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Another rant; criticisms of articleFrom: Steven
Subject: Philosophy
Date/Time 2008-01-07 20:26:00
Remote IP: 69.208.253.34
MessageSorry Dog, but I'm going to have to go on the
attack here . . . (nothing personal toward you
of course)
All smiles,
Steven
Some personal (harsh) criticisms of the article:
1. Several unsupported claims
e.g. DDT did not cause birds to die etc.--Really?
I heard that they destroyed the integrity of the
eggshells in Eagle eggs and that is one of the
reasons the bird nearly went extinct. After
the banning of DDT, the population rebounded.
If this story is false, then where is the
evidence. He makes a claim that refutes
popular opinion with no evidence. Now it
may be that his claim is true, but without
any hard evidence to support his claim, it's
just that . . . a claim. Anybody can claim
anything. Any claim countering common opinion
better have hard data to be taken seriously.
2. Too many straw man arguments
e.g. I don't know too many environmentalists that
want to save the environment because they
think the natural world was Eden or utopia--so
how does refuting the claim that the natural
world used to be/is utopia refute environmentalism
exactly? Yes, we've skewed the carbon dioxide
concentration off the charts, but that
does not imply that what was, was utopia.
It only demonstrates *change*; it does not
provide commentary on the value of what was.
Aside: I think that the majority of people
that want to protect the environment do so,
because of a belief of not doing harm--and
extending that to the planet also. After
all, if you are going to live in a house, you
should take good enough care of it, so it doesn't
collapse on you before you (or your descendents) are
finished living in it.
Back to the article, the example I gave above is
just one of *many* straw man arguments in the
article. I don't think I've seen so many
in a long long time. He successfully strings them
back to back throughout. In fact, the whole article
is just one continuous assault of them.
Aside: This is the sort of argumentative style
that is typical of the followers of Ayn Rand's
philosophy of objectivism. They put on rose-colored
glasses, pick a particular issue that they want to refute,
and then they refute a million straw man arguments and
proclaim victory.
3. No heart
This sort of goes with my last comment regarding
Ayn Rand's objectivism. Followers of this philosophy
want a society based completely on logical Dr. Spock-type
reasoning based on self-benefit.
As per some of my other recent posts, I definitely
don't believe in external intervention in people's lives--
however, individually people should try to think of
themselves as part of an overall collective, and do
things that not only benefit themselves but also
benefit others and show compassion for the fellow man.
Simply filtering away anything that doesn't benefit
the self is unhealthy in the long term in my opinion.
We should be able to decide how to interact with
the collective ourselves, but we are still part of
it!
Oh well.
It's too bad I'm not impressed with Crichton's ability
to present a good argument . . . I did like "Jurassic
Park" . . . although that was fiction. Come to think
of it, so is this article really :P
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