Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

PostHeaderIcon Rogan & Musk

Ignore all the hyperbole over Elon trying ONE small hit from Joe’s tobacco/marijuana hybrid joint, two hours into the interview, which did not appear to change his mental state at all. Watch this utterly fascinating conversation for yourself. I promise the time will not be wasted.

I can’t imagine anyone better qualified to explore Musk’s remarkable mind. Many truly thought provoking discussions on very diverse subjects arise. Enjoy!  :)  â—„Daveâ–º

PostHeaderIcon Ants & Gods

The subject of Artificial Intelligence and the future of mankind arose in discussions on the previous post. Here is an excellent TED talk on subject, by Sam Harris last year:

 

 

…pretty sobering and thought provoking, no? The analogy comparing ourselves to ants works rather well. His last line about constructing a new god was incredibly profound! Any discussion?

PS: Especially for Chris… be paying close attention to the visual at 4:08; but try not to lose your train of thought.  😉 â—„Daveâ–º

PostHeaderIcon Two Shooters!

Uh oh… We have been musing over the mysterious Vegas massacre a bit hereabouts; but I have deliberately avoided chasing the various conspiracy theories, involving multiple shooters. I had assumed that all of the reports of more than one gunman were the result of confusing echos. That just ended:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxmEFeKy8aI&feature=youtu.be

This sure strikes me as sound science (pun intended) and common sense. Now, what exactly are they hiding, and why? â—„Daveâ–º

PostHeaderIcon Cosmic Clouds

Here we go again. After watching the Electric Universe clip in my last post, try this one:

Do you think there might be a correlation between them? Think about the various electromagnetic fields involved in deflecting cosmic rays. Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon Electric Universe

A decade ago, in my About page, I made the following statement:

I have spent sixty years trying to respect the wisdom of my elders, and now that I find it increasingly difficult to find one, I reckon it is my turn to pass along to posterity whatever wisdom I have garnered. Youngsters always think they already know it all; I did too at their age. The older I get however, the more I realize how little I actually know, how many earlier beliefs turned out false, and how few people can tell the difference.

Now in my 70s, I am still having my mind blown by how wrong my science teachers often were. If the incongruities of cosmology and physics have ever puzzled you the way they have me, you might find the following lecture rather fascinating:

Since electricity and electromagnetism has been a central theme in much of my life, I find this profound and at least as plausible as other theories. Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon I Miss Hitch

Here is a good compilation, worth pondering:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuwRE6yM_Wg

Harris is brilliant; but so was Hitchens, and I always appreciated his attitude. 😀 â—„Daveâ–º

 

PostHeaderIcon Is It Parkinson’s?

I find this MD rather persuasive. He has been posting videos explaining his conclusion that Hillary has Parkinson’s disease, for a couple of weeks now. His latest is a discussion of her most recent episode on 9/11:

I thought there was something really weird about the deep blue sunglasses. Too bad she won’t be able to wear them during the upcoming debates. 😉

To better understand how and why he came to his Parkinson’s conclusion, watch the following Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon Collecting Cow Farts

Here in California, our dairy cows continue to fail our strict emissions tests, so the legislature is doing something about it.

cow_fart_collector

No, unfortunately this latest episode of AGW insanity is not a joke. AP is reporting: Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon The Honey Badger

When I was exploring Kenya in the late ’60s, I read several books by Robert Ruark, a well known novelist and big game hunter at the time. One of them was entitled, “The Honey Badger.” In it, I learned that this rather small critter was considered the meanest and most dangerous animal in Africa! Here is why:

Pretty impressive, huh? There is apparently no animal it won’t attack, and it is said that when it attacks a man, it goes straight for the crotch! OK, this was just a setup, for understanding an otherwise obscure motto/meme of the Breitbart News organization. You may have heard that Trump just hired their Executive Chairman, as CEO of his campaign organization. Although I must have, I don’t recall ever hearing anything about Steve Bannon before; Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon Dilbert is Persuasive

It is becoming increasingly obvious why Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, regularly garners several thousand comments to each of his blog posts. Here is another brilliant one, posted only a few hours ago, which has already passed a thousand. Yet, it is Sunday, when his presumptive office worker fans, are not goofing off in their cubicles.

