Fiction in the digital age: What do we do as writers?

Muramasa and the Mass Media Market

The online run of Muramasa: Blood Drinker is soon coming to an end. It won't be a swift end, and it probably will not have the end that was expected by my tortured readers, but it will be a good end. The right end. Rather than taking time and energy at the end of that project’s publication to wonder about the future, I thought it might be better to look ahead a little (ahem) ahead of time.

The Downfall of Traditional Media

"Prometheus Bound" - Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1618

The vision for this site came about through many years of experience in the arts, monitoring trends, and observing successful content creators. More than ever, I feel like our society is pushing harder toward content that requires no up-front cost to consume. This can be exhibited through the massive scale of online music “sharing,” which is, from a legal and indeed ethical perspective, rank theft. Other content, notably movies and cable TV shows, have had similar problems the last few years. When nobody is watching, the moral imperative to pay people for their work seems to be forgotten.

Rather than shake my fist at the wide swaths of people that use bittorrent and similar applications, I am going to use it as a message. When people had the option to not pay 18 dollars for a CD that contained a single song heard on the radio with the rest being totally unknown, they took up Napster on the offer. When people had the option to forego paying upwards of 100 dollars per month on cable to watch four installments of Game of Thrones, they took Pirate Bay up on the offer.

 In the media industry, such actions are lamented as they seem to represent a loss of revenue. The recording industry has lost a great portion of the profitability it enjoyed during the CD era of the 1990s. Nobody seems to think that people are buying less music because lots of it wasn’t worth paying for to begin with. The old music model relied on radio play of a single hit to sell a CD with 14 tracks on it, and the quality of those filler tracks was almost irrelevant to sales. When people could actually listen to the whole thing without the 18 dollar gatekeeping fee, or buy the one song they liked from iTunes, the highly-profitable model from the 90s was bound to fail. This hasn’t stopped the RIAA from trying, even going so far as to sue Limewire for an implied 72 trillion dollars, which is more than the combined wealth of Earth.     

The same is true of cable TV, which relied on selling large packages of channels to every single end user. With subscription services like Netflix, that model too should fail, though doubtless cable companies will try to keep it alive through manipulation of government entities like the FCC and might attempt to bully content makers. Even HBO, the long running “premium channel” has considered shifting away and offering HBO GO as a stand-alone service.

Everyday Skeptic, Part 3: Credible Evidence

Note: The video portion of this article could not be completed due to time constraints. It will be added on a future date.

While it is very possible to dismiss many claims using the rules of logic covered in the last installment of the series, you are still likely to encounter claims that, while adhering to the rules in their format, still warrant a bit of skepticism from you, the reader. This is because not all claims have credible evidence. Just to review from last week:

A statement is true if it is a positive claim and there is credible evidence to affirm it, while there is no credible contrary evidence that makes the statement untrue.

The most critical piece of any argument, given that it is a logical, positive statement, is supporting evidence. What remains to be added to our skeptic’s toolkit is a way to tell if evidence is credible, flimsy, or false. Some of the most common bits of misinformation are believed because readers either could not tell how bad the evidence really was, or were unable or unwilling to evaluate the credibility of evidence on their own. In this week’s article, we will go through what sort of things make good, affirmative scientific evidence, leaving the fallacies for their own shrine of dishonor next week.

The Scientific Method

The scientific method was developed and refined over the course of many centuries leading up to the modern day as a means to determine the objective reality of various physical processes. It accomplishes this using specific experimental processes, data gathering techniques, and rules of reasoning. When evidence fails to follow the guidelines of the scientific method in its acquisition and evaluation, it loses its objectivity, and therefore becomes less usable to others.

I. The experimental process

Not all scientific information requires experimentation. Most facts can be derived from observation of physical objects and phenomenon that are already occurring naturally. For instance, no experiment is needed to determine the average height of trees in the Sequoia National Forest; one only needs to go measure the trees and do the math. Scientific experiments are usually used to determine causal relationships.

