD. When making this comparison you shouldn't compare to someone making $0 but to someone with a job based on their current education level. For all but those who really cannot work at a non-PHD level the degree has a negative economic value. And that includes both science and liberal arts.

For Europeans the economic argument is different. They have a significantly lower economic growth rate and also rarely pay for any education. For non-American/European nations the math is more difficult. It is much more dependent on the individual's situation.

You also say the professor who advised Amy against pursuing a PHD was being socially kind. That is quite the reach. What were Amy's goals? How well did the professor know what Amy wanted to do as well as what she was capable of doing? A PHD is not always a positive. I will admit I don't have one. That was a planned decision on my part. A PHD would have prevented me from doing the work I am most interested in. And considering I am mostly retired and under 40 I made the right choice.

Ben Says:

"Past bad behavior is remembered. As you point out about Crid or Ppen. The truth is you rarely make coherent points and often appear to misunderstand what other are saying."

I'm going to need some evidence for this claim.

The actual truth is that all of my posts are coherent and drive at a reasonable point.

The events of this very thread demonstrate that I am not the problem here.

Crid said so himself here:

"Reasonable, coherent and maybe even true. But the detachment (and history) compel some needling anyway."

It does not matter if my points are reasonable or coherent... my statements will result in needling and unreasonable responses DESPITE the reasonableness of my own statements.

The reality is that when I am spoken to in a reasonable manner, the conversation proceeds in a reasonable manner.

When the people I converse with on this blog devolve into stupidity and unreasonableness the thread devolves as well.

The responsibility rests squarely upon the shoulders of those who ignore reasonable discourse in favor of calling people shut in paraplegics.

Such commentary leaves nowhere productive for the conversation to go.

"One point you missed is economic. It is not in the economic best interest for the vast majority of Americans to seek a PHD. When making this comparison you shouldn't compare to someone making $0 but to someone with a job based on their current education level. For all but those who really cannot work at a non-PHD level the degree has a negative economic value. And that includes both science and liberal arts."

Whether or not a PhD will be in someones economic best interest depends upon too many factors to make a general case for.

This will always be a matter of specifics.

In all cases, if one does not leverage their education to bring about beneficial economic results then the education was not in their "economic best interest".

This applies as much to an associates degree as it does to a PhD.

What I wish more people did was determine what they wanted to do with their life and then work their way backwards to determine what level of education they need to do that job. Unfortunately, too many people "wing it" and end up wasting effort.

Generally speaking, those who apply to grad school for the sciences are not in this group of poor life planners (but exceptions do exist). People do not by and large end up with a PhD in physics or chemistry without putting significant thought into it in the same way that someone might end up with a degree in philosophy because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

"You also say the professor who advised Amy against pursuing a PHD was being socially kind. That is quite the reach. What were Amy's goals?"

BINGO!!!

He was being socially kind in terms of recognizing that for what Amy wanted to do with her life (i.e., write advice columns) having a PhD would provide little if any added economic value.

That is what I mean by being socially kind.

If Amy wanted to actually do the work of publishing scientific results his answer is quite different.

The problem I have with the manner in which Amy puts forth this comment is very much outside of that obvious context.

The way she puts it is as follows:

"At one point, I thought I should get a Ph.D., but Albert Ellis himself, the co-founded of cognitive therapy, told me I'd be wasting my time: "You know what you need to know," he said. And could read and learn the rest without somebody standing over me with a crop."

Followed by:

"The reality is, I actually have an advantage over those who have Ph.D.s. It's that I can be transdisciplinary in a way they can't -- immersing myself in research across disciplines. (A Ph.D. demands a narrow focus.)"

Her description of events makes it seem like the typical PhD candidate needs to go through the PhD process because they are incapable of learning on their own... they need a supervisor who will "stand over them with a crop" to ensure that they learn what they need so.

Amy describes herself as better than this... she is above all that and even has an "advantage" over people who went through the actual process of earning the degree because she claims that her breadth of knowledge is more expansive than the typical PhD.

This is the bullshit I am calling out.

