Is It Time to Shrug?


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Phil,

You see what the priority problem is? Your focus is on controlling others, not on producing nor admiring producers. This is what is wrong with the Objectivist world. All this finger-pointing to keep each other in line.

Another thing. I don't care much for your definition of man if it includes Perigo. But then again, I have little use for thugs and hate mongers.

1. I agree that we should produce and admire producers. I hereby applaud Phil for admiring me for producing a crystal clear, logical explanation -- and myself for producing it. :) I also applaud Michael for producing a truly dynamic exhibition of slipping, sliding, and generally doing everything he can to keep from admitting the simple truth of what I said -- and instead to hector us (translate: verbally control and finger-point in order to keep us in line) for not agreeing with him about whether Dragonfly stepped over the line in his comments

2. You cannot (rationally, objectively) redefine "man" so as to exclude people you morally disapprove of from the concept. That is not epistemology. It's conceptual bigotry. Michael is welcome to it, though I wish instead he'd stop doing it. (For further details, see Rand's brief writing on the Fallacy of the Frozen Abstraction, or Barbara's discussion of it in her lectures on efficient thinking, or my rather long essay on the subject, which will soon be posted at my new web site at www.rogerbissell.com.)

REB

P.S. -- I'm on vacation, and this is about all of this thread that I can stomach. It's bad enough to see leftists and mystics behaving this way, but when it's one of "our own"...

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Roger,

You are free to state your opinion, which you have done and it's on record. I didn't delete it and I don't recall telling you how to behave. Yet there you are telling me. More than once.

Instead of slipping, sliding, etc. (which incidentally is a compliment if compared to what I think of accusing Bidinotto of being a racist), I believe I stated very clearly what I meant.

If there is any doubt, here it is again:

I am tired of people trashing Robert Bidinotto on this forum. It has become a fad ever since that crappy Ron Paul cover. He has a lifetime of admirable work and is entitled to a slip once in a while, and if people wish to act as boneheads and ignore that to call him a racist by harping on his use of "would" instead of "has" as proof (when there is a perfectly valid rhetorical meaning for his use of the word "would," which has a different meaning), don't get surprised if I start calling them boneheads.

I haven't until now, but this is pure bonehead territory. I believe one should read Bidinotto's work before calling him a racist and it is more than reasonable to assume that people who post here are somewhat familiar with it.

Ayn Rand made a disparaging remark once about Pygmies in the Amazon. Does that make her a racist? Keeeeriiiist!

It is my policy to let a person air a view, even a boneheaded view like that, but once or twice. I also reserve the right to contest it. But I will not allow a thread to degenerate into a string of insults against a friend. For instance, I would not allow people to call you a racist over and over without contesting it.

Anyway, if people are going to insist that Bidinotto is a racist, I will close the thread again and even start deleting stuff. I am sick of it.

How's that for slipping, sliding, etc.?

That's the way I behave when I have had enough crap. I am not even sorry this does not meet your standard of how I should behave. I have my own standards of how I should behave. And guess what?

I decide my own life. Not you.

Michael

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You cannot (rationally, objectively) redefine "man" so as to exclude people you morally disapprove of from the concept.

Roger,

Why don't we try stolen concept instead of frozen abstraction, as in using the same word to mean different things, but choosing the meaning we want at whim?

For instance you seem to think "big man" is a proper form of expression when Phil uses it, but when I discuss the concept he used as he used it, you think the meaning should be different.

If not, what does "big man" mean for you? Big human being? Big homo sapiens? Big human genome?

What part is big? The human? Does it mean tall? Fat? What?

Oh, wait...

"Big man" is a moral concept, isn't it? When Phil says "big man," he is actually redefining man as a moral standard, not as a physical human being. Thus there can be big and little and this can make sense. Or do you think midgets are morally depraved and tall men or fat men morally superior?

Of course, the moral meaning is valid if the person using it is Phil as accepted by Roger, but apparently not by me.

Well, if Perigo is a "big man" in Phil's meaning, I will have none of it. I am not a man in that sense. That hate-monger has preached spite and acted on hatred for years and just now called for a USA presidential candidate, and now our President, to be murdered. Then he said "Oops, I didn't mean it." That to Phil is worthy of moral admiration and is what makes a person a "big man." I personally don't want to be admired for that crap. I believe it was insincere anyway.

You can be a "big man" like Perigo if you wish and receive all the pertinent adulation that comes with that station. I want nothing to do with a comparison of that nature. I despise that person and I have nothing morally in common with him.

