A reader sent me the following in response to my post about that thing that doesn’t matter in the least to me:
Over the past year, I’ve moved your bookmark steadily up & to the left.Since last fall it’s been among the 18-20 that my screen width can hold in the bookmarks bar. It looks like my intuitive order roughly parallels the sitemeter totals you cited.My bookmarks L->R: aggregators Drudge; Insty; Lucianne; Hot Air; Ross; Slashdot; Vanderleun (not really an aggregator but front & center for his all-around brilliant writing & eclectic range)…then legals Althouse; LI; Maguire, Volokh.Specifically…what’s promted me to go to LI with increasing frequency has been your willingness to tackle difficult topics, your measured pace & the way your posts are driven by logical arguments more than ideological positions.I recently came across the website Your Logical Fallacy Is…(http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/), an excellent summary of 25 “tests” one can apply to arguments. I’ve been doing this intuitively and your posts repeatedly measure up. Perhaps these fallacy labels can be useful when you need to call “Bull—t!” on politicians, MSM journolists & other noisy demagogues.The noticeable way you’ve expanded the topical range you cover is also welcome.Keep on keepin on!
The Your Logical Fallacy Is website is really interesting. The “Middle Ground” fallacy seems particularly appropriate:
You claimed that a compromise, or middle point, between two extremes must be the truth.
Much of the time the truth does indeed lie between two extreme points, but this can bias our thinking: sometimes a thing is simply untrue and a compromise of it is also untrue. Half way between truth and a lie, is still a lie.
Seems like it applies to so much of our politics.
But then again, politics isn’t necessarily logical.
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