29 November 2006
Self Referential? You Ain't Never Seen Self-Referential
One of the oddities of having commented so prolifically at BrothersJudd for so long is that, when I'm looking for something in the archives, I'm constantly coming across things I've written of which I have no memory. It's as if someone else wrote them. Sent to the archives by this post at Thought Mesh, I came across this comment thread. I had remembered holing OJ's nutty "broken windows" theory under the waterline, but I hadn't remembered the comment "So we just need to give the invisible hand a rock." That comment just really, really amuses me.
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6 comments:
Not remembering writing it doesn't excuse such blatant laughing at one's own jokes.
But it is a good one. A very funny thread in fact. Nobody defends the indefensible like Orrin.
Brit: But now, when asked to list my strengths and weaknesses, I can add the ability to laugh at myself.
I love the way these threads can end on fantastic non-sequiturs like that comment by AllenS.
When people have a real bugbear or pet topic, they'll use any excuse to mention it. For AllenS, it must be composite metals - as if investment in development of composite metals should be mutually exclusive with postal delivery. Other popular ones are of course sideways baseball caps and the Muslims - as in, "Why should Europeans worry about fishing stocks when they've got the Muslim question?"
Actually AllenS wasn't non-sequitoring, he was yanking oj's chain. You have to remember that a corollary thread to the Let's Break a Window! thread was the Let's Raise the Gas Tax to $12 a Gallon! thread. In this thread gasoline taxes would be raised to $12 a gallon, or some such, and the automakers would respond by building cars out of lightweight, but cheap, composite metals. Whatever those are.
No, the best OJ counter-"argument" is the flat "counterfactual", which means "your data doesn't match any of my anecdotes".
How about "Bingo!" or my favourite, "You're tiptoeing up to an insight."
Though those are more like catchprases than debating tecnhiques (it's a fine line on Bros Judd).
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