It isn't simply described as an event where a well respected member of the academy suggested that for her purpose in life a PhD was unnecessary.

The way she describes it, it is as if she is *more* qualified than the typical PhD who is somehow incapable of learning on their own without close oversight by some educational overlord.

This perspective couldn't be further from the truth.

Amy Says:

"Sorry, but I'm fucking smart. I was tested as "gifted" as a kid, which I almost never mention, and put in a special program at my elementary school. I got As and the occasional B in high school while barely paying attention and reading books inside my textbooks, all of which seemed to be written at a 5th-grade level. I barely went to school my senior year."

You have just demonstrated my point Amy.

You honestly seem to believe that the PhD process is for people less intelligent than you.

That is the fundamental problem with your perspective.

"I could easily get a Ph.D. And when I say "easily," it just takes work. I'm a really, really, really hard worker. And a lot of getting a Ph.D. is writing."

Good grief... Amy... the bulk of what goes into earning a PhD isn't the kind of writing you do.

You really don't have the foggiest clue what is involved in terms of generating an academic publication that goes through the rigors of the peer review process.

If you had even 1 academic publication of novel research to your name I could take this claim more seriously.

Being good an learning what other people have discovered is fundamentally different than the process of discovering and demonstrating it in the first place.

This is something well outside of your personal experience and a little humility in this area would probably serve you well.

A quick news flash is that you probably are not more well versed in scientific topics than the recognized experts in the field.

Amy Says:

"There's a certain type of person who has to demean you in the way Artemis did -- making the assumption that you're dumb, and not just keeping that to himself. It bespeaks smallness in a person to need to throw that in someone's face."

No Amy... there is a certain amount of arrogance from you when you presume to be too smart to benefit from a PhD and that such degrees are apparently only for people who need close oversight because they aren't smart enough to learn on their own.

For gods sake... Albert Einstein earned a PhD... and I think it is safe to say that whatever your intelligence level may be it is far below that of Einstein.

I am not demeaning you... you have made it your mission to demean the work and efforts of everyone who has gone through the process of earning that degree by trivializing it as you so often do.

There is nothing wrong with opting not to earn a PhD... but when someone does so it is kind of insulting for you to go off on a rant about how much smarter you are then all of those numbnuts academic types:

"These days, I take complex science and turn it practical. I've learned to vet studies -- which I sometimes think I do more rigorously than some with Ph.D.s"

The only asshole I see here on this subject is you.

From your perspective it isn't that people who earned a PhD actually accomplished anything worthwhile... they simply did something that someone like you doesn't *need* to do because you are just apparently just smarter than they are.

What a load of crap.

If/when you ever manage to publish a real academic article demonstrating new results we can revisit this conversation.

Artemis,

You call Crid a troll, which he often is. But if you look around most people put you in the exact same category. That you cannot see that is your failing.

And the economics of PHDs has been studied by a few economists and paper were generated. The reality is in +90% of cases the degree is non-economic for US citizens. A PHD increases initial starting salary, delays workforce entry, and reduces employment opportunity. It is also hardly a novel observation that PHDs increase depth while reducing breadth of knowledge.

Ben Says:

"You call Crid a troll, which he often is. But if you look around most people put you in the exact same category. That you cannot see that is your failing."

I don't think you know what an internet troll is Ben.

A troll is someone who intentionally tries to instigate others to anger or frustration in order to get some sort of joy out of it.

There is a fundamental difference between people being frustrated when I disagree with them on an issue where I present a point by point case supporting my position... and someone trying to intentionally provoke someone else by suggesting them that they are handicapped.

If you are unable to tell the difference between those two items then you are beyond my help.

"And the economics of PHDs has been studied by a few economists and paper were generated. The reality is in +90% of cases the degree is non-economic for US citizens."

It is ironic that you would run to studies performed by PhDs to demonstrate how in "+90%" of cases the degree isn't worth it.

In either case, I would like to see the data so I can evaluate this for myself.

It might be true, but the figure seems a little off to me so I'd like to see the citation please so I can read it for myself.

One issue I may have with your claim is that you could be lumping someone with a PhD in philosophy in with someone with a PhD in electrical engineering.

