Scott Adams' Blog

Opinions vs. Ideas

Posted July 8th, 2011 @ 10:47am in #General Nonsense

If you hear an idea without knowing who came up with it, you can evaluate the idea on its merits. But if you know the originator of the idea, the idea gets slimed with everything you know about the originator and his motives. When an idea is associated with a personality it transforms into an opinion. And we fucking hate other people’s opinions. Ideas are kind of cool, but we don’t like opinions.

There’s probably some sort of evolutionary reason why we automatically hate the opinions of others. Maybe it’s a competition thing. Maybe it’s an ego thing. I’m just saying that we reject the opinions of others almost reflexively. We reject first and then we try to cook up some reasons later.

The exception is when an opinion matches our own. That is seen as confirmation of our brilliance. But in any case, the underlying idea become subordinate to the personalities involved.

For existing ideas, it’s too late to separate them from their authors. But maybe there’s a way to save future ideas from death-by-association. How much better off would the world be if new ideas could be freed from the slimy and infected shackles of their originators? What if all new ideas went through some sort of filter that stripped off the identity of the originator and allowed us to evaluate the ideas on their merits?

The first problem with anonymity is economics. If you’re a journalist or pundit, your income depends on being associated with ideas, even if doing so kills the ideas. So even if an idea were to have some sort of virgin birth, the first group or person to embrace it would become the adopting parent and slime the idea by association.

This is a big problem. I fear that the best ideas for the economy, the environment, and social contracts are destroyed by association with, ugh, humans. So I wonder if the Internet can offer some sort of solution.

Let’s imagine a website that requires all participants to be anonymous. Users are invited to submit original ideas on any topic. Popular ideas are voted up until the best ideas bubble to the top. And let’s say the participants on this site agree as a matter of principle to not discuss the new ideas outside the forum. And let’s say that the only people who can see the ideas are those who are members. The only ideas that are released to the general public are the ones that bubble to the top and are then published in press releases.

Partisans would obviously sign up to game the system and fill it with the ideas of their political parties and advocacy groups. That’s where moderators would need to be involved. Any ideas that seem nearly the same as existing ideas in the outside world would be deleted. Only new ideas, including novel twists on existing ideas, would be allowed.

That still leaves the problem of one advocacy group or another signing up in large numbers to pump up votes for ideas that are at least compatible with their philosophies. Maybe one of you has an idea for how to prevent that problem.

The main point is this: Humanity would become far more efficient at solving its biggest problems if ideas could be separated from personalities.

Useful Business Web Sites

Posted July 6th, 2011 @ 9:55am in #General Nonsense

It bugs me that there are tools on the Internet that I would find handy if only I knew they existed. I did a bit of searching and pulled together a list of useful, single-purpose, free, business utility sites that you probably didn’t know exist.

boxoh.com - Track any shipment

whichdateworks.com - Find a date that works for everyone

everytimezone.com - A clear graphic of world time zones

followupthen.com - Quick way to set up a reminder email to yourself

www.dafont.com - Thousands of free fonts for PC and Mac

www.anonymouse.org - Surf the web without revealing your identity

encrypted.google.com - Keeps your search queries private from nosey bosses

www.hipmunk.com - Best interface for finding a flight to book

seatguru.com - Best way to find the right seat on a flight

flightstats.com - Track flights

Do you know of other sites that meet the criteria of being a useful, single-purpose, free, business utility that most people would find useful but probably don’t know exist? I’ll update the list from your input. (No entertainment sites, please.)

Winning Kills

Posted July 4th, 2011 @ 10:49am in #General Nonsense

Chipping Away at the Superstition of Free Will

Posted July 1st, 2011 @ 10:01am in #General Nonsense

Here’s another blow to the Nature Deniers. Yes, I did just invent a new label for people who believe human nature is not an important factor in human actions.

 



 

Death by Hypnosis. Or Not.

Posted June 30th, 2011 @ 5:21pm in #General Nonsense

The story on WCTV’s website says, “Florida police are investigating a high school principal who hypnotized three students who later died.” Several of you sent me a link to the story and asked my opinion on the bullshit quotient.

By way of explaining my credentials, most of you know I once trained to become a hypnotist. The field is fairly shallow, in the sense that an expert wouldn’t know that much more than a person who went through hypnosis training and did some reading on the topic.

