[SPAM][ RadSafe ] OT Humor: Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run!

[Doug Aitken]

DUh!
;~)
Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On Behalf
Of Cary Renquist
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 12:01 PM
To: radsafe at radlab.nl
Subject: [SPAM][ RadSafe ] OT Humor: Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned
Arguments Backed With Facts! Run!

Might remind y’all of past visitors to the list…

 

Regards,

Cary

 

---

Cary Renquist

 

 

 

>From the Onion:


Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run!


By Matthew Barnes 
May 28, 2009 | Issue 45•22 <http://www.theonion.com/content/index/4522>  

I…I think it's finally over. Our reactionary emotional response seems to
have stopped it dead in its tracks. If I'm right, all we have to do now is
smugly reiterate our half-formed thesis and—oh, no! For the love of God, no!
It's thoughtfully mulling things over!

Run! Run! It's making reasonable, fact-based arguments!

Quickly! Hide behind self-righteousness! The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the
ad hominem rejoinders! Watch out! Dodge the issue at hand! Question its
character and keep moving haphazardly from one flawed point to the next!

All together now! Put every bit of secondhand conjecture into it you've got!

Goddamn it, nothing's working! It's trapped us in our own unsubstantiated
claims! We need to switch fundamentally unsound tactics. Hurry, throw up the
straw man! Look, I think it's going for it. C'mon…c'mon…yes, it's going for
it! Now hit it with the thing that one guy told us once while it's
distracted by our ludicrous rationalizations!

Gah! It's calmly and evenhandedly deflecting everything we're throwing at
it. Our deductive fallacies are only making it stronger! Wait…what on earth
is it doing now? Oh, no, it has sources! My God, it's defending itself with
ironclad sources! Someone stop the citing! Please, please stop the citing!

The language is impenetrable! For all that is good and holy, backpedal with
all your might!

Where are the children? Someone overprotect the children! They cannot be
exposed to this kind of illuminative reasoning. Their young, open minds are
much too vulnerable to independent thought. We have to shield them behind
our unshakeable intolerance for critical thinking.

What?!? Noooooooooo! Richard! For the love of God, it's convinced Richard!

No time for tears now. Richard's mind has been changed forever. But we
mustn't let it weaken our resolve. Mark my words, our ignorance will hold,
no matter the cost. Now, more than ever, we have to keep floundering ahead
with blind faith in our increasingly fallacious worldview. 

For Richard's sake.

What's that? Now it's making an appeal to reason? Never! Do you hear me, you
eloquent, well-read behemoth? Never! We'll die before we recognize what we
secretly know to be true! The cognitive dissonance only makes our denial
stronger!

We have but one hope left: passive-aggressive slights disguised as
impersonal discourse.† Okay, everyone, careful now…careful…if this is going
to work, we have to arrogantly assume that it won't be smart enough to catch
on to our attempt to salvage some feeling of superiority and—oh, God, it's
calling us out! Quick, avoid eye contact and stammer an apology! Tell it we
were just joking! Tell it we were joking!

Arrgh! Our pride! Oh, Lord, our pride! It burns!

All is lost. We don't stand a chance against its relentless onslaught of
exhaustive research and immaculate rhetoric. We may as well lie down
and—Christ, how it pains me to say it—admit that it's right. My friends, I
would like to take these last few moments of stubborn close-mindedness to
say that it's been an honor to dig myself into this hole with you. 

Unless…wait, of course! Why didn't we think of it before? Volume! Sheer
volume! It's so simple. Quickly now, we don't have much time! Don't let it
get a word in edgewise! Derisively cut it off mid-sentence! Now, launch the
sophomoric personal attacks! Louder, yes, that's it, louder! Be repetitive,
juvenile, and obstinate! It's working! It's working!

We've done it! It's walking away and shaking its head in disgust! Huzzah!
Finally—defeated with a single three-minute volley of irrelevant, off-topic
shouting!

Ironic, really, isn't it?

 

 

 

_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list

Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood the
RadSafe rules. These can be found at:
http://radlab.nl/radsafe/radsaferules.html

For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings visit:
http://radlab.nl/radsafe/