In the first case I don't see the value if someone is trying to maximize their salary, in the second case it will be dependent upon what you want to do.

If you are satisfied being a technician then just get the bachelors, but if you want to be a project lead for a fortune 500 company then you probably need the PhD.

Amy Says:

"And I don't publish "academic papers" because I'm not running tests on subjects and thus have no data and thus no reason to publish anything."

First of all, what is with the quotation marks around academic papers?... it seems like you are trying to imply something here, but I could use some clarification on what that is.

Secondly... you are finally starting to understand the difference between what you do and what someone with a PhD is trained to do.

Someone with a PhD has demonstrated an ability to collect and synthesize data and to draw valid conclusions from that data set that are new and beyond what is currently known.

You look at what has already been demonstrated by someone else and then report out on it.

There is nothing wrong with that... but it simply isn't the same thing as having to demonstrate that knowledge in the first place.

Let me try and explain to you why your perspective on this issue rubs me the wrong way.

During the course of my education I had to learn all about quantum mechanics and relativity.

I found both of these subjects to be fairly straightforward and easy (at least after I fully understood the sometimes odd mathematical shorthand notation used in QM).

That being said, it would be the height of obnoxiousness for me to simply assert that because it was easy for me to learn these subjects that it would have been easy for me to discover those fundamental findings.

That is what you don't seem to comprehend. There is a significant gulf between learning about something someone else has discovered or demonstrated versus the act of discovering or demonstrating something entirely new.

These two items require different sets of skills... and intelligence is only one factor here.

I saw first hand people who breezed through high school, got themselves into Harvard on scholarship and breezed through there as well, and finally got into prestigious graduate programs where ultimately they washed out.

These were not stupid individuals... these people by all accounts were in the top echelons so far as intelligence is concerned... and yet they couldn't make it through the program.

This is why when you claim that you could "easily get a Ph.D." I find it to be an empty claim.

This is no different than someone just claiming that they could easily run a marathon is they really want to... but that whole running thing is for other people.

Well that is great, but if you haven't run a marathon it is stupid to act as if you are in the same category as people who have actually completed a marathon.

That is analogous to what you are doing... you haven't put in the work to get a PhD, but appear to want to be recognized in the same regard as those who have.

But you haven't done the work Amy.

Your claim to be able to easily earn a PhD is as empty of a claim as if I were to suggest that I could easily become a columnist for a newspaper.

Maybe I could, maybe I couldn't... but the claim is ultimately meaningless. What's more, it trivializes your own accomplishments of having done just that.

You have your own accomplishments to be proud of... having expertise equivalent to that of a PhD on any subject just happens to not be one of them.

Just like I have my own accomplishments to be proud of... but having a newspaper column just happens not to be one of them.

tldr: If someone wants to claim that they are a marathon runner they must first have successfully completed a marathon.

Amy Says:

"It does seem I'm smarter -- or at least more capable at logic -- than you."

You do understand that this is a fallacious argument, right???

It is comical how you would break out an ad hominem whilst claiming to be capable of logic.

A logical person would not respond to arguments by attacking a person's character, rather they would attack the content of their arguments.

This is something you have failed to do.

"You need to dismiss me because you're a small man and it's your only way up -- knocking people down and then stepping on them. It's like feminists who want to get unearned power over people through all sorts of edicts."

Again... this is not a logical claim. This is another fallacy.

Your comments are saturated with fallacies as you claim to be preeminently logical.

What exactly is the logical connection in the above statement for example?

My objection to your claim that you understand subject matter better than people who have earned advanced degrees in the field is in some way the same as me trying to obtained "unearned" power?

I think you have things backwards here Amy.

You are the one who didn't earn a PhD... but want people to recognize you as having equivalent expertise to those who did earn one.

You are the only one here who seems to want credit for something they didn't actually accomplish.

And so you demonstrate in volume your difficulty with communication Artemis.

Wow, sorry, I thought this thread was dead until I came back to quote something.


> decided to attack me anyway without any
> regard for what I actually stated.

