Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

I've written posts like this before, and no doubt will again. But I think it's a drum worth beating.

Here's the thing about ad hominem and its obverse, argument from authority: they're not always wrong. Overall, I'd guess (without making any claims of having actual evidence) that they're right more often than not.

In a perfect world, we'd have full information about everything, all the time, and could evaluate any claim purely on its merits. But of course we don't live in that world. So we *have* to trust people who know more about a particular subject than we do, and who have a record of talking about the subject honestly ... and we're wise to *dis*trust people who are demonstrably ignorant, or who have a record of lying.

I know a whole lot about gene regulation, a fair amount about gene-disease prediction and gene-drug interaction, and a little about everything else that falls under the bioinformatics umbrella. Thanks to my former career, I remember a great deal about emergency medicine and infectious disease epidemiology, but while that's still useful knowledge, it's out of date. And I know a little bit about paleontology, purely as a hobby.

That's about it. On those subjects, particularly those at the top of the list, I'm trustworthy. People who haven't studied them at all should believe what I say.

On *everything else* ... I'm at best a well-informed layman, and often not even that. Like everyone else: nobody can possibly know more than a tiny sliver of everything there is to know. There aren't enough hours in a day, days in a year, or years in a lifetime to do any more.

You also have people—a *lot* of people—who are proudly, willfully ignorant, but talk endlessly on the subjects they know the least about. Most creationists, antivaxers, and climate change deniers fall into this category. They take their cues from the much smaller number of people who are knowledgeable in the subjects at hand, but are deliberately lying for ideological reasons. These people know enough to craft convincing lies which the rest then repeat at length.

When you're dealing with qualified experts in a field not your own, who have given no reason to think they're habitual liars, the *best source of knowledge* is what they say. If the experts disagree, the best you can do is listen to what most of them say. The majority may be wrong, and the minority may be right—but that's for them to hash out. Kibitzers are almost guaranteed not to make any meaningful contribution to the conversation.

And when you're dealing with people who *have* shown they're habitual liars, or who proudly proclaim their ignorance but nonetheless have a strong opinion, by far the wisest course is to dismiss their claims out of hand. Ignore them if you can, mock them if you like, fight them if you must. But never let them pretend their voices are equal to those of people who have a meaningful say. Both-sides-ism is a fatal trap.

James #Inhofe is dead. I hope his spot in Hell is at a pleasant temperature when he arrives, but then steadily gets warmer ... and warmer ... and warmer ... Satan should be very amused by his constant denials.

#seemslegit

@jessesheidlower With the popularity of _The Martian_ and _The Expanse_, I wonder if we're due for a resurgence of SF set in the Solar System. If so, I'd expect words relating to the gas giant moons to make a resurgence, since the moons themselves are such obvious candidates for human habitation.

I bet you can guess the context.

"Of course. Everyone is ignorant of nearly everything. The totality of human knowledge is too vast for any one person to learn more than a tiny fraction of it in a lifetime, and all *possible* knowledge is far greater than that. All I can do is try to learn my little sliver, and maybe if I'm lucky contribute a little more.

"But I do know *how we know what we know*, and some dude sitting in his truck making a YouTube video about how evolution is fake and vaccines are a (((globalist))) plot and global warming is a hoax because it snowed yesterday ain't it."

Eloquent and succinct.

@pikachu_sensei 😀

@VoxDei Yeah. Letting the perpetrators of a coup attempt off the hook is like ignoring a small tumor. They *grow*. We should have started the surgery in 2021.

@TerryHancock Simple: if a Republican does it, it's official.

Leave aside the self-evident truth that the #Supreme #Court's #immunity ruling was purely for #Trump's benefit. Leave aside the near certainty that it will be applied generously to #Republicans, and stingily if at all to anyone else. Leave aside the breathtaking level of judicial activism required to create a class of immunity with no grounding in precedent or the plain language of the #Constitution.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

This is a terrible idea. In a sane world, breaking the law cannot be an official act, because the #President's chief responsibility in office is to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." By saying that a category of official acts which are immune to prosecution *exists*, even hypothetically, the Court has placed any President, current or former, beyond a substantial portion of the law's reach. Any President to whom the (in)Justices in their wisdom deem it to apply, anyhow—but again, that's a side issue.

For anyone who disagrees, here's a challenge: think of one official act, any *possible* action the President as President could take, which requires immunity but is still within the law. One. Take all the time you need.

It's the macro-scale version of cops never writing each other speeding tickets. We should demand a *higher* standard from people we give power to execute the law, or at the very least an equal one. Instead we wink and nod at blatant abuses of that power. This does not strike me as a recipe for long-term national survival.

"Shocked but not surprised" is getting a real workout these days.

This is an excellent analysis of the fallout from the #Presidential #debate. TL;DR: #Biden's not going to step down, there's no reason for him to step down, and the #campaign will go on pretty much as before.

But I urge you to read the whole thing. And if you find yourself tempted to comment in response to my one-sentence summary, without following the link ... do it somewhere else.

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Jun29-1.html

And this kind of thing is why I keep coming back to #Quora, for all its sins.

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**Did 3rd wave #feminism cause the #MGTOW movement?**

The MGTOW movement has been around for fucking centuries. It was just called bachelorhood and it was celebrated. The “nagging wife” image of her beating the man over the head with a rolling pin (gee, let’s check the stats on domestic abuse…oh. Wow.) The “old ball and chain.” Men giving away the bride to (usually) another guy. Feminism, regardless of wave number, or any type of societal breakage by women was met with the increasing levels of hatred and vitriol. You see, these guys who say “men built society” are correct. But the next time you hear that, you may want to ask “for whom did they build it, jackass?” Because it sure as shit isn’t built for fucking women.

This is why the very idea that society needs a “mens movement” be it MGTOW or red pill or MRAs is laughably fucking absurd. If you want to jerk yourself off for “building society” the least you could do is take responsibility for not building it on a nearly equitable level. Feminism looks to rectify that. Nothing caused the MGTOW “movement.” It just went online and went from being Henry Higgins singing 🎶LET A WOMAN IN YOUR LIFE🎶 to….just insufferable fucking whining. Spoiled little shits, the lot of ‘em.

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Original: https://www.quora.com/Did-3rd-wave-feminism-cause-the-MGTOW-movement/answer/Zach-the-Voice

@cdarwin The system is working as designed.

The system is working as designed.

This seems like sound advice.

@LaNaehForaday If he gets back into office, he'll just change the rules. Doesn't matter what the law says. No matter how much he lies, when he says he plans to be a dictator on day one, I believe him. 😐