1. Background.

Usually, when you are performing a scientific experiment, you are not doing it blind or striving for a totally random outcome. You start by reviewing literature of those who have come before you, or observing something in nature or the human world. You may see hints at a pattern, or may wonder about an area of science or a physical process that has yet to be tested. You use this background information to formulate the next part of the process:

Everyday Skeptic, Part 2: What is Truth?

Note: the video contains the same information as the article, but in a more conversational form.

Now that we have established why it is important to be skeptical, and what sort of situations should prompt you to be extra careful, we can dive into the methods used to be skeptical.

Being a skeptic doesn’t mean you disbelieve everything and everyone, it means that you demand proof of claims before you commit them to belief or take action. In future articles, we will delve into what constitutes good and bad sources of evidence, and how to tell if evidence is used properly. For now, let us discuss an important logical concept: truth.

I. What makes something true?

The concept of truth is as old as philosophy. For the purposes of this article, which deals with claims, true means that something really exists, and can be proven. This concept can be defined quite briefly:

A statement is true if it is a positive claim and there is credible evidence to affirm it, while there is no credible contrary evidence that makes the statement untrue.

Like all brief statements, this one can be somewhat complex, so let’s take a closer look at the three conditions contained in the statement:

Everyday Skeptic, Part 1: Why and When to be Skeptical

Please note: The video below contains the same information as the article, but in a more conversational form. Choose which format you prefer!

I. Series Introduction: Information and Expertise

Everyday life is filled with decisions. Many of these decisions are made without knowing what the outcome will be. We rely on many things to help us make these decisions, including our own experience, intuition, assumptions how other people will act, and, the subject of this article, information from other people.

Everybody is an expert in something, but nobody, not even the super intelligent, can be an expert in everything. Each person trades the knowledge and skills he has in his own area for the knowledge and skills of other people’s areas. This is the division of labor that makes economies work, but also represents an information exchange. We trust our doctor to give us information about our health, and the doctor in turn trusts us to give him the benefits of our expertise – plumbing, teaching, even food service is an expertise – to meet his needs. Sometimes, money is involved in the trade, but often the information exchange is free and part of our friendships and social interactions. Advice about which wine tastes good or which plumber does the best job, are examples of this.

The members of the media are sort of information specialists, telling us about events that we cannot witness for ourselves. Often, however, media outlets do more than report events. They can move into areas that are well beyond news description, discussing scientific findings, political motivations, or promoting various prescriptions for action. On the internet, many such claims are made and distributed through a variety of networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, but just because something is published or claims to speak from authority, does not make it the truth. There is no media police to enforce honesty and integrity.

The purpose of this article, and the ones that will follow, is to assist the everyday person in figuring out which claims are likely to be true or likely to be false, without having to become an expert in the field. This way, we can spend our time on what matters – our own passions, expertise, and personal lives – and not on determining if a news story is true or not.

II. Three reasons we should all be skeptical

Violence: The Kind of Work You Don't Want to Bring Home

Fighting, Porn, Abuse, and Assault in Las Vegas

Note: this article is opinion, reflection, and analysis, not authoritative accounts of factual events. Source material should be used for citation, not this article, except as it pertains to the opinions of the author.

Rarely do I step outside of my usual fiction-philosophy mode of content for this site and do current event topics, but an interesting story popped up on my radar from my former home of Las Vegas. It seems that a professional MMA fighter promoted through Bellator MMA who calls himself “War Machine” (allegedly) severely beat his girlfriend, porn star Christy Mack, sending her to the hospital. He is now a fugitive and wanted by the LVPD, which hasn’t stopped him from making a fool of himself over twitter. Before I dive into some analysis, some philosophical discussion, and some practical advice, let’s have a quick rundown of some of the facts.

John “War Machine” Koppenhaver (For more, try Wikipedia):

“War Machine” is the legal name of the fighter in question. His birth name was John Koppenhaver. He changed his name legally in 2008.

War Machine fought on the Ultimate Fighter series under his birth name. He was eliminated in the first round.

