his New Years Day, as I type this, it's minus 7 degrees F (−21.6C) outside my
window.* My assoff is getting cold. In fact, it's almost frozen. All over the world
people are wishing each other global warming.
Snow
As we all know, the theory of global warming is unfalsifiable. Cold waves are not evidence that global warming is false, but heat waves are irrefutable proof that global warming is true. More snow means global warming, because more water is evaporating. Less snow also means global warming because it means it's too warm for snow to fall. If you notice the contradiction, you're a science denier.
For skeptics, AGW has become a topic of ridicule. Not because it's not happening, necessarily, but because the claims made for it are so over the top as to inspire doubt, and the doubt inspires even more extreme claims. Since it's too cold to play football, trolling the warmers is becoming our main source of entertainment.
If it gets any colder, women will need to get sexually harassed just to stay warm.
But AGW—recently re-branded as climate change, then climate inequality, then climate disruption, next perhaps climate dyspepsia—is more than a case study in science gone bad. It's also a paradigm of a post-empiricist illogic that is sweeping across academia.
This style of argument puts the conclusion first, then derives a proof that eliminates the need for evidence. It tells us that political correctness has gone way beyond pretending that it's just people being nice to each other. It's become the foundation of post-empiricism.
It has also led to a new field of study: political correctness studies, which try to fathom the self-validating ideology of PC. The latest is by a guy named Howard S. Schwartz, who reaches all the way back to Sigmund Freud and attributes PC to an unresolved Oedipus complex. Stephen Baskerville posted a glowing review of Schwartz's hundred-dollar book Political Correctness and the Destruction of Social Order at Takimag.
There can be little doubt that the absence of father figures in our society creates many problems; the rejection of traditional behavior norms surely contributes. But it seems to me that diving into the muck of the subconscious mind, while perhaps interesting in a Fantastic Voyage sort of way, misses the point when we can dumpster-dive here at home into the slimy muck of anti-empirical illogic.
Whether they're used to bash sexists or Deniers of the Official Truth, the arguments all have the same hidden goal: they're designed, with greater or lesser subtlety, to grab money from one's fellow citizens and give it to oneself. Since tax money is by definition taken by force, which most people find discourteous at best, it must be justified.
Behind it is an unshakeable belief that the purpose of government is to solve problems. Government is good, so more government is better. It follows that the way to get something done is to represent everything as a problem that can only be solved by the government. Since government is force, this is a fundamentally authoritarian viewpoint.
The real reason it feels so cold today
Self-deception is a trap. It convinces you that what you want to believe is true: that your actions are always noble, and by committing acts of violence and censorship you are fighting evil. This is why it is dangerous. The worst atrocities have always been committed by those who believe themselves to be a force for good.
It takes constant intellectual struggle to force ourselves to think beyond the idea that we're always right. To do that, our civilization invented philosophy and principles that guide us. This is what has gone missing from our educational system.
Well, it gets tiresome finding new ways to make this point, so I'll just wish everyone a Happy Global Warming. A happy sexual harassment to all, and don't let your assoff get too cold!
* My infrared thermometer, which I normally use for testing food, said my back yard was −oL degrees, meaning it's below −12°F, or −24°C. To resolve this inconsistency, I got out my high precision digital thermometer, which said −23.48C. Getting accurate temperature readings is not as easy as people think.
jan 01, 2018, 6:54 am; image added and temperature updated jan 01 2018, 8:08 am. Last edited jan 02, 2018, 7:47 pm