Well, it was for earlier weirdness... How to handle drunks on planes, that kind of thing. I forget some of it. OK, actually, I forget almost all of it. I just don't like your rhetorical habits.

> Comments like that are unnecessary,
> immature, and detract from progress
> in a conversation.

Amy lets us say whatever we want. She doesn't let any voice on the planet tell her when there's been sufficient "progress." No one is here out of "necessity," or to present "maturity" to strangers.

> How exactly would it change how
> you responded to anything I said
> if I was on the autism spectrum
> or not?

While it takes all kinds to make up our sweet human culture on this Big Blue marble, some kinds aren't so good at some things, and it's no crime to say so.

> Crid gets special dispensation to
> be an insufferable ass.

Amy lets us say whatever we want… No, there's no special dispensation. If there had been, I'd have burned through it long ago, probably in the Brittney Spears era. What you're responding to is just a personal life skill… I've been practicing for, like, ever.

We've discussed Amy's ideas about this stuff before: Amy very, very rarely forbids anyone access to comment on her blog. This technique is called "enough rope": Those who embarrass themselves hang by their own knots. It's effective… It's often kind of brutal. I've speculated on why she's does it that way... I think it comes from being both a red-blooded American and of Jewish heritage, which is all about dialogue and questioning.

(I'd say that in the whole of blogdom, somewhere between 55% and 78% of new commenters try to feign some kind of expertise or decency which is nowhere in evidence, certainly not within their [usually anonymous] comments.)

(Read that paragraph again, Art.)


> Crid said so himself here:

Mostly, that was trying to make nice with Ben... Who may be a little sunny, but apparently has some real expertise about things that might be useful to us.


> You call Crid a troll, which
> he often is.

How dare you. How dare you.

No, seriousballs -- As above, I almost never harsh people who aren't trying to pull some kind of fast one with their rhetoric. I *hate* snooty pretension. Growing up on a campus does that to you. Sheezus, these people are so proud of themselves, but they're so full of shit....

The internet has illuminated some not-entirely-pretty forces at work in the heart of the guy on the street. First, that he thinks the reason he personally is not better admired by his surrounding culture is that he has not been heard... Such that when he finally speaks out (even anonymously, with unsubstantiated positions), we're expect to salute him with fresh fruit and chilled beverages. Second, that he composes the beliefs which he discusses with strangers (as opposed to the patterns of his actual behavior) so as to maximally flatter himself.

Sure, people have always been that way, y'know? The guy standing in front of your Grandad in line at the bank in 1940 was a terribly pompous weasel, too. But the anonymous and pseudonymous conversations on the internet have greatly accelerated my appreciation of these patterns.

So there's that.

> > You call Crid a troll, which
> > he often is.
>
> How dare you. How dare you.

Apologies Crid. Would you prefer drama queen or maybe snarky? You often make arguments that are self contradictory or contradict what you have argued elsewhere. Other times you are clear and insightful. And yet other times you are full of bragging and bravado. More interesting for me is your trends vary over a multi-month period moving from one end to the other.

> You often make arguments that are
> self contradictory or contradict
> what you have argued elsewhere.

Cite?

> trends vary

No, I'm all about integrity.

Ben Says:

"And so you demonstrate in volume your difficulty with communication Artemis."

Ben, allow me to provide you with a quick reminder of something I explained to you earlier:

"First of all, I probably didn't "miss" any key points. When I am very thorough and provide details and comprehensive report on a topic the people here will criticize me for writing too much... now when I purposefully truncate my thoughs on a topic I am being criticized for missing "key points"?"

You have just managed to demonstrate my point quite nicely.

The issue at play is that this blog has a particular culture associated with it.

As a result if one writes anything that isn't exactly within the well defined boundaries of the "party line" they will be criticized for the length of their posts regardless of if they are long or short.

Previously you criticized me for "missing several key points"... which of course implies I didn't write enough.

Now you criticize me for writing too much and imply that writing too much suggests a communication issue.

Just to be clear... the problem isn't in whether I write a long or a short post, people such as yourself keep shifting the goal posts because it is easier to criticize post length than the actual content of what I write.

