Crap from Facebook: February 18th, 2021

 

This was posted with the notion that the comment in black text on a white background is silly and unscientific, while the comment in white text on a black background is a rebuttal. However, both comments are a bit weird and lacking in nuance. In case I lose the image, here's what was said...

First person: "It's a bit cold outside this morning in middle America... Aren't you glad you aren't heating your home with a solar panel like nitwit Socialist @AOC is demanding?"
Second person: "Do Solar Panels work in the cold? YES! Solar Panels work by absorbing LIGHT from the sun, not heat. In fact, the chemical reactions that occur w/i the solar panels are more efficient at cooler temperatures. Also, white snow can act like a mirror to reflect MORE light onto them"
My friend: "The war on science"

So, the first comment seems to conflate rooftop solar with ground-based solar facilities. Most people don't have rooftop arrays on their houses, and people who heat their homes with electricity can get that electricity from anywhere on the grid. Also, AOC is a U.S. representative from New York's 14th district. She's not in "middle America" and attempting to mobilize "middle America" against a representative from another part of the country is just bullshit political drama, and has no bearing on the facts here.

The second comment does get one thing right. It is true that solar panels are more efficient at cooler temperatures. Solar panels work using the optical bandgap of semiconducting materials to excite electrons in their photovoltaic cells. For every material, the bandgap has a temperature coefficient. Material gets hotter, fewer electrons can cross the bandgap. Material gets colder, more electrons can cross the bandgap. So far, so good. But the materials selected for making PV cells in commercial solar arrays are selected, in part, because they're less sensitive to this effect.

We could make solar panels that would only worked in super-cold temperatures, but they wouldn't do us much good. Also, solar arrays use passive systems (and sometimes active systems) to keep panels cool. In some cases, those technologies falter in major heat waves, but ordinarily, they get the job done. I can assure you that if you're standing outside in the desert sun next to a working solar array, the insides of the panels are nowhere near as hot as the air around you. That's kind of the point.

Remember: solar panels need light. In severe winter weather, there's way less of it. Even a regular cloudy day can ruin the electricity yield of a solar facility. Snowstorms are worse still. Panels can become buried in snow or accumulate a layer of ice, either of which render them useless. Blizzards can also permanently damage these facilities, necessitating expensive repairs. When power providers know that a major snowstorm is coming in, they're not counting on solar facilities to keep the grid electrified, and for good reasons. It doesn't work that way. We're talking about some extreme cold here. -16 °F? That's -26 °C! If it's that cold, we can be sure that not a lot of sunlight is reaching the surface. I don't know if our second person in this exchange understands or remembers this fact, but light the light reaching the surface that causes solar panels to function is the very same light that causes the surface to warm up. Ergo, there ain't as much of it as normal. Ipso facto, solar panels are fucked in this situation. Q.E.D.

As for snow acting like a mirror and reflecting light onto solar panels, there are two major problems with that idea. Firstly, commerical solar panels are purpose-built to capture direct sunlight. They can absorb reflected light too, but there's a drop in efficiency there. Secondly, and more obviously, solar panels are at their most efficient when they're pointed at the sun. If they're tracking the sun properly (not a guarantee in winter storm conditions, by the way), then they're not going to be oriented to capture much reflected light.

It seems that almost everyone who saw this exchange interpreted the second comment as a strong takedown of the first one. In reality, both are pretty bad.

Grandpa Rose

A couple months ago, I found out that my maternal grandfather had terminal pancreatic cancer. He died on December 24th. I'd been wanting to write something about it here ever since, but I kept procrastinating on that. I'm at a loss trying to come up with anything meaningful to really say, and I guess I didn't really know the man very well, and that most of my memories of him kind of blur together and don't make much sense. I think that's because I saw a lot more of him as a kid and only spoke with him a handful of times once I got older, and also because he was generally pretty quiet anyway. Maybe it's just the way my brain works. I don't know. Recently, my mom and my sister were talking about something and it occurred to me that a story I thought was about my grandpa was actually about my mom's grandpa, my great-grandpa. So that was something I probably had mixed up in my head for years.

After the news sunk in, I had some strange vivid recollections of reading Robert Heinlein's "Future History" stories and seeing the plot point about how the Howard Foundation had been orchestrating matchmaking between people who had four living grandparents, something that wasn't as common back in the 19th century. I remember musing that I still had four living grandparents, and that I was older than the characters they were talking about. It's a totally meaningless distinction related to something that wasn't even important in the stories I was reading, but it was the first thing that popped into my head immediately on learning that my grandpa had died. So that's weird? I'm weird.

