We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
– Thomas Paine, from The Age of Reason
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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It is always heartening to see such rational thinking being quoted. However it would be even more heartening to see some of the contributors on this site acting on that thinking with understanding, rather than the all-too-common habit of treating ideas and their proponents “with the contempt that they thoroughly deserve”.
Well, the fact that you are entitled to an opinion does not mean you are entitled to that opinion being treated as fact. I am entitled to the opinion that your opinion is rubbish for reasons A, B, and C. Contributors on this site are sometimes curt with Collectivists, to put it gently, but only because Collectivism as an idea has been thoroughly discredited in theory and practice.
Samizdatistas tend to argue with reason and ideas; I know of no example of anyone here trying to use force or coercion to silence their opponents. That is what Paine was arguing, not the silly notion that all claims are equally valid.
Yes, quite. Everyone here is entitled to their opinion, no matter how wrong they may be.
Yes, and everyone else is entitled to view that opinion as base idiocy, and to say so. Stupidity is not entitled to respect or “understanding,” only contumely.
Oh, and if we’re going to be pedantic, Mr. Pedant, the sentence should have been “Everyone here is entitled to his opinion, no matter how wrong he may be.” “Everyone” is a singular noun.
@Laird:
That may be your opinion, but I couldn’t possible agree.
“Everyone” = EVERYBODY. Also as antecedent of pl. pron. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary).
Still, I do think it’s a great idea to attempt to ad hominen the speaker rather than address the point being made, in keeping with past efforts of reasoning. QED.
More haste, less speed, perhaps?
Did not Voltaire not quite say, some 36 years earlier, pretty much the same thing: usually expressed as
It is, of course, most excellent that so many people think it: both back then and now.
Best regards
@Nigel Sedgwick:
I think it might have been Evelyn Beatrice Hall, actually, but it’s still a powerful point.
@Laird:
Slight digression: I read that Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, was quoted on the BBC website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7546975.stm) as saying that students’ “… most common mistakes should be accepted as ‘variant spellings’ “.
I do not know if Mr. Smith is an authority on the matter, but if what he was suggesting were accepted, then we’d be getting back to a word meaning whatever we wanted it to mean. (Was that from Alice in Wonderland?)
We studied Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason” (1794-96) at Catholic school, because it was a deist-atheist text and we were trying to understand how Godlessness was pervading the world and men’s minds.
We learned that a lot of what he wrote was his own atheistic ideological dogma, with great dollops of rationalization. Anyway, it s all hugely out of date now and no-one pays it any attention – in fact he was pretty much disowned because of it by his fellows at the time – so who cares what the old fart said 2 or 3 hundred years ago?
Because, Donna, some people are athiets and deists, and they’d like their ideas to be given some attention too. I realize it must be painful to realize that some people won’t just swallow the dogma you’re happy to have fed to you.
I’m just wondering what principled stand you could make for denying an individual the right of self-expression, no matter how distasteful it might be to you.
There is a difference between the person who may have a reasonable but “mistaken” opinion because of lack of education – but at the same time has a “culture” which deserves attention and respect (e.g. someone from a “peasant” culture) – and someone who although “educated” uses their title as a validation for their self-interested “opinion” – knowingly pushing a false position to gain some kind of social or political advantage. The latter are usually to be found in all shades of political party and are almost exclusively in white-collar employment. Need I respect their opinion? I would tend to avoid their company and if they become too insistent and don’t get the message….what are the legal possibilities besides a smack in the mouth?
@pedant
Through the Looking-glass, actually. Humpty-Dumpty says:
We quoted it here, so clearly we care. Was that not obvious?
Pedant, just now getting back to you; sorry for the delay. You are, of course, incorrect. The operative portion of “everyone” is “one”, which is clearly singular. And since you like the OED so much, I refer you to their free on-line site “AskOxford.com” (since their main site is for members only), and point out that they define “everyone” as “every person”; clearly also singular. (I suppose I should also point out that “everybody” is itself singluar.)
Besides, if “everyone” were truly a plural pronoun, your sentence should have been “Everyone here is entitled to their opinions . . .”, which of course you didn’t do (probably because it looks even sillier than what you actually wrote). This is the sort of sloppy writing I expect from someone who is[1] afraid to appear politically incorrect by using the grammatically correct “he.”
As to your charge that my post was an ad hominem attack upon you rather than a discussion of the point being made: (a) there was nothing personal in the statement, merely a correction of your grammar; (b) someone who affects the pen name “Pedant” should expect no less; and (c) even if it were such an attack, please note that I carefully placed it in a post which was entirely separate from the previous one, which was specifically directed at the instant issue.
