by Dave Maier

The other day here at 3QD, philosopher Guy Elgat provided an interesting discussion of the conspiracy theory Q-Anon and some relevant philosophical issues about knowledge and rationality. In particular, he focused on a seemingly perverse response by Q-ers to our challenge to provide proof of their outlandish claims: that we “don’t have any proof there isn’t [a Q].” I had a number of reactions to this column, as well as to some of the comments from readers, but I didn’t want to dump a huge comment on the thread (plus I had to think about it), so I thought I would put my response here instead.

I get the impression that since the QAnon business is sheer madness, and thus not philosophically interesting, what interests Elgat about it is instead the apparent parallel, epistemically speaking, with the historically much more substantial question of whether God exists. (For instance, he notes that religious believers pull this same epistemic-leveling move, in discussion with atheists, as do Q-ers with us.) I find this a bit misleading, or at least confusing, and I think that in the Q case we should be a bit more choosy about what exactly the content of their controversial belief is, even if we sacrifice that potentially interesting parallel. (In fact I think religious faith is a much more complex phenomenon than simply “belief in God,” to which proofs of this or that are pretty completely irrelevant; but let’s leave God out of it entirely for now.)

Elgat’s argumentative strategy, in any case, is to assimilate the Q-er to the Cartesian skeptic, both of whom issue seemingly impossible challenges to prove them wrong: in the one case, that Q exists; in the other, that we are brains in vats and are thus massively deceived about “the external world” outside our senses. In each case, in Elgat’s telling, the challenger’s conclusion, should our proof fail, is that we thus are “in an epistemological stand-off” and must acknowledge that “since I cannot show you I am right and you cannot prove me wrong, I am perfectly within my rights, so to speak, to continue to believe in whatever I choose to believe.”

Elgat has two responses to this. Read more »

by Michael Liss

My dad was a pharmacist. He had an old-fashioned store (including an actual soda fountain and stools) and some of the old-fashioned tools of the trade: scales and eye-droppers, spatulas and ointment bases, graded flasks and beakers, amphorae, and his mortar and pestle.

Pharmacy was a bit more of an art in those days and doctors often wrote prescriptions that had a little eye of newt in them. This could make Dad cranky, as they took time and counterspace, but I suspect that, secretly, he liked doing them. He would bring out the mortar and pestle (sometimes with a Remington’s Practice of Pharmacy), and, for all intents and purposes, he could have been an herbalist for a Pharaoh, so old was the tradition of combining exotic ingredients and using time and pressure until the desired potency and texture was achieved.

I have been thinking about that mortar and pestle the last few weeks. They remind me of how just the simplest set of tools, coupled with accumulated knowledge and craftsmanship, can produce something useful and even essential. And, they make me wonder whether, in this insane age, where ignorance and even falsehoods are celebrated and experience scorned, there is anything at all they still have to teach.

Last month, I attended the 16th annual conference of Columbia’s Center on Capitalism and Society. The topic was “The Economic Consequences of Mr. Trump: Jobs, Wages, Trade, Growth, Health and Satisfaction.” The organizers made a real effort to include views from across the spectrum, although it’s fair to say a majority were not Trump supporters. Nevertheless, the overall tone was cautious and analytical, rather than hypercritical. These are serious people (including three Nobel Prize winners), all literate and classically trained, and all share a deep understanding of the laws of economics, and a vast knowledge of data and historical trends.

There is no way I can do justice to a day of such intense sobriety, so I’m going to take a shortcut. Trump is not like anyone in their collective experience. Read more »

Justicia

fickle thing with scales

she’s blind sometimes, but often
lifts her blindfold just enough
to appraise a man’s cache of melanin,
holes in shoes, shuffle in gate,
accent, religious state and what he owns
of cars and houses: she aligns her scales
with power’s weight under which she
also slouches

in this ruse, Justicia,
with a wink beneath her blinders,
tips her scales with sleight of hand
as covertly as she’s able
to hide the fixes of her minders
financed under tables

Jim
10/11/18

by Anitra Pavlico

I have been a practicing Stoic for a few years now, with lulls here and there. Stoicism provides a compelling framework for living in a purposeful and ethical way. The question in my mind is, is it perhaps a little too compelling? In other words, not much fun?

One obvious response is that a philosophy of life is not supposed to be fun. It is supposed to give us tools for how to approach living, how to structure our thoughts and goals. Any enjoyment of life may proceed if it does not entail harm to others or ourselves, but it is not an explicit concern of a philosophy whether we enjoy life or not. In fact, it seems pleasure is more likely to conflict with one’s particular philosophy or creed than conform to it or peacefully coexist with it. Or maybe that is just what my experience with Stoicism leads me to think. I have started to realize that perhaps Stoicism is not for me–at least, not all of the time. Maybe on the weekends, I can take a mental vacation from Stoicism and switch camps to Epicureanism.

* * *

Epicureanism and Stoicism at first glance appear to be as different from one another as two philosophies can be. For the ancient Stoics, virtue was the supreme goal of life; Epicureanism, meanwhile, holds that the aim of life is pleasure.

