PZ Myers weighs in. I guess he got bored with inflicting damage on communion wafers and accusing Michael Shermer of sexually assaulting women, and now he wants to pick on cryonicists:
How is he picking on cryonicists? On the contrary, he is “picking on” (ie pointing out the flaws in) cryonics. There is a world of difference. The bulk of the article is a compare and contrast between lengthy quotes of mummification and cryopreservation.
Yes, Myers is engaged more in mockery than detailed argumentation. If a view cannot stand up to mockery, it doesn’t deserve defenders.
Mockery is neither data nor reasoning: no update is epistemically required of the person attacked. The outcome is a matter of their fortitude, not the rights or wrongs of their case. The purpose of mockery is to crush the hated enemy by shouting loudly.
Mockery is neither data nor reasoning: no update is epistemically required of the person attacked.
That depends—mockery is just a form in which many things can be clothed, including data and reasoning.
But in any case, the original claim was
If a view cannot stand up to mockery, it doesn’t deserve defenders
which, without too much contortions, could be reformulated as “a view which cannot encourage sufficient fortitude in any of its defenders does not deserve to be defended”. And then you said
if you can bully someone out of defending their beliefs, you win
You do? What do you win? And how does that relate to whether the belief mocked was (epistemically) correct or not?
I think you’re confusing the issue of whether something is valued (and so worth defending) with whether something is empirically/scientifically correct (and so “true”).
I find it of significantly greater value to engage in detailed argumentation than in mockery. If cryonics has flaws in it, those flaws can be pointed out without resorting to sarcasm, and doing so simply raises the probability of mind-killing.
How is he picking on cryonicists? On the contrary, he is “picking on” (ie pointing out the flaws in) cryonics. There is a world of difference. The bulk of the article is a compare and contrast between lengthy quotes of mummification and cryopreservation.
Yes, Myers is engaged more in mockery than detailed argumentation. If a view cannot stand up to mockery, it doesn’t deserve defenders.
Or in other words, if you can bully someone out of defending their beliefs, you win.
Really?
No, that does not follow. Your straw is very weak.
No straw, but purest steel. I stand by my words.
Mockery is neither data nor reasoning: no update is epistemically required of the person attacked. The outcome is a matter of their fortitude, not the rights or wrongs of their case. The purpose of mockery is to crush the hated enemy by shouting loudly.
That depends—mockery is just a form in which many things can be clothed, including data and reasoning.
But in any case, the original claim was
which, without too much contortions, could be reformulated as “a view which cannot encourage sufficient fortitude in any of its defenders does not deserve to be defended”. And then you said
You do? What do you win? And how does that relate to whether the belief mocked was (epistemically) correct or not?
I think you’re confusing the issue of whether something is valued (and so worth defending) with whether something is empirically/scientifically correct (and so “true”).
I find it of significantly greater value to engage in detailed argumentation than in mockery. If cryonics has flaws in it, those flaws can be pointed out without resorting to sarcasm, and doing so simply raises the probability of mind-killing.