...lazily attacking somebody's politics instead of the substance of their piece. This is small-mindedness in action.

Heh. My cousins do this to me all the time. Every time I post something on FB that they disagree with, they attack me, calling me all kinds of names, but not providing anything of substance to back up their reasons for disagreeing with me. My brother sent me an email, saying he was proud of me for being so articulate with my replies and not stooping to their level.

I still love my cousins very much, but they really have no idea what our government is really doing to us. Either that, or they're deliberately blind to it.

Yeah I agree, it's a bore. Taibbi has done some excellent investigative journalism into a difficult subject area for most people. I don't care what his angle is, I'm happy to take advantage of what he's found out, taking his biases into account.

I am constantly reminded of this scene:

Now reach back into our past when you used to have an open mind.

Remember that?

Okay. Just try to use that for the next couple of minutes.

There are forums that I used to love (fark) that I have basically given up on, because the SNR due to idiot partisanship in lieu of argument has become too high.

It's especially galling when it comes from people that would seem to hold the same political views as I do. (You're doing it wrong you bozos!)

So Taibbi definitely writes with a point of view. For what that's worth, I find it makes his articles a lot more interesting and frankly a lot clearer with a great deal more detail than the same articles as written by some sort of reporter claiming to hold no view, or be neutral, which tend to be boring, opaque, confusing, and mostly wrong. (http://seekerblog.com/2006/01/31/the-murray-gell-mann-amnesia-effect/)

And it's very rare I've heard that Taibbi's facts were wrong.

I would rather read from the Taibbi's of all sides (factually correct, definite point of view, clean refreshing writing) than from the bland pablum crap fed to us by most lazy and stupid reporters feigning expertise and neutral points of view all the while eager to get back to facebook.

Gah. Stupid wordpress changing what I wrote and breaking html because it's afraid someone might forget to close a tag and it doesn't know how to deal with that any better.

Now reach back into our past when you used to have an open mind.

Remember that?

Okay. Just try to use that for the next couple of minutes.

(http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/p/poltergeist-script-transcript-tobe-hooper.html)

Amy, this is why I try to get you to DragonCon's Skeptrak. You're an important bridge between the pedants and popular society!

Even experts in science, like PZ Myers, fail to sustain their logic when they venture out of their field, turning awesome abilities into simple parroting.

One should take such biases into account.

I know that journalists like to pretend that the have no biases, or that they can somehow keep them from turning up in their stories. And I'm not sure who they're really trying to sell that to: us, or themselves. I'm thinking it is the later.

Trust, but verify. Otherwise, you end up with stories about rape gangs wandering the Superdome during Katrina as accepted fact.

A "free enterprise" system would not allow banksters to commit fraud. It is precisely a "socialist" system that protects fraudsters.

Thanks, Raddy -- if they brought me in, I'd come, but I'm low on shekels these days, so I only go to science conferences I need to attend and the occasional newspaper conference (also a must).

And because I know what biased thinkers we evolved to be, I try to look for my biases and remind myself of my (human) tendency to be closed-minded.

This week's show on critical thinking is a joy to prep for because of this. I know this stuff -- Socratic reasoning, etc. -- but I just love being reminded of it. It can only make you better at arguing a point -- and winning arguments (as in, possibly even persuading people). Also, sometimes, you aren't the know-it-all you think you are (and I'm speaking of myself here, too), and if you try to be open, you might learn something or advance your point of view.

I wonder where Crid is? Maybe because he was called on this just a few days ago in your Lincoln Brutalized The Country And Shredded The Constitution post.

He disclaimed Gore Vidal, not any of the concepts or ideas.

You are so fucking late to this party... I was teasing Amy for her pompous adoration of "critical thinking" back when you were still trying to cover the yellow on your shelf full of Cliff Notes with a dessicated Marks-A-Lot from your (junior) college backpack.

> He disclaimed Gore Vidal, not any of
> the concepts or ideas.

Neither the concepts NOR the ideas, which were, after all completely different...

But I didn't let Pat Robertson tell me what to think about how the twin towers came down, either.

You can choose whatever champions you want, Pilgrim. Have fun out there!

So, Crid, is your point that you hate critical thinking (for the newbie, the application of reason and rules of evidence to all assertion), or that you berate Amy?

What a winner, either way. The best defense on your behalf on the Lincoln thread was, "Crid is using the same method of argument he always uses, ..."

I'm sure you're pleased with yourself, but you never did address the point of that Lincoln thread.

Now you can be mad at me, too! Bonus!

But I didn't let Pat Robertson tell me what to think about how the twin towers came down, either. -- Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 15, 2013 9:44 PM

I didn't either. But I listened to him for a moment to determine he was full of shit on 9/11. He has appeared again as well on other issues.