His father died when he was thirteen, while Koppenhaver attempted to revive him using CPR.

He has been convicted of numerous assaults. He has received probation and was also sentenced to a year in prison in 2011.

War Machine performed as a pornographic actor in more than 12 films and has worked at a gay nightclub. He was also accused of assaulting people at a birthday party for a pornographic actress.

After being trolled by users of 4chan in 2013, he punched himself numerous times in the face. (source-video below)

He began his relationship with Christy Mack by stalking her over twitter. She eventually responded to the advances. He is ten years her senior.

He has a tattoo of “Mack” on the front of his neck for his girlfriend.

Christy Mack (For more, try Wikipedia):

Christy Mack is a pornographic actress and has worked in the industry for about two years. She was not involved in porn while War Machine was active in the industry.

She is recognizable for her extensive tattoo work and her unique hairstyle, which looks like a Mohawk.

She has claimed that she wanted to retire from the industry but had a large house and had to take care of her mother (source in video below)

She has a tattoo reading “Property of War Machine” on her shoulder (source: twitter)

Your Friends Are Not Your Audience

Why you shouldn't expect friends and family to support your art.

We’re playing a show this Saturday at Club Fred. It’s only five bucks to get in and we’re playing all night.

I used to throw out this line nigh on every week back when I was 19-21 and gigging in rock bands regularly. After that it was different venues, more friendly to my classical and flamenco stuff, but the pitch was always the same, as were the responses, which something like this:

Awesome! I’ll totally try to be there. My girlfriend/boyfriend loves that kind of music! It’s so cool that you’re out playing.

When the gig rolled around, the audience would be filled with strangers. Occasionally a friend would show up (I’m thinking in my head of the few who actually would), but mostly the room would be filled venue patrons and random genre fans, virtually never anyone with whom I had a personal relationship. Most of my friends were, like me, musicians and were (I thought) just as dedicated to the art and the business as me. They feigned interest in my projects when I talked about them, but that’s where the support ended. Ultimately, my market always became strangers.

Teachers make a DIFFERENCE! What about YOU? Huh?

A Reflection on the Ego of the Teaching Profession

I had a different article in mind for today, but a conversation I had during work yesterday with my screenwriting partner Matt (find his website here) inspired me to create a different piece. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to share!

Credit/Source: Zen Pencils, zenpencils.com 

            I am a teacher.

            I have been a teacher for more than ten years, in various faculties. I’ve taught at private and public school. I’ve taught individuals and I’ve taught classrooms full of kids. I’ve taught at the college level and the elementary school level. Given my experience, it seems that the label of teacher is inescapable. Indeed, it seems I am the only one in my life actively contesting the title.

            I am a writer.

            I am a musician.

            I am a craftsman.

I am many other things to myself, my family, and my friends, but to people who have just met me, it all gets boiled down to “teacher.” Why then, do I rebel?

Man! Why is the sound so bad at this concert!

A veteran’s insight into live amplified sound.

“Man, that band would have been amazing if it weren’t for the awful sound!” I said as the house lights went up and the band known as Holy Grail, along with what few people constituted their road crew, began hastily clearing their gear away for the next act.

“I know, all I could hear was bass drum,” Matt said, pulling his ear plugs out.

“If you go in the bathroom you can actually hear the guitar,” Ron said, sipping his bass pale ale. It was our last beer of the night before the headliners, Blind Guardian, were set to take to take the stage in a club in Tempe. We had driven some seven hours from Las Vegas to catch them on their American tour, a rarer appearance for the old German power metal band as time went on. On the drive back, I would feel sick, blaming it on that last beer, which I admit tasted a bit funny.

“It’s a pretty awful thing to say that I can’t hear the guitar in a power metal band,” I said. “And the funny thing is, I can see what they were playing; I know it was hard to play.”

“I guess we’ll have to imagine the sound of shredding,” Ron said.