Michael

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I haven't until now, but this is pure bonehead territory. I believe one should read Bidinotto's work before calling him a racist and it is more than reasonable to assume that people who post here are somewhat familiar with it.

Repeating a lie (that I would have called Bidinotto a racist) doesn't make it a truth. Several people now have explained to you why you're wrong, but you just ignore their arguments. Is it so difficult to admit that you were wrong?

Nooooooooooooooo...

I can't be wrong.

That's what is important.

Right, a perfect example of psychological projection.

Ayn Rand made a disparaging remark once about Pygmies in the Amazon. Does that make her a racist? Keeeeriiiist!

If you are consistent, you would be the only one drawing that conclusion.

As Phil said:

"Michael, you have now had several people on this board...including Roger and with this post, myself...explain to you the difference between criticizing someone of **being** a racist and criticizing someone for once having **once let slip** a racist remark.

But go on to ignore it and to create you own "truth". Ignore, ignore, ignore!

It is my policy to let a person air a view, even a boneheaded view like that, but once or twice. I also reserve the right to contest it. But I will not allow a thread to degenerate into a string of insults against a friend. For instance, I would not allow people to call you a racist over and over without contesting it.

Anyway, if people are going to insist that Bidinotto is a racist, I will close the thread again and even start deleting stuff. I am sick of it.

The usual reaction you can expect on Objectivist forums: if you can't answer an argument you don't like (namely that Bidinotto made an insulting remark based on racist reasoning), you start calling names ("bonehead"), misrepresenting what the other said (claiming that I called Bidinotto a racist, which is a lie), and rewriting history (deleting stuff). It's déjà vu all over again...

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Dragonfly,

So before it was Bidinotto "suggested" an insult. Now it is "made" an insult based on "racist reasoning."

I've seen this game played before. That's exactly how it is played and how smears take.

Like you said, déjà vu.

See how easy it is to play? It's easy to go from you "suggested" Bidinotto was a racist to now saying you "called" him a racist. You don't seem to like it when the same standard gets applied to your statements, do you?

People who play this game usually don't. Like you said again, déjà vu.

Here's the hidden standard I see operating right in front of me: When I do that crap, nobody should perceive it (because I am so clever) and I should be able to get away with it. When you do it, I have to cry, "Foul."

It doesn't sound so clever expressed like that, does it? I'm just pulling the covers off by example and then calling it what it is, since this seems to be the only way to get through. You don't have to like it. I sure as hell don't like your use of the word "suggest" to snipe mendacious crap at someone who has a lifetime of achievement that contradicts the lie you just promoted about him.

I honestly think you knew what you are doing this time around. You even threw in snipes about Objectivists for good measure (and, to not waste the opportunity, kept that crap up over several posts). I tried to laugh it off at first, but now this thing has developed. So be it. If you dish it out, be prepared to get it back in the same standard. No. Get it back in double for a true double standard, that is until I get tired of paying for this crap.

There's a difference, too. What is between the lines with your crap, that Robert Bidinotto is a racist (or worse, a fuzzy writer who wants to sneak in bigoted slurs by accusing others of doing it) has no referent in reality. My between the lines, that you are smearing him for no good reason, does exist.

Robert Bidinotto is not a racist. Not directly. Not indirectly. Not in reality. Not in the imagination of any reasonable person. He is a racist only in the minds of the deluded.

Shame on you for insinuating that crap.

Incidentally, you went beyond "suggest" in your last post. I am leaving it up since it serves as such a good example of what I am talking about.

... Bidinotto made an insulting remark based on racist reasoning...

Who engages in "racist reasoning"?

Racists, of course.

Shame on you for saying that crap.

Michael

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Michael,

You simply seem to be incapable of using language with precision.

In your effort to not admit error on the 'racist' issue, you have now in a series of posts systematically misstated:

1. What Dragonfly said and intended (and he clarified it once again)

2. What Roger and I said on the above issue.

3. You've exaggerated and over hyped what I said about Perigo.

And then you go into a defensive crouch and bluster some more !!! Jesus!!!

Are you -really- an Objectivist???

I'm afraid I'm just going to have to give up on you. I simply have no idea how your mind works.

I've actually seen you do this on too many other occasions. People in good faith explain the simplest things to you....but you simply bluster and posture your way past them.

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[...] I am tired of people trashing Robert Bidinotto on this forum. It has become a fad ever since that crappy Ron Paul cover.

