Woodreads 6
hoo boy
“Gristle, flex-muscle.”
Interesting that Syr learned her earliest diplomatic tricks not from books but from her own father. His hatred for humans tends to obscure it, but he does have some political instinct; he wouldn’t be rising through the ranks of government without it.
Fr’Nj’s talents started appearing early, it seems.
The literary passage here is a variation on the old aphorism, “Those who do not read have no advantage over those who cannot read.” I’m afraid I bought into its attribution to Mark Twain, which appears to be false, but the last few words in the passage do at least infuse it with some of Twain’s sense of humor.
Makes me think of this quote: “I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying ‘flee at once – all is discovered.’ They all left town immediately.” -Mark Twain
Another good example of Mark Twain as misattribution magnet – I believe that one is from Conan Doyle…
If you’re curious about its origins, I’d recommend the link in the text. I tend to trust Quote Investigator; its research is fairly exhaustive…
Oh, wait, you’re talking about the “telegram” quote above. New one on me!
First place I have seen that “quote” was Civilization 5, when your civ picks up the Telegram tech. The quote almost certainly predates that but it is probably where a lot of people have heard it.
That must have been from a mod; there was no Telegram tech in Civilization 5.
Telegraph though. https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Telegraph_(Civ5)
We have quite a few people like this IRL…
Actually, a good number of people we disagree with – at least, I would disagree with – have faulty information on one topic or another. Out of frustration, I may resent them for not listening to arguments from my side, but at least the issue could be framed as “they hold their intelligence as valuable/more valuable than our intelligence”.
Makes me wonder which topics I have faulty information on.
OTOH, there are people who like to go around claiming how their opponents are “over-educated”, and more generally are going out of their way to stay ignorant. To put the quoted sentence another way, these people value their opinion as more valuable than your facts.
Those… yikes.
Avoid them. Use spears if necessary.
My experience of the past 30 or so years has led me to believe that the level of investigation you do should be proportional to the level of your participation in society, and not (primarily, at least) based on the desire to win arguments.
In other words, my takeaway has been that if you aren’t going to do at least some of your own research, you shouldn’t be voting (let alone running for office), and you definitely shouldn’t be making arguments. (Corollary: you shouldn’t even be boosting other people’s arguments, no matter how much you may personally like them.)
Bringing this back around to the topic of your post: The people in your second category don’t usually do their own research, but they do, necessarily, think that talking to their peers and evaluating their reasoning is valuable.
The problem tends to be that they don’t know how bad they are at evaluating anyone’s reasoning.
So, wondering which topics you have faulty information on is a good start when it comes to not being those people.
SamKlem’Ns. Love it.