After a short wait, the lights dimmed back down and the intro track started for Blind Guardian, a long orchestral affair. The stage lights went up and – holy crap! – we could hear the guitar. Marcus Siepen and Andre Olbrich played their separate and intricate parts with crystal clarity. The drums rumbled, with the bass drums giving out a perfect, chest-thumping kick. The bass had tone! You could hear the keyboards perfectly balanced on top of the mix. Then Hansi Kursch started singing, and it was crisp and dynamic. The band dropped into a softer section, and I realized I had forgotten to put my ear plugs back in. For anyone who frequents heavy metal shows, you know that such experiences are rare ones.

The whole show was like that. Dynamic and powerful. Soft songs were soft and clear. Loud aggressive tracks chugged forward with clarity. The concert went from being a tolerable experience to a truly great one. What was the cause of this rift? The sound, specifically, the way the sound was run through the P.A. A well-run sound board can mean the difference between hearing nothing with bleeding ears and hearing everything without plugs – from a heavy metal band, no less.

If you want to check out either of these bands and get a perspective on what I’m talking about, here are a few links (I believe these are actually the first songs each of these bands played live):

Blind Guardian: http://youtu.be/CFZ_Uyqbr4k

Holy Grail: http://youtu.be/0BE1RwR81dc

That concert was a great example of lots of things with live sound. Who is responsible for greatness and failures in that department? The blame usually lands on the “sound guy,” that is, the technician that is managing all the volume levels coming out of the P.A. or house speakers. That’s true for the most part. There’s a lot more to it than just the board though, and the band, along with every piece of equipment that gets toted from gig to gig, is usually responsible for at least part of a failure when it comes to amplified sound. I’d like to talk about some of those reasons.

Before I begin, I should tell you that I’ve been performing music most of my life. As an adult, I’ve performed lots of amplified music on many kinds of instruments in far too many venues to even list. Just as much, I’ve been a member of the audience for musicians that I love. I’ve also been “the sound guy” for lots of other gigs, and I have experience as a recording engineer. These days I’m usually not a good choice for those later two due to my hearing loss, but I’ve learned a lot by filling all those different roles.

The Room

The most overlooked, and yet still most important, aspect of any gig is the room in which it is being played. The acoustics of the room, its tendencies to amplify and reflect certain frequencies and its tendencies to dampen others, makes the biggest difference when trying to create an adequate sound environment. Where you are standing as a listener can have a huge impact on your perception of the concert. Stand close, and you may get blasted. Stand in the back, and you may miss something. Or, as in the above example, you stand in the bathroom and hear something inaudible otherwise.

This is why sound booths are usually placed center stage at the back of the venue, where all the tendencies of the room (or outdoor venue, if that is the case) can be more or less heard and accounted for. A good acoustic space will produce similar experiences throughout the room, a poor one will be full of bass traps and hard surfaces, distorting what the audience hears. The amount of people in attendance can affect the sound too, as the human body acts like a big treble dampener when the crowd is packed in. Many times sound checks are done on an empty room, and when the place is packed things can sound very different.

A good technician will be able to make adjustments depending on what the venue is doing on a particular night and what they hear from the band. I’ve met a few bad sound technicians that will refuse to adjust levels in any event, claiming that they’ve already figured out the best levels. These are usually people that work the same venue every night, and though you would think they have the room figured out, every band sounds different and requires some different treatment to sound good coming out of the P.A.

Sometimes, a venue is just an all-around bad choice for a concert, and very little can be done to improve the sound. Stadiums and arenas were built for sports teams, not concerts, so nobody should be surprised at a poor acoustic experience at such venues.

The Band

This is the next big variable. If you are traveling with the same band for weeks, doing the same sets over and over it isn’t such an unknown (though there are always little things that change night to night, like a hoarse singer), but for most gigs you have a sound team that is local, or is at least somewhat different than the night before. Figuring out how to make a band sound good is sometimes a puzzle, but can be accomplished easily with a solid sound check and some adjustments as the night goes on.