[I did enjoy your use of ad hominem as a verb, though. I’ve never before seen it used in that fashion. Not a criticism, mind you, just an observation.]
[1] Note the singluar.
Given the narrowness of Paine’s escape from the guillotine later on, it’s wise not to forget another adage: “You can’t tolerate that which will not tolerate you.”
Sanity Inspector, you don’t have to tolerate actions, but I can’t see how you could justify acting against anyone merely because of their opinions, intolerant and dangerous as those may be.
Laird, they/their/them has been used to refer to a singular by many masters of the English language, starting with Chaucer and Shakespeare. Go and correct your copy of the Comedy of Errors if you want to.
AW, Chaucer and Shakespeare wrote at a time when English spelling and grammar were still evolving; their usage is irrelevant to this discussion. The rules are well defined now. “Everyone is . . .” is quite a simple construction, not at all difficult to master (just like the proper use of apostrophes). The “everyone/their” formulation is used by the ignorant and those who place a high value on political correctness in their writing. Frankly, it annoys me, and it colors my opinion of their ideas.
I don’t usually bother to comment on grammatical errors, but given the quality of the rest of his post Pedant had it coming.
@Donna:
Yes, historical record does show that Paine was
Nevertheless, what he wrote then is just as valid today, and he was far from being “an old fart” – he contributed to “The Age of Enlightenment”, and was one of the greatest and formative critical thinkers affecting modern English, French and American political history. Which is why people care, as @Perry de Havilland commented.
Paine’s ideology was reason, and I think you may find that he was pretty short on dogma. This is as opposed to irrational (i.e., not reasoned) belief in imagined and unproven concepts or unproven theories – such as, for example, the theory that there is a God, or Darwin’s theory of evolution (though proponents of either one would insist that there was sufficient “empirical evidence” to “prove” their belief).
The importance of thinkers such as Paine – and Descartes of course – is astounding. They were rather like the developers of reasoning tools – an approach called critical thinking, which was a probably necessary precursor to the scientific method so valuable today. Those reasoning tools have, helped mankind to achieve much – for example, helped to enable the technological achievements of modern Western society.
@Evan attempted to use those tools when he said:
An opinion can never be a fact. In this case, a fact is true/provable – “a thing known for certain to have occurred or to be true; a datum of experience” (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary).
Thus, employing reasoning in order to to attempt to substantiate one’s own opinions as being somehow “better” or “more right” than another person’s opinions, and thus “demolishing” the other’s opinions would seem to be an egotistic exercise in futility. It would be a bit like arguing that my Sun God was stronger than your Moon God. (Well, of course He is, because I want Him to be – and if you won’t accept it, then I shall take the @el windy approach (above) to encourage you to shut up and accept it by a:
We articulate our reasoning using language as a tool for communicating our ideas and reasoning, though intellectual Fascists would probably prefer to employ another tool, such as, for example, the @el windy approach. Unfortunately, our knowledge and use of language is necessarily limited, and we can only think with what we know, and we are ignorant, so we have to constantly work to overcome all of that – i.e. we seem to be not designed for or very skilled at thinking, though we may feel compelled to reinforce our egos by reassuring ourselves that we are. As mentioned elsewhere, De Bono referred to this as “intellectual deadlock”, where, once your ego is assured that you are “right” in your opinions and thinking, then you clearly are not in any need of thinking skills improvement – there is “nothing to improve”, is there? De Bono reckoned that this deadlock thinking/behaviour could most easily be seen in intelligent people who were adept at demolishing other people’s opinions – they lived in an ego state dominated by a non sequitur that “I can prove you wrong, therefore, I am always right”.
@Laird went to to some trouble (above) to help clarify some aspects of grammar, though he seemed to get himself sidetracked by wanting to “prove” his opinion (Oh dear!) about grammar. (Thankyou @Lairdfor that effort. From what you wrote, it seems that my edition of the SOED must be wrong. I do apologise for that, and I promise not to noun verbs any more.)
The point he did not reinforce, and that I was attempting to communicate in my first comment was that the language used in this forum demonstrates an:
This is where “competitve thinking” comes into play, as De Bono calls it. Its foundations are ego and relatively archaic (e.g. religious dogma, atheistic dogma). When combined with what seems to be a natural human tendency towards Fascism, it has caused and continues to cause wars, and it is built into our paradigms.