His name was Earl Thomas Ashton Junior. At first, I only knew of him as "Grandpa." Looking back, I wonder how well I understood the various relationships and individuals in my extended family. My paternal grandparents were "Nonny and Papa" by their own choosing, and that was all I knew them as. I think I only ever met one great-grandparent on my father's side, and she was "Grandma Vi" to me. My maternal grandmother was (and is) "Grandma Mickey." My maternal grandfather was "Grandpa", but his parents were "Grandma and Grandpa." That meant two different men (father and son) were, in my childhood, known simply as "Grandpa" to me. But I think that if there was ever a need for clarification, the elder of the two was stipulated to be "Great Grandpa." My maternal grandparents divorced while my mom was still a child, and at different points she lived with each of them and a step-parent, and with her grandparents (the same ones that were "Grandma and Grandpa" to me). Grandpa had two children with my mom's step-mother (I met my mom's half-siblings, but never met their mother). But by the time I showed up, Grandpa had divorced and remarried again. At least I think it was before I was born? I can't remember. It would have been in the 1980's, anyway. Since Grandpa's wife's name was Rose and since there was already a "Grandma" and a "Grandma Mickey" and a "Grandma Vi", it made sense that I knew her as "Grandma Rose." That was the way of things for me and for my sister, Rachel, going into the early 1990's. But then our little brother, Josh, heard about "Grandpa and Grandma Rose" and assumed that this meant "Grandpa Rose and Grandma Rose." He was corrected, but Grandpa thought it was hilarious and just kind of rolled with it, so it became a thing. He was "Tom" or "Tommy" to most people, but within my family, he was "Grandpa Rose."

As a kid, I remember seeing him hanging out with my dad a lot. I remember that he was always the one with a video camera at family functions, and that I got to see a tape of a party for my own first birthday, with lots of friends and relatives present, but not Grandpa (because he was the one holding the camera, of course).

In 1999, my Uncle Troy (Grandma Rose's son) started having kids. When I was in high school, they moved to Port Townsend, so they weren't close to where I was living, but still within driving distance (it was probably a 2.5-hour drive). On multiple occasions, Grandpa and Grandma Rose drove all the way up from San Bernardino to Port Townsend to visit their grandkids there, without me seeing them or even knowing they'd been in Washington until after the fact. I remember acting like it didn't bother me at the time, and reasoning that it's not like I was entitled to anything. But really, it did bother me. And I guess I kind of thought, "I'm not in their lives anymore." So I wasn't. And maybe that's part of why this is weird. They couldn't be bothered to keep in touch with me, so I couldn't be bothered to keep in touch with them. Perhaps that says something about me, though. Rachel seemed to maintain a lot more contact with them. They visited Rachel's apartment and I saw them there, probably some time in the late 2000's. I was going to say that was the last time I saw him, but I suspect that we were both at the same family reunion once or twice in the early 2010's, briefly. In fact, I remember that there was one in Oregon where I showed up with Rachel, and Grandpa and Grandma Rose were there when we arrived, but they left soon after so that they could drive up to Port Townsend to see their grandkids there. Yikes, this makes me sound bitter, but I promise I'm only just now even recalling this! I hadn't even given it any thought for years and years.

Well, this is awkward and I can't think of a good conclusion, so I'm going to quit while I'm not ahead.

Crap from Facebook: December 3rd, 2020

 https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10216050605595463&set=pcb.10216050608755542

 It's just a series of "tweets." So I'll transcribe it...

Hey everyone I'm a clown and I just got back from facepainting at a picnic and here's my take on male violence in America:

It starts young. And it's more than just letting boys play with guns, it's how we shame them for feeling anything that isn't anger.

A 4yo boy asked me to paint a blue butterfly on his face. Then his mom told me, "no, he doesn't want that."

"Butterflies are beautiful, he said that's what he wants, shouldn't I paint what he wants?"

"No give him something for boys"

She turns to dad, a big guy in a jersey, and says accusingly, "Do you want your son to have a butterfly on his face. He says "No."

Which, cool, let's bring your husband's masculinity into it too. Because your 4yo kid needs to know that his father would be ashamed too

I really tried you guys, but this woman was so scared of her son wanting a butterfly she made me paint a skull and crossbones on his cheek.

When I finished the skull I said to kiddo "You want a little blue butterfly too?" He nods. Mom interrupts "You didn't ask me."

I say in my kindest fuck you voice "Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was for HIM."

"I'm his MOTHER. You need to ask me." She says.

"SORRY." I say and wave goodbye to the kid. And I am. I'm sorry that he is not allowed to love something as beautiful and miraculous as a ☒

I'm sorry that he was shamed for wanting to share in the joy that is the miracle and wonder of nature.

I see this all the time. And I feel really bad for these boys, because the girls don't get it as bad. Being a tomboy is slightly more normalized

And when girls want skulls or sharks the parents shrug and laugh like "haha she's a kooky kid!" Because maleness and masculinity isn't a sin

But when a boy wants to enjoy something for its beauty, they are told it's not for them. Not in this house. Not in this family.

We are teaching them that anger and violence r the only things they are allowed to experience. That to value beauty and elegance is shameful

I know that it was just facepaint, but that's sort of my point. Why in the hell are these parents shaming their boys over FACEPAINT

Honestly don't even get me started on the balloons.

So the next time you are incredulous about how the govt could shut down our national parks, or build the pipeline, or nuke the planet...

