10-6-12 Hodgepodge
Saturday, October 06, 2012
The Morality Behind "Tough Luck"
I
enjoyed Don Watkins's recent post at Laissez
Faire regarding the common debating tactic of anti-capitalists peppering
pro-capitalists with questions based in part on the (true) premise that there are no
guarantees in life -- and in part on the (false) premse that there is no
selfish motivation on anyone's part to mitigate that fact.
Weekend Reading
"Opinions, by their
nature, are not bad. The issue is whether they are grounded in fact and reason,
and whether they can be proven." -- Michael Hurd, in "What's Your Opinion?" at DrHurd.com
"Just as we would never assume that someone possessing a state driver's
license is necessarily a safe driver, patients should never assume that someone
possessing a state medical license is necessarily a competent physician."
-- Paul Hsieh, in "How
Medical Licensing Laws Harm Patients and Trap Doctors" at PJ
Media
My Two Cents
I have become a big fan of Michael Hurd over the past few years and the
column linked above is a good demonstration of why. I already knew that
"opinionated" shouldn't be a pejorative description, and why. But I improved my
understanding of what that means on several levels by reading his piece.
For
example, Hurd discusses ranking both one's certainty and the importance of
airing one's opinion before speaking. I think I usually end up doing this, but
until reading his column, I'd never explicitly thought about the issue of
ranking. Hurd draws out some of the implications of such tests with some
examples. I can see that his discussion is going to help me improve my own
performance on this score, not to mention become less likely to be annoyed when
I hear others who don't do this uttering their opinions.
Heh!
Greg Ross recounts a
vignette from World War II:
Australian Nancy Wake fought fearlessly for the Allies in World War II, first for the French resistance and later as a spy for Britain's Special Operations Executive.Photo at the above link, and more about Nancy Wake here.
Parachuted into the Auvergne in April 1944, she was hanging from a tree when a resistance fighter told her, "I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year."
She said, "Don't give me that French shit."
--CAV
2 comments:
Gus,
My GP has often asked the following:
"What do you call a medical student who has graduated at the bottom of his class?"
"Doctor."
In regard to being opinionated, I was once treated to the following after an argument.
"You really think you're right, don't you!?"
My reply was, "Are you in the habit of embracing positions you know to be wrong?"
c. andrew
C.,
That's a nice comeback to that kind of argument, and introduces the idea of objective, factually-based opinions to anyone you are debating with, not to mention, anyone who might be listening in/reading.
Gus
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