Farts In A Wind Tunnel

I had a brief but entertaining exchange the other day, one prompted by my sharing the recent blog post about lotteries. In this case, I shared to a libertarian page on Facebook, and got this reply from "MH."

MH: You forgot the part where it's completely voluntary and therefore NOT theft. If dumb people want to give over their money, more power to them. We need more lotteries.

Nowhere did I argue that lotteries are theft, either in the original article or in the share blurb. The crux of the article is about government giving itself monopoly powers so that it can pay out less than almost any other form of gambling (and that's before we get into the ethics of government marketing to and exploting the poor), not about the notion of voluntary participation in a recreational activity. But, I won't rehash the lottery argument any further here, because:

As the conversation unfolded, it became clear that MH was rebutting a point I never made. Then, he made a different argument, about taxation in general, to which I offered another blog post that elaborated my view.

The ensuing exchange.

MH: you seriously going to send me a link to a blog you wrote?

Me: The original post is my blog as well.

MH: didn't read that either. Lol

This makes a liar out of MH, since he claims I “forgot the part where it's completely voluntary,” but we could grant that as a rhetorical flourish. The not-reading itself, however?

There's a whole lot of that on the Internet. People either offer contrary opinions without actually taking the time to understand or even skim the opinions they're rebutting, then taking a "better than you" position when you call them out on it. I called MH out on this. His rationale?

MH: if I were to click on the blog post I would double your clicks and I just don't want to give that to you.

Oh, gee, I guess he showed me…

I will grant any person who interacts with me a baseline level of respect. I will defend my views, but will consider opinions I may not have thought of. Oftentimes, those appear to miss the point I was trying to make, so I'll elaborate, because I don't presume that I got my message across perfectly the first time around. But, if and when I figure out that the other party didn't even bother trying to understand the point before rejecting it, that interaction stops being interesting.

I did tell MH that, in so many words:

Me: If you haven't even read it, your opinion is uninformed and therefore of no interest to me.

That ticked MH off, and he nyah-nyahed with something about me being the uninformed one (missing that I called his opinion, not him, uninformed).

The great speculative fiction author Harlan Ellison once wrote:

Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that’s horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it’s nothing. It’s just bibble-babble. It’s like a fart in a wind tunnel, folks.

I don't expect "research" in response to my opinions or blog postings, but I do expect that someone at least read what I wrote before rejecting or rebutting it, and so should everyone else. It's common for people to comment on article headlines posted on social media without reading the underlying articles, but expecting the authors of those articles to take them seriously or give them consideration is a level of self-importance that shouldn't exist. Yet, it does. People can and often do use those comments sections for their own debates, but in such cases people are actually reading what each other wrote.

Rebutting an argument you haven't read is indeed like farting in a wind tunnel. It adds nothing of note, and doesn't even deserve to be heard. The farter may feel good for a moment, but it doesn't help anyone else.

This is yet another ill brought upon us by social media. B.S.M. (before social media, in case it wasn't obvious), only those physically near you were the victims of such "farts," of having to listen to you talk out your ass, and you could not avoid their instant feedback. Today, every last bit of effluvium travels around the world, but the feedback is delayed, and thus easily muted or ignored. It's a big-ass wind-tunnel, carrying around a whole lot of swamp gas.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.