Disqus - Latest Comments for "Q" the Enchanter

Re: The Courage to Conjoin

"Q" the Enchanter — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:30:35 -0000

Suppose you know that Ramesh Ponnuru is an idiot... (That would save several steps in the argument.)

Re: Yuval Levin on Haidt

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:46:44 -0000

Very nice.

Re: Yglesias Doesn’t Care about the Causes of Inequality Because He Doesn’t Care about Inequality

"Q" the Enchanter — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:33:40 -0000

"It is then vivid that the decision not to have the next child will leave some unlucky soul dejected and unrealised. If having a kid benefits the kid, then not having a kid harms the kid-that-might-have-been."

But cf. Sam Kinison (to his parents, who have announced to him, "[Y]ou're old enough to be on your own":

You know, before I was your little son. Before I was your baby -- before I was your loan -- I was a free spirit in the next stage of life. I walked in the cosmos, not imprisoned by a body of flesh, but free, in a pure body of light. There were no questions, only answers. No weaknesses, only strengths. I was light, I was truth, I was a spiritual being, I was a God!!!

But you had to F*** and bring my ass down HERE!

I didn't ask to be born! I didn't call and say: 'Hey, please have me so I could work in a f***in' Winchell's someday!' Now you want me to pay my own way? F*** YOU! PICK UP THE F***IN' CHECK, MOM! PICK IT UP!

I read Kinison as pretty much disagreeing with the Economist's analysis.

Re: Yglesias Doesn’t Care about the Causes of Inequality Because He Doesn’t Care about Inequality

"Q" the Enchanter — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:36:53 -0000

Boy, did I ever leave that comment on the wrong post. Go ahead and delete it; I'll repost it over where it belongs.

Re: Yglesias Doesn’t Care about the Causes of Inequality Because He Doesn’t Care about Inequality

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:01:36 -0000

"so there’s really no reposting it..."

Yes, as I subsequently discovered. Oh well, glad you liked it. I'd tried to track down the clip on youtube (Sam's performance is much funnier than my transcription); alas, no such luck.

Re: The Idealism of Jackets and Ties

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:02:52 -0000

I don't like your tone. Are you suggesting that Disneyland isn't the Happiest Place on Earth?

Re: Taste

"Q" the Enchanter — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:31:37 -0000

"so they create their own secret super awesome genius city where no jerks can ever bother them ever again."

Is this another dig at Disneyland?

Re: Moral Duties in Contexts of Partial Compliance

"Q" the Enchanter — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:10:06 -0000

"At the time of your choice, all of the relevant chickens have already been killed."

Suppose there were a delicious food product called Soylent Bleen, which is made out of dead people from a defined class -- say, those born between August 23 and September 22.

You enjoy the product, but lament with appropriate intensity that Virgos are being killed to make it. The same collective action problem obtains. Should you only abjure eating SB only, say, if your threshold at Pledgebank is met? Or isn't there some further argument that no matter what others may do, eating SB is just morally wrong (in a way that, say, withholding nontaxed disposable income from the government isn't)?

Re: More Fun with Collective Action

"Q" the Enchanter — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:47:18 -0000

Will, you're answer is very amusing, and maybe even spot on. One rhetorical feature of your answer, though, cuts both ways. You play on the convenience of Brother's CO2 excuse, as a means of avoiding having to cough up plane fair. ("C'mon, pony up, cheapskate.") But your collective action rationale is just as convenient an excuse for those who simply want to do whatever it is they want to do, no matter the externalities of the underlying activity. And besides which, as between environmental and economic rationales, I think it's clear which more typically serves as a convenient justification for self-regarding behavior...)

Re: Meditations on Collective Action and Moral Norms

"Q" the Enchanter — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:07:51 -0000

"[A given constraint on self-interest is morally binding if] heeding the constraint will tend to make the person who heeds it better off, conditional on others heeding it, too.."

Should my interpretive "if" be an "only if"? An "if and only if"?

Individual flourishing may be part of what grounds moral imperatives, but it would seem quite insufficient on its own (cf., for example, the problem of sadistic pleasure). Wouldn't you agree that you need a prior theory of good character (such that only the flourishing or persons with such-and-such character traits can ground a moral imperative)?

Re: Meditations on Collective Action and Moral Norms

"Q" the Enchanter — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:09:52 -0000

I probably should have said "Wouldn't you agree that at minimum..."