Furthermore, if you were in any consistent you would have felt the need to similarly criticize the lengthy post Crid just made in response to you... but you didn't.

The simple reason for this is that it is not, nor has it ever been about how much or how little I write... it is about the fact that my arguments are too sound to be easily rebutted on the basis of their content alone.

How come you're no fun?

Crid Says:

"Well, it was for earlier weirdness... How to handle drunks on planes, that kind of thing. I forget some of it. OK, actually, I forget almost all of it. I just don't like your rhetorical habits."

Crid... you have been wrong about so many things so many times that it should not surprise you that I or anyone else would disagree with you on a regular basis.

While your memory might be too poor to remember the details of all of the interactions we have had, my memory is a bit sharper. I recall in detail that conversation amongst several others.

Here is one bit of information I recall about our conversation regarding the drunk on a plane who was subdued to the point of possible asphyxiation and death.

I was arguing that while he needed to be restrained, that the measures taken had clearly gone too far as he was strapped down in a manner that was unsafe and could have resulted in his death. You on the other hand did not care and were arguing that any fate was deserved because he had presented a danger to the passengers on the plane by spitting on them.

Now a normal person would see such a debate as having room for arguments on both sides... a normal person could see that two people could reasonably disagree on this issue.

However, you are not a normal person... instead of actually addressing any of my points or arguments you started in on a tirade about how I must be a paraplegic shut in who never interacted with people.

Other gems from your discourse were to assert that I have never been exposed to risk or danger and hence was in no position to judge.

The reality Crid is that I have spent the better part of my adult life working in environments that could kill me if I was not properly trained, if I was not adept at performing proper risk assessment, and was not able to keep a cool head under dangerous circumstances.

I wasn't speaking from the state of ignorance that you kept asserting as the foundation of your position.

You have been utterly wrong about just about everything you have ever said on this blog... and yet you are wrong with the unwavering conviction of a religious zealot.

You keep talking about a history that you now claim you can't even remember.

Basically all you are arguing is that you recall being an insufferable ass to me in the past... therefore you will continue to do so into perpetuity whether it is justified or not.

"Amy lets us say whatever we want. She doesn't let any voice on the planet tell her when there's been sufficient "progress." No one is here out of "necessity," or to present "maturity" to strangers."

Lucky for me Amy isn't the judge of what I find to be necessary or unnecessary.

You're comments are unnecessary because they are unproductive and do not yield new insights.

If Amy of the other commenters on this blog might not particularly care if you decided to post links selfies of you bathing in a tub full or horse semen... wouldn't make such a hobby of yours "necessary".

My point is that just because you have some antisocial habits, and that those antisocial habits happen to be acceptable to the owner of this site... I am still very much entitled to call those habits "unnecessary".

One problem I have noticed you have Crid is an inability to distinguish between what someone says you ought not to do... and what someone says you are prohibited from doing.

Obviously I can't prohibit you from doing anything... but I can certainly tell you that it isn't necessary.

Get it?

Crid Says:

"How come you're no fun?"

Oh come on now Crid... you are obviously enamored with me... that is why you continually follow me around and trying nip at my ankles like an abandoned and needy little puppy.

What do people in your life like about you?

Crid,

Cut the crap for one second and answer a serious question.

Do you honestly believe it is possible to assess how someone interacts with the people in their life on the basis of the interactions they have with people on one specific blog?

Believe me... I understand that someone like you and someone like me would never be friends... we wouldn't even run in the same social circles.

That being said, if you behaved in real life how you behave on this site you would be utterly alone and quite pitiful.

The interactions I have with people in my life are nothing like the interactions I have with people here because the people in my life are generally respectful and kind.

In addition people tend to self segregate into groups of like minded individuals.

This is actually one of the reasons I look at certain places on the internet... because unlike most people I don't like to exist within an echo chamber.

Unfortunately most blogs become more and more akin to an echo chamber over time. I remember long ago when the diversity of opinions on this blog was much larger, but it was people such as yourself who drove off the most reasonable members of this community.