How to Un-Hypnotize a Rabid Anti-Trumper

Regular readers of this blog know I’m a trained hypnotist. I’ve been studying the ways of persuasion – in all its forms – for decades.

My background in persuasion is the reason I recognized last summer that Trump would exceed most people’s expectations. He was pitch-perfect on persuasion technique. If you don’t study persuasion, Trump’s actions appear random and even dangerous. If you do know how persuasion works, you probably realize Trump is in a league of his own.

You think I’m overstating the case for persuasion. Perhaps you think Trump is doing well for a variety of reasons that include his accurate reading of the Republican base.

But Trump’s accurate reading of the Republican base is part of the art of persuasion. None of what you see in Trump’s election success so far is luck or coincidence. It is technique. If you’re not trained to see it, the method is invisible.

For example, I have already used several persuasion techniques in the paragraphs above. If I were to see another writer use these same persuasion methods on me, I would recognize them. But most of you did not recognize the methods – at least not all of them – when I used them right in front of you.

Persuasion hides in plain sight.

Just for fun, I’ve un-hypnotized several rabid anti-Trumpers lately. It takes less than ten minutes, requires nothing but conversation, and you can probably pull it off just by reading how I did it. Here’s how…

You don’t want to miss it. Whatever one’s opinion of Trump, most serious thinkers should agree that his suggestions are provocative, and very persuasive. 😀 â—„Daveâ–º

PostHeaderIcon This is Classic

I don’t often share emails; but this one was classic:

Frog_survey1

I had never heard of a yellow-legged frog; but a quick search confirms that it does in fact exist, and is so rare that it is now on the endangers species list! Anyway, the property owner’s response Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon A Really Stupid Answer

As previously stated, I am essentially dropping out of political commentary because the political situation is beyond the ken of rational discussion. Yet, I still have the urge to amuse myself via diarrhea of the keyboard, hence a journey into new fields of discussion.

Today’s rant was inspired by a billboard I saw the other day while riding down the highway. Now, I had seen this and similar billboards for years but, for some reason, this particular sighting rather slapped me upside the face when the idiocy of its message actually got through. The message:

LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION

Now anyone with ¼ of a brain knows that life, as we currently understand it, actually began several billions of years ago.

I am a longtime fan of the writings of the late Dr. Carl Sagan. Among other insights he offered us was that while the universe seems likely to spontaneously produce new life on a grand scale, by processes we do not yet fully understand, there remains the possibility that the universe got the process right ONLY A SINGLE TIME. And, in Dr. Sagan’s opinion, on the mere possibility that spontaneous life was a singular occurrence, we should treat it as a miracle beyond mere reverence. I find myself in total agreement with Dr. Sagan’s viewpoint.

Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon Global Cooling

…must win in the end, and there is nothing whatever man could do to prevent it.

This rather obvious truth occurred to me while reading an incredibly fascinating, informative, and must-read article entitled: “Climate and Human Civilization over the last 18,000 years” by Andy May. It includes a PDF of an 18,000 year timeline of what is known of earth’s climate and human efforts at civilization. Do download the poster and view it at about 100% zoom in your PDF viewer, so you can read the text. This means you will have to scroll left and right as well as up and down; but it is worth the effort.

The subject was skepticism of AGW, of course, and the historical timeline is juxtaposed with the best estimates we have on global temperatures, which purport to show the historical effects of natural temperature variations on human activity, particularly migration. What struck me most, however, as I contemplated all the time covered by various civilizations I had never even heard of, much less studied, was how insignificant to the whole scheme of human history is a single human lifespan. Consider how exceedingly few people’s lives and deeds are remembered even one hundred years after their death by their own descendants, much less leave an indelible mark in history. Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon Sons of Liberty

I find myself weary of trying to awaken sheeple, to the perils facing our nation. Most don't want to hear it. I am bored with reading about and commenting on the latest outrageous corruption and scandals emanating from Sodom by the Potomac. They are now coming so 'fast and furious' that it is impossible to keep up with them in any depth anyway.

Yet, I find it impossible to just give up and let the Pro Retrogressives win a total and final victory, which would bind our posterity in the ancient chains of serfdom, in the land our forefathers fought and died to keep free. I think we need a positive project to focus our energy on, which would at least attempt to save our country for our grandchildren.