Let’s jump right in. Researchers have studied hypnosis to see if it’s possible to make a person act against his best interest in any meaningful way. There has never been a documented case of hypnosis causing a person to hurt himself. But it would be fair to wonder if such a thing can be studied, since a hypnotized subject knows on some level that the researcher isn’t really going to hand him a loaded gun and ask him to blow his brains out. Even a hypnotized subject understands that he’s safe. It’s a tough thing to study in the lab.

Obviously a stage hypnotist can get subjects to do some interesting things on stage, but part of the secret is that in any large group there are always people willing to do just about anything. The illusion for the audience is that the people on stage are as shy as you imagine you might be in that situation. They aren’t.

In my own experience, both as a subject of hypnosis and as a hypnotist, I’ve never seen a hint that hypnosis might be harmful. Contrary to popular understanding, the hypnotized subject is always aware of his situation in exactly the same way you are right now. The difference is that the subconscious shows up at the dance at the same time. Your conscious mind has the option of being somewhat of an observer, like a driver’s ed teacher, while your subconscious causes your arm to feel cold, or whatever the hypnotist suggests. But like a driver’s ed teacher, your conscious mind always has the option of intervening. A subject can snap out of it anytime he wants. Indeed, he is never asleep in any common sense of the word. It’s more of a relaxed state in which the subconscious is less dominated than usual by the conscious mind.

That’s the quick and dirty explanation of what’s happening. I think you could have a debate about whether there is really such a thing as a subconscious mind. It might be more accurate to say that a deeply relaxed mind functions differently than a non-relaxed mind, and in predictable ways, and leave it at that.

Now, about this principal in Florida - I don’t think he is the first hypnotist in the world to discover some sort of hypnotic death spell that accidentally kicks in when he tries to help a point guard increase his free throw percentages.

So how do I explain the coincidence? One word: coincidence. I’ll bet somewhere in the United States is a man who has had a cup of coffee with three people who died within the year. It doesn’t imply causation.

Also, if you sort the world into two groups, with the people who feel their lives are just fine in one group, and the people who think only a hypnotist can help them in the other, I think the latter group might be a bit more suicidal on average. That’s just a guess. The point is that the 75 people who got hypnotized probably aren’t a representative sample of the students.

The wildcard in all of this is whether the principal was using the hypnosis sessions as a smokescreen to get private time with minors. There’s no allegation of the sort, and he reportedly did lots of sessions with adults, so I’m guessing he was just trying to be helpful and it didn’t work out.

When you combine the topics of hypnosis, suicide, children, and the Bible Belt, it’s a perfect storm. There’s no surprise that this story got attention. But my verdict is that death-by-hypnosis is bullshit.

It’s an Epidemic

Posted June 29th, 2011 @ 8:02am in #General Nonsense

This is an odd little coincidence. Check out Paul Krugman’s blog for June 26th on bad reading comprehension. It seems to be an epidemic.

I sense a startup opportunity.

Suppose you start a company that administers a basic reading comprehension test and issues a password to people who pass it online. Then imagine that the password would be needed to sign up for commenting on blogs and other online forums. The startup would sell its password services to websites looking to filter out people with bad reading comprehension.

As a consumer, if you pass the test once, your password is yours forever. You can use it as many times as you like for as many blogs and forums as you sign up for. You would be a certified “good reader.”

I suppose you could extend the concept to include tests for history, politics and economics. Each time you pass a new test module, your lifetime password is given new rights that match the test you pass. Websites could determine what sort of test success they want to make a requirement for participation on their sites.

One problem with this idea is that it would severely limit the traffic for comments. But a website could allow everyone to comment and simply indicate which commenters are “good readers.” That way you have the benefit of knowing who has a minimum set of qualifications to comment on a topic and who doesn’t.

Author by Relocation

Posted June 27th, 2011 @ 8:04am in #General Nonsense

Yesterday I was watching a comedian on HBO doing a routine that was both politically incorrect and hilarious. The audience seemed to enjoy it, which is not surprising, since they self-selected to be there. If any in the audience were offended, I’m guessing they blamed themselves for not doing their homework before buying tickets to the show.

Now imagine if someone recorded the comedian’s act and decided to play it at the next church meeting. All hell would break loose because the x-rated material would be offensive in that context. My question is this: Who is the author of the material at the moment it is replayed at the church meeting? Is it the comedian who created it, or is it the person who moved it to a new context? I say it’s the person who moved it to the wrong audience.