De Bono goes on to demonstrate why this is a lack of skill in thinking and is probably the single biggest thing which may be holding us back from the next evolutionary development – the training/development of our thinking skills leading to an evolutionary development of the way we think. He argues that this evolution could be towards collaborative thinking, as opposed to the competitive thinking mire in which we are currently stuck.
It is not that people are entitled to their opinions, some opinions I have heard expressed are so loopy that I cannot accept that anyone has a right to hold to such tosh. No, it is that no one is entitled to use force, of whatever description, to force alternative opinions on them.
The difference between the two positions is subtle, but it is real.
The issue is not that the individual is entitled to his opinion, but that the state has no role in determining which opinions may be held and which may not.
What a strange and pointless argument Pedant is forwarding. This is a site made up of folk who love personal liberty, and want to see society built around its enshrinement. Why on god’s green earth would myself and others give equal weighting to a belief system that contradicts our own? OF COURSE we think we are correct in our opinions – don’t you think you are correct in yours? Folk who disagree with us are welcome to come here and debate the point if they remain civil, and they often do. This does not mean myself nor anyone else here must agree with them in the interest of “understanding” if their argument is not convincing enough to change minds.
Indeed.
awww, feeling a bit tender there, Pedant? Grow a bit of backbone. The doctrine of natural rights is hardly supported by all libertarians; some are consequentialists: freedom works. But of course this is a complex issue. I think that rights, at least in the classical liberal formulation, can be derived in the loosest sense from that understanding of how humans need to be free to use their minds to survive since thinking is not an automatic, hard-wired process, notwithstanding what some of the evolutionary psychologists might claim. As a consequence, humans need to be free to retain what they have freely created or contracted to receive, etc. Hence why I regard the right to acquire and transfer property as not just a piece of legalistic flim-flam, but something that is real.
And of course with most people who decry such rights, it is not long before you see the coercive state lurking behind. Hence our “contempt” for such a hostility.
So there!
Posted by el windy at September 13, 2008 08:03 PM
“but at the same time has a “culture” which deserves attention and respect (e.g. someone from a “peasant” culture)”
Mmmm, I’m intrigued to know why a priori a peasant culture deserves respect, care to elaborate?
MiltonF
What makes you think the rules are well defined? That’s like saying the rules of fashionable dress are well defined. The rules might be clearly described, but they are just as changeable as they were in Shakespeare’s time. The fact that some people in universities get paid to record the current set of rules is neither here nor there.
Are you suggesting that for the rest of time it will be wrong to split an infinitive? Has it now finally been decided whether 1960s or 1960’s is correct? Oh, and have the language scientists now discovered what the word ‘it’ refers to in the sentence “It is raining.”?
Language changes constantly. It always has and always will. The fact that someone writes down what appear to be the current conventions among the more powerful speakers of the language in a book called a ‘grammar’ is fairly irrelevant to the language. In an age when conformance to the rules was considered important, I suppose grammars might have had the effect of slowing the rate of language change.
But these days, it seems more value is attached to your ability to coin neologisms and get them accepted in your specialist language group (e.g. management consultants, rappers, modern artists). This has greatly encouraged changes in the English in recent years. Many of them are changes for the worse, many of them aren’t.
Languages ARE NOT well defined. If they were, we’d have a fighting chance of making computers parse them. And we can’t.
Yeah, right.
Everybody can think what they want.
But if their ideas involve making me a slave of his, or his kind, he’d better keep those ideas inside the cozy warmness of his totalitarian brain.
Or else…
@sine metu
Appropriately put, and this is precisely what I am talking about.
Descartes put it another way:
‘Everybody’ is a singular word. In the sentence, ‘Everyone hates me.’, you could replace the first word with ‘everybody’, and nothing else would change.
Heinlein had a character make the comment, “Yes, everyone can have an opinion, but that doesn’t mean that all opinions are equal.” There’s a lot of truth in that statement.
I oppose Thomas Paine on many things.
Religion.
The role of government – he was an early Welfare Statist.
The assumption that elected people are automatically better at governing than people there by accident of birth.
And so on.
But I stand with him on freedom of speech.
He broke with the French Revolutionaries on the murder of King – because the ardent republican Paine could not bring himself to murder a weak and harmless man.
Paine would break with the modern left (even the “moderate” left) on freedom of speech.
Although, of course, the French Revolutionaries also opposed freedom of speech (indeed Thomas Paine almost paid with his life for some mild dissent on the murder of the King).