The band can also affect the sound outcome negatively in some ways they themselves may not be fully aware of. In the above example, the opening act, Holy Grail, was playing on stage with traditional amplifier rigs. In a heavy metal band this usually consists of very loud half or full stacks (guitar and bass amplifiers with one or two cabs filled with four speakers each) placed next to or behind the drummer, facing out toward the audience. In the old days these were more necessary, as P.A. systems often lacked the power and clarity to handle much more than vocals, and venues were small. Now they are less necessary. This detail is important because, although we in the audience could not hear the guitar players much at all, they likely could hear themselves loud and clear. They were not aware that they sounded bad.

Bands also can ruin their own sound by making demands about their sound from the stage, where they cannot accurately hear the P.A. They can also play differently than they did at the sound check (you would be surprised how much this happens – bands turning up their amps, singing louder, or using their microphones differently). They may also not have an idea of what they want their amplified sound to be like, just assuming that the technician will know what to do. The person at the board might just assume they want everything bass-heavy and loud when what the band wants to be heard is the high-end of the bass and the sound of the hi-hat. The band must communicate what they want.

Lastly, their equipment might not be set up to be easily compatible with their sound system. Direct inputs for bass and keyboards can be distorted without the proper knowledge for patching in, and the microphones for acoustic instruments may be something unfamiliar to the musicians if they did not bring their own. All of these things are the band’s responsibility.

The System

The sound system at a venue can have a big impact on your experience as a listener as well. A sound system might be geared toward a certain type of music that frequents that location, and you may be listening to a different genre. Monitor systems may give the band a different impression of the sound than what comes out of the main speakers. The P.A. may be too big or too small for the genre you are listening to, making a jazz band sound over-loud or too bass-heavy, or making a heavy metal band sound like static. Big subwoofers work for rap, but sound far too boomy for folk music.

The “Sound Guy”

Though it may seem like I spent the last thousand words trying to shift the blame for bad sound away from the technician, ultimately it is their responsibility to run their equipment optimally during a concert.

This failing comes in several varieties.

The union guy. I’ve been to a few shows (and played in a few more) where the technician running sound got the job based on seniority; even non-union venues will often hand jobs to the people who have been around the longest. Needless to say, with age does not necessarily come wisdom, much less skill. I’ve dealt with older techs that are deafer than me, which is really saying something. You can usually tell if this is the case when there is a screeching amount of treble, even from the booth, as those frequencies are typically where most people lose their hearing. This isn’t to say all union guys are deaf or bad at their job (in fact, most are quite good at what they do), just that they are out there and you get them from time to time

The rock/pop show guy. You will find this particular kind of tech running sound at a gig of a different style, say jazz or an acoustic guitar-based group, and generally bringing over habits and assumptions from the other side. Audiences at rock concerts or clubs generally like things really loud, with the bass booming, and rock show guy will give you just that, even if the current act is a jazz trio. If you find yourself plugging your ears at an unplugged concert you usually have this sort of tech. He might also like to pump up the reverb effects for an indoor event, or make acoustic instruments like horns overly dry because he’s used to guitar coming in drowned in reverb from the amp.

The vengeful sound guy. This the tech that gets angry over a band making certain requests, and chooses to exact his revenge by making the show sound awful for everyone present. Any number of small things can set him off, such as a drummer repositioning his mics so that he doesn’t hit them while he plays. If you’ve ever heard a musician declare that you should be nice to the sound guy, chances are they’ve med the vengeful type and fear them.

The sound guy who just doesn’t care. This probably most of your bad sound experiences right here. It’s an opening act. Who cares? Eh, so what if that mic doesn’t work, you can hear the cab from the stage anyway. Hey man, can you watch the board? I’m gonna go get a drink. Just pull back this slider here if you get some feedback. What more can you expect from a PA salesman from Guitar Center that was asked to run sound for his buddy in a local band?

Blind Guardian and Holy Grail- Why Such Difference?

