December 2005 Archives

Sentimens is a clever fallacy. Its idiotic claim, that emotion is a better guide, is most alluring to an intelligent audience. Intelligent people are often afraid of being thought rather cold because they use reason so much. They do not want to appear to be emotionally deficient, and are easy prey to a speaker who assures them that they are just as sensitive, loving and compassionate as the next person, who is also a bit of a bore. This permits them the delusion that they are welcome into the common fold, instead of remaining aloof from it. They happily abandon reason as the price of their admission ticket to the human race.

An individual can be ensnared with sentimens, and led to drop a carefully thought-out position after being assured that he or she cares just as much about humanity as the rest of us. A denial would hardly count as a good response. A crowd is even easier to lead by the nose on a sentimental string. I have rarely seen an international gathering which did not give a standing ovation to any gaga idiot who urged them to forget reason and concentrate on loving each other.

http://www.adamsmith.org/logicalfallacies/000616.php

This, incidentally, is one of the cornerstones of the philosophy I like to call “callous conservatism”…

“For your convenience, the floppy drive is located beneath the flap intuitively marked ‘Memory Stick’.”

Rather irritating to a chap with a morning head, that.