Stoicism’s main focus on virtue, or aretê, is a noble goal, one that envisions us maximizing our wisdom, our fortitude, our generosity toward fellow humans, and the temperance of our desires. It can give an idle mind a direction and impetus. To pursue virtue, there are certain mental tricks we keep in mind, such as that there are some things that are under our control and other things that are not. We should concentrate on the former, which includes our thoughts, words, and deeds. To everything else, we should be indifferent–including pleasure. Read more »

by R. Passov

Tony: “Yeezy dropped.”                 

Big Tony: “Naw…For Real.”

“Yeah for real. But I’m not going there. Mass produced. For real, thirty-thousand in just New York alone.”

“For real?”

“I’m telling you. That’s how they did it.”

Tony gives me the rundown.

“Sometimes, Nike drops four or five pairs in one day, five in a week. A shoe like Jordans, every two to three weeks. Sometimes they drop a pair from ten years ago.” Tony tells me he’s set to get notified 15 minutes in advance of a drop. His credit card is stored. If he wants the shoe, it’s his.

I ask how many shoes he has and what he thinks they’re worth. “Just the ones that don’t fit in my closet I’d say is $20 to $30 thousand right there. With the shoes in boxes, $100 grand.”

How do you know? “If I want to see what their worth I go to Flight Club NYC. Online or their store in the City. Folks come all the way from London to buy the $20k Yeezy’s.” Read more »

by Bill Murray

Hyvä asiakkaamme,
Ethän käytä huoneiston takkaa.
Se on tällä hetkellä epäkunnossa
Ja savuttaa sisään.

Dear customer,
Please don’t use the fireplace. It is for the moment out of order and the smoke comes into the apartment.

Now wait a minute. We might need that fireplace in Lapland in December. Just now it’s three degrees (-16C) outside. The nice lady couldn’t be more sympathetic, but they just manage the place. Fixing the fireplace requires funding that can’t be organized until we are gone.

She promises we’ll stay warm thanks to a magnificent heater, a sauna and the eteinen, one of those icebox-sized northern anterooms that separate the outside from the living area. I have fun with the translation, though. I imagine that fool Ethän has busted the damned fireplace again.

• • •

Welcome to Saariselkä, Finland, where it’s dark in the morning, briefly dusk, then dark again for the rest of the day. The sun never aspires to the horizon. Fifty miles up the road Finland, Norway and Russia meet at the top of Europe.

But look around. It’s entirely possible to live inside the Arctic Circle. It takes a little more bundling up and all, and you need a plan before you go outside. No idle standing around out there.

There are even advantages. Trailing your groceries after you on a sled, a pulkka, is easier than carrying them. There’s a word for the way you walk: köpöttää. It means taking tiny steps the way you do to keep your balance on an icy sidewalk.

Plus, other humans live here, too, and they seem to get along just fine. Infrastructure’s good, transport in big, heavy, late model SUVs, a community of 2600 people, all of them attractive, all of whom look just like each other.

I imagined “selling time shares in Lapland” was a punch line, but it’s an actual thing. A jammed-full Airbus delivered us from Helsinki, one of three flights every day to Rovaniemi. Read more »

by Bill Benzon

Zeal Greenberg is one of the most amazing men I’ve ever worked with. I emphasize “worked with”.

I’ve discussed Disney’s Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 over dinner with Steve Martin. I took Malcolm Forbes’s photo with one of his fans, who then took a photo of me and Forbes. He and his motorcycle club, the Capitalist Tools, were at the Americade rally in Lake George on July 4th weekend. And I once told Sheldon Glashow (physics Nobel 1979) I thought that physicists’ search for a “theory of everything” was ill-conceived and a bit hubristic – I didn’t see that their theory of everything would help much with the problems that most interested me. Unfortunately the meeting we were attending started before I was able to explain myself and, alas, we didn’t get back together afterward.

I didn’t WORK with these folks.

Met them, chatted with them, but I never collaborated with them on a common project. I worked closely with Zeal for years early in the millennium.

I’m tempted to say that you couldn’t imagine a stranger and more unlikely pair. But that’s not true. Of course you could. But still… I’m a Ph. D. and rather Old School WASP in my sense of self-presentation. Zeal never went to college, started out as a schmatta salesman, and lives and breathes sales and marketing. But we had a common desire, to change the world. I was happy to help him pursue his vision. Read more »

by Evert Cilliers aka Evert Eden

It was the most riveting TV of the 21st century.

And why?

Because we saw two American faces under the greatest strain.

Something you only see acted out in the final moments of some grand fictional drama. Something Eugene O’Neill might’ve written.

But here it was for real: an actual live event starring two actual live humans.

How do you think you would have acted under such trying circumstances? Who do you think showed most clearly that admirable Hemingway quality of “grace under pressure”?

Let’s explore.

There was the face of the woman.

Doctor Christine Blasey Ford.

Polite, modest, personable, reasonable, soft-spoken, civic-minded, rational, scientific (“hippocampus”).

And so female: accommodating, seemingly fragile but steely, and terribly anxious to please.

“Collegial” as she put it. And doing her best to be, in her own words, “more helpful.”

She was other-directed: how can I help you? Read more »