You appear, here, to agree with my own (and others') scatological appraisal of that graphic. Is he not to be held responsible for it?

That magazine's cover is the most prominent public face, to many, of The Atlas Society. Such a smear, in such a position, calls for such a reaction. This isn't an aside that inhabits a corner of an op-ed essay or is tossed off extempore after a speech.

Bidinotto was editor, and was directly responsible. He, moreover, knew better than to call Paul's integrity — and humanity — into question as he did.

He, however, is not solely responsible. Blame for it also lies with Ed Hudgins, Bidinotto's superior — and David Kelley and the TAS board, above Hudgins. They are not excused from such calumnies simply because they gave Bidinotto editorial independence.

I and others have reacted accordingly, not continuing to donate to an organization that allows an editor such free rein, to the point of libel.

He has a lifetime of admirable work and is entitled to a slip once in a while [...]

A mere slip? "Mistakes of this size," et cetera.

Yet apart from his evident organizational and editorial skills, I have long been dubious of that long list of "admirable work." Especially since Bidinotto chose 15 years ago to trash libertarians on terms that — though they were more polite, and respected more context — differed little in substance from those of Peter Schwartz. (His point and a counterpoint.)

And doubly so since Bidinotto has become wedded to neoconservative outlooks, as with so many others at ARI and TAS — and OL.

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Phil,

I gave up on you a while back. Too much blah blah blah. Too much personal stuff.

Not enough achievement.

You need to be right even when wrong.

That's enough for starters, but you are free to post here if you like.

Michael

EDIT: Oh, yeah. I forgot about kissing Perigo's ass on my forum. If that ain't worth giving up on someone who lacks discernment of context... well...

Here's a great idea. Why don't you post over there? Ummm... Oh yeah... You are banned over there, aren't you?

Jeezus, what a bunch of crap you manage to write constantly. I sometimes wonder if you are on the same planet as me.

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Steve,

Your critique of Robert is more in line with a proper way to do it than insinuate that he is a racist. Obviously, you only speak for yourself, as do all here. But it was more or less civil, so I only register that I am not in total agreement with your views. I doubt we will come to agreement, so I see no reason to go into it. Your position is on record in a rational manner for anyone who wants to read it and possibly agree. That form of persuasion is basically what this forum is about (or supposed to be about).

Speaking of people representing their own views, OL has no party line, much less a neoconservative line. You are wrong to state otherwise. People post their individual views here, including me, and including you.

I ask for people to be civil. There are some lines I draw like this racist crap (and genocide and other hate speech, etc., which has come up before), but for the rest, everyone can express their ideas. Unfortunately, many prefer bickering instead of ideas. I would like to see more ideas, but OL is part of the Objectivist subcommunity, where bickering is enshrined as sound reasoning and considered by some as a path to saving the world, expressing morality, or whatever.

As I announced above, OL will have a party line after a while. I will teach people for free how to make money on the Internet, at least for free at the beginner level. It will produce money for students at the beginner level, too. When that starts, the OL party line will be no more bickering or personal insults, but it will apply only to the threads where the course is presented. I will probably moderate all comments on those threads to ensure this happens as I plan, and move the meat of the course to a blog to get away from the bickering on the other threads.

I have long observed that some Objectivists prefer to criticize others and bicker with each other to cover their lack of achievements in life. This gives a false sense of achievment, that one is moral, or whatever. It's a game, not achievement. I will provide all who want to do some simple work a possibility of real achievement in reality, but that bickering jig will be up at that time.

MSK's Beginner Internet Marketing Rule No. 1: You need to be emotionally engaged with a subject to learn it properly and implement your learning.

This means you can't learn technical information and bicker over nothing at the same time. This sabotages your emotional engagement, thus sabotages your learning and production.

MSK's Beginner Internet Marketing Rule No. 2: You need a benevolent environment to get pumped and positive.

If people around you are bickering, they poison your emotional engagement and learning.

As you can see, my focus is on not shrugging for real, as given in the title of this thread. Structuring that course (and furthering my IM skills and efforts) is where I spend my hours off this forum. It feels good, too.

I dream of the day when productive effort like that will be considered by a group of Objectivists as more important than petty distractions. I believe it can happen, so I am going to give it a run and see.

Michael

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**emotionally loaded package deals, dodging maneuvers -- instead of careful and precise reasoning**

> Unfortunately, many prefer bickering instead of ideas [MSK]

You use negatively slanted words like "bickering" to cover two entirely different things: personal attacks and disputes over microscopic matters -and- legitimate or thoughtful criticism over matters that are important or need correction.

