Baseless Elitism: The Dangers Of Inductive Reasoning Vindaloo Diesel

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Baseless Elitism: The Dangers Of Inductive Reasoning
Vindaloo Diesel

False Induction

You know what really bugs me? Elitism. Not all of it, only the unjustified kind. Justified elitism is your basic meritocratic thinking: “I have achieved/accomplished/finished this, I therefore hold in a higher regard those who can do this than those who can’t.” That’s one thing. Then there’s unjustified elitism, such as “I am an atheist and he isn’t. Because there is no proof of god, this means I’m smarter than him.” Or “I’m ‘progressive’ and he’s ‘conservative’. He doesn’t support government-mediated social welfare and entitlements. Therefore he is a petty-mined, unintelligent, uncharitable bastard.”

It’s not quite the same thing as racism or prejudice. Instead it represents a failure of inductive reasoning. Person A takes a position on a specific subject. Person B takes this position and then generalizes it into an overall assessment of Person A’s character, intellect, or other personal characteristics.

In other words, it’s like trying to figure out the composition of an entire forest by looking at a single fir tree.

Overgeneralization and Oversimplification

Other than the fact that I’m sick of this false elitism being perpetrated all over my backside, what’s really scary about this mode of thought is that it hampers open communication and understanding of the complexity and nuances of ideas. So let’s leave behind elitism for a minute and focus on the twin foibles of overgeneralization and oversimplification.

Nothing illustrates this better than the idea of the Party Line. ‘Oh you voted Republican? You must not be a conservationist.’ Or ‘Oh you’re a Democrat? Gun-grabbing hoplophobic eunuch…’

You can see the problem already. It’s attempting to impute an Either/Or where none should exist. Can you link conservation, gun control, drug legalization, and social welfare together logically? Not especially. Which might explain why I see no problem with supporting two of them and being vehemently opposed to the other two (guess which ones).

Whether it’s the two party system or the innate desire to label someone either ‘us’ or ‘them’, I couldn’t say. What I do know is that this tendency destroys our ability to question our own stance and understand the other guy’s, whether political, scientific, personal, or professional. This tendency to oversimplification means that instead of the four positions mentioned in the last paragraph, we see only one, whether referring to ourselves or to our political opponents. Attack one, attack them all. To put this into context, say Person A attacks Person B’s position that all handguns should be banned. ‘A’ presents a well-reasoned argument that may have had some sway over Person B if he hadn’t gotten all defensive and closed himself off to the merits of Person A’s case immediately. Why did Person B get so defensive? Because when Person A attacked one of Person B’s many political opinions, Person B felt like Person A was attacking not only his entire political ideology, but also his personal character. Person B was oversimplifying his own political views into a single artificially monolithic construct.

Turning this around, imagine that Person A expresses a distaste for the Intelligent Design. Person B then makes some remark implying Person A is of a decidedly leftist persuasion, like himself. Person A takes umbrage and decides to start a movement called Conservatives Against Intelligent Design (launching at the end of the month-ish). In addition to making a total ass of himself, Person B has alienated a lot of people who, like Person A, aren’t particularly socialist, but aren’t ID supporters either. Best case scenario is that people like Person A no longer voice their opinions, fearing they’ll be lumped in with people like Person B. Worst case is that people like Person C, who was on the fence about evolution-creation but was definitely conservative, and Person D, who’s a political opportunist, throw their hats in the ring in support of ID (I’m pretty sure this is the real reason for the strength of the ID movement). They’ve taken advantage of Person B’s conflation of one issue with an entire ideology and used this as a weapon against B. They’re not taking the opposite position on that issue in order to say ‘Hey we’re different from this guy.’

Oversimplification and overgeneralization are bad no matter how you look at it. But ignoring all the strategic pitfalls you may find yourself in by engaging in false induction, at its most basic it is a crime against reason: It prevents you from being honest in your assessment of the beliefs, opinions, and contentions of everyone including yourself.

