Of Ifan Morgan.
I thought this one had been done and dusted, but he came back for more and again we see intellectual dishonesty and strawman arguments.
Of course, anyone who had followed the discussion, will have realised that I said nothing of the sort – I was drawing a parallel and it’s an accurate one. The Catholic church in Galileo’s time was the holder of the orthodoxy – today, we have “the science” and both are articles of faith as is the assumption that a consensus is meaningful. History is riddled with the consensus being upset by new discoveries. What matters is that the published data can be replicated. That’s it. No consensus is necessary. Nor did I ever suggest that anything be taken at face value – this is a fabrication on this poltroon’s part. Another strawman. Indeed, I did not take at face value, the claims that masks, lockdowns and social distancing work. Subsequent facts on the ground have demonstrated that I was right to be sceptical.
When faced with this kind of stupidity, I find myself wondering about the state of mankind – not least the level of intellect and education. Anyway, another guy waded in making much the same points as I did.
A reasonable man would say that Mr Irving has a reasonable point. Morgan is, indeed, spouting garbage, but he is at least, consistent.
None of this matters and no one has said that it does – merely that when results are published everyone gets to discuss it. If it’s snake oil – see for example Ferguson and his catastrophic predictions – we can draw our own conclusions. No one has suggested that opinions be presented as fact. This is another strawman. It would seem, however, in Morganworld we can only discuss matters within our own area of expertise – I cannot comment on a bad landing, because I’m not a pilot, I cannot draw a logical conclusion that Chris Witty et al were lying to me because I’m not a medical doctor. Yet, yet, yet, despite the emerging evidence that SAGE and company were devastatingly wrong, that their restrictions were not only useless, but actually harmful, this charlatan clings like a shipwrecked sailor to his plank of wood in the choppy seas.
Once again, the intellectual dishonesty. I did not say that the church came up with the restrictions – I used an allegory, something this buffoon seems not to comprehend. Indeed, every utterance uncovers a man who lacks intellect, yet has probably had a certain amount of education and that has instilled in him the mistaken belief that having an educational qualification is comparable to intelligence, yet cannot master the basics of logical argument or critical thinking.
We find ourselves faced with a man who has consistently used logical fallacies now trying to claim that his opponent is doing likewise. His assumptions – if that’s what we are to believe – are as foolish as the rest of his argument. And the poor little fellow doesn’t like my statement about the violence of the state – as if, in some way I am being inconsistent. I dislike the state in all its forms and regard it as at best my enemy. Nothing it does should be taken on trust. Clamping down on free speech is, indeed, the violence of the state. Democracy is merely the dictatorship of the majority – a system that is marginally less bad than the alternatives. What we have seen this past two years has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with tyranny – and what Morgan wishes to impose on the free speech principle is also tyranny.
I’ve come across some nasty, vile, illiberal fuckwits in my time, but this guy is at the top of an excrescent pile of shit.
Edited to add: Okay, it looks like we have finally come to an end here.
I’ll make a couple of final points here. If I wished to write a text book on logical fallacies, this argument has been rich with them. Morgan tried to accuse me of not understanding the strawman, yet made some pretty outrageous mischaracterisations of my argument – a classic strawman. So, yes, I very much understand it and accurately identified them when he tried it on.
I find it somewhat amusing that being called an idiot and a moron didn’t ruffle him, but the Kipling quote did. It really seemed to get under his skin. Again, he tried to accuse me of a fallacy – but the ad hominem fallacy only applies if it is an insult without substance. The continued use of fallacies, intellectual dishonesty and mischaracterisation was enough evidence to substantiate my point. He did twist my words to make traps for fools – this is an objective fact that is there for all to see. Ergo, no ad hom applied here.
I will agree with him on one matter. We are done here. Even my patience was beginning to wear thin. However, this serves as an example of the kind of thinking (?!) we are up against – logically flawed and in thrall to the cult of the expert – even when there is clear evidence that the experts are lying and his solution is to silence critics with the threat of punishment via the violence of the state. If you want to understand what we have endured this past two years, this glimpse into Ifan Morgan’s mind should tell you all that you need to know.
Science and religion, overlapping magisteria as is sometimes claimed? As an atheist who’s education and employment has had a distinct scientific/technical bias, I’ve always struggled with this.
An orthodoxy I’m sure many here have encountered: If you can’t explain whatever to a reasonably intelligent 13/14 year old you don’t know what you are talking about.