> Do you honestly believe it is
> possible to assess how someone
> interacts with the people in their
> life on the basis of the interactions
> they have with people on one
> specific blog?

That's sorta highfalutin'... Our interest isn't all that psychotherapeutic. You present your thoughts distinctively. I'm curious about the audience for which they persuade and inform.

Crid Says:

"Our interest isn't..."

What is with majestic plural tense?

Are you secretly the Queen of England having her jollies trolling on the internet???

Look, I have told you this before and I will tell it to you again, you do not strike me as a genuine individual, hence I am not interested in answering any of your questions.

When/if you decide to behave like a normal human being we can revisit this.

Being "normal" is a big theme for you.

And that's actually the problem you're having with Amy, too: When people aren't sincere and interested in what you're interested in, you lose your footing. You want everyone to play by explicit rules.

Also, Ben thinks you're not very smart.

Also, Lenona was calling you names a few days ago.

Crid Says:

"Being "normal" is a big theme for you."

You are projecting again Crid.

Your entire thesis about me is that I am in some sense abnormal (based entirely because I find your opinions and statements to be largely ignorant and uninformed)... that is the foundation of all of your arguments and why you will claim that I suffer from either autism, that I have no social interaction, that I am locked in a wheelchair, etc...

You harp, and gripe, and moan, and whine constantly about the normality of my own existence. This is in lieu of actually presenting facts to back up whatever unsupported contention you made on a particular day.

Then you claim that my argument about you being rather antisocial and that your behavior is abnormal suggests that "normal" is a theme from my arguments.

You must live in a mirror universe or something.

Can I just start calling you Bizcrido?

Crid Says:

"When people aren't sincere and interested in what you're interested in, you lose your footing. You want everyone to play by explicit rules."

No... what I want is for the rules to be consistent and for people to be honest.

What you call "losing my footing" is what happens within a discussion when one side distorts facts, redefines historical events, changes rules from one discussion to another (or sometimes within a single conversation), and sets up double standards for facts and evidence.

You cannot declare someone is losing their footing when you insist upon playing in quick sand.

What I like are conversations based upon solid foundations... the fact that you and others here are very uncomfortable in that area and prefer to debate from quick sand suggests that you don't actually have good arguments to put forth and haven't really thought anything through.

"Ben thinks you're not very smart."

Even if this were true, what baring would it have on any discussions.

You are constantly harping about what people think and not about what the facts are.

Facts are not up for popular opinion... you can't for example vote away gravity.

"Lenona was calling you names a few days ago."

If she was I certainly didn't see it because I haven't been involved in a conversation with Lenona for a very long time, I certainly haven't conversed with her in the last "few days".

Can you provide a link backing up this claim because like most things you say, I think this is just more of your made up nonsense.

Crid,

One final thought for the moment.

Earlier Ben made this claim:

"You often make arguments that are self contradictory or contradict what you have argued elsewhere."

Then you make this claim:

"When people aren't sincere and interested in what you're interested in, you lose your footing. You want everyone to play by explicit rules."

If you don't see a close relationship between these two claims then you are a fool.

It is functionally impossible to maintain ones footing in a discussion when the person you are holding the conversation with will contradict themselves several times within the same discussion.

Talking to you is kind of like trying to have a conversation with a person suffering from an extreme form of delusion or insanity who isn't capable of rational thought or argumentative consistency.

Then you act as if an expectation for consistency within someones arguments us an unreasonable "rule".

So let me ask you in a very straightforward manner:

Is it fair for me to expect you to be honest and consistent when it comes to your arguments?

If not, that is fine... but it kind of goes against Amy's entire contention that she somehow hosts a blog where reason comes into play.

Honesty and consistency are two necessary preconditions for rational discourse.

Why couldn't you say it all at once?

Why couldn't you?

"Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at February 26, 2015 7:14 AM"

"Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at February 26, 2015 7:19 AM"

Know any jokes?

Consider---

>> You want everyone to play
>> by explicit rules.

> No... what I want is for the rules
> to be consistent and for people
> to be honest.