The Sin Of False Pride

I’ve got no problem with pride, so long as it’s deserved. As my best friend and I used to say back in high school “It ain’t cocky if you can back it up.” Of course, that was our excuse for being egomaniacal twerps who deserved a good ass-kicking and never got it. But anyway, the thing about pride is that it’s generally contingent upon a perception of achievement or superiority. The problem I see today, the problem I mentioned in the first paragraph, is that either the perception is false, or the achievement/superiority is much smaller in reality than it is in the individual’s mind.

People who possess otherwise fine minds allow unreasoned and often silly propositions to piggyback their way into their ideology along with one well-reasoned. As is seen all to often in scientific circles, a man can develop one of the most important theories in sociobiology while simultaneously supporting crackpot conspiracy theories. The brilliance of one does not somehow invalidate the wrongheadedness of the other. Granted, that was an extreme example, but many scientists seem to not dwell even a second on the many inconsistencies between the various philosophical theories underlying leftist concepts (’the collective’ and ‘Maslow’s hierarchy’ being foremost among them) and what science actually says about individual behavior. They imply that being ‘experts’ or ‘having proven themselves’ by getting a PhD, their political stance must be as reasoned as their professional and scientific opinions, when nothing could be further from the truth. These are the same people, after all, who don’t understand the distinction between positive and negative liberty, or that between a classical liberal and a conservative.
Or a leftist may imply that because he voted for social welfare, he’s a more charitable person than the next man. He’s taken a simple proposition; that he supports government-mediated charity whereas the other man doesn’t, and extended it to imply that the other man doesn’t believe in charitable works whatsoever.

Or the conservative might look upon my own stance on marriage, drugs, or freedom of expression and declare that I am an immoral hedonist while he’s a sparkling beacon of tolerance, brotherly love, and non-judgmentalism. He’d be just as wrong as the men in the other two situations.

So long as we allow this false pride in ourselves and in others to go unchecked, we will never have a free exchange of ideas, we will never be able to argue on the merit of the positions themselves, and we will never find our way past the flawed positions that all political ideologies flow from.

** Vindaloo Diesel is alternately known on the internet as a meathead, intellectual, geek, or giant troll, which he uses to disguise the fact that he’s actually an amazing guy who helps people he should probably ignore. His friends find equal amounts of consternation and amusement in the fact that he’s incapable of dating women who aren’t evil gorgeous blondes who treat him like garbage. When he’s not ranting about life, the universe, and everything; he’s either lifting weights, looking for fights (but they keep running away!), engaging in juvenile humor, or making homoerotic jokes with male friends who may or may not actually be straight (because Gay Roulette is even funnier than Gay Chicken).

 

84 thoughts on “Baseless Elitism: The Dangers Of Inductive Reasoning Vindaloo Diesel”

  2. Sensible well reasoned observations. Obviously you must be silenced for the good of the narrative.
    Hang in there Vin.

  3. You can’t be “elite” on the basis of something that everyone agrees upon. So you have to pick something that makes you special.

    You can’t be “cultured” if the masses agree with your aesthetic sense.

    Or like the young actress who was working in her formative years and had to have “feminism” explained to her at which point she says “Isn’t that everyone?” and something about how maybe it should be “everyone” and then a special word for those few who don’t think women are equal.

    But that’s not how it works. No one wants to be “everyone”. They want to be special.

  6. Justified elitism is your basic meritocratic thinking: “I have achieved/accomplished/finished this, I therefore hold in a higher regard those who can do this than those who can’t.”

    Daddy practiced law.  He was held by those who were in a position to know to be both extremely talented and disciplined.  His skills are those of his profession, including verbal agility and the ability to sit down and plow through hundreds of pages of tightly worded legal documents synthesizing a nuanced understanding.  He has worked hard to develop his innate talents, as well as to overcome any weaknesses.  By that hard worked reached a level to which very few in his profession could aspire.  Yes, he has earned the right to be proud of what he has done.  His accomplishments demand a level of respect.

    Does this puts him in the position to argue that his accomplishments makes him any better than the man who has a different calling and set of skills that he has worked equally hard to perfect?  A crack attorney is not going to do you any good if what you need is a plumber on Christmas Day*.

    * An observation Daddy made the second Christmas running that a plumber was needed.