Same with Bill Maher. He occasionally gets it right on government financial issues. But he is a liberal hack. But I'll give him a moment to air his ideas.

The same thing with Piers Morgan, Jesse Ventura, Mark Levin, and just about anybody else.

Part of being a rational person and not a vegetable is learning things and actually applying logical and critical thinking to the idea that is presented to you.

Saying the person presenting the idea is your deciding factor means you are not rational or logical person. You are part of the mob.

Also a concept is general, an idea is specific. So while similar they are indeed different.

> So, Crid, is your point that

Still unclear? This has been going on for a long time. These classics of yesteryear are as sentimental & enduring as a Chumbawumba hit: "…examples of thinking that do not have the important deductive characteristics of critical thinking."

> is your point that you hate critical thinking

Why bother hating? I don't believe there's any such thing.

There are, however, a series of dark forces in human nature which encourage the disregard of others through shibboleth and similarly baseless condescension. That's what's going on with you fuggers, self-aggrandizement:

> (for the newbie, the application of

Perhaps it tickles you pinko to imagine yourself as a tour guide for arrivistes at The Citadel. Not only do you enjoy the posture as their learned and disciplined superior —no small thrill, that— but you also pack a license to disregard them whenever you want... Because if there's ever some point on which you disagree, well, the problem can only be that they're not thinking critically enough. Right? Sure. (Freshmen, the kind who never had to wash dishes or cars for a summer job in high school, call this "false consciousness.")

> or that you berate Amy?

She lets me. When she's wrong, it's a lot of fun. When I'm wrong, I get corrected. (No such occasions come to mind, but it's at least metaphysically possible that it could happen some day if we all continue to do this for many, many years to come. Possible, Raddy.) She may be theatrical about other positions she regards as virtuous, but her belief in unhindered speech and the power of argument (including the extended and snotty kind) appears to be genetically instilled and thus invisible to her.

She's not a personal friend, and I wouldn't know how to ask anyway, but I've often wondered whether this stoicism before mundane unpleasantness (which might strike us as proudly American) is some inherent characteristic of a Jewish background. (She once said something about being descended from Russians [Georgians?], but I don't think that's where this comes from.)

The strongest response to weak argument is the wide hearing of its best expression, not a suffocating smirk that its champion is insufficiently "critical."

> Now you can be mad at me, too!

The verge of annoyance and pity is a low fence.

> The best defense on your behalf on
> the Lincoln thread

> you never did address the point of
> that Lincoln thread.

Ya got me, Coppers! Gore Vidal is of no interest, as noted at the time: "I don't like you —or even loathe Vidal— enough to give you the pathetic little hand job you're looking for."

Okay, maybe that was a touch spicy…

…But fellers, across my young life, Vidal's persona was much more about a witless preening as a renegade truth-teller than about scholarship.

YouTube fails us on this point, but there was an appearance on Rowan & Martin that seemed inappropriate for a "thinker," even to this fifth-grader.

So here's the thing: If you'd read a shelf full of scholarly works about Lincoln, then this argument might be worth having for someone who shared that interest. But you've not done that reading, and I don't share the fascination, so your eagerness for fisticuffs (over a fucking novel) (fiction!) seems misplaced.

Teenage girls like to think that Bieber is the most graceful & moving & romantic music, like, ever, in Western Civ.

Why argue? They'll figure it out in the years ahead, or they won't.

('But Uncle Cridmo, you haven't even listened...!')

Another strong version. If the first 2'50" of that don't put tears in your eyes, your heart is coal.

This has nothing to do with our discussion, but the woman in the YouTube proxy has a nice rack.

Melodic tits were a theme with this guy.

God follows just one Twitter feed... That's right.

Radwaste,

Just to be clear. When I said "Crid is using the same method of argument he always uses, ..." that was NEVER intended to be viewed as a defense on behalf of Crid.

In fact I've been very vocal in opposing his often irrational, illogical, and unconvincing mode of argumentation for quite some time now.

My statement in the previous thread, far from being a defense of crid, was in fact a criticism of those who suddenly found his method of argumentation objectionable when in the past they have been on the same side of the fence as crid continually acted as if that very same method of argumentation was reasonable.

Just to be absolutely clear... that method is NEVER reasonable.

I just wish everyone else were more consistent about it instead of giving him a pass when he uses irrational arguments to support positions they happen to agree with.

A bad argument is a bad argument whether you agree with the conclusion or not.

Also a concept is general, an idea is specific. So while similar they are indeed different. -- lujlp at February 16, 2013 1:53 PM

Are you willing to blow off a concept or an idea just because of it's author? I personally think Al Sharpton is a race hustler and a hack. But if he shows up making an argument for legislation, I listen to his proposal. Then I'll delve in and find out whether to oppose it or not with facts.

Crid is saying he is ignoring anything that doesn't fit in his world view strictly on the author.

