FU - FairAndUNbalanced.com

In response to: John Myste's
A Heretical Challenge to the Gospel According to Charts

You claim that skeptics ignore "the facts," "won't even consider them." You have a real opportunity to show that you are actually interested in the truth and if the charts are flawed, you wish to discover it, even if they are charts that support a liberal stance.

- John Myste, June 19, 2012

Aging continues to hold surprises for me. I had thought gray hair would bother me. It didn't. At least not much. As I lost even that gray hair, it proved to be a minor issue. I simply got brave and leaped on in before being completely pushed, shaving what few strands I had left. Aches and pains bother me, but not that much. I had sort of anticipated them, and discounted them as they came along.

I have noticed a tendency to rather pointlessly grunt as I sit or stand up. It's not pain or effort, just some habit. Where does that come from? Health fades a bit with time. Medical people prescribe a host of pills that have to be taken on schedule. All in a life. No deal.

What I did not expect, what caught me flatfooted, was the emotional toll of dentistry. Losing teeth was something experienced by friends who are considerably younger than I am. I don't notice it in them, and they seem to take it in stride. But dentures were a sort of terrible milestone with me. For some reason the continuous consciousness of what had once required only a minor bit of attention is a constant reminder of the passing of a clear demarcation.

I now focus on every bite. No choice. And the concentration reinforces the fact that I am undeniably older than I want to be.

Worst of all is the gradual loss of working memory. I keep lists now. I make sure to follow a rigid routine on major matters, so I won't forget something critical. My medications are divided each week into daily pill boxes. Without them, I simply cannot remember from one moment to the next whether I have taken what I should. I don't want to skip, and I don't want to double up.

When my friend John Myste drops by this site to attack me, I often cannot remember my guilt. His accusations are, not to put too fine a point on it, MYSTErious. Ha-ha-ha. See what I did there?

Sadly, it is not the first time John has had to intervene, pointing out some sin that had completely gone from my mind. Consider this major event from a while back.

This time, John condemns my dishonesty on a number of counts. John has a special dislike to charts and graphs, whereas I regard charts and graphs to be "data" and "gospel" and "truth". I decline to confront those who may disagree with me. Here is a small portion of John's rebuke:

You claim that skeptics ignore "the facts," "won't even consider them." You have a real opportunity to show that you are actually interested in the truth and if the charts are flawed, you wish to discover it, even if they are charts that support a liberal stance.

Since you consider the charts to be "data," "truth," "gospel," I suspect you will rush over their post haste and defend the truth.

John is quite right to condemn my practice of condemning skeptics. It is wretchedly unfair of me. The fact that I cannot recall a single instance of attacking skepticism is no excuse. I am doubly guilty, since I have long considered skepticism to be an honorable and worthwhile attitude.

I open myself to a further accusation of hypocrisy by pointing to an entire piece I wrote about, by chance, John himself. In it, I thought I had made clear the difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism is the constant questioning of logic, evidence, and viewpoints. It is the intellectual challenge that forms the very heart of debate. I pointed, in an attempt at contrast, to cynicism as a reflexive and lazy rejection.

At the time, John sent a comment promising a later detailed reply. He undoubtedly provided one, although I do not recall it, and cannot find any evidence of it. The mind does fade with age, for I know John would not so hastily condemn my unconscious neglect of opposing views if he was more guilty than I could be. That would not have been honest.

Unfortunately, I am not the only debater to suffer John's scathing wrath. Another blogger is also guilty of dishonesty, combined with a blind acceptance of data whenever it is put into chart form. The Heathen Republican goes through considerable trouble to research his point of view. He usually buttresses his argument with his research, making it stronger. I have thought of this as a strength, an unmistakable indication of intellectual integrity. It took John to provoke an opposing epiphany.

I don't have the time to read The Heathen Republican as often as I wish I could. My loss. Every week I make it a point to at least scan his work to find something to comment on in a Saturday post at FairAndUNbalanced.com. It is my hope that those who follow this site will take a moment and experience Heathen's remarkable writing, as do his growing legion of readers. That I usually disagree with his conclusions will not be news to some. The difficulty I have is not disagreement, it is the sheer volume of quality. It is hard to choose from what Mario Cuomo would have called an embarrassment of riches.

Yes, The Heathen Republican is that good.

Until yesterday, I would have favorably compared The Heathen Republican to John his own self. "Everyone has strengths and weaknesses," I would have said. "One visible strength of The Heathen Republican is intellectual integrity. John has other strengths."

My difficulty in following John's profound logic is this:

In my simple world, a chart is simply a visual aid, a tool, a method of communication. If I describe a trend as a series of points tending over time in an accelerating direction, I may put it into graph form for the sake of clarity. I would regard it as "Gospel" to the same degree that I would regard a hammer to be a house.

In fact, in an idle moment, my poor mush filled mind fell absently to substituting other forms of communication into John's condemnation of all things graphical. A number of folks bravely engage in public speaking. I found myself taking out "chartsists" and putting in "public speakers." I came up with this:

I have a partial rebuttal to the Heathen Republican's brutal assault, but I really kind of let it go, because I have long wanted to see public speakers defend their positions honestly, which thus far rarely happens.

A lot of debaters accomplish their debating on the internet. Heathen and I both write, for example. So I absently expanded John's condemnation to writing, taking out "chartists" and "charts" and making a substitution:

Generally, writers do not defend their "facts," even when other writers clearly have writings that refute them. They do not seek out the refutations (not the obviously flawed ones, but the ones of their peers), nor do they generally respond to them. Heathen made a very unusual exception in this case, and I applaud it.

I'm sure Heathen will be pleased at receiving credit for this rare piece of bright and shining honesty in the otherwise dismal gray cloud in which he dwells with his charts. At least he gets out into the cleansing fresh air, even if rarely. As John points out, I am perpetually imprisoned, with no redeeming features at all, stuck deep on the sandy bottom of an ocean of dishonest charts.

In fact, since words themselves are a tool of communication, and they can also be used dishonestly, I started putting in the word "word". This changed John's insight about my hypocrisy, the hypocrisy I can't seem to remember, regarding skeptics:

You claim that skeptics ignore "the facts," "won't even consider them." You have a real opportunity to show that you are actually interested in the truth and if the words are flawed, you wish to discover it, even if they are words that support a liberal stance.

Once I became aware of what I was doing I confess that I went a little crazy, in an elderly sort of way. In for a penny, as they say. Marching along a mental path that would disappoint a purist such as John, I put "communication" itself on trial. John's critique became this:

Since you consider communication to be "data," "truth," "gospel," I suspect you will rush over their post haste and defend the truth.

See you there.

Next week, John will join other Amish folk and condemn the dishonesty inherent in ... you know ... electricity.

See you there.