[T]he superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times, once it is debunked, takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure out of control. . . . [O]ne of the functions of old-fashioned religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be regarded as myths into behaving in a way that long-run civilized life requires.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
Things I don't care about
If Paul Krugman himself were to come here and say only, "Larry, I have a Ph.D in economics, and I say you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about," I wouldn't be interested. (Of course, the good doctor is not a jackass; if he cared enough to comment, he'd care enough to post a devastating (and probably correct) argument showing precisely why I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about, and I would change my mind.)
I don't really care about your personal experiences. I don't care that you live in a communist country and you therefore know communism sucks. I don't care that you used to be an atheist and you now know that God exists. I don't know you, I don't want to know you, and I can't place your personal experiences in enough context to draw any conclusions. Maybe you're just the sort of greedy asshole that's just not going to thrive in a communist country. Maybe you were an atheist for all the wrong reasons, and now you're a theist for all the same wrong reasons. Maybe you just hate borscht. Or maybe not: I don't know and I'm not going to do the work to find out.
I don't care about your criticism — however elaborate — of what you think I believe, or what you think I ought to believe. Seriously: a huge chunk of the criticism I get for calling myself an atheist and a communist (and don't even get me started on philosophy) addresses beliefs and opinions I've never expressed and some I've explicitly denied. I've written a couple hundred thousand words on this blog: It's trivially easy to find something I've actually written to criticize.
1 comment:
Please pick a handle or moniker for your comment. It's much easier to address someone by a name or pseudonym than simply "hey you". I have the option of requiring a "hard" identity, but I don't want to turn that on... yet.
With few exceptions, I will not respond or reply to anonymous comments, and I may delete them. I keep a copy of all comments; if you want the text of your comment to repost with something vaguely resembling an identity, email me.
No spam, pr0n, commercial advertising, insanity, lies, repetition or off-topic comments. Creationists, Global Warming deniers, anti-vaxers, Randians, and Libertarians are automatically presumed to be idiots; Christians and Muslims might get the benefit of the doubt, if I'm in a good mood.
See the Debate Flowchart for some basic rules.
Sourced factual corrections are always published and acknowledged.
I will respond or not respond to comments as the mood takes me. See my latest comment policy for details. I am not a pseudonomous-American: my real name is Larry.
Comments may be moderated from time to time. When I do moderate comments, anonymous comments are far more likely to be rejected.
I've already answered some typical comments.
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I agree with you!
ReplyDelete/irony