Torture versus collateral damage; the bigger evil?

[carl]

Really? You understood "the perception that if you pool enough dubious loans together they somehow cease to be dubious" to be about government establishing perverse incentives? Because, wow. That's not at all what that phrase means.

I did understand. Though I had to read it real slow and then put my thinking cap on and cogitate hard before I got it. Because, wow, if government provides perverse incentives and subsidizes moral hazard, it may tend to lead to dubious groupthink.

Yeah, see, you can say you understand "stuff", but when you're flatly ignorant of the role the ratings companies played? That indicates that you actually don't understand stuff.

I already said I understood the offsides rule in soccer/football. That is stuff, I think.

Anyway, I do understand that because ratings companies were paid by financial institutions to rate them and the investments they offered there was an inherent conflict of interest. That was not a good thing. See, not so ignorant, at least not completely, totally, blindingly, maddeningly ignorant.

Regardless, that's twice you've shifted goalposts in a single page, which is more crap than I'm willing to deal with.

I have a question. How come when I wrote #### as part of a quote in post 77 it came out ####, but when you write crap, it comes out crap? I don't understand that.

[carl]

Backwards Observer:

You provide good links.

That one says more or less that the good stay good and the bad stay bad. Our elites, to me, seem to be trending bad. I don't know why either. Maybe it has something to do with the paramount importance of being nice. That may sound paradoxical but in order maintain the right (thank you RCMP), you have to say no at times, which isn't nice.

I don't know, I am still trying to puzzle this out.

[Surferbeetle]

Carl,

As long as we are considering things, 'a man's character is his fate' is attributed to Heraclitus...

...PBS Frontline always has some interesting programs:

The Crash: Unraveling the 1998 Global Crisis, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/crash/

Money, Power, & Wallstreet, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...r-wall-street/

...and the Open Secrets: Money in Politics website is always interesting, http://www.opensecrets.org

[carl]

Surferbeetle:

That Open Secrets site had an interesting quote by an airline captain. I'm sure he still has his job. You can do a lot as a captain, sometimes it's sort of fun.

[Backwards Observer]

Backwards Observer: You provide good links.

Better nip this in the bud.

Dorakyura Tsū: Noroi no Fūin

Simon thought he had destroyed him - but Count Dracula may have the last laugh. Castlevania is facing disaster, and Simon is turning into a vampire. Unless Simon can defeat Dracula once and for all, Castlevania is doomed.

Dorakyura Tsū: Noroi no Fūin

[carl]

Backwards Observer:

When did this turn into improv night?

I'm still laughing at that. Castlevania is doomed!

[motorfirebox]

I did understand. Though I had to read it real slow and then put my thinking cap on and cogitate hard before I got it. Because, wow, if government provides perverse incentives and subsidizes moral hazard, it may tend to lead to dubious groupthink.

Wow. Just... wow.

Wow.

[carl]

Wow. Just... wow.

Wow.

Yep. That's what they all say.

(stage direction: that is to be said in a drawling Clint Walker sort of way. Like when he said to Kim Novak in a movie "Just because I talk slow don't mean I'm peculiar.")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOiqicU5-tk

[motorfirebox]

Yep. That's what they all say.

(stage direction: that is to be said in a drawling Clint Walker sort of way. Like when he said to the dance hall girl in a movie "Just because I talk slow don't mean I'm peculiar.")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOiqicU5-tk

Mm. I'm posting this so that I'll remember to not engage with you in the future: you are, without a doubt, the least intellectually honest person I've ever tried to have a discussion with. If you put half as much effort into being smart as you do into trying to be clever, you wouldn't have to resort to shifting the discourse every time someone raises a solid point against your position. There are good, reasonable, convincing arguments against the arguments I'm putting forward--I know this, because other people have made them. You haven't. You've obfuscated, you've avoided, you've deliberately misunderstood, but you haven't debated with anything approaching honesty. It's a tiresome habit that you really ought to work yourself away from.

[carl]

Mm. I'm posting this so that I'll remember to not engage with you in the future: you are, without a doubt, the least intellectually honest person I've ever tried to have a discussion with. If you put half as much effort into being smart as you do into trying to be clever, you wouldn't have to resort to shifting the discourse every time someone raises a solid point against your position. There are good, reasonable, convincing arguments against the arguments I'm putting forward--I know this, because other people have made them. You haven't. You've obfuscated, you've avoided, you've deliberately misunderstood, but you haven't debated with anything approaching honesty. It's a tiresome habit that you really ought to work yourself away from.

We all have our faults. But at least my mother liked me.

Or alternatively- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cxNR9ML8k