I believe authorship - at least in terms of responsibility, not copyright - should transfer when a person moves material from one context where it is appropriate to another where it is not. The same should be true whenever moving material from one context to another changes the message.

Tracey Morgan recently got in trouble for saying in his act that if his son announced he was gay, Tracey would stab him. If we presume that this was one of fifty outrageously inappropriate things Tracey said on stage that night, all within character as the absurdly ignorant and selfish guy he likes to portray for laughs, it means a comedian was trying to be outrageous and funny and missed the mark. That’s all it means, since no reasonable person believes Tracey would stab his own son or love him less if he came out. But reported out of context, as it was, one has trouble seeing the statement as anything but the worst kind of hate speech.

I would argue that Tracey was 100% responsible for whatever psychological or social harm he caused to the audience that heard his remark live, and zero percent responsible for the harm that was caused when others spread the story. The spreaders became the authors (as far as responsibility) when they changed the context. They became the Authors by Relocation, a term I just made up.

Most people would agree that you shouldn’t shoot the messenger. But that rule only applies if the messenger delivers the right message to the right person. If the king’s messenger stops at the local inn to share the king’s message before delivering it, someone is going to get beheaded.

Prior to the Internet, this transfer of authorship was a smallish problem. An unscrupulous or clumsy newspaper journalist could take out of context something from a book or a speech and write it up to make the original author seem ridiculous. But most professionals would be aware that moving material from one audience to another will change the message, and they would self-regulate to maintain the reputation of their publication.

Then along came the Internet. Now any idiot with a computer can move material from one context to another and totally change the meaning. Sometimes this is done by taking quotes out of context. Sometimes material is paraphrased incorrectly. Sometimes the person moving the material has low reading comprehension and makes an honest mistake. Sometimes a problem arises because an author has taken shortcuts with his regular audience, leaving out information that would be necessary for a new reader.

As a writer, you recognize that a huge part of your job is choosing your words to fit your intended audience. When a third party introduces a different audience to your writing, it destroys the audience-matching element of your craft. In a real sense, it changes the product.

An author has no legal recourse when his work is changed by the act of moving it. Libel laws are intentionally weak, and we’re probably better off if they stay that way. But I recommend a solution that makes sense in the Internet age. I propose that responsibility for the impact of content (but not copyright or royalties) should be with the person who delivers material to an unintended audience.

By this model, you can blame the author for anything objectionable if you see the work in the channel he or she intended. But as soon as that work appears on some other website, including a link to the original, any anger it sparks should be directed at the person who invited an audience that the original author did not intend.

On the Internet, anything written for a particular audience is instantly available to the entire world. That’s a wonderful thing, but it makes it too easy for the author and the audience to become accidentally mismatched.  Pay walls would be a solution, but they aren’t generally economical. And we don’t want authors writing to the least common denominator, trying to please everyone while offending no one. We want writing that is appropriate for the intended audience.

My proposal is that we leave things exactly as they are, technology-wise and business model-wise. We need no new laws. All we need is a name for the phenomenon: Author by Relocation.  It’s the literary version of “You break it, you bought it.” If a piece of writing causes little or no harm for its intended audience, we can assume the original author did his job. But if the work is relocated, and/or carved into quotes out of context, that becomes a case of Author by Relocation, and the carver/mover takes on responsibility for the message at that point.

This model maintains complete freedom of expression, including freedom to quote material and to criticize. It simply recognizes that moving and changing a message makes you the Author by Relocation.

Reading Comprehension Test

Posted June 25th, 2011 @ 7:48am in #General Nonsense

Here’s a reading comprehension test for readers of Salon, Jezebel, and Change.org. (I borrowed this idea from a comment.)

Reading Comprehension Test:

If I say all men have a natural urge to eat, and some men are cannibals, have I implied that all men are natural cannibals? Did I condone the practice of eating people?

Discuss

[Note: Readers of The Huffington Post are exempted from the test because most have already passed it.]

Update: I’m adding two more questions.

If I say Dutch men are the tallest in the world, which of the following facts have I implied?

1. I’m a racist.

2. Every Dutch man is taller than every other man.

3. I have a low opinion of women because I didn’t even mention them.

4. None of the above

If I say I invented a robot that can be used to help feed babies, quadriplegics, and some mentally handicapped people, what else have I implied?