Some years back at a TJS conference, I criticized ARI for trying to absorb or control too many sub-movements and projects such as the book service, independently owned conferences etc. A worker at ARI then told everyone she could that I had been "bad-mouthing" ARI.

Notice the emotional slant. It's bad to "bad-mouth" or to "bicker" or to be a "school marm". And when you can simply dismiss what I or someone else has said by using such a non-objective term, you allow yourself to not have to deal with the -content- of the argument or criticism.

Even worse is when you deflect by **attacking the critic**: You don't have a record of achievement, so I don't have to think through your disagreement or critique. You are just doing it to get attention or for some ulterior motive, so I don't have to answer.

,,,,,,,,

Michael, these are not usually conscious attempts at evasion, but often one's mind goes into a defensive crouch. One comes up with a lot of words and 'defense mechanisms' used in childhood. It provokes anger. It hurts too much. It seems to be humiliating to admit error. Especially publicly. Perigo is no hero, not an object of admiration. But **on the one limited occasion I mentioned** he -was- able to retract and correct.

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Perigo is no hero, not an object of admiration. But **on the one limited occasion I mentioned** he -was- able to retract and correct.

Phil,

So a "big man" is "not an object of admiration" to you?

The disconnect grows and grows as I scratch my head in wonder.

For the record, that jerk retracted his call to murder an American candidate for president, which incidentally would have become a serious crime if he had insisted on it, but he certainly did not "correct" anything. Just wait. I bet any amount of money there will be another blast of hate speech from him and it will not take long in coming.

A slug or two of firewater over a reasonable limit, and... well we keep seeing it, don't we?...

Is that what "big men" do in your understanding?

Bah... enough of this.

Let's do it this way. You are invited to take my course when it goes up. It will be free and maybe I can help you make some money if you are interested. (No bickering will be allowed, though.) If you take it, you will certainly learn how to spread your ideas in a more competent fashion on the Internet than haunting Objectivist forums to try to teach etiquette to posters over nothing of any real value.

I'm not interested in much else in your message. I disagree with you on an awful lot and I have given my reasons. And I still disagree with you.

Michael

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Phil and Greybird -- back to the theme of this thread.

Your arguments are exactly correct, and you have done well, as well as anyone could.

Give it up. Shrug. It's not worth the abuse you have to suffer.

REB

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I may be wasting my time suggesting this, but I'll do it anyway. I have found that if I'm having trouble keeping my cool in an argument, because I feel that my opponent must be demented or malicious or stupid -- and probably all three -- to argue for his idiotic position, there's a way out short of mayhem. And that is to become, in my own mind, the devil's advocate -- to take my opponent's position and do my honest. serious best to defend and justify it, to find the best possible arguments and evidence for it that I can. That doesn't necessarily result in my accepting his position -- although sometimes that has been the result -- but it usually does make me understand why someone might accept it without being demented or malicious or stupid.

It also makes it possible for me not to throw around accusations about the psychology of my opponent.

Barbara

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Barbara,

You are right.

Now for the inevitable exception. I will not host people repeating claims or insinuations that people I respect are racists without at least contesting it, then stopping it.

One of the posters on this thread even outright claimed that you are a racist in another thread. I let it stay and it was contested and both positions are there for people to read and judge. (I do admit that I have a very low opinion of anyone who thinks you are a racist.)

But it ground to a halt as it should have. Had it continued, I would have reacted as I did on this thread, probably worse.

If people want to do that crap, let them do it elsewhere.

Michael

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Barbara:

Precisely. The way I was educated in Aristotelian rhetoric and modern debate was that the best way to prepare your case was to argue your opponent's case.

Aristotle's theory of creating the "good" society was to provide "all the available means of persuasion in the given case". In so doing, providing good and evil, right and wrong or the negative and the affirmative with the same tools would, in and of itself, lead to citizens possessing common sense choosing the good.

I had a student who chose as his debate topic for the term: Resolved that the Sullivan law of NY City was unconstitutional. Not one liberal student in the class I was teaching would take the negative position. I, as the instructor, met with the student and told him that I would take the negative. Needless to say, he was averse to the concept because he thought it would effect his grade.

Fortunately, I was able to get really close with my students and I explained to him that my taking that position would be just an exercise to prove to the class that you could use the principles of rhetoric to effectively argue either side of any issue.

