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Rationality

Written 27 March as part of an apology I made about not assuming good faith, but not included in that apology because of length and the possibility it would have drowned out the apology itself, presenting it as insincere.

Reading back some of my own comments on Wikipedia, it strikes me that I probably come across as an utter bastard to those I challenge, and as a pedant to some others who might snicker at me.

The reason for thinking about this at all is not remorse or any sense of warm and fuzzy goodwill. It is about working out how to more effectively convey my sense of impatience with the all too frequent demands that information be subjected to a test of democratic consensus. Every fibre in my being recoils from traducing information by making it subject to lazy opinions and irrationality thrown at me by couch patatoes who know more about Oprah's weltanschauung than she does.

My civilization has invested considerable effort and resources in providing me with the methodologies and history of the scientific method, of academic debate, and with evidence of the paramount importance of adequately referencing my own small contributions to this endeavour.

Part of my journey in the academy was the discipline that comes from being opposed to the soft-left academic consensus and having to fight tooth and nail to put my position without having it laughed off the table. That meant extra special attention to referencing my work. Sometimes I had ten or eleven references for a paragraph as long as this one, just to make sure no one could say I was pulling opinion out of a hat (or my arse).

It struck me as testament to the robust and resilient nature of the Western academy that my most influential tutors were a Trotskyite (during my undergraduate studies) and a Bukharinist Marxist (in my post-graduate work): ideogically these two people were as far removed from my own JS Mill, Tom Paine, Burke, Hayek liberal tendencies as it was possible to be, but they both mentored me selflessly, teaching me how to get get my point across in a manner that saw me not only pass their subjects, but excel academically and according to their own standards while disagreeing with them vehemently. (American readers please note: liberalism does not mean limpid left in the UK and Australia, but is rather more conservative in appearance when discussed here).

It is that discipline that was the real benefit of my education, not the readings, the passionate arguments, the drunken nights, the awesomely smart girls, etc. The discipline of knowing how to mount an academic argument that can withstand all rational challenge, that fully explains what ideas are borrowed and from whom, and that offers opinion only as a rational conclusion from carefully referenced assertions.

And that discipline is actually the Western tradition of rational debate, which is not to be subjected to ideological terrorism or religious intolerance through censorship or the imposition of irrational demands that others obey or respect irrational viewpoints at the point of a gun, in the confessional, or by weight of numbers (the tyranny of the majority).

That an encyclopaedia should be even more exacting, by removing even the possibility of reaching a rational conclusion at the end of a referenced exposition of a line of reasoning, is an absolute prerequisite for a work like Wikipedia. If anyone could infect information with personal bias, then it's not information anymore, it's ideology. Just because I fervently believe something doesn't make it fact, nor my right to impose that opinion on others under the guise of 'truth', that most tendentious of all words.

So when I sharply dismiss in these pages and discussions a whole bunch of assertions that strike me as lazy, disingenuous, spurious, irrational, and ludicrous, etc, I'd like to think that those people worth talking to will have considered what I mention here from their own perspectives before engaging me in fantastical claims that we can find the lost city of Atlantis if we just all have enough faith, or that I will become a born again Christian because not to do that would be evil, or that I should respect mysticism as science because ... You get the picture.

If you've read this far you know why I will never lie down for mendacity, tautological tendentiousness or plain sophistry. So if sometimes I come across as brusque, gruff, discourteous or in some other way too sharp, it is because I think some people who are just lazy about the assertions they make don't deserve anything better. I know that this makes me less than admirable as a human being, but I'm not looking for a sainthood, and I expect more from people who debate here than half-arsed petulance, thin-skinned sulkiness and demands to be heard just because they can say so.