Sheesh! (Special Jeff Goldstein Edition)

by hilzoy

It's been coming on for a while now. There was his claim that "constant naysaying" from the left has "has objectively hurt the war effort", and more recently this fascinating prediction: "I’m beginning to think that a (non-violent) civil war is coming—and that, frankly, it needs to happen." But now it's finally happened: in my completely unprofessional opinion, Jeff Goldstein has come unglued.

Basically, here's the story: Atrios wrote a snarky post about Jeff. Apparently, Tristero said something good about it -- I can't find it on Hullabaloo (the relevant time period seems to be off their main page, but not yet in their archives), but since Jeff apparently didn't read it either, I'm not sure what it would add. Jeff apparently took offense at the fact that Tristero was commenting on Protein Wisdom while criticizing him of Hullaballoo, and wrote a bizarro comment banning him. It has to be seen to be believed, though it is not work-safe (actually, it's pretty revolting.) In it, Jeff not only provides several different graphic (and completely gratuitous) descriptions of things Tristero is supposedly doing to or with his (Jeff's) dog, but also the fascinating suggestion that Tristero has been fellating, not Atrios, but one of Atrios' posts. (Is that conceptually possible?)

Jeff also says that Tristero "has the intellect of a gibbon". This DVD, which I highly recommend, has an interview with Tristero, so you can judge his intellect for yourself. (If you get the DVD, you can also compare Tristero's creative work to Jeff's. I was tempted to add that that wouldn't really be fair, but then thought: why on earth not? The only real difference I can see, other than quality, is that Jeff Goldstein advertises his artistic pretensions, while Tristero wears his so lightly that you wouldn't know they were there.)

This was just one of those moments that's too weird to pass unremarked.

Comments

[Jake - but not the one]

Oh, sure, Phil, there just has to be one sharp pencil in the box.

[matoko_platonist_against_aristotelians]

hilzoy, pardon.
i thought you were scient, and had perhaps read Atran on terrorist surrogate kinship groups and Maynard-Smith on evolution and the theory of games.
my mistake. ;)

liberaljaponicus:
hilzoy is mathematikoi here, i am aukousmatikoi. Salmonia was a slave of the pythagoreans yet also mathematikoi, a speaker.

slart:
Ahhh, but Heroditas is all we have, no?

If Moto can't stand the Dems because they don't take an principled stand and oppose ID et al, how does he justify supporting GW and his gang when they PUSH ID?

Jake, that is my point exactly. the left leaves me no choice but to support Bush. because they have no believeable vision.
hilzoy and drum even admit as much in the top post here.

[Jake - but not the one]

Mato, you are delusional if you imagine that Bush's position on ANYTHING, then or now, was or is in any way believable.

Two delusionals do not make an objective reality.

Jake

[Mona]

jake writes:Frankly, I'm not sure what good it is to distinguish libertarians from garden variety reactionary conservatives. Just like the so called conservatives, you guys vote the Republican party line when the wind blows that way, then whine about the bad outcomes when it's too late.

And them blame it all on the Democrats because they didn't put up someone for whom you could bring yourself to vote. It's all whine, whine, whine with you guys.

Your truly don't know what you are talking about. Myself, I didn't vote for over ten years, until '04. At the time, Schiavo hadn't happened, the lawless spying was not an issue, and I hated Kerry. I also thought the war in Iraq was justified. (I spent my non-voting years on issues advocacy, primarily drug policy reform, an area in whihc both parties are awful.)

I am a Reasonoid and that bunch of libertarains was split in the last election. Now, many of us are heading Dem, to end the Bush/Frist lawless/populism. (This crowd is not mostly theocrats; they are populists who employ religion to their ends.)

Anyway, libertarians usually find much to dislike in both the GOP and the Donkey Team. If Bush were Goldwater, we'd mostly be Republicans, but Bush is the antithesis of Barry. So we aren't.

[john miller]

Jake, I know how hard it is for you to imagine someone supporting anybody they disagree with, but Bush states that is a reason to support him.