1. Quadriplegics are mentally handicapped.

2. Babies are quadriplegics

3. Mentally handicapped people are a bunch of babies

4. I’m a socialist

5. None of the above

Maybe it’s Me

Posted June 24th, 2011 @ 7:57am in #General Nonsense

The fascinating thing about being batshit crazy is that often you’re the only one who isn’t aware of it. That’s why I sometimes like to take a step back and seriously consider the hypothesis that the reason people disagree with me is that I’m an idiot and I don’t realize it.

To that end, I would like to invite some experts to render their opinions of my sanity, based on my interviews with my detractors, below. Any of the following professionals would qualify:

Judge

Lawyer

Debate coach/teacher

Logic professor

Psychologist (professional)

Scientist

If you have an expertise that seems relevant, please read my original offending blog post, Pegs and Holes, and the interviews directly below with Irin Carmon and MaryElizabeth Williams. Give each of us an overall grade that is relevant to your particular expertise. If you’re a judge, issue a verdict. If you’re a scientist, let me know who had the best grasp of the objective facts. If you’re a debate expert, let me know who “won” the debate. If you’re a psychologist, let me know who is suffering from cognitive issues.

Please describe your qualifications and your (brief) evaluation in the comments below. Please also specify your gender, since we would expect some bias in that regard.

Interview with Salon.com Writer MaryElizabeth Williams

Posted June 22nd, 2011 @ 6:20pm in #General Nonsense

Update: Final update added 8 PM PST 6/23/11

In round two I interview Salon writer MaryElizabeth Williams on the topic of what was so objectionable about my blog post Pegs and Holes. (See prior posts for more background.)

MaryElizabeth Williams is a senior staff writer for Salon.com, an author, and has written for The New York Times and other publications. She recently wrote this about me.

Let’s jump right in.

MaryElizabeth: Why did I object to your post? Perhaps you meant it humorously, but let’s start with the way you lump “behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world” together. Cheating is “behaving badly.” Raping is a crime. Right off the bat, you’re working off fuzzy logic, in which a consensual affair and an act of violence are somehow on the same plane. You do so again later when you suggest that if men were to “lose the urge for sex,” there’d be “no rape, fewer divorces,” as if rape was all about the “urge for sex.”

You state that “society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable…society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness. No one planned it that way.” Your presumptuousness over the natural instincts of men is surpassed only by your wild second-guessing regarding those of women. And society, by the way, is plenty planned. Ours here in America, in fact, was planned by, and its government and businesses are still largely run by, men. So instead of going on about the “instincts” of men and women, consider what our culture deems acceptable behavior from all its members, of both sexes. I would furthermore submit that if our society is “a virtual prison for men’s natural desires,” you’ve never been to Vegas.

Now let me ask you - do you believe that rape is a “natural” instinct, or that our culture doesn’t differentiate between the “urge for sex” and forcible violation? 


Scott: I’ll start by answering you closing question. I think sex is a natural instinct, and it manifests differently in different people. A person who is simultaneously horny, prone to violence, and has sociopath tendencies might act in the worst possible way. That person would be abnormal, and I favor the death penalty for rape. Violent behavior is natural in the same sense that cancer and hurricanes are natural. Natural doesn’t mean good. Everything I just explained was obvious to many if not most readers of my Pegs and Holes post. You can verify that claim by reading the comments on this blog and on Huffington Post.

On your other points, let me see if I can break them down to bullet points and get your agreement on what you are saying before I respond to them individually. I believe you are saying…

1. Men who have no sexual desire and no erections will still rape because it’s not about the sexual urge.

2. If an author lists three things that are bad, he means all three things are equal to each other. For example, if I say blizzards, ulcers, and head lice are bad, I am implying that they should be treated the same way.

3. Society didn’t evolve as the result of millions of people making millions of independent decisions. It is mostly the result of planning by men who successfully designed society to meet their needs. 

4. Men can get their natural urges satisfied by, for example, traveling to Las Vegas. Their wives and girlfriends won’t mind. There’s no real downside. 

5. You can’t tell when I’m trying to be humorous. 

Did I accurately summarize your points?

MaryElizabeth: So to be clear, you’re saying do believe that “horniness” is a factor in rape. I wonder, have you ever known someone who was raped? Are you aware that rape is used as a weapon of war? Men who have “no sexual desire and no erections” do rape, Scott. Ask someone who’s experienced it. Ask Abner Louima, as just one example.

