Category Archives: Logic

UPDATE III: Jeff Ashton: Class Act in the Classless Casey Anthony Case

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Law, Logic, Pop-Culture, The Courts

What a class act is Florida’s Assistant state attorney Jeff Ashton. What magnificent closing arguments he delivered in the case of the through-and-through sociopath, Casey Anthony. What a stellar presentation of evidence, rebuttal of the defense’s pie-in-the-sky’s clashing theories of the crime, and slap shod, ad hoc, invent-as-you-go narrative.

Ashton etched in evidence an identikit of the classic sociopath. Casey Anthony had never told the truth in her short life; had never done a day’s work in her life, and expected constant gratification and thrills at every turn. It’s a great shame that a man with as rigorous a mind as Ashton’s is retiring. I don’t blame him. Reason and reality, increasingly, will be lost on younger juries, who now inhabit a parallel, electronic universe where idiocy is normalcy.

One criticism of Ashton: His slurping of bottled water was annoying; he ought to have been supplied with glasses of water for his hard work.

Another is his theory of the day of the crime. It was well-done, but a little narrow for the morons in the jury box to grasp. Mommy dearest departed with her daughter, who was never again seen alive. It is, however, possible, even likely, that this wanton woman, a sociopath—who kept telling her parents she had a job, a babysitter, but had neither and was lying and stealing to keep herself in the loop of club life—lost it with the child, and climbed into her in a fit of rage.

The murder of Caylee Anthony was no accident, but it could have been committed in an unplanned manner too. Casey is clever, but she is also a bitch in rage (and in-heat). The child was probably spirited and willful, and this woman (now letting down her hair, primping and preening as though on a red carpet) had had enough of her child’s willfulness, and of the responsibility her (pretty liberal) parents attempted to foist on their difficult daughter.

“I have never been able to figure out why someone would cover up an accident by putting three pieces of duct tape over the nose and mouth of a child and then dumping him in a swamp. When children die of accidents, people call for help; that’s how it works in the real world, not in fiction.” (Ashton on CNN)

Rather than do the job with which they were entrusted, and deduce a logical sequence of events from the powerful evidence provided by the prosecution, the Millennial moron juror interviewed took elements of the profile and the evidence as discrete, atomistic items rejecting her duty to apply some deductive thinking. As I’ve said, short of a YouTube clip, nothing would have convinced these clods of the Anthony woman’s guilt.

Casey’s victory is about “winning”… in the Age of the Idiot.

[I can’t find transcripts of Closing. Can anyone send these?]

UPDATE I: I give your Dean Eckstadt, alternate juror. He instantiates most everything I said about the Millennials, some of who sat on this case. “Like, from the pictures, she seemed a good mother to me. Like she’s innocent. Like, it is what it is.”

I called this justice in the age of YouTube and I told you that there is something deformed about many younger Americans’ mindset and mentality, some of whom debuted on the jury. I’ve witnessed it in the young people with whom I am forced to deal in my interactions—narcissistic, informal, disrespectful to their elders and betters; they conflate how they feel with how things should work, they are the center of the universe, lazy, often incompetent, slow, can’t follow any logical, sequence or algorithm, conflate the personal and the professional. On and on. In short, Dean Eckstadt.

Behold another such specimen: Russel Heuckler. Not as young but as limited.

UPDATE II (July 11): “In Florida, there are two possible penalties for first-degree murder — life in prison without parole or the death penalty.” Also, as I understand it, there are two phases to a trial. The other, highly opinionated, young female juror doing the rounds, indicated that what weighed on her ability to deliberate was the fact that the prosecution had sought the death penalty. She was, however, prohibited from judging the evidence with the recommended penalty in mind. Moreover, the jury did not have to recommend the death penalty. When the sentencing phase commenced, they could have recommended life in prison. Not unexpectedly, Mike Huckabee was not apprised of this distinction. The man is a simpleton. Always has been.

In any event, the jurors currently proudly touting their exquisite sensitivity had flouted the Judge’s instructions in the matter of distinguishing the deliberation from the penalty phase of a trial. To these simple, Millennial minds, everything was enmeshed. And, of course, there was no footage of the act…

UPDATE III (July 11): And Greta keeps a straight face. I give you the YouTube youth vote on Jury Duty.

Update 2: ‘Genius’ In Contemporary America

America, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Logic, Music, Reason, The Zeitgeist

With the death of objective standards, the assessment of everything from cultural products to moral nature has become near impossible.

Consider: According to author Richard Reeves, classical liberal John Stuart Mill was “learning Greek at three, taking in Plato and Sophocles at ten, and turning, at eleven, to the mastery of Aristotle’s logic.” Indisputably a genius. Genial too, I believe—which goes against the romanticized notion whereby true genius involves eccentricities and crazy behavior. It seldom does.

The slow Morley Safer of “60 Minutes” has repeatedly provided examples of the difficulties fin de siècle America has in assessing genius.

Some time ago, Morely headed over to Julliard, if I recall, to feature a young man touted as a musical prodigy. The boy was full of affectation and acted eccentrically, as he obviously believed a young man of his “abilities” ought to.