Revisiting the two metal acts I saw with my friends, I can tell you why they sounded so radically different in the same room with the same PA only minutes apart:

1. The Band. Blind guardian is a group of very experienced and legitimately good musicians. They have been touring for nigh on thirty years and understand how to adapt to situations better than their young and still inexperienced openers.

2. Equipment. Blind guardian actually played with no monitors or amplifiers on stage with them. All of the amplification and processing was done off of stage left in well-organized road racks. Isolation cabinets were used to perfect the sound. All five of them used in-ear monitors, which deadened some of the loudness of the drums on stage and allowed them to play with good balance. Holy Grail, by contrast had their cabs on stage, and was using angled monitors to hear themselves.

3. The sound guy. Blind Guardian travelled with their own sound tech who was familiar with how to run their show, but the opening acts that travelled with them had to use in-house sound techs. The person running the board for Holy Grail was likely not as competent or did not understand what the desired sound for a metal band was, as shown by the booming, muddy bass and total lack of guitar in the mix.

There you have it! I hope you have found it informative. Feel free to leave me any more article suggestions.

A Little Bit on Anecdotes

I came across a plea today on Facebook, asking for people to send to a particular individual stories about the negative impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially called “Obamacare,” for the president who signed it into law.  I pointed out that anecdotes are not good evidence, and I had objections to their use as such, since I feel it is emotionally manipulative and therefore not totally truthful.  I was met by a lot of opinions counter to my own. The arguments were fairly varied, there were some ad hominem attacks, but most seemed to take my use of the word “anecdote” as some sort of insult, so I thought I’d write a short piece explaining anecdotal evidence, appeals to emotion, and the part I often see them play in politics.  Here is the post:

https://www.facebook.com/Corie03/posts/4789775441622

I saw it because it was shared by Julie Borowski, who does some great videos on libertarian issues on youtube, check her out:

https://www.facebook.com/JulieBorowski

http://www.youtube.com/TokenLibertarianGirl

I. Anecdotal Evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

Anecdotal evidence isn’t really evidence, at least in the clinical or scientific sense.  It is a story, or an example, usually involving a real person or a particular case. Moreover, it is often used in the place of evidence, supporting or intending to lead to a particular conclusion. Facts only become evidence in the context of a conclusion, like saying “smokers die of heart disease at a higher rate than non-smokers” supporting “People should not smoke.”  Telling a story about a particular negative impact of the ACA, like saying, “This is Dan and Rachel. Obamacare cost them $10,000,” is an anecdote; a story.  It might make you feel bad, but it doesn’t represent the negative impact of the ACA for anyone beyond them. I could tell you a story about my father being killed by a truck. Would you be persuaded to ban trucks?  It’s an anecdote, and isn’t sufficient for the support of most arguments.

II.  Confirmation Bias.

            Anecdotal evidence tends to contain elements of confirmation bias, which is a logical fallacy where one ignores evidence that is contrary to one’s argument or conclusion. The woman in the link was essentially asking for such.  She did not ask for positive stories about the ACA, she asked for specifically negative ones. If the stories were truly evidence, they would be neutral to the collector, who would then form a conclusion from it, not the other way around.

III.  Data and Presentation.

            Somebody asked, “What is the amount of stories of people being affected [that would] drive us over the hump of "anecdotal"? 10,000 stories?” (brackets added by the author of this article). The short answer is that stories cannot be evidence until they are put in context of an argument, and then, who would read them? When dealing with statistics it is the commonalities that matter and must be presented; the facts of the story are superfluous beyond the commonality they have with one another.  Here is a fact:

Under Obamacare, 30-year-old men face average premium hikes of 260%

Source: http://americanactionforum.org/research/premium-increases-for-young-invincibles-under-the-aca-and-the-impending

This is data that would be common to all the people affected, including myself.  They may live in New York or Florida, be gay or straight, be black of white.  What matters about the data is the commonality that allows us to put it in context.  If I said, “I’m seeing a 260% increase in my health insurance premiums,” you could not consider it evidence that the AVERAGE 30 year-old man would see a jump in his premiums.  Only data collection can support that.