It is they, the children, who are the future of America. Yet, presently they are ever increasingly and deliberately being dumbed down. They are indoctrinated in our public schools, to be ashamed of America's past, and view a Marxist utopia as its inevitable future. If we really want to save America, first and foremost this trend must be reversed. Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon Please Understand Me

Getting back to the subject of your “Unable to Cope” post, Troy, another thought it engendered was the problem of expecting others to think like we do. Remember when we got tangled up with that freethinker forum, where we first met? Expecting it to be a place where ideas were freely discussed, we were somewhat taken aback to find it dominated by ACLU type atheist activists, who were as rigidly dogmatic as the Christian fundamentalists about which they obsessed.

To your credit, you were the first to flee those stultifying groupthink environs in horror. Several more of us soon followed, and we created a new forum, which we called 'Reasonable Rationals' (as opposed to 'Atheist Activists'), where we thoroughly enjoyed daily kicking around interesting ideas for over a year.

As an exercise in comity, early on we explored David Keirsey's work on innate temperament differences, derived from Jungian personality types, identified by Meyers-Briggs type personality tests. He describes the four basic temperaments, out of the 16 possible Jungian combinations, which are not evenly distributed in the population. He briefly explains them here, and then elaborates a bit on each:

'SJ' Guardians 40 – 45%

'SP' Artisans 30 – 35%

'NF' Idealists 15 – 20%

'NT' Rationals 5 – 10%

Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon AGW Update

James Taylor, blogging for Forbes Magazine has a great article entitled, “New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism.” It is short and well worth the read. It concludes with:

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth’s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a “huge discrepancy” between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.

The AGW alarmists are going nuts in the comment section, and he is having a blast swatting flies. I love his spunk and sarcasm:

I allow myself the pleasure of responding sarcastically to ad hominem personal attacks. I think I can hardly be faulted for that. If you don’t want sarcasm, don’t make ad hominem attacks.

Read the rest of this entry »

PostHeaderIcon Best Tsunami Video Yet

I have seen a lot of clips of the Japanese tsunami; but this is the most riveting five minutes of video I think I have ever watched:

Obviously, the person who filmed this survived; but I’ll bet he was puckered by the time it got up to the third floor and just kept coming! The focus on the nuclear disaster may make for more compelling news; but this shows in stunning detail what happened to thousands of lives that day. Even the survivors lost everything in five short minutes. My reputedly cold hard heart bleeds for them. â—„Daveâ–º

PostHeaderIcon Livermore Laser

I encountered an old retired friend who is stunned that the government has revealed the project he has been unable to talk about all these years, “US lab debuts super laser.”

Equipment connected to a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that exist at cores of stars or giant planets.

NIF will be able to create conditions and conduct experiments never before possible on Earth, according to the laboratory.

A fusion reaction triggered by the super laser hitting hydrogen atoms will produce more energy than was required to prompt “ignition,” according to NIF director Edward Moses.

“This is the long-sought goal of ‘energy gain’ that has been the goal of fusion researchers for more than half a century,” Moses said.

“NIF’s success will be a scientific breakthrough of historic significance; the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting, duplicating on Earth the processes that power the stars.”

Since he knows better, he reckons they are claiming this benign purpose for the weapon in order to get the “greenies” now in charge to continue to support their obscenely expensive project. He also shared the fact that they often triggered UFO sighting reports by bouncing the laser off the moon. 🙂 â—„Daveâ–º

PostHeaderIcon Progressive Madness

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D. has diagnosed our malaise and written a book on, “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.” It and excerpts from it are available on his website, “Liberty Mind.”

I eschew the Orwellian use of the word “Liberal” to refer to the Marxist Left; but if one substitutes the word “Progressive” wherever he uses “Liberal” in the following excerpt, “On the Madness of Modern Liberalism,” he convincingly makes the case that the Leftist ideology is an evil psychopathology, whatever label one attaches to it:

The egalitarianism and welfarism of modern liberal government are incompatible with the facts of human nature and the human condition. But the rise to power of the liberal agenda has resulted from the fact that the people of western societies have irrationally demanded that governments take care of them and manage their lives instead of protecting their property rights. This misconception results in massive violations of those rights while permitting government officials to act out their own and their constituents’ psychopathology. The liberal agenda gratifies various types of pathological dependency; augments primitive feelings of envy and inferiority; reinforces paranoid perceptions of victimization; implements manic delusions of grandeur; exploits government authority for power, domination and revenge; and satisfies infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation.