    1. That last bit reminds me of the problem I have with some of the “critics of critics.” The “If you know so much, go do it yourself” makes sense in some case, but at other times one doesn’t need to be able to do something to know it is amiss. Many a reader here might not be a writer (yes, there are such creatures) but can still “wall” a story that doesn’t work. Or, as I’ve put it, “You are probably not a mechanical engineer, nor mechanic, and cannot design, build, or repair an automatic transmission. I suspect, however, you have no trouble determine when one isn’t working right.” (Yeah, I know, around here the followups will likely include a few mechanics and engineers, and someone who is neither by profession but rebuilds transmissions for fun).

      1. Yes. There is a difference between “I know so much and I can therefore tell you what you’re doing wrong, because I’m great!” and the person who uses the reasoning/empathy/wisdom they apply well in a certain area to see possible flaws in other areas. Or even solutions.

        The main differences seem to be 1) hubris and 2) ability to transition.

        Hubris is obvious. It takes humility to not be the a**hole in the above situation. A too high opinion of your own opinion is likely to bite you in the end (even when you’re not opining outside your field).

        Ability to transition is related, as it means the ability to recognize the difference between your field/area and the field/area in which you are opining. I can reason a great number of things out, including medical issues – but I know the difference between my level of knowledge and that of a doctor. I also know that I can’t necessarily apply a mechanical engineering solution to a biological problem. (On the flip side, despite not being an expert on a topic, I can also use my reason/empathy/wisdom to see when a doctor seems to have made a diagnosis before all the information is even known.)

      2. I’d note that there are mechanical engineers who couldn’t design an automatic transmission, or a least not a good one quickly. Using a definition that includes people with an ABET accredited degree, and does not require that they have passed the PE exam. And one might be able to design a functioning automatic transmission without having the hands on mechanical ability to usefully repair someone else’s design.

        Fabrication experience helps design a mechanical system that can actually be built. Hands on repair experience probably helps with the design of a mechanical system that can be maintained.

  7. While I agree in main with your essay, your examples of four things that are lumped together unjustifiably has a problem. Three of them are similar in that they give the state more control over people, the fourth, drug legalization, I don’t think is a Democrat thing. At least when they had a chance to strike the drug laws down the liberal wing of the Supreme Court decided that it was more important to maintain the State’s power via the Commerce Clause than to strike down drug laws.

    1. The objection I was going to post is remarkably similar to yours, though from a slightly different direction. There are also certain political positions that are often found together, even though there’s no particularly rational reason for them to be clustered together. E.g., many people support expensive NON-military gov’t programs (like welfare and Obamacare, but I repeat myself) and oppose military spending. These are not positions that have an obvious, rational link between them (if someone was in favor of increasing the power of government, you’d expect them to be in favor of military spending, but the anti-war movement in the US has latched on to the Democratic Party). And yet they are often found in the same person. Not always, but often enough that Bayesian analysis suggests that if you know that someone supports position A, you can expect that they probably support position B as well. Such analysis is quite rational, as long as you make sure not to assume that someone is guaranteed to support position B, and ask them about it before you tear into them with an argument against position B.

      1. The anti-war movement was supported by the communists because it kept us out of their hair as they fomented revolution around the globe. That’s how it got attached to the “moa gummint!” folks (who were also supported by the communists).

        The lack of connection is invisible to the prog prol because they have had their reasoning faculties atrophied by their propagandization.

      2. There is currently a push by the Greens Party* to get marijuana legalized here in Australia. Personally, I have a problem with this, because the same people (not the party) who think that smoking cigarettes should be banned think marijuana should be totes okay to smoke pot everywhere and have it available in grocery stores (hurray for inconsistency!) (Note: Grocery stores carry cigarettes, but they are available only at the service counter, not at the general aisles.)

        Andrew Bolt encapsulates the insanity, and the noted push for greater government control in lives:

        *The Greens are the closest thing we have that resembles the US Democrats, from my observation, but sometimes do have some environmental concerns. The most noted irritation is the way they declare that you cannot cut down trees in your property, because environment!11 – even if they’re a fire risk.