II.  Emotional Manipulation.

            Why do we tell so many stories?  Why are there so many human interest pieces on the news?  In short, they are effective, or the news providers wouldn’t use them. Politicians would abandon all appeals to emotion if voters did not respond to them well. That’s really what anecdotes are; They aren’t evidence.

            Is emotional manipulation truth?  The story might be true, on some level, but is the decision that is a reaction to that story based on truth.  Essentially it is not, or it would be made with reason and evidence instead of just emotion. The story does not create an honest relationship between the speaker and the listener. In fact, the speaker has made an assumption on some level that the listener will not respond to evidence alone.  At this point the rationalization for engaging in emotional manipulation is the ends: convincing someone of the correct position for the wrong reasons. 

IV.  Moral Arguments.

Whether or not the end justifies the means has been a topic in morality and ethics discussions since the dawn of time.  Those of you who know me know my opinion on it: action is always the locus of discretion in morality.  When you make an ends-justifies-means argument, or imply it through your actions, you are representing an entire moral system that moves the locus of discretion away from the actions themselves to the consequences (or intent, if you are a Kantian).

What is interesting about the above the appeal for stories is that they desire to show the negative impact (the consequences of means) of the implementation of the ACA when the originators consider such consequences as being justified by their perceived ends. They are essentially making a moral argument that the end does not justify the means while simultaneously utilizing actions that support the opposite conclusion. The moral argument is self-contradictory if you yourself are unwilling to apply it.

A true moral argument against the ACA is actually quite easy to make, especially if you use libertarian morals:

Killing people is wrong.

If you don’t get health insurance, the government will tax/fine you (for the purposes of this argument those actions are interchangeable).

If you don’t pay the fine, the government will eventually arrest you.

If you feel the arrest is unjust, and refuse to be imprisoned, you will be killed.

The ACA is immoral/evil.

V. A Fight With Mike Tyson.

            The left has been doing the emotional manipulation game a very long time. The image of the right as being heartless automatons is mostly a product of how good the left is at evoking emotion in people. Emotional appeal is their world, and you better be prepared if you want to step into the ring with them, because it will be like jumping into a fight with Mike Tyson in his prime. If you were wanting to knock them out, you would have a very hard time of it, especially in the health care debate.

This is ultimately the problem with exchanging stories: there is no end to them, and the listener is left to decide the merits of them on a one-to-one basis, rather than as a whole field of evidence. You can tell a very touching story about the financial hardships brought on by the ACA on a particular family, but the other side can merely tell their own story about someone who died because they didn't have health insurance (I used Chuck Schuldiner of Death as an example).  If you weigh these two stories on their own, and believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or that greater needs outweigh lesser ones, than even logically you will lose the argument.

The real argument attempting to be made is that the amount of pain inflicted by the law is greater than that it prevents. One can only make this argument beyond anecdotes, in the world of real, large-scale evidence.  You could certainly add anecdotes to real evidence, but what does that accomplish?  Either someone is persuaded by reason or they aren’t; I don’t believe you can add reason and emotion together and reach some threshold that tips the scales in your favor.

VI.  Summation

Define your position. Make real arguments with meaningful evidence and avoid biasing it. Follow through with consistent moral ideology. Make pragmatic and trade-off arguments with evidence, not appeals to emotion. Don’t resort to tactics that are intellectually and morally inferior to reason. 

The Mike Tyson reference is one I see used a lot by Stephan Molyneux, a brilliant libertarian philosopher, and it is usually quite a good analogy.  Check him out at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/

Words or Phrases that Should Immediately Set Off Your B.S. Detector

1. Equality-  There’s such thing as equal before the law (in concept, not in practice), but whenever somebody uses “equality” as a justification for something, you know the actions will involve theft, revocation of rights, or punishment for success and subsidy of failure.