Modern liberalism rejects, to one degree or another, the competence and sovereignty of the common man and subordinates him to the will of governments run by liberal elites. The western world’s twentieth century capitulation to this philosophy is obvious–and the implications for liberty are ominous. But the history of the world also documents the heroic struggles of human beings to escape from tyrannies of all types, whether imposed by the brute force and declared entitlement of a dictator, or falsely justified by economic, religious or political sophistries. The science fiction of Marxian economic evolution, the grandiose fantasy of a New World Order, the utopian dreams of The Great Society, the myth of the divine emperor, have all had their turns on center stage in irrational man’s attempts to legitimize government control and deny individual liberty. The realities of the human condition, especially the inherent sovereignty of individuals and their inevitable differences in choice and preference, render all collectivist doctrines absurd. A rational biologist will not transport a mountain goat to a prairie and declare a match between organism and environment. A rational social policy theorist will not create an environment of rules for human action that dismisses individual differences, ignores the critical roles of free choice, morality and cooperation, and otherwise distorts and violates the nature of man, and then announce that utopia has arrived in a workers’ paradise.

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”

The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is “In Government We Trust.” To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.

Radical liberalism thus assaults the foundations of civilized freedom, and for that reason it is a genuine evil. Further, given its irrational goals, coercive methods and historical failures, and given its perverse effects on human development, there can be no question of the radical agenda’s madness. Only an irrational agenda would advocate a systematic destruction of the foundations on which ordered liberty depends. Only an irrational man would want the state to run his life for him rather than create secure conditions in which he can run his own life. Only an irrational agenda would deliberately undermine the citizen’s growth to competence by having the state adopt him. Only irrational thinking would trade individual liberty for government coercion, then sacrifice the pride of self-reliance for welfare dependency. Only an irrational man would look at a community of free people cooperating by choice and see a society of victims exploited by villains.

The liberal agenda urges the citizen to place his basic trust in government, to see it as the mother of all providers, and to mistrust those with whom he would have to trade voluntarily in order to get what he wants. In doing this, the politician seeks to redirect to government offices the trust which can and should empower the individual to run his own life through voluntary cooperation with others. Government programs appeal to the citizen’s passivity by implying that he need not provide for his own health care, housing or retirement. And he need not cooperate with his fellows for these purposes either. Instead, he is told, he need only trust the government to make available to him whatever he needs and to implement that trust by ceding to its officials the power to tax the people and regulate them for his benefit. In short, the government invites the citizen to vote for the candidate who promises what a parent gives a child. It invites him to assume the dependent role of the child, to surrender his personal sovereignty to the state, to ignore his existential obligation to take full responsibility for his material and social welfare, and to empower government officials as his guardians.

His neurosis is evident in his ideals and fantasies; in his self-righteousness, arrogance and grandiosity; in his self-pity; in his demands for indulgence and exemption from accountability; in his claims to entitlements; in what he gives and withholds; and in his protests that nothing done voluntarily is enough to satisfy him. Most notably, the radical liberal’s neurosis is evident in his extravagant political demands, in his furious protests against economic freedom, in his arrogant contempt for morality, in his angry defiance of civility, in his bitter attacks on freedom of association, in his aggressive assault on individual liberty. And in the final analysis, the irrationality of the radical liberal is most apparent in his ruthless use of force to control the lives of others.

In a competent society the principles of ordered liberty guide the citizen throughout the life cycle. They inform him and his children and the community of the rules by which human beings make good lives for themselves. Because the rights, laws and duties of the competent society are all of a piece and reflect the bipolar nature of man, the entire ensemble of individual citizen, family, community, society and institutions forms a coherent whole in support of life, liberty, social cooperation and the pursuit of happiness. Under the rules that govern ordered liberty, the human organism and its physical and social environment are in harmony to the maximum extent possible given the turbulent nature of man.

By contrast, a society organized under radical liberalism comes into immediate conflict with the bipolar nature of man and with the rights, laws and duties needed for human beings to live in peace and freedom. Rather than coordinating the life of the individual citizen with the institutions of his society, radical liberalism sets individuals and institutions into perpetual conflict with each other through its rhetoric of class warfare and victimization, its violations of personal freedom through confiscatory taxation and invasive regulation, its attacks on family integrity, and the endless bungling of government bureaucracy.