Many a time I have had to explain things, not to 13 year olds, but to colleagues, clients etc. Important that I could actually fo so and it does concentrate the mind.
You can explain science, religion just claims and indoctrinated.
This sort of pseudo science is some bastard chimera which tries to cloak itself in scientific authority.
I don’t think anybody is seeking the opinions of a truck driver. That driver is simply asking for clarification and explanation. Answer, don’t disparage, sneer, criminalise or indoctrinate.
A lack of an answer is usually all the answer needed.
I agree. What we are seeing are statements of faith dressed as science. I mentioned in the discussion the covid restrictions, as not one of them has any scientific basis and all of them are falling apart as the evidence emerges, yet we were exhorted to ‘follow the science.’ It was bullshit. Some of us could see that it was bullshit and we were reviled and ridiculed for doing so. Morgan continues that sneering in his comments just as the building around him collapses. He’s a bit like Comical Ali in Iraq.
As you say, no one is pretending that the trucker is an expert in this field, merely that he has the right to challenge, discuss and debate things that will affect his life. Whether he is right or wrong is neither here nor there. No one has said that his opinions are the same thing as facts – that’s one of the strawmen (one of a whole field of the damned things). Also, this is characterised by the kind of intellectual snobbery we see from people who have an education, but little intellect.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, in the US, Lund University, in Sweden and the Centre for Political Studies, in Denmark, said the costs to society far outweighed the benefits and called for lockdown to be “rejected out of hand” as a future pandemic policy.
The team even found that some lockdown measures may have increased deaths by stopping access to outdoor space, “pushing people to meet at less safe places” while isolating infected people indoors, where they could pass the virus on to family members and housemates.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/02/trusting-people-do-right-thing-saved-lives-covid-lockdowns/?WT.mc_id=e_DM1543379&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_FAM_New_ES&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_FAM_New_ES20220203&utm_campaign=DM1543379
Quite so. A bit like the Berlin wall this one is falling apart.
Nothing dumber than an idiot who thinks he’s smart, is there? Personally, I use the “scientific community”’s rejection of the Big Bang theory and plate tectonics rather than Galileo for precisely this reason. When you’re arguing with the simple-minded, there’s no room for subtlety.
More recently, having just read a book on it, I’ve also found the decipherment of Linear B apropos to the subject: an amateur (Michael Ventris was an architect) blew apart the rock-solid academic consensus that the Minoan civilisation couldn’t possibly be Greek. And yes, it was a very similar situation, with diversion from the consensus immediately condemning you to academic oblivion. In fairness, there’d been a lot of hack amateurs claiming to have broken the code over the years – it was a favourite subject of the sort of people who turn up on Ancient Aliens these days claiming to have “deciphered“ crop circles or something – but that kind of reinforces the point: just because some, or even most, amateurs don’t know what they’re doing, it doesn’t mean they all don’t, or that the experts do. Truth is truth, regardless of who discovers it.
Good point. I’ll bear it in mind. To be fair, I was giving the guy some leeway in assuming (big mistake) that he would recognise that it was a parallel and that I was not suggesting that the modern church was creating a policy of lockdown. I mean, you’d have to be pretty dense to think that I was. His repeated assertions that I don’t understand the strawman are laughable.
Is it deliberate that they teach ‘science’ but not the scientific method in school? The thing is, it doesn’t matter if you are a truck driver or a clerk in a patent office, if you are right and can demonstrate that you are right and why, that is all that is required. It also doesn’t matter how eminent you might be in your field of expertise, if you are wrong you are wrong. Of course we now have the added dimension of scientists who are paid by the government to push the government’s line on a particular subject. If telling the truth will get someone fired then that person’s opinion is pretty much valueless.
Much of this stuff isn’t rocket science anyway. You don’t need to be an epidemiologist to know that wearing cloth masks isn’t going to stop an airborne virus from spreading.
This seems to be the cult like mentality that we are seeing here – hence the dissection. Throughout history, scientific advances have been made by amateurs applying the principle. Their experiments could be replicated, so supporting their hypothesis. Science is not – or it should not – be the preserve of an elite expert class. Anyone can do it if you understand the basic principles involved.
Sure, I wouldn’t want a trucker to operate on me, but neither would I take anything the Whitty, Van Tam or the other charlatans, say seriously because they have lied and lied again. It doesn’t matter whether they are medical experts, they lied, hence they are untrustworthy. A medical degree doesn’t absolve them.