David Gordon Layeth the Smackdown

[John_James]

It seems my opening sidenote has caused a stir. I really didn’t think much of it, I was just being open. I figured gotlucky deserved to know he’s the only reason you got a reply. (Everyone needs to feel special sometime I guess).

I used the present-tense “grow” to make a statement about the typical discussion with you. Not just this one in particular. I honestly was never trying to “goad” you into anything. Indeed our conversations always begin with you jumping into threads to respond to posts I make. And besides, if I were trying to express a statement about this interaction in particular I would have said “I’ve grown tired”.

But sure I offered a full response. As I said I had no intention of responding, but thanks to gotlucky expressing his interest, I decided to go ahead and do so. If I was gonna bother with responding at all I might as well address everything.

It’s nice that you finally acknowledge that Molyneux’s narcissism was the theme of my post all along, (thus basically admitting your earlier mischaracterization in which you so pretentiously seemed to try to claim I focused on his narcissism for a single “argument”). But you have actually finally made one correct observation, that pointing out Molyneux’s ridiculous narcissism is actually less boring that his horrible arguments. You throw in the phrase “trying to understand” his arguments, but of course, we’ve shown that it is in fact you who has trouble understanding them…I just find them, well, bad. So yes, pointing out a large part of what makes Molyneux such a douchebag (and calling out some flaws and straw men along the way) is much less boring than trying to contort his incredibly poor “arguments” into something logical and reasonable. But of course, you would know more about the latter than I would.

It’s also kind of silly (laughably ironic, in fact) how you would accuse me of “continued participation” after “protestations”…when it is you who has shown such pedantic attention to accuracy in statements. I’ll again call attention to the entire segment of your previous post in which you highlight the “s” in “arguments” and proceed to talk about plurals vs. singulars, etc. And yet here in this very next post you accuse me of “protestations”.

As I said, I had virtually no intention of responding to your nonsense until gotlucky took the time to create a post solely to signal his interest in the discussion. With that I decided to actually offer a response. In that response I simply offered a sidenote for gotlucky to mentioned the only reason it appeared at all.

And here you characterize me of “continued participation” after “protestations”, as if I had said “I’m never responding to you again” and then offered another response and said “okay now I’m done”, and then yet another response and said “okay I really mean it this time”, etc. It was a single post in which I mentioned I wasn’t going to bother creating one until a third party expressed interest in it.

I fail to see even one “protest” here, but I would be very interested for you to show me the multiple instances of this “protest” against participation.

But don’t worry. I won’t hold my breath.

[cab21]

seems like a wwe smackdown.

[vive_la_insurrection]

seems like a wwe smackdown.

nah, that would imply there was an actual contest between something - rather than a basic demonstration of futility

[vive_la_insurrection]

@JJ

Ha! I was right he is an actor, from his own words on the Mises thread:

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/stefan-molyneux-responds-to-david-gordon/23472

I must admit that I am always skeptical when a review starts with insults - when I studied acting and playwriting at the National Theatre School in Montréal, I was always told to “show it, don’t say it!”

So yeah, good call on picking up him creating a persona

[cab21]

ill give the link lol, wwe has basic demonstrations of futility

Ryback battles two athletes at the same time 2-on-1: SmackDown - May 25, 2012

[vive_la_insurrection]

lol, good point I forgot about stormtrrooper / redshirt type syndrome

[MMMark]

Sat. 12/07/07 19:26 EDT
.post #209
[url=David Gordon Layeth the Smackdown - #21 by John_James]

@John James

[/url]I figured gotlucky deserved to know he’s the only reason you got a reply.

Magnanimous of you.
For whose benefit is your latest round of participation, oh bored-yet-altruistic one?

@John James

I fail to see even one “protest” here, …

I was quoting Shakespeare, and I linked to the wikipedia page that explains the usage. I encourage you to read it.

Almost five hundred fifty more words from you this time, including:

• you so pretentiously
• kind of silly
• laughably ironic
• pedantic attention
• your nonsense

but none of which deal with reconciling Molyneux’s two (seemingly) mutually-contradictory statements.

I’ve offered two theories; here’s a third:

Being a fallible human being, perhaps Molyneux, when he said that he has “done a huge amount to promote the non-aggression principle in personal relationships,” was a bit sloppy and neglected to qualify that with “by stressing that the NAP should also be applied to children” (for example).

Now that he’s (apparently) posting at this forum, maybe he’ll pop in and offer some clarification.

[John_James]

No examples of my “protests”? Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t hold my breath.

[cab21]

http://www.fdrliberated.com/stefan-molyneux-promise-failure-upb-inside-story-part-1/

“And there it stood. On the eve of the publication of UPB, Molyneux knew he had done nothing less than replace God as the final authority on morality. Where philosophers had failed for thousands of years, he would succeed. Out of nowhere, a small band of believers led by a Canadian philosopher stood ready to lead humanity, finally, to happiness.”