        1. That one always boggles my mind. It is the same here in the US, the anti-tobacco politicians are by and large also the pro-cannabis politicians (with the notable exception of a few libertarians like Ron Paul). On my less cynical days I wonder if these politicians are so stupid that they have never been around their constituents that want pot legalized. I don’t have the exact statistics, but from my observation a majority of those who smoke pot also smoke cigarrettes. On my more cynical days I realize that the aforesaid politicians are smart enough to realize that there is enough money and support for tobbacco that it is never going to be outlawed, so they don’t have to worry about ticking off their stoned constituents by actually accomplishing what they are advocating, but they might manage to get a larger chunk of the tobacco money pie, if they make enough noise.

          1. I don’t have the exact statistics, but from my observation a majority of those who smoke pot also smoke cigarrettes.

            Not a great surprise. If you’re willing to voluntarily inhale one set of hot noxious gasses into your lungs, heck, why not another!

            And also in my observation, you’ll find a lot more heavy drinkers among smokers of any kind. Addictive behavior seems to not really care what addictive substance is being used.

            1. There’s a recent video going around that says “alcohol is the real gateway drug.” Which I haven’t watched, because it seems like an obvious thing to me—but the video is no doubt obnoxious.

        2. “The Greens are the closest thing we have that resembles the US Democrats … but sometimes do have some environmental concerns.”

          The Democrat Party USA has serious environmental (emphasis on the “mental”) concerns; they are, after all, the party that nominated Al “Hot Air” Gore as their presidential standard bearer in 2000. Never mind the pollution spewed by his home state beneficiary Tennessee Valley Authority.

          They especially like the EPA because it aids their union supporters in obstructing construction projects unless they pay their vigorish to get permits passed. Environmentalist Democrats somehow always seek to increase political control of all parts of the economy.

          1. nevermind the pollution spewed by mister ‘uses 17 times the power of the average home’

            1. Another head spinner for leftists: Which former President lives in the most environmentally friendly home? President George W. Bush.

              An advocate of sustainable design, Heymann [the architect] incorporated into the compound a number of green features, including a geothermal energy system for heating and cooling. Rainwater runs off the house’s standing-seam metal roof and into a gravel-filled moat, where it filters into a 42,000-gallon cistern concealed beneath the rear terrace and is recycled to irrigate the lawns.

              From an article that originally appeared in the August 2014 issue of Architectural Digest.

    2. Actually, I’d say drug legalization gives the state more control as well. Addicts are far easier to control. While they are usually less useful as most addictions interfere with most other aspects of life, if your main concern is control they are a benefit.

      1. Addicts are easy to control. Someone who just uses drugs, and isn’t addicted, not so much. Some of us, do to neurochemical differences, don’t response much to addictive substances. Which is fine at avoiding addictions, but leaves us wondering what all the fuss is about.

    3. Until very recently both gun control and abortion were likely to be poor determiners of what party a politician belonged to.

          1. “It is when you’re getting close to 55 years old.”

            Or when this is the year of your 40th Wedding Anniversary.

            Or your baby, that little bitty kid you held & were terrified you were going to drop, is headed for 30.

            Or …

            30 seems like yesterday; & 40 is not that far behind.

        2. “Recently” is anything that I remember in my own life time.

          Also, get off my lawn.

          😉

  8. Many confuse the distinction between “elite” and “accomplished.” And many accomplished people tend to elevate the skills required in their profession into generally important skills. This tendency was on display iin the MSM admiration for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, two men whose skill set — verbal facility, being quick studies (albeit superficial) and projecting a kind of empathy — are critical to success in the television news industry.

    1. ‘Elite’ now seems to be based on zip code. Get the ‘right’ zip code and you can call yourself ‘elite’. Whether or not you have any intellect or skills to back that claim is an entirely different question.

      1. Nah. More on which tickets you punched. Ivy League Snotty gets you adored by the Left.

        1. I thought it was pretty much all rolled up into one? You live in that zip because you went to the ‘right’ schools and have the ‘right’ degree which has allowed you to form the social connections required to be successful (for values of ‘success’).

  9. To see what people really think about themselves, leave a third of a pie on the counter and see what they do. They can either cut it in half, take a bigger piece, or take the whole thing.

