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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 07/23/2009 :  21:04:10   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Kil

Yeah. Good points. It was a massive ad hominem that really says nothing about global warming and a lot about Penn. Oh well.

Perhaps I'm softer on him because he replied the way I wanted him to reply when I asked him if libertarianism should be the default politic for skeptics. I dunno.

Shermer is driving me crazy.
The big difference between P&T and Shermer, regardless of your politics or your understanding of AGW or SHS, is that P&T also have a really entertaining magic act.

In other words:
Shermer: Skepticism and Libertarianism.

P&T: Skepticism, Libertarianism and really cool tricks.
I'm only half joking. I haven't seen the Bullshit! episode on AGW (stopped getting Showtime ages ago), but I understand that it was lacking in interviews with scientists, instead interviewing Cato Institute hacks and the like. I did see the SHS episode, which featured Steven Milloy of the Cato Institute so much that he's the only guy I remember from it. Cato is Libertarian, through and through, so without overtly proselytizing Libertarianism, those episodes were promoting Libertarian positions nonetheless (and calling "bullshit" on opposing views).

In other words, I have little doubt that there exist at least a few people who saw those P&T episodes, learned the lessons being offered, and only stumbled across Libertarianism later on and said, "these people think just like I do about these issues, so I'm joining up!" They may still have little idea of what the Cato Institute is, but they've been converted, anyway, by P&T.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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Dude
SFN Die Hard

USA
6891 Posts

Posted - 07/23/2009 :  22:54:32   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Dude a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Anytime I see "CATO" in a P&T episode my bullshit detector goes off.

They are mostly on the money though. If they would leave politics and the occasional unevidenced claim/position out of their show it would still be great.


Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin

Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth
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