Remember in 2004 when he repeatedly said, "You may not agree with me, but at least you know where I stand."?

Of course, as polls showed, most people didn't know where he stood on many issues and he himself changed positions more than he accused Kerry of doing.

Mato is merely echoing that same thing, which is kind of like supporting someone because he stands for something, even if I disagree with just about everything he stands for.

[Jake - but not the one]

Aren't NOW. Which is my point, Mona.

Even so, welcome home. You know, the prodigal story and all that.

Jake

PS - Reasonoid? Did I read that right? I mean, correctly?

[Jake - but not the one]

Hmmmmm. I get your drift, John, even if I find the water a little shallow.

By Nov, 2004, Iraq was already a disaster. I can't even get ny head around supporting the war in the beginning, much less continuing to support the war a year and a half into it.

It's all too easy to wish for Camelot on the hill. One fell stroke for mankind, so to speak. But it was never more than an illusion broadcast by the delusional. Opium for the masses.

Jake

[Mona]

Aren't NOW. Which is my point, Mona.

Even so, welcome home. You know, the prodigal story and all that.

Jake

PS - Reasonoid? Did I read that right? I mean, correctly?

(scratching head) Reason magazine and their Hit 'n Run blog. As I said, that crew was split in '04, but I think most voted for Kerry. It is simply wrong to say that, at least wrt the modern GOP, libertarians are essentially Republicans.

My sense is that at this point, the overwhelming majority of libertarians are baling on the populist GOP. See John Cole, fer instance. But give us too much leftist crap to tolerate, and we'll go back to the Elephants.

[Slartibartfast]

Or you could always go to Lyndon Larouche.

Just kidding, really.

So, Slarti, I orders a Watts trilogy - it took 3 books to get above $25.

I've got two of those; only have read one, though.

[matoko_transhumanist_against_bioluddites]

liberaljaponicus, dennett is speaking on OSR tonight.

i am quite a fan.

[Jake - but not the one]

I'll let you in on a secret, Mona. I ain't no leftist. I don't even actually know any leftists. I think we all got lumped together when the "right" moved over into the totally corrupt and reactionary column.

I used to have a boss like that (not the totally corupt and reactionay bit). In the corporate world it works well if the lieutenants are more rabid than the chief - that way cooler heads always have the power to compromise, but those cooler heads get to start from as close to their desired position as is humanly possible. But MY boss was the most rabid person I ever knew. There WASN'T anywhere on the other side of him - no room left, at least without acheiving lunatic status, a last step I was unwilling to take. Not sufficiently loyal, I guess.

Anyway, that's where the Republican party is today - so far to the right there is no right left, only left. Which is pretty much ALL of us, if we only knew it.

So, in that vein, don't belittle leftists too much - you ARE speaking of yourself when you do so.

So, what polices would you characterize as leftist crap?

Jake

[Jake - but not the one]

So, Slarti, I had a difficult time parsing your comments on the presentation. Were you saying the the assumptions were bad, so the results didn't apply to anything, and now you were thinking about assumptions again?

Jake

[matoko_the _sycthian]

dutchmarbel, Waxman is investigating incompetance. that hardly is a vote loser.
i want someone to stand up and say fire the bioethics council, fund ESCR, and censure GW for volunteering the opinion that ID should be taught in schools, instaed of trying to censure him for a legit NSA program. and don't even start with me on that, i have work experience and the "lawless spying" is a myth.

but that won't happen.
look at the schiavo effect.
even the bare few (two, wasn't it?) that voted against that insane terri's law mealy mouthed around it so as not alienate the culture of life voters. Hilary especially made me ill, as she voted for it.
cynical pandering.

aren't you supposed to be the loyal opposition? isn't it your job to point out that we can't protect the nation against biowarfare and bioterrorism if we don't do biotech?

[Lame Man]

I've looked at Protein Wisdom only a couple of times, when the devil on my shoulder made me click on links from memeorandum.