Think about what this four year old boy asked for ☒

And what he got [pictured here is what looks like a yellow ISO hazard sign with a skull and crossbones, something Twitter apparently uses as an emoji or whatever; don't ask me because I'm not tech-savvy]

Epilogue: the mom complained to my boss ☒ [pictured here is a pink box with the symbol for Venus inside]

About halfway through this, I had the sinking realization that I was probably going to make another "Crap from Facebook" post here, and I tried to just dismiss that and tell myself that this wasn't worth my time. By the time I got to the "nuke the planet" part I had shifted to thinking that this crap is totally worth my time because it's surreal in its confident stupidity. This is the sort of crap that motivated me to start doing "Crap from Facebook" posts in the first place.

I've tried to accurately preserve all the typographical mistakes in my transcription, but I'm out of practice at that sort of thing and caught myself repeatedly typing what I interpreted as the correct versions of the original. I went back and un-fixed what I did catch, but I can't be sure that it's 100% transcribed. Anyway, the inconsistencies in punctuation drove me crazy. But let's try to be a mature adult and look past that. I guess if the link keeps working, you can just use that. I've noticed that a lot of these posts have broken links when I go back and look at them later, so I tried.

There are several issues here. There's the fact that the author thinks her experience painting kids' faces gives her some profound insight into grave social ills such that this warrants broadcasting her anecdote and her analysis of it to everyone on the planet. There's the fact that the author believes she can connect her own story involving no violence whatsoever to violence all across the country. There's the fact that the author, in her own version of this story, relates her own rude behavior and use of a "fuck you voice" at a customer, and then expresses derision at how the customer complained to her boss about it. There's the conflation of shutting down parks or building a pipeline with "male violence." But I want to move past all that and zero in on the big issue here. That other stuff is bad, but mostly it just displays a lot of cues about the author's personality and way of thinking.

What we have here is a banal anecdote related entirely by the author. She was in full control of the narrative. She could have changed or emphasized whatever details she wanted. Or if she wanted to be entirely truthful and this particular story didn't suit her purposes, she could have chosen a different anecdote. This was her choice. Everything written here was hers. And for "male violence in America" she chose a story about the behavior of a woman. No violence took place in the story. The kid's father was present and basically didn't even do anything. The mother is 100% the antagonist of the author's narrative.

At the risk of being repetitive, I want to make sure this sinks in, how surreal it is. I was expecting another "toxic masculinity" rant about the behavior of some man. Instead, I found out that the only villain in the story was a woman. It was all a woman. And the author didn't even acknowledge or account for that. She managed to write a little story about behavior by a woman, and just connected it to "male violence." I was waiting for it like a punchline, some inkling of a realization. It was right there in front of her.

1. Premise: male violence is caused by the stunted emotional growth of young boys.
2. Premise: bad mothers stunt the emotional growth of their boys.
3. Conclusion: ???

And of course, she never got there. Oh well. Never send a clown to do a lepidopterist's job.

Crap from Facebook: November 20th, 2020

ALSO: if you don’t make your living thru s*x work & s*xy work, consider toning down the free thirst trap shit. Sure, your ego might get a temporary dopamine boost, but you are also contributing to the mass psychological expectation of free content. Consider the impact your ego’s needs has on others around you, k thx bai.

Normally I wouldn't even bother with something like this, but the novelty of it took me by surprise. I mean, I don't even have anything clever to say about it. I thought, "I'll make some witty rejoinder" and I seem to be tapped out. Like, I could make fun of this person for censoring the word "sex" or for thanking others for doing something that they assuredly will not do. But that just feels kind of bland. I guess the part that interests me enough to actually preserve it on my blog is the notion that if someone else is giving away for free what you're trying to sell, that person should consider how such behavior hurts your business. Like, what's the journey someone takes to get to that point without being overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance?

Presidential candidates and my dad

This could be a bit of a weird one. Tomorrow is the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. I might have already thrown my vote away by voting for a third party or whatever, but in case you need a reminder, the two major candidates are Donald Trump and Joe Biden. I don't like either of them, but that's not a particularly unique or interesting position for me to espouse. And I'm not here to complain about them. Both men have drawn their share of criticism and will doubtless continue to do so. But I thought it might make for a decent blog post to use these two assholes as a springboard to suddenly tell two stories about growing up with my dad.

I suspect it's a common curse to be drawn to some endeavor one is unsuited for. In my case, I have always been fixated on skills to make things, to build something, to create. It's a happy coincidence that I am introspective enough to realize that I have zero talent for such things. My one conceit is my insistence on maintaining my own delusion that I am a writer. But I'll always have a kind of quiet, background envy for all artists, engineers, and artisans. I think being able to make stuff is just about the coolest thing ever. It's also something I'm downright bad at. Well, in my dad's case, he's drawn to salesmanship and business. When I was a kid, he dreamed of running his own business. Later in life, he bounced around in several sales jobs, but could never make it work. Either he lacks my faculty for introspection or I lack his faculty for boldness, but he's chased his futile sales dream numerous times. It's never worked out for him. He's not a good salesman. He wants to be, but that's not how these things work. People who don't know him well sometimes think that he'd be a good salesman because he's boisterous, assertive, and persistent. But those character traits aren't actually what makes someone a good salesman. I forget when I first realized the nature of my dad's plight, but I've have some understanding of this for a long, long time.

