I have returned to find, as predicted, the irony most definitely lost. When will you americans learn to appreciate such simple devices? Any chance of an explanation? Perhaps a riposte (I rather like that)? Oh never mind. Oh dear I have just noticed another howler ‘a few minutes of philosophical reflection trump a few millennia of human cultural tradition.’ Where do you think such philisophical epiphanies come from I wonder? Conjured much like your arguments, out of thin air? Your own subjectivism which you take great pains to distance yourself from is inescapable, you are a prisoner of mediochrity, accept it and get off your high horse. As for the rest of you relax, temper those patriotic stirrings, as someone who knows the Italian justice system fairly well I can assure you Foxy Knoxy and her Italian friend will get off on the next appeal. It’s a travesty of justice so far but that is the nature of justice, and for that matter rationality, they are human constructions thus inevitably flawed, deal with it.
jaxx18
I read your article when it appeared rather aptly under a search for irrational argument. I’ve never wasted my time submitting to such a ‘blog’ before but the sheer pomposity of your prose compelled me. How rewarding to find that, as often is the case, the arrogance of weak intellect should unwittingly display its failings quite so blatantly. You have undoubtedly arrived at most probably the correct conclusion with regards to the Amanda Knox case by way of some very flawed reasoning (well done). The hubris of your ‘rationality’ is really quite hilarious. To quote, your knowledge of the case comprises of ‘an hour on the internet’ (how very diligent of you) yielding ‘two things constituting so far as I know the entirety of the physical “evidence” against the couple.’ It really does make me laugh to see such subjective and empirical statements colluding in a single sentence but no doubt the irony is lost on you and clearly on the rest of your ‘critics’. So I’ll spell it out, you have based the entirety of your ‘rational’ argument on, and here’s the rub, second hand evidence which by your own admission, you have so thouroughly researched. Now in terms of an ‘exponential spacial distance’ (you dress it up as one decorates their own grave, plotting their own ends) you couldn’t be further from the locus of the event. Whether or not the evidence you have chanced upon is representative and accurate of the entire affair is completely irrelevent because you have entrenched your argument so heavily in ‘rationality’ that it undermines itself. Your final unashamed hypocresy rather neatly sums up my objections: ‘The commenters whose estimates were closest to mine—and, therefore, to the correct answer, in my view (...) congratulations to them’. No, no, really, congratulations to you, you are the inevitable monkey who has stumbled accross the works of shakespeare and thinks himself an original genius.
Right last words then I’m off to enjoy the sunlight, has wonderful benefits for the skin you know. Before I go though I should like to leave you with this: reason, ultimate truth, the singularity you adore is a redundent desire as dead as the God it replaced and I shall illustrate this in a single sentence, a short one mind, taken from S/Z (Roland Barthes): ‘There are said to be certain Buddhists whose ascetic practices allow them to see a whole landscape in a bean’ That’s you by the way, the Buddhist monks, and the ascetic practices well you guessed it the perfect rationality, the formula for truth. As for the landscape I think it reasonable to extend it out into the known universe, the whole possible universe(s) for that matter. Well then what have we left? The bean of course, for what is the inevitable end of such a perfect system but to reduce the entire universe, the entirety of existence into a small brown (could be green) bean. Kind of like Jack and the Beanstalk in reverse. Right, now start enjoying the multiplicity of life or go back to your cave, the choice is most definitely not yours.