[FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Jon

 

This ...

 

a reactionary position to increasingly support inaction in the face of
incomplete knowledge as the path of moral high-groun. While some may believe
this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make the big
moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and confined to
ivory towers.

 

. is one of the most important thoughts to be dangled before me in a long
time.

 

I think it relates to my fears about the Trump/Biden debates.  How do you
debate a person who is willing to confidently lie?  A debate cannot go
forward in the absence of any concept of truth.  So, I think Biden should
either refuse to debate or pick a fight with trump on the first whopper he
tells,  bury him in facts, refuse to talk about anything else until the lie
is revealed, and walk calmly off the stage if that conversation be carried
to its end.  

 

N

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 12:36 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

 

Please excuse the Cassandrafreude, but here we are nearly 7 months later and
we now have the app, it is called the U.S Postal Service. Will the app
manage to escape any of Dave's points of critique? It is beginning to occur
to me that manifesting beside the rise of bad-faith science (bogus climate
studies supporting denial, bogus pharmaceutical trials, and the like) comes
a reactionary position to increasingly support inaction as the path of moral
high-ground, in the face of incomplete knowledge. While some may believe
this strategy to be 'correct', it leaves bad-faith actors to make the big
moves while the purists hole up, finding themselves besieged and confined to
ivory towers. What remains of the republic is at risk and not just at the
hands of those that seek to dismantle it, but also by those too paralyzed by
the righteousness of certainty to protect it. Somehow, I would have much
preferred to find myself complaining in November about the failures of a
first-gen voting app than whining about losing another of our critical
institutions as we cower in the post-democratic apocalypse.

 

 

 

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