Further, I wonder why you’re backing off from your own use of “tweeting, raping, cheating" and "no rape, fewer divorces” in the same lines of thought. You may facetiously compare your post to saying “blizzards, ulcers, and head lice are bad,” but I would argue that if that had been your original statement, you’d have been rightly accused of posting utter gibberish.

Instead, you referred, in the most blanket-like of terms, to the “natural instincts of men” as “shameful and criminal.”  You’re the one who called men “square pegs” and referred to “males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges.” You made no such distinction, as you do now, for the more “prone to violence” and “sociopathic.”

And let me see if I understand you correctly - society has evolved from “millions of independent decisions”? I guess the Constitution can go suck it.

Finally, just because someone can tell when you’re attempting to be humorous, it doesn’t follow that you’re succeeding at it. Likewise, just because people disagree  with you, it’s not always a sign they’re just not as smart as those HuffPo commenters. Perhaps if there weren’t so many of us with what you deem poor reading skills, you wouldn’t have the need to create imaginary defenders. (http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_scandal) I’d like to believe that you’ve reached out to your critics because you have a genuine curiosity to understand why your remarks were so offensive to so many, Scott. Or is that one more thing I’m apparently all wrong about?

Scott: If you’re lumping together every type of rape from war crimes to date rape to child rape to prison rape, most generalizations fall apart. I will grant you that when rape is used as a weapon of war, horniness is not the inspiration for the act. And I will grant you that if an erect penis is not used in the crime, horniness is probably not involved. And I will grant you that if someone who is seriously insane commits rape, it might not involve any horniness. And I will grant you that there are probably dozens of other twisted motivations that don’t start with horniness.

My original reference in my Pegs and Holes blog involved the IMF chief and his alleged rape of the hotel maid. In that case, I don’t think he first had an urge to do some violence and decided that his penis was the go-to weapon of choice.

Chemical castration drugs already exist, and have proven extraordinarily effective in reducing recidivism rates among sex offenders. The science is on my side. If you have a link that shows otherwise, I am happy to look at it.

And yes, I’ve known a number of rape victims. I don’t draw conclusions from anecdotal evidence, but horniness was obviously a factor in those cases.

If we can set aside for a moment the clarity, or lack thereof, in the writing of my original blog post, can you tell me what view you think I hold that is different from your own? And please put your answer in bullet point form if you can.

MaryElizabeth: Let’s look at how you’re changing your narrative here. “My original reference in my Pegs and Holes blog involved the IMF chief and his alleged rape of the hotel maid.” Your original post about “tweeting, raping, cheating” declared that “the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male?"  That’s not a specific reference to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who, by the way, is not accused of "horniness” taken to an extreme, but of orally and anally assaulting a woman.  A refusal to take no for an answer may be a “factor” in some sexual assaults, but “horniness” does not lead to rape, Scott.

You go on to state, “Chemical castration drugs already exist, and have proven extraordinarily effective in reducing recidivism rates among sex offenders."  Yet in your original post you said, ” Society is organized as a virtual prison for men’s natural desires…“ and whimsically imagined that  "science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it."  You didn’t say, "sex offenders.” You said “men.” The entire tone of your post    suggests the two are indistinguishable in your mind, and that   “ if a man meets and marries the right woman, and she fulfills his needs, he might have no desire to tweet his meat to strangers” ie, the burden of responsibility falls upon women to keep “bad behavior” in check. It’s a very cynical and incredibly depressing way of looking at the world.

What views do I think you hold that’s different from my own?

-      That, as you stated earlier this year,  “women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.” I don’t regard my sex as differently abled subset of society.

-      That society forces males to exist  “in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness” (Perhaps you could clarify what society you’re speaking of. Is there an Unhappiness Island I’m not aware of?)

-  That “It’s a zero sum game. If men get everything they want, women lose, and vice versa.” I’m not convinced this general “men” you speak of all want the same things. The men   right now fighting for the right to marry their same-sex partners in New York want something very different than the men of the National Organization for Marriage. Hugh Hefner, whom you claim never got “a round hole for his round peg” likely has damn near everything he could want, if whatever he does want, it’s probably not indicative of what Justin Bieber wants. And I don’t believe in a world where one gender always has to win and another has to lose.  I think better of humanity.

Here are few questions for you: What are you hoping to communicate with posts like “Pegs and Holes”? Is it means as strictly satire? And if so, why bristle when people take the bait? 