In my dad's failed forays into the business world, he latched on to Donald Trump's Art of the Deal. My dad's enthusiasm for Donald Trump was a point of annoyance for me growing up. I mean, it was probably a pretty minor point of annoyance and I think most sons find things about their fathers to gripe about. My dad's weird, misplaced admiration for Donald Trump's shady real estate dealings was a pretty minor source of conflict between us, compared to some other things. But it did leave me hating Donald Trump and his stupid face since around the time I was 11 years old. So in 2016 when Donald Trump's presidential campaign was in the news cycles, I just kept waiting for this all to blow over. So yeah. If you're reading this and you're critical of Donald Trump and his actions as president, just understand that I'll never empathize. Whatever it says about me, I'll never be able to bring myself to care more about Trump's role in governance and the consequences thereof than I'll care about how baffled I was that the personification of my dad's delusions of a life in the business world had somehow come to life and gotten elected president. It was surreal. It still is. It's like working at a job where your boss is literally the villain out of your favorite cartoon as a kid. Even if it turns out to be a miserable job, the weirdness just overrides all that.

I've told some form of that first story to a couple of people. But here's one I've never told anyone. In the mid-90's, two of my mom's close relatives died: her half-sister at the age of 17 of bone cancer and her grandfather at the age of 79 (I think) from Alzheimer's disease. I'm don't really have close relationships with most of my mom's family and I generally have positive impressions of most of them, but they did something here that I don't approve of: they tried to keep me and my younger siblings insulated from the matters surrounding these illnesses and impending deaths. This pissed my dad off and he wasn't having any of it. Since I don't remember (if I did know) and haven't inquired, I can't really be sure what role my mom took in this, whether she sided with my dad right away or whether it took some convincing. But I have to give credit to my dad here. At least in part it was because of him that I got to be there and have some memories of those family members before they died. I can't remember the exact timing too well. I think that I was somewhere in the age range between 8 and 11 throughout both of those cases. Although my younger sister remembers being frustrated at how our family initially hid our aunt's cancer from us, and that frustration influenced her later, I don't think she really remembers that it was our dad who fought against that, nor that he did the same thing in the case of our great-grandfather's Alzheimer's disease.

Watching my great-grandfather's decline was unpleasant, but I remain grateful that I got to see what I did. If you've heard people talk about dementia patients in their families before, all I've got for this one is more of the same. Or rather, I suppose I have less of the same, since we were living about a thousand miles away at the time and I only got a handful of visits with my great-grandfather during this time. I guess one thing I'll note that stuck with me was how even though all the adults tried to explain the memory loss aspect to me, they didn't explain (probably because they didn't know how) the various quirky side effects of advanced dementia. I remember when my great-grandfather was in the nursing home and was being pushed in a wheelchair, that he saw a rug on the floor and remarked on it without understanding that it was a rug on the floor. I gathered from the conversation that he knew he was in a wheelchair and he knew that someone was pushing him in that wheelchair. He seemed to, at that time, recognize the people around him. But in his mind, this rug on the floor was some kind of impassable obstacle, and he believed that the nurse pushing his wheelchair would not be able to traverse it. I scrutinized that rug looking for clues as to why it would seem so different to him. Whenever I see dementia patients, I inevitably compare them to those childhood memories of my great-grandfather. I have a mild fascination with the subject. That probably sounds morbid. Oh well. Anyway, my observation of dementia patients as an adult has been different, albeit not as formative for me, I suppose. My biggest takeaway, since I was in high school really, has been that a big difference between my great-grandfather's case and most other cases I've seen is how rapid his decline was. In every way, from his memory to his motor skills, my great-grandfather's nervous system took a plunge. In most cases, it isn't over so quickly.

I am convinced that Joe Biden is suffering from some form of dementia. I can't prove it, and I'm not a medical professional. This isn't a diagnosis. But I've seen enough of his televised behavior to convince me of this. And I find it alarming that he's being fielded as a presidential candidate. That's separate from other things about him, or it should be. Whatever anyone thinks of him as a person, of his conduct as vice president, of his lengthy career as a senator, of his accomplishments, or of his controversies, pushing someone whose brain is falling apart on him to take a role as top executive in the country is disgusting. He's projected to win. And if that happens, Joe Biden in his current condition becoming president in 2020 surprises me even more than Donald Trump becoming president in 2016.

Either way, all of this crap reminds me of my dad.

How to lose an argument (dissection of some fun with YouTube comments)

I never post here enough, so here's something a little different. Last week, I had an interaction in a YouTube video comment section that was unremarkable, but it left me thinking, "I should throw that on my blog as an example of how to lose an argument." Well, I didn't do that right away, but it's been less than a week and I can still find the stupid thing, so let's go for it.