From those few times, my take is this: his writing is inscrutable. So, not many return trips there.

[hilzoy]

matoko: oddly, I have read game theory. Just wasn't clear on its relevance here.

[Slartibartfast]

Were you saying the the assumptions were bad, so the results didn't apply to anything, and now you were thinking about assumptions again?

No, I'd noted that during my stint on this project, I'd spent some serious times working on problems whose solution required a serious reexamination of some key assumptions, and the process of arriving at the lightbulb-going-on moment took...well, it took a very long time.

[Slartibartfast]

Did I mention it took a long time? I don't want to leave that part out. And serious, too.

[john miller]

"and the process of arriving at the lightbulb-going-on moment took...well, it took a very long time."

At least the moment did arrive. I have worked for companies where it stayed completely dark in perpetuity.

[Jake - but not the one]

Ahhhh. The old "re-examine the original assumptions" light bulb.

In my line of work, the assumptions are usually crafted to generate desirable solutions, rather than the other way 'round.

Life is much easier when you start from the answer and work back to the question.

Jake

[Gary Farber]

"...censure GW for volunteering the opinion that ID should be taught in schools...."

I'd be fine with that, but do you think the majority of the country would be at present?

"...i have work experience and the 'lawless spying' is a myth"

You're entirely welcome to expand on that, you know; I assume you don't expect people to simply accept your word for the assertion, absent explanation and citation, though?

[ProcleanMetaphysicist]

Jackmormon,

Late to the game here, but how do you see Conservatives as Platonists? I could be labelled as a Platonist, since I read Plato, Plotinus, Proclus (ahh Proclus, such a great mind suffering such unjust neglect), as well as guys like SImplicius, Olympiodorus, Numenius, and so on for leisure. I am with Whitehead that the history of philosophy is just footnotes to Plato (though we don't agree on much else). I certainly do not see the modern Right's thought has any relation to Plato in any serious respect, except inasmuch as they can parrot the lines and copy the rhetoric of the various sophists in the dialogs (esp. Thrasymachus, Polus, and kin). Not that the left can't indulge in something like Protagorean sophistry. So I'd be interested to know what you mean.

Personally I agree with Plato's Republic, and don't think philosophers should participate in politics, except for their duty as a citizen, though for my political views, you'd find me essentially in the Peace and Freedom Party on the somewhat contrived Right-Left continuum. Most Platonists I know are similar.

[Noone]

"Jeff Goldstein demands your utmost respect and worship. He is a god among men. He will annihilate you with mind bullets."

Sounds like an OT-VII Scientologist (Master of MESTtm).

[liberaljaponicus]

hilzoy is mathematikoi here, i am aukousmatikoi. Salmonia was a slave of the pythagoreans yet also mathematikoi, a speaker.

No problem with classing hilzoy as a mathematikoi here, and the internet provides a 'veil' even. But I don't imagine the akousmatikoi yelling at any mathematikoi 'stop making me vote Republican'. (or 'stop making me go check out the Eleusinian mysteries' if you need a more chronologically appropriate reference)

And, with all due respect, you seem to be advocating censuring people for what they think rather than the way they act. Thus, if Bush believes in ID, he should be censured, but if he violates the law (something I think, but if you want to assert that his spying is 'lawful' rather than 'lawless', I hope you can show that), one shouldn't. When Bush got a question in Cleveland about the current problems in Iraq being the signs of the Apocalypse, he didn't say 'I sure do.' Absent some sort of memo laying out Bush's scientific beliefs, any kind of evidence needed for censuring Bush is open to interpretation. If one believes in a scientific approach to data, one can't advocate an approach that censures Bush for what his beliefs are believed to be.

[Jackmormon]

I didn't mean to calumn leftist Platonists! My mention of Plato was more about stereotypical methodologies of literary interpretation, and intended to illustrate a point about Tolstoy. I chose Plato over Jesus because of comments like Whitehead's, which strikes me as a conversative position with possible unpleasant consequences for the production of knowledge and the organization of educational institutions.

