On 1/9/2013 9:10 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:54:45 -0800, the following appeared
> in sci.skeptic, posted by George Plimpton >:
>
>> On 1/8/2013 1:57 PM, Dutch wrote:
>>> Bob Casanova wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:49:04 -0500, the following appeared
>>>> in sci.skeptic, posted by dh@.:
>>>>
>>>>> What do you want people to think is preventing you from
>>>>> benefitting from
>>>>> life?
>>>>
>>>> Goalpost shift? Your assertion was that "life is a benefit",
>>>> not that "one can benefit from life"; I certainly have no
>>>> argument with the latter. The answer to your *actual*
>>>> original assertion that "life is a benefit" is by
>>>> counterexample (two of them, actually; there are more
>>>> available on request):
>>>>
>>>> The fact that you think there's some nebulous "benefit" in
>>>> being born with a painful heart defect which kills you
>>>> before the age of one, or born to abusive addict parents who
>>>> beat you to death at the age of two (neither of which is any
>>>> sort of "benefit"), is sufficient to reject your conjecture
>>>> that "life is a benefit". A short life of nothing but pain
>>>> isn't a "benefit".
>>>>
>>>> Now stop snipping the answer and claiming I've given no
>>>> answer, you lying sack of shit.
>>>>
>>>
>>> If by "life" one means the circumstances around you then they can be a
>>> benefit or a harm. But he doesn't mean that, he is equivocating. He
>>> means the very process of living,
>>
>> He means existence, period - with no regard to the quality of the existence.
>
> That's exactly what he claimed. Until now, that is. Now it
> seems he may have caught on to the idiocy of that position.

He sort of vacillates back and forth. I beat the stuffing out of him on
this issue a few years ago, actually (so did Dutch), and that's when he
began his clumsy attempts at equivocation, but on occasion, he falls all
the way back to claiming that coming into existence, or "getting to
experience life" as he puts it in his wretchedly shitty cracker
terminology, is a benefit. He waffles back and forth now.


> He should have, as it's been explained enough times with
> enough examples that even he should finally "get it", and
> he's trying to weasel-word around his idiocy in hopes no one
> will notice. Unfortunately for him he's too stupid to do so
> with even minimal competence, and too arrogant and dishonest
> to admit his errors.

You seem much more reluctant - quite possibly you refuse - to believe in
any explanatory power of the sort of regional and class stereotypes I
have used to describe ****wit, but I think there is some explanatory
power in them. He really is a poorly educated and backward cracker.
Although he claims to have been born elsewhere, he spent most of his
youth in benighted territory in the far outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia.
He exemplifies southern anti-intellectual know-nothingism. If you've
ever read or had any exposure to Richard Hofstadter's
"Anti-Intellectualism In American Life", you know that he was writing
about the ****wits of America.


>>> and that can't benefit you, because it
>>> *is* you. But honestly, I don't think he knows he's doing it, he's too
>>> stupid, he has just rehearsed all these different tortured wordings to
>>> escape facing the utter stupidity of what he is saying for so long that
>>> he thinks they make sense.
>>
>> He picked up this lame trick from someone else, and he doesn't know how
>> to manipulate it.
>
> Seems so...

It is so. There is no way ****wit thought this up by himself. He
hasn't had an original thought in his life. In all seriousness, he
really hasn't.