First, some context. For the past few years, I've been involved and invested in the unofficial EDH or "Commander" format of Magic: the Gathering. I'd played it off and on since about 2009, but shifted a lot of my focus to it around 2017. Partway into last year, my local game store started a weekly Commander League and I brought a new deck to almost every meetup, for a total of 41 appearances in 2019. I'd been planning to beat that in 2020, but some kind of pandemic got in the way. However, I've still been playing a lot of Commander and spending a lot of time on Commander-related stuff. Earlier this month, Wizards of the Coast sold a controversial product aimed at selling mostly mediocre cards, themed around a television show (The Walking Dead), to Commander players for an exorbitant price. Although EDH is technically supposed to be an unofficial format, regulated by a "Rules Committee" that doesn't answer to Wizards of the Coast, there's a lot of money in the format. Wizards of the Coast made an exceedingly lousy product marketed blatantly to EDH players, propelled by fear of missing out. The response from the community has been, almost universally, that this product is bad. People hate it. And a lot of them went to the Rules Committee seeking intervention. This was a doomed endeavor: the Rules Committee is rather toothless and had never taken a stand against Wizards of the Coast before, nor could they really be expected to.

All of this led to a cascade of developments an internet drama, which I took some interest in. There's a popular YouTube channel called "The Command Zone" and it seems that the viewers of this channel solicited commentary on these current events. I don't know a lot about this channel and it's not one I follow closely, but I've watched some of their content before, with mixed reactions. I knew though, that since one of the people involved is on the "Commander Advisory Group" affiliated with the Rules Committee, that the commentary in the video would be about as toothless as what the Rules Committee put out. Also, the most popular content by these guys is sponsored by Wizards of the Coast. And on top of all that, pretty much everything about this channel, for as long as I've been aware of them, has been sponsored by Ultra Pro, which itself is massively entrenched with Wizards of the Coast. This isn't a criticism of "The Command Zone." I'm just being realistic. I knew right away that these guys couldn't very well throw away their business connections for the sake of taking a stand against WotC's latest cash-grab. It would be silly to even ask them to do that. YouTube people with nothing to lose called this bullshit out for what it was. Professionals who rely on their relationship with the company that made the bad product didn't dare. Not terribly shocking. But I watched the video anyway.

You can see the video for yourself here, if you want to. It's long. They like to make long videos. Anyway, I don't think that they said much of interest one way or another, and there weren't really any surprises. One thing that I did find pathetic was the deflection of blame away from WotC and toward random strangers on the internet. These guys brushed off the issues that the community had complained about and insisted that the real problem was how rude some unspecified people in the community might have been in correspondence with the Rules Committee and with WotC. I bring this up not because it's interesting or surprising, but because it's what I found myself, indirectly, arguing with an idiot about. In order to change the subject away from the myriad issues with what WotC had done, the front-man for The Command Zone made the ludicrous comparison to ordering a cheeseburger at a restaurant and specifying that you don't want tomatoes on it, but the restaurant giving you tomatoes anyway. Unspecified criticism from presumably powerless individuals was then likened to "killing the chef" over tomatoes. This metaphor was pretty stupid and was rightfully called out in the comment section by numerous people before I even watched the video. So, well done there.

We're almost done with context, I promise. Someone in the comment section tried to turn the metaphor back on the creators of the video with this line...

"My friend's son is deathly allergic to tomatoes. So that burger analogy is perfect - just because it doesn't affect you that badly, doesn't mean it's not that important for others."

And that's where my interlocutor comes in with this statement.

Cool. It's still insane to go out and beat the cook to death

And yes, even if your kid has a severe allergy, it's not OK to beat a cook to death for a dangerous mistake. But no one did that. If we're holding true to an analogy here, what would have actually happened would have been more like if you saw the tomatoes, complained about the tomatoes, and then the restaurant ignored you and you ate the tomatoes anyway. I mean, that's not perfect, but it's an improvement. When bad analogies are used in a disingenuous manner, it gets my attention. So I chimed in.

Holy shit, did a WotC employee get beaten to death over this?

 

Just a nice, gentle prod at first to rein things in. Because if you're smart, you'll catch my drift: no one was actually beaten to death. That's not on the table. Stop comparing non-issues to life-or-death issues. It's bad and everyone knows it's bad. You've been called out on it. A savvy individual might be able to walk the statement back and redirect the conversation away from the notion that comparing alleged mean words on the internet with beating someone to death is inherently a pretty messed up thing to do. I didn't point it out explicitly here. Not yet. Because I was being nice. Alternatively, I was giving my interlocutor enough rope to hang himself or herself with. Anyway, this person was oblivious to my calculated use of tact and jumped right to.

 

Google "analogies"

 

At this point, I was mostly annoyed at the combination of the omission of terminal punctuation being combined with the nonstandard use of a company name as a verb. I got the point that this was supposed to be an imperative sentence. "I am instructing you to use the Google search engine on the word 'analogies' and to examine the search results." But I quickly brushed that off. My interlocutor was throwing out bait anyway. There wasn't an genuine impression that I didn't understand what an analogy was. The idea was that I'd get all huffy over being told to just Google it, that I'd been a dummy and failed to understand that something was an analogy.