    1. Oh, now that’s one of those bogus tests, like the “choose who survives” stuff.
      Because….

      – How many people are in the family?
      – How many have had a piece of the pie?
      – How long has the pie sat there (same day? two days past the meal? nobody’s touched it in a while?)
      – How many people in the family will even eat that type of pie?
      – Does the pie belong to you? Someone who buys their own groceries?

      And the corollary: When you cut a piece off do you cut it in a normal fashion (from crust to center), or do you cut the tip off and eat it, leaving the crust for the other poor schlubs?

  10. While I generally agree with the gist of your post, I will point out that I can both believe you are an immoral hedonist (I would actually have to know more about your stances to believe so, but for the sake of argument we will assume I am sufficiently versed in your beliefs and actions to make such a judgement) while at the same time being tolerant of your choices, liking you personally and/or loving you as a brother/fellow human (which is possible to do while not actually liking the person) and supporting and defending your right to make such immoral choices.
    After all if it is acceptable to take away your right to make immoral choices, how long before someone in power with different morals than myself takes away my moral choices? Besides the simple fact that I think it is immoral to basically enslave other people to my beliefs, if someone is forced to follow moral “choices” because they have no choice; does that really make them a moral person?

    Note I did not say I was non-judgemental. Exercising good judgement is important. Many Christians will quote Scripture to the effect of “do not judge” this does not mean not to recognize when others are doing something wrong. If you are falling down drunk it is stupid, not non-judgemental of me to accept a ride home from you.

    1. I have generally taken that “judge” warning as “How would you like to be on the receiving end of exactly what you just did?” Whatever one’s theological framework, asking oneself that question is good guidance.

      1. This ends up being a point of frustration for me because as I was raised (parents, school, society, etc.) what one DID to evaluate your actions or your opinion or your plans was to turn them around… substitute a different people group and see how your opinion sounds now, imagine the same actions or activities if they rested on a different point of view. Imagine if you weren’t “the majority” anymore.

        But now? Now, any of those activities are “false equivalencies” because it’s *not* the same (we’re told) to hate someone who deserves to be hated, as it is to hate someone who deserves our sympathy. It’s not the same (we’re told) to make laws demanding moral observance when that moral observance is actually moral and important.

        So you say back… but what if the people passing those laws believe different than you do?

        And you’re told… it’s a false equivalency because they are wrong, and I am right.

        And bashing your head into a brick wall benefits neither your head nor the brick wall.

      2. Given that the Scripture containing that warning also says “lest you be judged in the same way”, that’s a perfectly good PoV.

    2. All fundamental laws are moral in basis. You don’t pass a law against murder because you did a cost/benefit analysis*. You make it illegal because it is wrong.

      One of the large problems is laws that are NOT based on morality. Those multiply incessantly.

      The place where many people are really making the “don’t impose your morals” argument is in an area in-between, where society shifts back and forth over time, declaring what is and is not moral. It often moves over an area where immorality might be a real issue, but in a healthy free society they are dealt with informally.

      You want to get drunk or high? OK. But don’t expect people not to think poorly of you. You want to fool around on your spouse? Don’t expect a jury to convict your spouse when they catch you.
      Some of those items get legal hooks into them when the societal cost begins to overwhelm those informal mechanisms. Being a drunkard is less of a societal problem when there are no multi-ton, high-speed machines they can operate to get home.

      (* OK, yes, there are some libertarians who do so. I have found those who really base their decision-making on such things are ultimately sociopaths.)

      1. But why is murder wrong? Or, more importantly, why does one person have a gut reaction that murder is wrong while another person who is raised differently views some things as not-murder, primarily killing outside their kin-group? Why is theft wrong? Why does a person have a gut reaction that theft of wrong? Why might someone else view theft as quite ordinary or even admirable if you’re good at it, so long as you’re not stealing from your kin-group? Clearly one’s gut feeling of “wrong” is unreliable.

        If one thinks of the most disgusting and awful “wrong” that you can think of, the sort that makes your tummy crawl, is there really not an objective reason that the thing that repulses you so badly leads to bad ends? Objectively? Almost always?