Scott: On your first bullet point, you are making my point for me. The actual point of the earlier blog post you mentioned was that men don’t argue in situations where the cost of doing so is greater than the gain. The world is watching you make that true for me right now. This debate will probably reduce my income by a third, as feminist forces have already mobilized and started to ask newspapers to drop Dilbert. That’s the sort of risk that men don’t have when they engage in a debate with other men.

The exception would be when anonymous men on the Internet debate with women. In that case they have no downside risk and are willing to fully engage. But nothing is gained by it beyond entertainment.

On your second bullet point, regarding men existing in a state of unfulfilled urges, I’m referring to the fact that men (gross generality alert) have hearts that want a relationship with one person and penises that want a thousand different women. Neither marriage nor single life can satisfy that condition. And our current society discourages any other sort of arrangement.

Woman (gross generalization alert) are biologically less inclined to crave continuous sexual variety. That’s a statement about evolution. If you have a link that disproves that notion, I’m happy to look at it.

Someone will mention that men and women cheat at about the same rate. But research has shown that cheating isn’t about sex for either gender. Cheaters generally just want someone to treat them the way they want to be treated.

Obviously it wouldn’t be a point of disagreement if you were to say that many people differ from my gross generalizations. I said the same thing in Pegs and Holes: “Everyone is different.”

On your third bullet point, you argue that life is not a zero-sum game for the sexes. That’s probably true for economics. But my blog post was about natural urges. If a man you barely know wants to have sex with you, and you’d rather not, you can’t both be winners. Society has to pick sides, and you won. I think we both agree that is the best solution. Even the man who wants to have sex with you is glad he lives in a world where his mother/daughter/sister can safely say no.

You asked what I’m hoping to communicate with posts such as Pegs and Holes. My only goal is to be interesting. Ideas are society’s fuel. I drill a lot of wells; most of them are dry. Sometimes they produce. Sometimes the well catches on fire.

My next question: Do you support the death penalty for rape, as I do, or are you relatively pro-rape compared to me?

MaryElizabeth: First of all, Scott, your continued assertion regarding the risks “that men don’t have when they engage in a debate with other men” is a stellar example of why people find your views offensive. It’s insulting, it suggests that talking to a woman isn’t worth your time and effort, and when you stoop to do so, you face retribution from the “feminist forces.” Here’s a thought: if as you claim anyone is asking for your strip to be dropped (and for the record, I am not among them) can you consider that maybe it’s because of the things you say, rather than because you’ve so benevolently deigned to engage in a conversation with a female?

Now, let’s consider your idea that “If a man you barely know wants to have sex with you, and you’d rather not, you can’t both be winners.” So much to unpack! What if it’s a man you know well? It gets back to what you wrote about how “the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal.” You’re not making the distinction between wanting to have sex with someone and wanting to force her to have sex. And to couch sexuality in terms of “winning” and “losing” just sounds really juvenile. If a woman says no to sex, the man “loses” and the woman has “won”? I will however cop that for a man who views the world that way, the burden of male “unhappiness” you spoke of earlier must be great indeed.

You say, “My only goal is to be interesting. Ideas are society’s fuel.” I think that sums up the essential difference in where we’re coming from. I don’t write to be “interesting” (go ahead, peanut gallery, take the straight line). I’m not bored or jaded enough to write just to get a reaction. My Irish firmly in the “up” position, I’m here because I care passionately about these issues, and about the world in which my two daughters are growing up. I don’t want their ideas and opinions dismissed as too troublesome for a man to squander his energy on, or to have to put up with what you refer to as “gross generalizations” about their sex.

Now, regarding your question, “Do you support the death penalty for rape, as I do, or are you relatively pro-rape compared to me?” Oh Scott. Oh really. You’re just messing with me now, aren’t you? What’s next, you going to ask when I stopped beating my wife? You can’t honestly believe that being opposed to capital punishment is tantamount to be in favor of sexual assault, can you? Where’s that great logic you pride yourself so much on?

Scott: I think this would be a good place to stop. I’d like to thank MaryElizabeth for being a good sport and for trying to make the world a better place in her own peculiar way.

I feel as if this has been an Internet-wide conversation, with many websites joining in the debate. I leave it to readers to decide whether it was wise for me to engage in an honest conversation on this topic or whether it would have been smarter to apologize for any alleged offenses and slink away. Here’s a link that should help you answer that question.

To the women who are not batshit crazy, and fortunately that is most of you, I apologize for any lack of clarity on my part was deemed offensive. I’m reasonably sure we agree on all of the important stuff.