 

When someone shows up to a discussion and immediately throws you a freebie, as I did, that says something about the person you're dealing with. If you pay attention, you can ascertain that it is a freebie and consider what this means and how to respond. But if you're intent on losing an argument, you could respond by trying an indirect insult in order to bait an aggressive response.

 

Since I was not, up to this point, sufficiently insulted, I kept on being charitable. I gave my interlocutor another chance to clarify things, to frame the issues in some desired context.

Exactly what thing is it you're saying is analogous to beating someone to death?

 

I don't find it appealing to go right for steel traps in discourse. What I've presented so far is an easily escapable trap. For instance, my interlocutor could have fallen back on the stereotype of internet drama to involve death threats. A lot of prominent YouTubers have complained about death threats. Now, no claims of death threats were even made in the video, nor did I see any in the surrounding context, but invoking the concept of the threat of death at least adds some element dire enough to potentially justify murder-themed analogies. That's one path out of my lazy trap. There are others. My interlocutor didn't immediately make the worst possible blunder, which would have been to try resorting to insults as bait again. But the response I got was still pretty bad, perhaps even worse than I'd been expecting.

 

Lawsuiting WotC. Demanding the RC of commander to ban those cards. The analogy is that it's an exagerated reaction to a wrong doing.

 

At this point, I learned that I was in an argument with the sort of person who uses "lawsuit" as a verb. Now, the good news for me here is that I have absolutely no compunctions toward the popular notion that "punching down" is bad. I'll punch as far down as I damn well please, and that's my business. However, I do have standards. The original line in the video might have been dissembling. But the person who regurgitated it here didn't appear to have the capacity for proper dissembling. So I felt obligated to be as fair as possible, even to err on the side of generosity a little bit. But it was also time to stop being all Socratic about this and to draw the line, to make it clear just what was being challenged. That way, when my interlocutor lost an argument, it would be over something I'd actually bothered to define.

Well I totally disagree with that. Saying words at people isn't analogous to killing them, and I'm comfortable calling such a comparison disingenuous.

I have no idea what lawsuit you're talking about, but lawsuits are also not really analogous to premeditated murder.

 

I've done two things at once with this response, because I think that's not too overwhelming for most people. I've made the point that the word "analogy" isn't some kind of linguistic catchall to make any statement right. Framing something as an analogy when the details are not analogous is, at best, confusing or, at worst, dishonest. While doing that, I've also seized control of the argument by challenging the fiction of a lawsuit. Not only was there no lawsuit involved with this issue, but no one else had even made the claim that there was. Instead of just calling out my interlocutor as a liar, I forced the issue to be about one thing and one thing only.

To this person's credit, splitting one argument (which you're losing) into multiple arguments can indeed be a way to avoid losing an argument. It was the first intelligent move I'd seen my interlocutor make, but it's also a tactic I'm well acquainted with. So I shut it down right away. Sometimes people who are losing arguments take a second bite at the tactic of forking the issue. In this case, at least my interlocutor had the sense to shift to another approach: reframing the argument to contend that I was obligated to defend a claim I'd never actually made.

yeah, the point of the analogy wasn't that saying words was as bad as killing. It is that there's such as thing as overreacting. Not that I care much, but to argue against that point you have to explain why it wasn't in fact an overreaction. Not explain why it's not like murder...

While putting your opponent in the position of defending a contention you've chosen yourself is a classic rhetorical trick, it was executed poorly here. My interlocutor has asserted that I have to explain why "it" wasn't an overreaction. What was "it"? In our case, some hypothetical alleged online criticism, exact nature unspecified. I'm keeping track. It's not my fault that someone else isn't. But I'd say that the way to lose an argument here is to try to befuddle someone without realizing that you haven't been paying attention yourself.

 

My next reply was rather blithe and I won't say that it was my best point in the exchange. I got hung up on this issue of overreaction being unspecified. Without paying much attention or trying to remain charitable, I quipped...

 

Comparing something someone said to murder isn't the same as pointing out that overreaction exists.

 

I could try to retroactively pretend that I was forcing the issue of this hypothetical "overreaction" being a vague fiction in the first place. After all, going from "someone somewhere overreacting" to "beat someone to death" is pretty absurd. But really, I was genuinely making a hasty response, rather than this being any sort of clever approach. And a smart person could have used that against me here. I realized this after a few minutes had passed. I thought maybe I'd opened myself up to a solid counterpoint. Maybe something about how if the overreaction hadn't been so severe and disproportionate, that it wouldn't have been brought up in such a manner to begin with, so its egregious nature ought to be taken for granted? I don't know. There is something of a weakness in the way I approached that comment.

 

There could have been clever ways to turn the tables on me at this point. But my interlocutor didn't seem to notice, instead making two crucial errors.

