I honestly wonder if no one has ever told Saletan that being moralizing, sanctimonious, holier-than-though or pompous are bad things. I mean really. What child doesn't know not to address people this way? I hope I'm around to see Saletan ascend into heaven. (What was your virgin birth like, Will?)

In general this article is the typical Saletan journey into bad faith and arrogance, but in particular I would highlight this:

In fact, that's exactly what you've done in this study: You've manufactured a tiny world of letters, half-seconds, and button-pushing, so you can catch us in clear errors and keep out the part of life where our tendencies correct yours. And now you feel great about yourselves. Congratulations. You haven't told us much about our way of thinking. But you've told us a lot about yours.

I know that he is supposedly speaking in another voice here. But come on-- who is doing this? Who is manufacturing this tiny world? Liberals? Anyone who reads this study? It's incredible to me that a paragraph condemning intellectual dishonesty can be so incredibly full of it. Here's one thing that "we" try to avoid doing-- making sweeping generalizations about our political opponents based on studies performed by people in no way connected to us. That's the height of spurious thinking. Physician, heal thyself.

And if you'd care to, turn my water into wine.

I know that he is supposedly speaking in another voice here. But come on-- who is doing this? Who is manufacturing this tiny world? Liberals? Anyone who reads this study? It's incredible to me that a paragraph condemning intellectual dishonesty can be so incredibly full of it.

Um - the authors of the study? Wouldn't that really be the logical antecedent for "you" here? I mean, wouldn't the "people who manufactured the tiny world" be, um, the people who manufactured the tiny world?

Where on earth did you go to school that you can't even read a magazine article without forgetting where you started by the time you get to the end?

Wow.

Quote:

Some of our people are obtuse; so are some of yours. If you studied the rest of us in real life, you'd find that while we second-guess the status quo less than you do, we second-guess putative reforms more than you do, so in terms of complexity, ambiguity, and critical thinking, it's probably a wash. Also, our standard of "information" is a bit tougher than the blips and fads you fall for. Sometimes, these inclinations lead us astray. But over the long run, they've served us and society pretty well. It's just that you notice all the times we were wrong and ignore all the times we were right.

Now, since apparently you went to such a great school: by what possible meaning could "you" and "we" in the final sentence only refer to the authors of the study? How on earth could "our people" and "your people" only mean the people involved in the study? Saletan is clearly referring to conservatives vs. liberals. So you're either being deeply dishonest, or you're not very smart. Which?

Freddie, your comments actually went a long way towards explaining to me why Saletan gets along so well with san and why san hasn't been banned from the Fray. They are both "moralizing, sanctimonious, holier-than-though or pompous".

I'd add rude to the mix.

Simple, dummy. The question was, "who's the 'you' who manufactured a phony tiny world of flashing letters?" The answer is, "the authors of the study, who also used the results to argue that conservatives are inflexible in life, thus obviously placing themselves in the liberal camp."

Yeah, Saletan's somewhat self-righteous voice doesn't usually bother me that much, but this time he really takes it over the top. I actually laughed when I read his last paragraph, for the reasons Freddie outlined. Furthermore, his argument is far from convincing; the case against the conclusions of the study's authors has been much better argued in the Fray.

Sigh. I can write 50 articles against Bush, and even the dumbest of them is celebrated as some kind of insight. Then I write something critical of some liberals, and suddenly it's arrogance, sanctimony, etc. There's a whole network of pseudo-liberal blogs that dismisses any criticism from within this way. It's just perfect that in this case the alleged sanctimony consists of trying to understand how the other side might see things. Apparently arrogance toward the left consists of insufficient arrogance toward the right.

Again-- how can "some of your people" refer to the authors of this study? Do you really believe he's only talking about the people involved in the study? The article he links to most certainly does not refer to the authors of the study. How would saying that conservatives have higher standards of information, or that conservatives have served themselves and society well, be any kind of a defense of conservatism, if it only referred to the authors of the study? How could "you notice all the times we were wrong and ignore all the times we were right" possibly, possibly refer to the authors of the study and have any meaning at all?

You're just wrong about who he's referring to here, I'm sorry.. If he was only referring to the authors of the study he wouldn't be meeting even basic standards of comprehensibility.

No. I'm sorry, sir, but you can't slink out of it that easy. I ask you, who precisely are the people who are responsible for this study? I say all of this as someone who has felt that this study was frankly ridiculous from the beginning. What has served me well, what has been an appropriate standard of information for me, has been to not criticize a sweeping group of people because of the (yes, stupid) opinions of a few.

And as far as you merely adopting another voice... okay, that's fine. And I'm merely criticizing that voice.

who precisely are the people who are responsible for this study?

What? The authors are. They're listed in the news reports, in the original Human Nature article, and all over the place. This is your big damning question?

Dude, he's just as much as confirmed with his comment that he's referring to liberals in general in the final two paragraphs. The name of the article is liberal interpretation! You are being deliberately obtuse. Respond to my specific questions about how those paragraphs make sense in your reading or stop, please.

Freddie is just trolling. I think your article was pretty decent when taken with the article that spawned the discussion to begin with.

In the first article you publish something which was unbelievably bad science and brought out the worst in every self-proclaimed liberal on this board. In the second article you summarized the bad points of the study nicely and provided the conservative readers a message that you don't entirely hate them.

The two articles need to be read together for it to make sense.

Freddie:

And as far as you merely adopting another voice... okay, that's fine. And I'm merely criticizing that voice.

Which is fine with me, too. If I agreed with that voice about everything, I'd be one of them.

And please don't spend the rest of the day demanding to know who "them" is ...

;-)

Freddie:

I honestly wonder if no one has ever told Saletan that being moralizing, sanctimonious, holier-than-though or pompous are bad things. I mean really. What child doesn't know not to address people this way? I hope I'm around to see Saletan ascend into heaven. (What was your virgin birth like, Will?)

In general this article is the typical Saletan journey into bad faith and arrogance, but in particular I would highlight this:

In fact, that's exactly what you've done in this study: You've manufactured a tiny world of letters, half-seconds, and button-pushing, so you can catch us in clear errors and keep out the part of life where our tendencies correct yours. And now you feel great about yourselves. Congratulations. You haven't told us much about our way of thinking. But you've told us a lot about yours.

I know that he is supposedly speaking in another voice here. But come on-- who is doing this? Who is manufacturing this tiny world? Liberals? Anyone who reads this study? It's incredible to me that a paragraph condemning intellectual dishonesty can be so incredibly full of it. Here's one thing that "we" try to avoid doing-- making sweeping generalizations about our political opponents based on studies performed by people in no way connected to us. That's the height of spurious thinking. Physician, heal thyself.

And if you'd care to, turn my water into wine.

Holier then "though"?

It's funny for someone trying to be so smart to not know how to spell "thou."

I don't know, I think the first article would have stood better on its own. It doesn't take a genius to figure out at least one of the many reasons this study is fatally flawed, and belaboring the point in a drawn out article contesting the authors' and media's conclusions one by one (without even taking the study as a whole to task for its paucity of test subjects) seems to legitimize the study in attempting to discredit it. If these conclusions are so ridiculous (and they are), why devote so much energy to dismissing them?