        And don’t a great number of the things that we (whoever “we” are) object to that mainstream society (or at least the SJW’s) are insisting upon rest on the fact that the “morality” that they are trying to compel through passing laws or punishing people in society – aren’t the objections to those things based mostly on the fact that they are toxic and actively damaging once one looks a bit farther into consequences, systems, and trends?

        On the one hand are the “feels” that this or that thing or this or that person or choice must be supported, and why don’t you care you monster.

        On the other hand are objective cost/benefit considerations where you look past the gut feeling of wanting to be compassionate and think… you know… this HURTS people, and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t.

  11. “Justified elitism is your basic meritocratic thinking: “I have achieved/accomplished/finished this, I therefore hold in a higher regard those who can do this than those who can’t.””

    Wasn’t that the justification Barack Obama gave us to elect him President? Because he was such an excellent community organizer? (good thing my trash can has a plastic liner.)

    1. Give him this: He managed to get the individualists to organize long enough to keep his “destined” successor from being elected.

      2. Although to give credit where credit is due, his destined successor worked hard and deligently towards the same goal.

        1. Yes, she did. But the link to her former boss didn’t have the results her polling and support groups anticipated.

          1. Her anointing had already failed her once. She may have wrapped herself in the mantle as successor, but, no, she did not wear it well

            1. Throughout her husband’s presidency, her Senate career and her service as Secretary of State the polling consistently demonstrated that the less Americans saw of Hillary Clinton the higher her approval ratings. Clearly they liked the idea of HRC far more than the actuality of her. Clearly she was a candidate best kept tightly wrapped.

  13. Whether it’s the two party system or the innate desire to label someone either ‘us’ or ‘them’,

    It is the two party system after half a century of GoGo type reforms.

    The parties had much larger diversity as recently as 1980.

    However, a variety of things which weakened the party structures made it much harder to have diversity. That might sound counter intuitive but it isn’t. Because the parties could ensure compliance on top line votes there had a lot more room to let individual candidates go their own way on second and lower tier issues.

    Oddly, one of the things that weakened it was the end of political party affiliation as a source of social capital (not, not identity). If you read Heinlein’s book on winning elections he discusses forming a “Demopublican club” (he used such formulations because he didn’t want the book to be party specific). Dr. Pournelle in his intro to the 1992 edition says he encountered similar structures as late as the early 60s. People on campaigns I worked in the 90s said similar things.

    These clubs were as much social and thus played cards, bowled, had cookouts, etc. The infamous Tammany Hall had its origins as a social club and never completely lost that aspect. These clubs also played a role as a relief society, something that has slowly died off since the 30s (I suspect come the 30s this century they will return as social security and medicare dry up).

    The loss of social connection among diverse party members and the inability to keep candidates in line on key issues via funding and perks has meant two things. The grassroots converted to pure issue oriented organizations and candidates had to go to them for money and boots. This means to raise sufficient funds to campaign party members need to check a lot more boxes.

    But remember, this was to give us GOod GOvernment as the Reformers promised us.

    No wonder I agree with Trollope that Reformers are fools who only make things worse.

  14. One of the oddest posts I’ve seen here. Interpret that as you see fit. 🙂

    And, yes, hubris is the biggest problem of modernism/post-modernism/progressivism/”pure” rationalism/whatever. It’s the prime reason they push so hard for eliminating Christianity – they can’t stand the idea of Someone over them, shaking His head at their stupidity ideas. (You they don’t mind so much, because you can be put in a railroad car, if necessary.)

  15. “my backside, what’s really scary”

    Clearly, by this we might infer that you are inferior… Yet, by your own words,

    “looking at a single”

    you appear to be thrifty. Which would make your claims of being

    “reasoning. Person A”

    seem to be less of a boast, and more of a general statement. However, there is this proclamation:

    “I’m sick”

    Lad, we are all a little sick. It’s part of being human. Don’t be so hard on yourself.

  17. I really like the actor Vin Diesel. The Chronicles of Riddick is a very underrated movie. And the man seems to be running a level-headed business for the long run, good for him.

    1. Check out his Witch Hunter movie. The pacing is a bit unexpected but if you forget to expect the movie “beats” to be standard, the story is pretty darned good.