It was an overgeneralization, though, and not one I can back up with a sophisticated understanding of Platonism. Consider it retracted.

[matoko_the _sycthian]

liberaljaponicus: witness the Salmonia reference. i am a slave, mathematikoi, and aukousmatikoi.
btw, dennet was very good, on his new book.

do you know what wiped out the pythagoreans? politics.

lol, Gary. i'm no leaker-traitor. i value my oath. If you want to understand the minutiae of the NSA spyscandal, read Goldstein. He has the best open source analyis on the web. ;)

saaaaay....perhaps that why hilzoy jumped him? apparently the "lawless spying" myth is her raison d'etre. Could it be? Jeff has done awesome work on it. Perhaps by attacking him over this tristero fool, she believes she can invalidate his work by critiquing his writng style?

and Gary, where's my exception?

[matoko_the _sycthian]

I have read game theory. Just wasn't clear on its relevance here.

ha ha, of course you aren't. I expect two-person zero sum is far as you got. May i reccommmend Atran, Maynard-Smith, some exposure to the prisoner's dilemma and evolution of cooperation?

Silly me, i thought this was a science blog.
my bad.
;-)

[Slartibartfast]

Silly me, i thought this was a science blog.

I have no idea where you might have gotten that impression. We have a couple of lawyers, a philosophy professor, an engineer, and I can't recall what Charles does.

[ProcleanMetaphysicist]

Hi Jackmormon, thanks for clearing that up. I do very much agree that claiming an ancient writer as a speaker for a contemporary debate, especially a political one, is a hazardous undertaking, and leads to many difficulties. The truer the scholar you are, the less useful the ancients will tend to be for politics (though understanding them in themselves has its own inherent value). Another case of an ancient who has been turned into a sock puppet to discover ones own political views in is old Aristotle, who has been dredged up many a time over the centuries, Thomism, the Right-Hegelian infatuation with Aristotle, the U. Chicago Aristotelians, et al.

[matoko_the _sycthian]

ha ha, i guess i thought that because razib linked something pretty decent hilzoy wrote on ESCR.
well, the joke's on me.
i won't waste any more time here.
adieu.
;)

[John Emerson]

Who is this "Bush" who Matoko thinks is keeping him/her safe? Where is Scythia?

Coincidentally, we have a President with the same name here in the US, and he fails at everything he does and lies all the time. He does blow a lot of shit up, and that makes some people feel safer dor some reason.

[Gary Farber]

"lol, Gary. i'm no leaker-traitor. i value my oath."

I didn't ask you to reveal any secrets, of course; I asked you if you'd like to support your opinion with more than an assertion. No reasonable person would expect "because I say so!" to explain an issue to others. Perhaps you take a different view of the-argument-by-assertion.

"If you want to understand the minutiae of the NSA spyscandal, read Goldstein."

It's a subject that quite interests me; why don't you give links to what you consider the five best posts by Jeff?

"and Gary, where's my exception?"

To what?

"Silly me, i thought this was a science blog."

It isn't. Science topics do come up at times, though largely only in a political context, though conversation does tend to wander.

Slarti: "...I can't recall what Charles does...."

Works for an accountancy firm?

Hilzoy is, matoko, I give away no secrets by mentioning, a professor of bioethics.

[matoko_the _sycthian]

haha, hi john emerson!
how become we are on the same side at gnxp and opposite sides here?
here is a thing we say at work, do something! even if it is not perfect, at least you will have some results and some experience. ;)

you dems are too like hamlet for my taste....you should make up your minds what you want to be.

And enterprises of great pitch and moment shall in this reguard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action......

[hilzoy]

matoko: on this board, there's a rule that we enforce against liberals and conservatives alike, and it is this: when you generalize about "you dems" or "you right-wingers" or "all liberals" or "all conservatives", you have better be able to back it up. "All liberals are spatio-temporally extended": OK. "You dems are (insert degree of hamlet-likeness here): not OK absent proof. Same goes if someone says that about Republicans.