 

at this point you are just stating things that are wrong and giving no justification. So think whatever you want, I'm out of this conversation

 

The first blunder here is to trot out the "you're not justifying your claims" tactic against someone who isn't making any statement that would apply to. There are rhetorical tactics that can backfire when used on a clever person or one familiar with your tactics, but the tactic of asserting that your opponent needs receipts fails automatically and spectacularly against even a fool if there simply aren't any pertinent contentions for this tactic to stick to. So that's a surefire way to lose an argument.

 

The second blunder, not made directly with this comment but found in the followup, is declaring your exit without actually exiting. Never say, "I'm out of this conversation" if you're going to stay in the conversation. It's always bad for you.

 

I may not balk at punching down, but I'm also not one to beat a dead horse. I could basically say that I'd won at this point and I'd be right. But I had been accused of stating wrong things by my now-declared-absent interlocutor, and stating wrong things is something I take seriously, so I was compelled to ask...

 

What wrong thing did I say?

 

I didn't really expect an answer, and I didn't really get one. But there was a followup from the other person. I think that we were both typing at the same time, so to be fair, I assume that the next part wasn't in response to my question anyway, but in response to other things prior to my question. That's fine.

 

"Comparing something someone said to murder isn't the same as pointing out that overreaction exists" Comparing overreactions to murder is actually a very common trope.  

 

"My mom is gonna kill me for this. You will never find my body"

What does that expression means to you? It basically means that the person's mother is gonna overreact to whatever the person did. Almost never will it actually mean that a mother will kill their child

 

Seriously, if I have to explain this, then I see no point in continuing this conversation

 

It seems that my interlocutor gave the matter some more thought and came up with a tactic that might have been put to better use earlier in the argument. Still, credit is awarded for coming up with it eventually. There is a tenuous connection between the starting point and this other example of a phrase like "my mom is gonna kill me."

 

I was a bit annoyed by this tactic, not because it was difficult to see through or because it was brought out retroactively. Those I could forgive. What bugged me was that a normal and commonplace sort of hyperbole (the one about how "my mom is gonna kill me") was being used to dismiss a totally different instance of hyperbole. It's one thing to compare the prospect of someone allegedly flaming someone else online to beating someone to death in real life. But dismissing any criticism of that comparison by conflating it with "my mom is gonna kill me"? That pisses me off. So now I'm pissed off. And one way to lose an argument is to piss me off. So, having now been rankled, I did what I had to do: I used reason.

 

I agree that someone saying, "My mom is gonna kill me for this" is pretty common and well-understood. Saying something more like, "My mom beat the cook to death" is not. The former is an exaggeration of an expected future response from someone. Mom is going to be mad and the average listener would assume that a fatal outcome isn't sincerely anticipated here. But if the average listener heard, "And then my mom beat the cook to death" the conclusion would probably be the assumption that Mom is a murderer, and not that it was an exaggerated way of saying, "Mom sent the cook a harshly worded email."

 

I saw my reasoning as being unassailable. So I sat back and relished my victory. OK, not really. But I kinda anticipated that the next response would be to change the subject or try to bait me with an insult again. It's not like anyone would seriously dispute my conclusion that "My mom beat the cook to death" would be taken in a very different light from "My mom is gonna kill me." I mean, it's obvious that those two contexts aren't comparable and, oh, nevermind...

 

yeah, no. No one would assume that "and then my mom beat the cook to death" means anything different from "she harshly critiqued him/yelled/ etc." I don't know what kinds of groups you are hanging around, but they seem to be too literal.

 

Ask around and you will see that most people understand the meaning. Specially when listening to commentators, who runitely create new variations of old used expressions.

 

Even if you don't think it's a common use of the expression, it still is clear that's what the commentators meant. Thus, not interpreting their message as intended is using a strawman againt them

 

I guess another way to lose an argument is to hand your opponent victory by spouting blatant falsehoods and pretending that no one will notice.

 

Probably the main thing that inspired me to throw this exchange on my blog was my amusement on seeing that someone would concoct a new colloquial expression midway through an argument, then try to assert that anyone who isn't familiar with this totally legitimate colloquialism has just lived a cloistered life or something. It's a fascinatingly stupid technique, and I can only assume that it was meant to be a distraction, something so absurd I had to respond to it, which would shift the argument.

 

But the way to really, thoroughly lose an argument in this case is to forget what it was about in the first place. My interlocutor had started out stating that beating someone to death would be a disproportionate (insane) response to the hypothetical disregard of a dietary restriction. Because I took issue that that scenario being used as an analogy, the argument moved enough that he or she forgot where we'd started and had, in an attempt to throw me off, tried to pretend that "beating someone to death" just meant criticizing harshly, that it was hyperbole and I was taking it too literally. So I pointed that out.

 

I don't actually believe that "to beat someone to death" is a common colloquial expression meaning "to criticize harshly" and that I've just somehow missed out on that my entire life because of "groups I hang around with." I don't buy that for one second and I don't think that you seriously expect me to. But hypothetically, if that were the case, then what's the issue in your initial scenario? If the cook wasn't literally beaten to death, but was merely berated for making a dangerous error, then what's the problem? You said that it would be insane. Why? What's insane about that? 