      2. No kidding, it was a real surprise. Might have been better as a TV series, though.

  18. The issues with “identifying” noted here are also the reason I more and more reject the left/right labels for people. While it might have some usefulness, it is abused and misunderstood to the point of uselessness. I haven’t managed to come up with an easy replacement, but the issue is truly multi-dimensional. And, yes, some dimensional extremes tend to drag other dimensions with them.

    One point, though: some people’s viewpoints are firmly ensconced in the upper-front-right or lower-back-left corners of the grid. If you call those people “right” or “left” you’ll probably be correct.

    1. It should be noted that Ringo has frequently been a guest at ConCarolinas for over a decade. He has also publicly advocated for Gay Marriage at least a decade prior to Hillary, Obama and Joe Biden’s expressions of support. Based on what I’ve read at Vile666 (hey, it turned up in the search engine and was a fairly balanced summary: file[666].com/?p=41735 ) the primary objections came from other guests, not attendees.

      Following on the Sad Puppies* crapfest it seems clear that the purging of conservatives from fandom is underway. This will not serve con promoters at all well, given that the fan base is small enough without eliminating any segments.

      *Apparently one of Ringo’s crimes is defending the Puppies. Quelle Horreur!

      1. N.B. – the article linked includes an excerpt from a comment by Sarah, noted Mormon White Male (albeit with a stupendous rack) and rampant basher of gays.

    2. I saw this uproar in the socials, and I’m unsurprised by it. Mr. Ringo has been “disinvited” to a fan con -for his own safety- by the con runners. Meaning, apart from the loudly braying SJWs screaming that they were cancelling their plans to come to the con, other SJWs have expressed the desire to start some shit with Mr. Ringo. Enough of them that the con decided to hire armed off-duty cops for armed guards.

      To me, this indicates we are well beyond the limits of inductive reasoning, and baseless elitism. We are now entering the beginning fringe of tribal warfare territory. Sides have been chosen, the shouting of taunts and the shaking of the spears has begun.

      Arguably Jon Del Aroz fired the first arrow, with his lawsuit against WorldCon. Regardless of the ultimate resolution, he hit them. Lawsuits cost money, even when they get thrown out. A flesh wound, but a hit for all of that. Should he win a substantial judgement, that wound may end up being life threatening.

      This is not an environment I’m going to willingly subject myself to. I’m too old to be engaging in fisticuffs with random morons who are looking for a punching bag. That’s essentially what Mr. Ringo said in his posts on the issue, and I’m with him on the issue. SJWs want to get their hate on, I’m happy to watch from the Internet.

      If there will be fisticuffs, I’ll be the one choosing the ground and the time of the engagement. Never start a fight you haven’t already won.

      1. “Arguably Jon Del Aroz fired the first arrow, with his lawsuit against WorldCon. Regardless of the ultimate resolution, he hit them. Lawsuits cost money, even when they get thrown out. A flesh wound, but a hit for all of that. Should he win a substantial judgement, that wound may end up being life threatening.”

        Good. Killing WorldCon, and any other con the Progressives control, is good thing.

      2. I’m too old to be engaging in fisticuffs with random morons who are looking for a punching bag.
        Arguably, this is why man invented weapons.

      3. So all that has to happen to chase every single non-SJZ approved guest is to threaten harassment and physical violence in enough numbers that it’ll be safer to not go, while whimpering at the same time that they are threatened by the Other’s presence. That’s handing the zealots quite a big weapon.

        That is just an observation on my part, mind. I have been operating for the last decade on “Someone insane wants to find me and kill me or my loved ones”, so I am the last person to criticize that.

        1. I think of it more as gathering them all into one convenient place. >:D

          I don’t object to fisticuffs with the morons per se, I just want to be the one to pick the place and time. Which will be a place favorable to me, at a time when lots and lots of friends are there with me, so we outnumber them 5-1. Then the SJWs can chimp-out all they want. Rinse, repeat.

          Never start a fight you haven’t already won.

            1. See? Now you’re getting it. ~:D

              Go and read Sun Tzu again. The best wars are over before the enemy gets his boots laced up. Fighting is for kids and chumps.

                1. Yes. And this is why we do not self-identify to the morons. We take pictures of them chimping at cons, and post them for the world to see instead.

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