You may say that you're just writing about the people here. Forgive me if I say that you have not demonstrated the kind of familiarity with us that would license such conclusions.

[liberaljaponicus]

Perhaps it's just my jaundiced view here, but I don't think your prose style represents a breakthrough in the evolution of cooperation. And if you'd like to provide some links to particularly apropos posts of Protein Wisdom, I would be grateful, but if I have to wade through sexual references to dogs, I guess it's just my loss.

As for Pythagoreans being wiped out because of politics, well, they were exiled, which tells us that if a group is going to be completely oblivious to the political ramifications of their ideas and fail to take into account politics, they might run into some problems. And if you think that the Pythagoreans did have the secret of immortality (which I'm guessing links into the Aubrey de Grey invocation), I don't think that is a very hard science based conclusion. Though I do like the story about Pythagoras seeing a dog getting beaten and saying 'stop, that's the soul of my friend!' which brings to mind Nietzsche's horse. Whom the gods want to punish, they first drive mad.

[matoko_the _sycthian]

Gary, my exception to the "gutless vote-whoring cowards". ;)

i'll ask jeff which five he recommends. ;)
ta for now.

[matoko_the _sycthian]

ok, hilzoy, i retract.
can i say most dems remind me of hamlet?
i feel like diogenes with his lamp, searching for that one democrat that can speak without first checking the polls.

liberaljaponicus: The pythagoreans inducted local nobles into their society and trained them to rule, on top of their hereditary rights. A noble named Kylon was refused admittance due to character flaws, Kylon with a mob of villagers attacked Milo's house at Croton in 460 bc, killing 50 or 60 pythagoreans and burning the house to the ground.
The pogrom spread through the Italineate states, burning temples and displacing pythagoreans to greece and thebes. those who wern't killed.
but some of those displaced to greece became Plato's teachers.

now really, i must go.
i have write a post on wafa sultan yet tonight.

[Gary Farber]

"Gary, my exception to the 'gutless vote-whoring cowards'. ;)"

Those seem to be subjective opinions, not objective and measurable standards, so arguing over who and who isn't one seems boring.

Adjectives tend to be uninteresting points of debate and unedifying and unenlightening.

If Jeff is so great on NSA stuff, I'd think you could point to some posts you youself were impressed by, but if you'd prefer to check with him, fine; he's welcome to come back to the discussion here, but I understand he's got a blog of his own (rumor does I do, as well, but I don't feel I have to make an effort if I'm writing low-quality jabber here :-)).

[liberaljaponicus]

Matoko,
what about Feinstein? More to the point is the case of Talent (warning, a left leaning blog post). Again, if your bread and butter is supporting life enhancement, you've got a better chance with Dems than with Republicans. And given that hilzoy is a bioethicist who is trying to create a supportable consensus on stem cell research, it seems like you are dealing out a lot of friendly fire.

[Jeff G]

Not interested in reading through this entire thread, but I will say that it was Mona -- who posts under a different name at Greenwalds' -- who asked me for a number of links to my posts on various issues. She claimed a high degree of respect for me, and I was thrilled to help in her program for what she called rapprochement.

I sent her plenty of links. She was very thankful. And then, after reading my post about Feingold (which I explained to her in a private email was quite in keeping with the progressivism vs. classical liberalism battles I had been writing about for two weeks).

Showing up here now to offer her new assessment of me is simply stunning in its classlessness.

Congrats, Mona. And anytime I can help you with a project again, please be sure to ask!

[liberaljaponicus]

And then, after reading my post about Feingold (which I explained to her in a private email was quite in keeping with the progressivism vs. classical liberalism battles I had been writing about for two weeks).

And then...? I think a predicate is missing here, unless you wanted to say that she read your post on Feingold and then showed up here, but that seems to be a big leap.

[Gary Farber]

"And then...?"

Please let Jeff's dog not be involved.