 

I'd think that this was where it became a no-win scenario for this poor fool. Once I pointed out that the hastily concocted fiction of "beat to death" being a slang term for "harshly criticize" clashed with the original implications of it being "insane to go out and beat the cook to death" there was no longer any way to turn this around.

Of course, my interlocutor had to drag it on a little longer before giving up. So here came one last desperate Hail Mary of bullshit.

Boy, you keep saying things without providing the least bit of evidence. Do I really have to search for a few mainstream examples of people using "gutting someone" or "destroying" or "killing someone" to be the equivalent of harsh criticism?
"Jordan Peterson DESTROYS this student"
"Trump gets MURDERED on interview"

Anyway, the cook comparison went completely over your head so I guess I have to explain.
The whole point of the commentators is that the response to the Secret Lair by the community is exaggerated and destructive.
They don't state that the Secret Lair was right but that the response is too much.

To illustrate how there can be such a thing as Person A does wrong but Person B over punishes person A, they make the comparison to the murdered chef. Which is a pretty intuitive comparison to me, btw.

But apparently where you get confused is by replying "but we are not killing anyone" because apparently you don't get that the problem with the murdered chef scenario is that "murder is an absolutely over the top punishment for this crime" and not just "murder is wrong"

You might as well be replying "but Wotc is not a chef and I wouldn't take out my tomatoes"
It's a reply that just misses the point

 

Yikes. I already thought that the argument was unsalvageable, but this was like "Losing the Argument Madlibs."

• Insulting me hasn't baited me so far, but better go all Foghorn Leghorn and call me "Boy" just to maintain that air of condescension. ✓
• I'd pointed out that "beat to death" really isn't slang for any kind of verbal criticism. The "my mom is gonna kill me" comparison got quashed, but throw out more examples of things that aren't the phrase "beat to death" anyway. If one example isn't relevant, maybe three will be! ✓
• Change the subject. ✓
• Double down on the contention that I'm just too obtuse to get it. ✓
• After having accused me of employing a strawman, make up a fake argument and then attribute it to me. ✓

Not that I don't like to argue (clearly I do), but I'm not necessarily going to just get dragged into a rematch by someone who just got so decisively outclassed. It was the other person who made an assertion (X would be insane). I'm going to hold the argument to that. If there'd be an explicit concession of that point, then fine. But we're not just going to move on to unrelated topics until then.

If there's some claim I made that requires supporting evidence, please let me know. I'm not seeing any such claims.

Now, don't change the subject. No one said anything about "gutting" "destroying" or Donald Trump. Your exact words were "It's still insane to go out and beat the cook to death."

And I didn't say, "but we are not killing anyone." I don't know who "we" are supposed to be in this scenario. Nor did I say, "but WotC is not a chef." Don't put words in my mouth.

To reiterate, if "beat to death" is purportedly just an expression referring to to verbal criticism, then what's the problem? You said that it would be insane. And literally beating a chef to death over such an incident would be insane, I'd agree. But since you're now contending that "beat to death" doesn't mean "beat to death", what's the issue?

I was ready for more absurdity, for tripling down, for more accusations and insults. But my admonition actually worked. The other person actually addressed what I was saying, or tried to.

the issue is that the reaction to the secret lair is an overreaction.

If we'd already been discussing some actual example of someone's reaction to the underlying issue, then this could have been a potential way to bring the argument back around to that. The problem is that our argument had demonstrably started with a generic "it's insane to beat someone to death." There was no reaction to point to. So this was kind of a doomed comeback. For a given reaction someone else provided to this Secret Lair issue, I'd either agree that it's insane or I'd disagree. But there had never been a "given reaction" for us to argue about. So I asked the only question I could ask.

Whose reaction are you talking about?

The next response cracked me up and definitely made this whole exchange worth it all on its own.

watch the video again and pay attention please. I'm done with being trolled

To reiterate: we had not actually been discussing the video. We'd been discussing a comment someone else made, based on a line said in the video. Neither of had, at any point, addressed the video in our argument. So it's way too late for that little change-of-subject. But the really satisfying part was this enterprising individual protesting that I'm the one doing the trolling when this person invented a fake slang term and then tried to pretend I was obtuse for never having heard of it. Glorious.

I didn't really need to respond to such delightful self-destruction. But just to be thorough and get some closure, I did respond to the singular grain of pertinence in all this.

Your comment, which I was responding to, wasn't in the video. So why would I rewatch the video?

That was the last word, but hey, it was more than enough. I guess I love "punching down."

 

January 11, 1948 – September 17, 2020

Terry Goodkind died last week. I thought that I had never posted about him on this blog before, but I checked and found a post from 2016. Although it wasn't an incredibly lengthy post, I was surprised at how much I'd said there. It looks like I wrote that back when he'd only published 18 books (I said 17 at the time, but I'm counting 18 published before 2016 now and cannot discern the discrepency), but he'd go on to do 14 more, having been especially active these past few years. I read them all.

I want to find something substantial to say about those 32 books. And when I started this post, I thought that I could. But I'm not finding the words. Perhaps later.