[vive_la_insurrection]

If this was anyone other than molyneaux, I would feel sorry for them by now.This is just ugly

http://mises.org/daily/6105/Mr-Molyneux-Responds

“He holds that all such rules must refer to all human beings without reference to particular times or places. He says in his response that he has argued for this requirement, but in fact he hasn’t. He has simply repeated his requirement a number of times.”

[ClaytonB]

Another nonarbitrary moral rule that I commend to Molyneux’s attention is “one ought to respect one’s parents.”

LOL

[gotlucky]

David Gordon’s criticism is not only awesome, but sometimes even subtle. This section was the best, imho:

He says,

Rape cannot be UPB because sexual penetration is only rape if it is unwanted — thus one man must want to rape, while the other man must desperately not want to be raped, which means that both of them cannot simultaneously value rape as universally preferable behavior.

Suppose that A is trying to rape B. A wants to rape B but B does not want to be raped. This is entirely consistent with both A’s and B’s thinking that A is morally obligated to rape B. It isn’t a requirement of logic that B want A to do whatever A is morally obligated to do.

The argument against rape that I found the most philosophically interesting in his book is a different, though related, one. If rape is morally required, then acting against rape is evil, i.e., as Molyneux defines this, morally proscribed. But in order for rape to occur, the victim must resist the rapist. If the victim does not resist, then rape has not taken place.[1] Thus a moral rule that required rape could be put into practice only if evil behavior, i.e., resisting rape, takes place. The purported rule, then, is inconsistent with everyone’s acting as morality dictates.

Gordon’s response is hilarious. Not only does he actually provide an in depth criticism of this, he slips in a really subtle criticism in the footnote. It’s like it’s not even worth his time to call attention to Molyneux’s mistake.

EDIT: I did not quote the response nor did I quote the footnote. You guys will have to read the article to find it!

[Rcder]

I’m amazed that Gordon is spending so much time on Molyneux; he has the patience of a saint.

[Neodoxy]

David Gordon has put out what I consider to be the highest quality of Mises dailies, contributing real, valuable, and economic material to the discussion.

At any rate, I’m glad that someone at the institute has finally given some attention to Molyneux, a man who I find has a lot of quality material up until the point that he really gets going on ethics. With this said, from what I’ve read he still misses the fundamental problem with Molyneux’s ethics which is this: The performing of an action does not mean that everyone should do this action, merely that the individual in question believes that the performance of this action by himself under a specific set of conditions is positive.

[weedface]

i love the discussion! certainly something good has to come out of it

[ClaytonB]

I’m with Neo, Gordon is definitely my favorite Mises daily writer.

[John_James]

@Neodoxy

At any rate, I’m glad that someone at the institute has finally given some attention to Molyneux, a man who I find has a lot of quality material up until the point that he really gets going on ethics. With this said, from what I’ve read he still misses the fundamental problem with Molyneux’s ethics which is this: The performing of an action does not mean that everyone should do this action, merely that the individual in question believes that the performance of this action by himself under a specific set of conditions is positive.

You might also be interested in this from the Molyneux responds thread. (In case anyone was unaware, Molyneux has an even worse problem with economics and finance.)

…which actually leads me to question…what exactly is Molyneux’s “strong suit”/“quality material”?

[Rcder]

…which actually leads me to question…what exactly is Molyneux’s “strong suit”/“quality material”?

I guess his “strong suit” is his strange and idiosyncratic ideological potpourri which synthesizes opposition to government with opposition to family, academia, friendship, etc. Molyneux isn’t so much “anti-authoritarian” as he is “anti-authority”; he believes that statism has its roots in parent-child relationships and that to destroy the state you need to first destroy the creator of the state, i.e. family. Molyneux steadfastly claims that he isn’t opposed to all parents, but in order to be a good father or mother you have to be an anarcho-capitalist, which is almost none of them.

[Malachi]

in order to be a good father or mother you have to be an anarcho-capitalist, which is almost none of them.

my first thought was “well, at very least they wont be in favor of shipping their offspring off to die for halliburton in some barely hospitable wasteland” but considering how rebellious adolescents tend to be, perhaps that would have the unintended consequence of encouraging them to do such a thing. But ignore me, I’m just fixating on this because of recent events.

[vive_la_insurrection]

I guess his “strong suit” is his strange and idiosyncratic ideological potpourri which synthesizes opposition to government with opposition to family, academia, friendship, etc. Molyneux isn’t so much “anti-authoritarian” as he is “anti-authority”; he believes that statism has its roots in parent-child relationships and that to destroy the state you need to first destroy the creator of the state, i.e. family. Molyneux steadfastly claims that he isn’t opposed to all parents, but in order to be a good father or mother you have to be an anarcho-capitalist, which is almost none of them.

Either way to base oneself in psychology , that encourages proactivness (even if it is passive agressive) in an environment of many young adults / kids in an unaccountable environment is a move that desreves nothing but contempt