2. Democracy- Even a casual student of the humanities knows how well democracy worked out for Socrates. Besides its serious shortcomings as a means of political organization, the idea of the majority rule is used as justification for a host of atrocities including foreign wars, theft through taxation, and as with Socrates, murder.  It, along with its more insidious cousin known as the republic (which is what the US actually is) has led to the preservation of slavery and then Jim Crow laws, the ascent of Hitler and the murder of 6 million individuals, and the horrors of central banking.  Just because the majority of legal voters likes something doesn’t make it moral.

3. Social Justice- This is usually used to justify the theft of property from a party in order for the supposed crime of their ancestors, under the assumption that the result will provide peace and equality.  Of course never addressed is how you intend to foster peace and equality within the resentment of theft.

4. Class/proletariat/ 99%- In the United States, class is mostly an illusion crafted by socialists to make you resent individuals who have been productive.  The reality is that age is most associated with income and wealth, and the young usually end up moving into the middle and upper “classes” by the time they retire. The induced struggle then becomes between people who have already produced wealth, and those who have yet to produce any.

5. The American Dream- The idea of satisfied wealth, home ownership, and children is, believe it or not, outside of the scope of desire for many Americans. This combined with the odd transformation of the results of hard work, thrift, and savings into a mountain of unsustainable debt attached to your home makes this one of the most illusory concepts in the modern mind.  Look for it to be used in a sorrowful manner by those who feel entitled to comfort and by politicians to invoke a greater theft of your money to subsidize home debt.

6. Christian Nation- Alright, time for a term from the right.  People love to call America a Christian Nation when they are attempting to upend the separation of church and state by instituting prayer in public schools, preventing the building of mosques, preventing the teaching of evolution, and a host of other repressive irrational causes.  Don’t expect to enter into a reasonable debate with the people who champion this cause; the appeal to the authority of the founders as justification for the appeal to the authority of God is a logical fallacy you cannot hope to overcome.

7. Hero- In the classical sense heroes were characters like Hercules or Jason that did impossible feats. Today the category of Hero has been expanded to include all people who use force on behalf of the government as well as anyone who has ever done something nice for another human (or puppy) ever.  Being called a Hero is half a step up from being called “nice,” only I generally don’t paint an entire profession of people whose job it is to kill or repress others as “nice.” It is essentially a meaningless term used to golf-clap for people who don’t actually produce anything for society (and of course, their families).

8. Needy- This term is usually used when a third party takes it upon themselves to determine someone’s needs.  What they almost always need is more of your money.  Of course, the assumption is that you don’t have any needs.  You make 24,000 dollars a year.  You’re rich.

9. Hungry- Same as needy, only worse.  How do you determine who is hungry?  Do you go around and ask them? You can’t use the term “starving” because people die of that;  there would be bodies. Did you know there’s a strong correlation between food stamps and obesity? Just think about that.  Even bums, who spend your change on booze, and can’t get food stamps, somehow manage to feed themselves. 

Sources: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=do-food-stamps-lead-to-obesity-2009-08-11

10. Diversity- Maddox once did a much more thorough debunking of this term, but I will affirm him:  People almost always mean diversity of appearance, not thought, because of the belief that all brown people will represent some “black perspective,” and all white people will represent some “white perspective.”  You could get a Thomas Sowell for that diversity hire, and add him to a room of white republicans and not see very much change in the output of thought.

Maddox articles: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=stock_photos

 http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=your_stupid_ideas

11. Rape Culture/Patriarchy- A set of popular feminist terms used to cast all males into the role of predator, taking sex from unwilling women because of the dominating effects of their patriarchal culture.  The reality is that most men are unwilling to have sex without consent; indeed, it is primarily women who control the occurrences of sex and with whom.  The few exceptions to this are generally viewed as abhorrent.  The actual tension attempting to be described by the term “rape culture,” is just an objection to how interaction between the sexes has evolved.  Society’s typical placement of women is as selectors and rejecters in the case of sex, as opposed to the male experience of pursuit and peacocking.  If you are a man, you don’t have to apologize for having sex.  If you are a woman, you are allowed to enjoy it.

More to come some other time!