Juxtaposition

At first, I thought I had no comment upon this, but I do. While looking at the lack of thought and common sense in the above video makes me highly uncomfortable, the intellectual attack upon the common man in the next video gives me the same feeling. There are several points to make. In this second video a man takes a premise way beyond the logic he touts making a broadside personal attack on anyone he thinks disagrees with his opinions about "logic." While the argument is seemingly thoughtful and his command of the language is quite remarkable, he actually uses several logic flaws in a continuous manner (logic being fairly important to his argument.). When he brings up television advertising (one of my pet subjects for scorn) it makes me wish I were watching the first video instead. Here is a man I agree with in principle who is making a mockery of it with his venomous words and manner. It is as if the man is similarly possessed as the man above. The audiences both entranced by the psychology of crowds, though it is more obvious in the first where everyone is allowed to... well speak. In neither video does someone speak up and say "enough, you have made your point." The heart of the second video begins at 3:10. Notice how he begins by putting down the first speaker as being too professionally minded:



I think I find video two more repulsive. Oddly, I found both these videos in the same evening. I think, together, they illustrate the central theme of this blog.

"Science is capable of undertaking it's own reformation and critique and has been engaged in that fairly vigorously for some time." Thou shalt have no other God before science, though through reformation it may negate its earlier beliefs and there are clear postulates one must have faith in to make it correct. Place your emerald glasses on before entering the Emerald City.

Our main goal above all others is to "build a world based on clarity" and I say that in language that is intentionally verbose.

The "abduction phenomenon" of which he spoke takes a bit of thought because it dates his opinion (which is perfectly acceptable to science which can turn on a dime with no logical flaw). His intent is to make fools of those who believe nonsense (with a very nice use of wordplay which is funny only in the sense that it is cleverly pejorative) and equate this with all peoples who do not think as he does, or the "idiots." At first this phrase seemed odd because we have basically fictionalized the alien abduction concept for good plot development, whether it be in the "X-files" or on a "science channel" like the ironically fictional Discovery Channel.

Of course, the Discovery Channel is an example of the commercialization of science which I think he would equally loathe at this point in his life. I actually believe he is correct in much of what he says but somehow his personal bitterness did not gain popular traction and stop the "idiots" that are part of the establishment he so strongly believed in.