With an incomparable record of flawed analysis, faulty solutions and destructive consequences, liberal government grandly proclaims itself indispensable and presumes to regulate and administer our lives from the business office to the bedroom. The inherent potential for madness in all human beings–our tendencies toward grandiosity, overestimation and extravagance; our impaired judgment, distortions of fact, misunderstanding of cause and effect and resistance to learning from experience; our lack of perspective and obsession with irrelevant details; our foolish goals, paranoid fears and irrational counter-aggression; our power-grabbing and criminality–all are writ large in the madness of liberal government. Its policies and operations are a study in the psychopathology and sociopathology of human nature.

Contemplating this profound insight, it offends me that Republican politicians demand that we accommodate such evil in order to win elections, rather than loudly condemn it in the most unambiguous terms, and do everything possible to eradicate such irrational nonsense among thoughtless sheeple. â—„Daveâ–º

PostHeaderIcon Being Disagreeable

I have a well-earned reputation as a contrarian. In part, this is a result of my extreme ‘mismatcher’ (a NLP input filter sort) mind. Where most people, being ‘matchers,’ compare new data with what is already known, looking for similarities, my mind automatically looks for differences. Ask me to compare similar objects (e.g. a few coins), and my mind will assume that it is being asked to report all the things that are different about them, while a strong matcher will report all the noticed characteristics they have in common. Submit a new idea, and it will immediately search for the hidden flaw that dooms it as unworkable, no matter how good it initially sounds.

This trait has driven colleagues around the bend over the years; but it has also saved a lot of wasted time, effort, and grief. In a business meeting, someone will present a great sounding idea and everyone else jumps aboard with enthusiasm – until the contrarian in their midst asks, “Have you considered {hidden flaw}…,” which renders it stillborn. In my own enterprises, I had to learn to bite my tongue when the flaws were inconsequential, in order not to dampen employees’ enthusiasm for innovation.

Naturally, this affliction appears in my writing and can be a turnoff to readers. I really enjoy debate on forums and in comment sections, so it was with pleasure that I encountered a flawless little essay by Paul Graham entitled “How to Disagree.”:

The web is turning writing into a conversation. Twenty years ago, writers wrote and readers read. The web lets readers respond, and increasingly they do — in comment threads, on forums, and in their own blog posts.

Many who respond to something disagree with it. That’s to be expected. Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing. And when you agree there’s less to say. You could expand on something the author said, but he has probably already explored the most interesting implications. When you disagree you’re entering territory he may not have explored.

The result is there’s a lot more disagreeing going on, especially measured by the word. That doesn’t mean people are getting angrier. The structural change in the way we communicate is enough to account for it. But though it’s not anger that’s driving the increase in disagreement, there’s a danger that the increase in disagreement will make people angrier. Particularly online, where it’s easy to say things you’d never say face to face.

If we’re all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here’s an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy:

Profound! A cogent license to be disagreeable! What follows is a hierarchy of disagreement techniques from DH0, Name-calling, to DH6, Refuting the Central Point. I intend to refer to them often in the future, and look forward to the time when I can from memory declare, “That is only a DH3 class argument on the Graham scale, and not as convincing as a better effort might be.” The value of this scale cannot be explained any better than he does:

The most obvious advantage of classifying the forms of disagreement is that it will help people to evaluate what they read. In particular, it will help them to see through intellectually dishonest arguments. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. In fact that is probably the defining quality of a demagogue. By giving names to the different forms of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons.

Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional. Someone arguing against the tone of something he disagrees with may believe he’s really saying something. Zooming out and seeing his current position on the disagreement hierarchy may inspire him to try moving up to counterargument or refutation.

But the greatest benefit of disagreeing well is not just that it will make conversations better, but that it will make the people who have them happier. If you study conversations, you find there is a lot more meanness down in DH1 than up in DH6. You don’t have to be mean when you have a real point to make. In fact, you don’t want to. If you have something real to say, being mean just gets in the way.

I suspect I will still be thought mean, because I don’t suffer fools easily and come by my reputation as a curmudgeon honestly; but I intend to work on the promise of that second paragraph. â—„Daveâ–º

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