The class knew I was, personally, totally opposed to the position that I was to argue and it was a superior way to teach one of the essential aspects of the course they were taking.

The student did an excellent job on the debate and would up getting a B+ in the course. In five years of teaching, I only gave out two A's and they were both to two students who would up graduating magna cum laude. It turned out that he recommended to his soon to be ex-wife that she take me as an instructor the next term because I was an excellent teacher.

Amazingly, she did and we would up together for almost 15 years.

Adam

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What abuse, Roger?

Michael

To those who know what I'm talking about, no explanation is necessary. To those who do not know what I'm talking about, no explanation is possible. :poke:

reb

Roger,

Sounds tribal enough to me.

Michael

Cute.

Try these:

Your focus is on controlling others, not on producing nor admiring producers.....You can be a "big man" like Perigo if you wish and receive all the pertinent adulation that comes with that station. ....Shame on you for insinuating that crap....Shame on you for saying that crap......You need to be right even when wrong....Jeezus, what a bunch of crap you manage to write constantly. I sometimes wonder if you are on the same planet as me.

Sound familiar? Though, as noted above, while I expect Dragonfly, Greybird, and Phil to get what I am referring to, I have serious doubts that you will recognize the above quoted comments as being abusive. Prove me wrong...

Heh. Perhaps it's like the way Ba'al regards popularity in music: the galloping subjectivity of opinion polls.

REB

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So before it was Bidinotto "suggested" an insult. Now it is "made" an insult based on "racist reasoning."

You cannot read. In my very first post on this subject I wrote "This is insulting bullshit", that's clear enough, no suggestion about it. My next sentence was "It suggests that the fact that other countries don't have a black president or premier is due to some racist prejudice." The meaning of "suggest" is here of course that Bidinotto cannot prove his outrageous claim, he can only suggest it without having any evidence to back it up, it does not mean that there is any doubt about Bidinotto's meaning.

I've seen this game played before. That's exactly how it is played and how smears take.

Who is playing games here? My statements have been consistent from the beginning. But what do you write in your replies? "You are not going to paint Robert Bidinotto as a racist and make it stick." "Robert Bidinotto is not a racist." "Do not call them racists or engage in any other form of hate speech." Now this is a prime example of smearing, as none of these statements apply to me. I never called Bidinotto a racist and I have not engaged in hate speech, so your remarks are uncalled for.

Here's the hidden standard I see operating right in front of me: When I do that crap, nobody should perceive it (because I am so clever) and I should be able to get away with it. When you do it, I have to cry, "Foul."

I've no idea what you're talking about, this sounds to me like some paranoid fantasy. I haven't been hiding anything, on the contrary, I've been quite open and explicit in my criticism, so the idea that I'm trying "to get away with 'it'" (whatever that might be) is just ludicrous.

It doesn't sound so clever expressed like that, does it? I'm just pulling the covers off by example and then calling it what it is, since this seems to be the only way to get through. You don't have to like it. I sure as hell don't like your use of the word "suggest" to snipe mendacious crap at someone who has a lifetime of achievement that contradicts the lie you just promoted about him.

What lie? The lie that only exists in your imagination? The notion that Bidinotto is a racist? That is a lie on your part, as I've never said that. Criticism of a statement for its racist implications is not the same as calling the person making that statement a racist, as several others here have confirmed. You keep ignoring that, which doesn't look good.

I honestly think you knew what you are doing this time around. You even threw in snipes about Objectivists for good measure (and, to not waste the opportunity, kept that crap up over several posts).

Snipes about Objectivists? This is what I wrote: "The usual reaction you can expect on Objectivist forums:...". Well I've myself had enough experience in that regard, as you should know. Now you have of course never made disparaging remarks about Objectivist forums. Noooooooo....

Incidentally, you went beyond "suggest" in your last post. I am leaving it up since it serves as such a good example of what I am talking about.
... Bidinotto made an insulting remark based on racist reasoning...

Who engages in "racist reasoning"?

Racists, of course.

Non sequitur. As several people have in vain tried to explain to you, pointing out racist reasoning in a particular argument does not imply that you accuse the person who makes that statement is a racist. But either that is too difficult for you or you really know better (which would be worse).

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As several people have in vain tried to explain to you, pointing out racist reasoning in a particular argument does not imply that you accuse the person who makes that statement is a racist. But either that is too difficult for you or you really know better (which would be worse).

Dragonfly,

It's worse. Robert Bidinotto does not use racist reasoning and is not a racist.

I've had enough.

The thread is closed.

Michael

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