You are arguing semantics. You aren't arguing for critical thinking.

> saying he is ignoring anything that doesn't
> fit in his world view strictly on the author.

Right! My "world view"! YOU MUST NOT DESECRATE MY WORLD VIEW. I have a view of the world, and I won't let you challenge it! The risk to my "world view" is too great, Jimpers, because your perspective is so daring and untraditional! As Lake once put it, my credulospere can't handle your real-keeping! You read a novel! The Criticality of your Thinking is too disruptive!

…I mean, Vidal certainly slips neatly into a canon of Critical Thinkers™ including "Piers Morgan, Jesse Ventura, Mark Levin"… Figures of Maximal Criticality, all.

You wanna have a meaningful conversation about Lincoln and the Civil War? Read some books about it... Volumes undistracted by the enchantments of pop fiction, or by the posturing of self-styled media firebrands.

Call your nearest state university and ask for someone in the history department. Look 'em up with the Google. You're in Oklahoma, right, Jimpers? Phone and/or write to these people:

David Wrobel (Ph.D., Ohio University), Merrick Chair, Western History, University of Oklahoma, Norman

David Wrobel teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the American West, Modern American Thought and Culture, the Progressive Era, Historical Methods, and the U.S. Survey: 1865-Present. He is the author of Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory and the Creation of the American West (2002); The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal (1993); and numerous articles and essays, including “Exceptionalism and Globalism: Travel Writers and the Nineteenth-Century American West, reprinted in David Roediger, ed., The Best American History Essays 2008 (2008). He is the co-editor of Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West (2001); and Many Wests: Place, Culture, and Regional Identity (1997). His current book projects are "Global West, American Frontier: 19th and 20th-Century Travelers’ Accounts" (for the University of New Mexico Press’s Calvin Horn Series); and “The West and America, 1900-2000: A Regional History” (for Cambridge University Press). He co-edits two book series: The Modern American West (University of Arizona Press) and The Urban West (University of Nevada Press).

James F. Cooper, (Ph.D., Connecticut) Oklahoma State University Department of History, Stillwater

Publications: Books- Church Records and Religious Culture in Colonial Massachusetts , ed. with Kenneth P. Minkema, forthcoming, University Press of Virginia, 2005; Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); The Sermon Notebook of Samuel Parris, edited with Kenneth P. Minkema . (University Press of Virginia, 1994). Articles- "Who's in Charge? Laity, Clergy, or Both?" The Congregationalist , Vol 161 (November, 2001); "Higher Law, Free Consent, Limited Authority: Church Government and Political Culture in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts ," New England Quarterly , LXIX (June, 1996); "Enthusiasts or Democrats? Separatism, Church Government, and the Great Awakening in Massachusetts ," New England Quarterly , LXV (June, 1992); "Anne Hutchinson and the 'Lay Rebellion' Against the Clergy," New England Quarterly , LXI (September, 1988); "'A Mixed Form': The Establishment of Church Government in Massachusetts Bay , 1630-1648," Essex Institute, Historical Collections , Vol. 123 (July, 1987). Received editors' award for best article published in the Historical Collections in 1987.

Etc.

You can Google their pages at the schools for email addresses, USPS addresses, phone numbers, and office hours, if you want to visit.

ASK THEM TO RECOMMEND BOOKS ABOUT LINCOLN. If you're respectful, they'll be happy to help. I've done this a number of times. Academics make time for sincere enthusiasts, whether from their own communities or from across the country.

When you've read those books, come back to the blogs to find someone to talk to about them.

That person will not be me, because I don't care, and have better things to study this summer. I won't be listening to Bieber records, either.

But if you can't make that effort, and I'm certain you won't, it will be difficult for the next person you choose to pester to regard your feelings about Lincoln as meaningfully informed... No matter how many novels you've read.

Did you go to college? Just asking.

Right! My "world view"! YOU MUST NOT DESECRATE MY WORLD VIEW. I have a view of the world, and I won't let you challenge it! The risk to my "world view" is too great, Jimpers, because your perspective is so daring and untraditional! As Lake once put it, my credulospere can't handle your real-keeping! You read a novel! The Criticality of your Thinking is too disruptive! -- Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 17, 2013 1:34 AM

Some how you couldn't post objections to David Wrobel and James F. Cooperback in the original post.

Add to that you refuse to admit to deductive and inductive reasoning. For once liten to Amy.

> Some how you couldn't post objections to
> David Wrobel and James F. Cooperback in
> the original post.

I don't object to David Wrobel and James F. Cooper. That's the point! If you want to learn enough about the topic to be worth engaging, no one will stop you, even if you don't bother to get a degree. In America 2013, no one can stop an open mind and a humble heart.

Sadly, few can detain those whose enthusiasm has been waylaid by hucksters, either.

Yew a big reader?