A blindness to irony of that magnitude HAS to mean you're on the spectrum... And such certainty that rules always apply affirms an institutional mindframe...

C'mon.

Crid,

You are incredibly dense.

It is self-evident that some preconditions for rational discourse include honesty and consistency amongst the participants.

None of this would be an issue if you just admitted to being an irrational participant in the conversation.

Your contention that only autistic people would have an expectation that reasonable discussion will involve things like honesty and consistency makes you sound like a moron.

> It is self-evident that

1. No such thing is "evident," neither in its "self" or by other manifestation.

> some preconditions for rational discourse

2. Chatter here is about the whole of the human experience, swiping litmus for neither rationality nor intercourse: Some of best things ever said here are playfully ironic and mic-drop conclusive, allowing no response worth reading.

2A. Additionally, the "pre" is gratuitous. Mere "conditions" would have covered the territory.

> include honesty and consistency

3. If you're that worried about lies and clever posturing, you're not old enough to do this.

> amongst the participants.

4. Who else would it be about, if not the "participants?"

> Your contention that only autistic
> people would have an expectation…

5. I have no such inflated contention... Only that your need for sincere, rule-laden and vaguely-affirming exchanges makes me think you're Aspy or something... And have been educated in the patterns typically America offers such people.




Dood, just say it so we can all let go… Just whisper it: Special Ed.

Crid,

You are spending a great deal of time trying to pick apart something that is very simple.

It is so simple in fact that even small children understand this without much trouble.

Why is it that you continue to insist and imply that only people who are on the autistic spectrum might have a preference for dealing and conversing with people who are honest and consistent?

"3. If you're that worried about lies and clever posturing, you're not old enough to do this."

What you do here isn't "clever" Crid.

That you make a habit out of lying and playing games doesn't suddenly make you "mature" either.

You continually try to come up with justifications for your own antisocial habits, and these justifications always include coming up with reasons why something *must* be wrong with someone who happens to be honest and consistent.

People by and large do not prefer to deal with liars who argue inconsistently.

This is not an unusual preference no matter how you would like to portray it as something only people with mental deficiencies would show a preference for.

Exactly what is the evolutionary basis for anyone to have a preference for interacting with an inconsistent liar?

Let's face it, as usual you don't have a leg to stand on here.

Crid,

I will also point out that my observations of your habits are not in any way unique.

In this very thread Ben has said the following with regard to your behavior on this blog:

"You call Crid a troll, which he often is."

and

"You often make arguments that are self contradictory or contradict what you have argued elsewhere."

As much as you don't want to admit it, the core issue with out adversarial interactions are the fact that you are a troll who makes self contradictory arguments.

If that were to change, the nature of our interactions would change.

It is that simple.

> you continue to insist and imply
> that only people who are

Again, as three hours ago: Not "people"; just you.

> Exactly what is the evolutionary
> basis for anyone to have a preference
> for interacting with an inconsistent
> liar?

Who cares? Amy's just grateful that you're taking the heat for a weekend.

Crid Says:

"Again, as three hours ago: Not "people"; just you."

So what you are saying is that you believe that I am the only person on earth who has a preference for holding conversations with people who are genuine, honest, and consistent as opposed to people who are insincere, dishonest, and inconsistent?

This is the part you just can't seem to get beyond Crid my boy.

My preferences in this area are shared by the vast majority of people.

That you keep trying to make that preference out to be odd or strange suggests that you are completely out of touch.

> So what you are saying is that
> you believe that I am the only
> person on earth who

I never said anything of the kind, which is why you didn't quote me. Nor did I ever aspire to being 'in touch'… I don't follow fashion, fashion follows me… Knowutimeen?

So... Residential in childhood, special sections for high school, etc.? Thought so!

Crid Says:

"I never said anything of the kind, which is why you didn't quote me."

I did quote you Crid. As usual you need to ignore reality to try and prop up your position.

The entire foundation of your argument rests upon the idea that having a preference for conversing with honest and sincere people is in some sense abnormal.

So let's just get back to basics here because you aren't really ready for anything advanced.

Here is a VERY simple question for you to think about:

Do people, in general, prefer to talk to people who are honest and sincere over people who are dishonest and insincere?

