May 29, 2004

Physician, Heal Thyself

Posted by Kieran

Glenn Reynolds responds to criticism from Matt Yglesias:

Instead of blaming the messenger, perhaps a bit of soul-searching would be in order.

You said it, mate.

Posted on May 29, 2004 04:13 AM UTC
Comments

Your quote from Glenn Reynolds would lead readers to believe that he is the one who should be doing the soul-searching, whereas a reading of his post causes me to believe he is referring to himself as the messenger and the press as needing that inward look.

Posted by Physh · May 29, 2004 04:58 AM

Yes, Glenn does thrive on self-delusion.

Posted by fyreflye · May 29, 2004 05:34 AM

That’s the joke.

I found it came across quite easily without clicking through or even knowing a bit of background.

Posted by wcw · May 29, 2004 05:35 AM

That is one of the most clearly simple and singularly beautiful examples of projection I think I have ever seen. Breathtaking.

Posted by Kip Manley · May 29, 2004 05:49 AM

Indeed.

Posted by bad Jim · May 29, 2004 06:23 AM

That guy is really a piece of work. The hypocrisy isn’t even out of context, for those of you who didn’t click through — Matt is criticizing him for scapegoating the Times and encouraging vandalism against their property.

Posted by neil · May 29, 2004 06:31 AM

This is the problem with instapundit links, I really want to avoid clicking through to his site, giving him advertising money and increasing his pagehits by one for the next time he does one of those “5 trillion hits this month!” posts.

Posted by bryan · May 29, 2004 07:01 AM

I do believe that’ll be my last hit on Instapundit. Not that I’ve visited him often before, but there’s just never any intellectual payoff. Just a lawyer playing with rhetoric, badly, pathetically trying to project brilliance and insight that are MIA. Who needs that bullshit?

Posted by robbo · May 29, 2004 07:55 AM

Isn’t Instapundit the guy who was worried that overuse of Free Speech might endanger its use?

I would nominate him for an ILA (intellectual Laziness Award).

Posted by DCharles · May 29, 2004 08:56 AM

I bellieve that I read here of a name for the problem caused by assuming that one is right.

Since most arguments are incomplete there is usually some description of the world that in which one remains right even in the face of the strongest evidence.

It seems to me that bloggers are extremely prone to this. For example Steven den Beste arguing that the war was a Bush masterstroke that would cure the deficit problem by bringing oil down to $20 a barrel.

Even more open minded souls suffer. Read Tacitus who has the rigour to see that you can’t really describe the war as going well still find ways to argue that not invading would have been worse.

I believe the name was something like Buggin’s paradox where Buggin is a relatively recent and possibly British philosopher. If I am deluded in this I propose calling it the Sherlock Holmes fallacy. If you eliminate the apparently impossible and what remains is extremely improbable, it’s really worth checking if the alternatives really were impossible. cf Daniel’s latest post at d-squareddigest .

Posted by Jack · May 29, 2004 09:46 AM

Heh.

(I can’t believe I just wrote that)

Posted by Mr Ripley · May 29, 2004 11:12 PM

Indeed.

Posted by Backword Dave · May 29, 2004 11:46 PM

Read Tacitus who has the rigour to see that you can’t really describe the war as going well still find ways to argue that not invading would have been worse.

On the contrary: I said precisely the opposite here.

Posted by Tacitus · May 30, 2004 02:06 AM

Dos Reynold read his own blog?

You have to wonder.

But boy, does he ever have a capacity for irony.

Posted by Insta_Irony · May 30, 2004 07:34 AM

I drop in to Crooked timber to get some alternative world-view comments. Being from Australia I am used to very homogeneous attitudes in my media commentators. It is terrific to get some diversity, in quality comments from places like Crooked timber, Oxblog - and Instapundit.

Drop over to PC Watch or the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler if you want something to bitch about.

Posted by Chrisper · May 31, 2004 08:44 AM

Jack/Sherlock-
Do you run your own blog?

Posted by q · June 1, 2004 05:28 PM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.