Sunday, September 05, 2010

Reading comprehension

It's amazing that some of my "readers" are actually incapable of reading and comprehending simple declarative sentences in the English language. It's even more amazing that they would publicly display this inability. I guess it's the Dunning–Kruger effect in action.

Update: It's always amusing to me when people comment here telling me I'm wrong. I already know that millions of people disagree with me. No matter what you say, someone thinks you're completely full of shit. (Even if you restrict yourself to complete banalities, someone will object to your insipid choice of topics.) I just don't care that you disagree with me. I'm 100% absolutely, completely, utterly indifferent to the fact.

If you're not completely stupid, I might care why you disagree with me. You don't have an "obligation" per se to back up your assertions with arguments and evidence, but if you don't, I'm simply going to ignore you (or take a little trouble to make fun of you). I don't care, for example, that someone happens to believe that state intervention extends periods of overproduction. Millions of people believe — with total passion and conviction — that there's an invisible man in the sky who's frightfully concerned about what I do with my penis. All I can say is: isn't that special.

I might, however, be interested why you think so, and, more importantly, why I personally might change my mind. Do you even know why you yourself believe it? Have you examined the arguments, pro and con? Have you made even a cursory study of macroeconomics? Or are you simply uncritically regurgitating the opinion of some dumbfuck with an ornate piece of paper who's telling you what you want to hear?

And when you follow an angry, argument-free denunciation of my position with a misreading of a simple sentence so egregiously stupid* that one suspects organic brain damage or massive quantities of mind-altering substances (that you're not offering to share), I'm inclined to conclude you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

*The misreading, not the sentence. ;-)

A person is known not just by his friends but by his enemies. There's a certain class of people I'm profoundly satisfied actually disagree with me, the more passionately and intensely, the better. So feel free to vent your spleen in comments. Nobody but me reads them, and when fools and dumbfucks rail against me, I get a warm and fuzzy feeling in my heart: I'm making the right sort of enemies.

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