Re: Meditations on Collective Action and Moral Norms

"Q" the Enchanter — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:33:32 -0000

On the issue of being soulless, by the way, I've always liked Giulio Giorello's remark: "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots!"

Re: If You Own It, You Can Sell It

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:13:39 -0000

"Honest work that we legally and culturally marginalize is degrading. But that’s because we marginalize it."

Cf. Nietzsche's remark: "The Christian resolve to find the world evil and ugly has made the world evil and ugly." (I would substitute the more ecumenical "moralist's" for "Christian.")

Re: How to Be Grotesquely Reductionist and Utilitarian about Human Love and Life

"Q" the Enchanter — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:47:32 -0000

"Since I have no easy access to women who sell sex, will you share my life so I can use you for sex?"

Is that line from the Church-approved edition of The Game?

Re: Obama’s Patriotism

"Q" the Enchanter — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:49:00 -0000

The reason patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels is that it works brilliantly; American jingoism does little but give their ilk aid and comfort.

Re: Patriotism and Monogamy

"Q" the Enchanter — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:29:52 -0000

Robin, presumably, any nation state could adopt the "American form of government." Doesn't "patriotism" on your analysis entail "loving" every country that does so?

Re: Krugman on Immigration and Inequality

"Q" the Enchanter — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:58:27 -0000

"Liberal Fascism is a more intellectually evenhanded book, which says more about Krugman than it does about Liberal Fascism, I’m afraid."

Now that feels like reading Ann Coulter! Maybe Krugman made a hash out of the argument, but Goldberg's entire thesis is inherently, transparently frivolous.

Re: Comical Conservative Conditionals

"Q" the Enchanter — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:22:18 -0000

Do Jihadis "give a damn" about explanations?

Re: Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:44:45 -0000

I always like Michael Caine's remark: "I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better." (Sophie Tucker said much the same sort of thing back in the '40s.)

Re: Arthur Brooks on Religion and Happiness

"Q" the Enchanter — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:03:34 -0000

Oh yeah? Well why don't you ask all these people how happy they are when they're burning in the Lake of Fire?

Re: “Irrational” Choice and the Persistence of Lives Well-Lived

"Q" the Enchanter — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:27:58 -0000

Some nations persisted well enough for millennia without free markets. But the move from that fact to the suggestion that we ought to embrace free markets is a non sequitur.

The question isn't whether we can get on "well" enough without this or that institution, but whether the institution marginally optimizes human flourishing.

Re: “Irrational” Choice and the Persistence of Lives Well-Lived

"Q" the Enchanter — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:28:40 -0000

Sorry - should have read "...that we ought *not* to embrace..."

Re: Collectivism and Meaning

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:27:14 -0000

Well where exactly does Obama deny that "every human life counts," or that "[y]ou have a right to live [life] as you choose." Where does Obama insist that pursuing "happiness" is an "self-indulgent"?

Oh, he doesn't.

Boaz is responding to relatively innocuous, trite, pleasing talk on the theme of public spiritedness with counter-formulations that are significantly more misleading than anything Obama said in the referenced speech. Measured skepticism about "collectivist" rhetoric is one thing; casting public spiritedness as somehow incommensurable with individual achievement (or with the "pursuit of happiness") is another.

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

"Q" the Enchanter — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:27:31 -0000

I like this analysis. I'd just add that what you say about the weird transmogrification of Hayek, Friedman and Buchanan is arguably even more true of Adam Smith.

Re: Uncooperative Collectivsm

"Q" the Enchanter — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:44:00 -0000

"in the more collectivist cultures of Istanbul, Turkey; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Muscat, Oman, the play is a little rougher."

I take it all plausible third variables are accounted for in the paper? (Of the distinctions that could be drawn between Europe and the near Middle-East, "collectivism" doesn't strike me as necessarily the most salient.)

Re: Games Within Games

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:42:13 -0000

I want to do business with the guy who came up with Option 2. That dude is funny.

Re: Bikes vs. Cars

"Q" the Enchanter — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:01:26 -0000

The rule against riding on the left side of the road isn't about the oncoming traffic: When someone turns right, their last glance before committing will typically be to their left; whereas, if you are riding on the "wrong" side of the street, you will be approaching them from their right -- which makes it easier for them not to see you, and for you thus to be run over by them.

Re: Bundles of Oy

"Q" the Enchanter — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:30:10 -0000

A well known ad trades on a countervailing intuition.