Kara Connor

Did I not answer your questions? Oh, I didn’t! I would call them secondary to the main questions about R nought, the anti-vax movement, and flaws or laziness in human cognition.

@PopeBeanie – Yes, you are correct with the basics of ‘R Nought (12-18). But it does not explain why Canada lost elimination status before the US. But elimination statu…[Read more]

..or at least a non sequitur….as most people who use the Galileo Gambit aren’t making a formal logical argument….it appeals not to reason but to ego, making it less an argument and more a psychological defense mechanism.

Yes, I guess it is more of a cognitive bias than a logical fallacy.

Cheers Strega! Hope all is good with you!

I am still thinking about what the ideas of the Enlightenment……..

The Lillian Hellman Fallacy and the Galileo Gambit.

There’s a predictable pattern in modern argument, especially online, where someone with a weak or poorly supported claim begins by presenting themselves as a courageous dissenter—someone who “refuses to cut their consc…[Read more]

Thanks Reg!!

Have a great week!

Appreciate it, PopeBeanie….I just rhyme what the evidence taught.
Gift of the gab, not the gift of God……
Critical thinking’s my creed, skepticism my sport.

Once you no longer reserve a hidden compartment in your reasoning for “maybe there’s a divine exception,” the entire field of view opens up. You stop having to protect contradictions, and patterns that were once blurred by reverence or taboo become visible. I don’t carry a residual conceptual veto. When you remove that invisible constraint of ma…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!

Have a great week!

Thanks Jake, I was mostly thinking about Ireland when I wrote that :-).

The Enlightenment was about freeing thought from authority, be that authority religious, royal, or dogmatic. Now the new authorities are hashtags and outrage algorithms. The problem is not just ideological, it’s epistemic. Both the ‘Lunatic Left and Rancid Right’ have abandoned Enlightenment principles like reason, evidence, and open debate in fa…[Read more]

The idea of America; self-determination, free inquiry, equality before the law, is extraordinary. The execution of it has always been messy, compromised, and full of contradictions. Please don’t see my criticism as anti-American. I hope it is seen as pro-Enlightenment. I have no tribal attachment, and I can separate the myth from the machinery. T…[Read more]

@Jakelafort – I agree with the sentiment, but I am more optimistic (or naïve!) about the future. The pace of scientific and technological progress has far outstripped the average person’s ability or willingness to keep up intellectually with these advances. It is not so much that there is a growth in ignorance and stupidity but rather that it now…[Read more]

@Enco – It could be that Tucker Carlson made a balls of his testosterone booster with too much testicle tanning?

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Simon, the problem with JD Vance isn’t that he “respects” his wife’s atheism — it’s that he doesn’t respect her Hinduism. He’s implying she’s an atheist simply because she isn’t a Christian, which is a rather offensive way to erase a faith practiced by hundreds of millions in India. It’s disingenuous.

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Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
What you’re describing isn’t moral realism but moral function: why we act morally, not whether morality exists as some external reality.

Thanks @Reg, that’s it in a nutshell.  Talking about morality is like talking about the middle east – the answer is always complicated.  The remit was to figure out morality so th…[Read more]

Good Website here.