If you are incapable of focusing on something this easy there is no hope for you.

Crid Says:

"Nor did I ever aspire to being 'in touch'… I don't follow fashion, fashion follows me… Knowutimeen?"

I do know what you mean.

It means you are out of touch with reality and instead of trying to understand what is fact and what is fiction you expect reality to in some sense comport with your own fantasies.

That is called being delusional Crid.

Ever kiss a girl?

Ever have children?

People who read my comments know that about me. Look, everyone knows the numbers don't lie....

Crid,

We have already established that you are dishonest and insincere, so why should your historical comments have any baring upon the facts of your pitiful existence?

When I try to piece together the type of person you are, I cannot help but picture you as an elderly, out-of shape, retired, childless, friendless, bitter human being who sits around on their couch all day watching car races while getting his jollies as a troll on the internet.

I could be wrong of course... there is the distinct possibility that you don't even manage to get out of bed to make it to the couch.

Not "cars," F1.

Ever cash a paycheck? Your own, I mean?

Crid Says:

"Not "cars," F1."

Wow... I really hit the nail on the head, didn't I?

"Ever cash a paycheck? Your own, I mean?"

Come on Cridster, people don't generally cash paychecks anymore, most companies pay you via direct deposit these days.

If you had worked in the last ~5-10 years you would know this.

What next, short bus cracks?

Saved me the trouble, Lizz

Crid,

Maybe it went over your head, but I believe that Lizzie was pointing out the juvenile nature of your behavior.

Look, I would be happy to talk to you like an adult, but you don't seem to want any part of a mature, honest, and reasonable interaction.

You make it impossible to hold a normal conversation, so I have learned not to bother wasting energy on pursuing one with you.

No one has responded as frequently to my comments.

Many (if not most) have responded more thoughtfully and less defensively...

But don't kid yourself: Without me, you're nothing.

Crid,

I am not sure what you are trying to prove here.

That I choose to respond to your trollish comments doesn't make me responsible for them. Are you an adult who is in control of their own actions or not?

I can certainly be accused of being guilty of feeding the troll... but that doesn't make me responsible for your antisocial behavior.

The way you talk about it, once someone responds to your instigating behavior, suddenly the responsibility for what happens somehow shifts to them. What a childish notion.

You said it yourself here about one of my first comment in the thread that I will remind you was not addressed to you in particular:

"Reasonable, coherent and maybe even true. But the detachment (and history) compel some needling anyway."

You have a compulsion to needle and instigate people.

You cannot help yourself. It is your sickness.

"No one has responded as frequently to my comments.

Many (if not most) have responded more thoughtfully and less defensively..."

As you say here, you do this to many people, not just me. So the responsibility can't exactly lay at my feet. That some people let you take verbal potshots at them and then ignore you is a fine choice... I choose to draw it out and see just how long you will be compelled to continue.

You do not seem to be capable of stopping.

"But don't kid yourself: Without me, you're nothing."

Let's put this to the test Crid... stop talking to me and see if I become nothing.

All you do is detract from conversations here, you never add to them. All you do is derail productive lines of conversation.

Your claim is empty... if you couldn't needle people you would have nothing to say.

Yeah I would, but I wouldn't enjoy it as much.

Crid,

As usual you are making an empty claim without any basis in reality. Prove that you are capable of contributing to a conversation without needling people and I will believe you.

I don't think you are capable.

I don't care enough to prove anything, and I don't like you. I just want (a little) to know if you were raised (or are being raised) in special ed.

For normal participants in this forum, it's not a particularly intrusive query.

Crid Says:

"I don't care enough to prove anything, and I don't like you."

Why are you so dense that you can't understand this very simple fact Crid.

I also do not particularly like you, and also do not care to prove anything to you or answer any of your inane questions.

This works both ways, but you are clearly too stupid to figure that part out.

OK, but I think people can tell at this that you're a little bit defensive.

Just for example--- We can't tell if you're a boy commenter or a girl commenter, and you don't want to say.

Is that NORMAL???????

???