Over the course of this most mundane hour, it became obvious that what you had here were pushy parents and their cocky, narcissistic son, who’d managed to eliminate along the way any opinion contrary to theirs with respect to their son’s designation as a musical genius.

One old school Russian master, who was of the opinion that the lad was not particularly good, was subject to complaints, and promptly dismissed. The rest at Julliard simply fell into compliance with the genius designation out of ignorance and pseudo-intellectualism.

Suffice it to say that to listen to the lad’s compositions was to know right away that he had very little to offer. Passion was remiss, other than for himself. Technique was non-existent. He had, however, watched a lot of Leonard Bernstein footage, as he emulated Lenny’s antics. Thing is, the prodigious Lenny, as repugnant a persona as he was, delivered. I myself am inspired to leap up in the air and land as did Lenny when listening to his recording of Stravinsky’s Firebird and Petrushka. Great fire and precision in that interpretation. (Actually I do leap in the air to Petrushka.)

Particularly amusing to this music lover—Bach, any Bach, and chamber music, in particular—was this goddamn-awful self-styled genius’ insistence that, like Bach, he never needed to erase the music he wrote down. I’m not sure this is fact or folklore, but it is said that Bach Senior wrote without having to erase.

Stupid Safer found this very convincing. I found this an example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy:

The moron had read that J. S. Bach never corrected the music he wrote. He concluded therefore that if he never erased the crap he transcribed he’d be in his right to lay claim to Bach-like genius.

Listening to this lad’s self-reverential, introspective, crappy, choppy compositions was all one needed to conclude that decades of tutoring with an exacting master would be required to produce a solid piece.

The revolting reality was that the pandering parents and pedagogues surrounding this lad partook in the charade.

Update 1 (April 6): Since it seems some readers have not understood what is meant by post hoc logic, let me try again. If A then B is correct in logic. In Bach’s case: his abilities (A) led to his not needing to rewrite what he wrote (B). The proof was in the pudding too, i.e., the music is heavenly; assessed by objective standards, Bach’s music epitomizes genius.

If B then A is wrong in logic. It is exactly the case of the stupid kid. He refuses to rewrite (B) and improve despite the opinion of people greater than he that this is indeed what is required of him if he is to improve. From the act of not rewriting (B), he and his accomplices have reasoned backwards and concluded that his abilities are Bach-like (A).

Reasoning backwards is an error, illogic, bogus. What this means it that there are many other reasons for his not rewriting. Hubris being one.

What had happened is that the lad had imbibed the story of Bach not rewriting, and concluded that if he did not rewrite (B), he indeed did not need to rewrite (A). That the music doesn’t approach reasonable standards in complexity and beauty certainly suggests that scrapping it and trying again is the first order of the day. That other fine—and thus so fired—teachers have suggested that a great deal of learning and rewriting is what’s required if an improvement is to be attained suggests that there are, if anything, good reasons to rewrite and rewrite a lot.

I’ve explained the post hoc error laboriously. If you fail to get this distinction, I can’t help much more that I already have.

Update 2: I’m delighted that Barely A Blog’s resident musician (settle down ye humorless; that was meant to sound pompous), Professor Ira Newborn, has dilated on the topic of the modern-day genius with his usual flare.

Ira is a well-known, highly-accomplished composer. He may be known more for his popular “motion picture soundtracks,” but I’ve heard some of his more serious compositions. Yeah, baby: those made me leap up in the air too, as does Lenny’s Fire Bird and Petrushka. I only wish the tracts where available to the public. How about it, Ira? How sad that the bad (Wonder Boy) pushes out the good (Ira).

Also, sample Sean Mercer for some of the hottest guitar playing you’ll hear with tight arrangements to match technical skill. The recording, which Sean engineered, is a little dated, but it holds up.

The Silly Sex?

Feminism, Gender, Logic, Reason

Barbara’s comments here sent me in search of a priceless excerpt from Norah Vincent’s book. Its title is self explanatory: Self-Made Man: My year Disguised as a Man.

Vincent, a lesbian in her regular life, describes dating women while disguised as Ned:

“I listened to [the women] talk literally for hours about the most minute, mind-numbing details of their personal lives; men they were still in love with; men they had divorced, roommates and co-worker they hated…. Listening to them was like undergoing a slow frontal lobotomy. I sat there stunned by the social ineptitude of people to whom it never seemed to occur that no one, much less a first date, would have any interest in enduring this ordeal …”

Seconded in my VDARE.com article, “The Silly Sex?”:

“The Apprentice candidates constitute a restricted sample, chosen for a combination of looks and status. Despite this, the disparities in character and cerebral agility between the men and the women could not be more glaring. An obviously dé class é act, the women would have been utterly risible if they were not so revolting….”

Question: Vincent had clearly dated women before. Had she always found them generally lacking? If not, what changed once she assumed her fictitious identity? I have an idea, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m tired.

Answer: Vincent probably dated lesbians, not straight women. The following are generalizations, but nonetheless valid, I believe: the lesbians I’ve known over the years (my sister, for one) are not as petty and self-absorbed as straight women. My best friend in Cape-Town was a beautiful and feminine gay woman. In addition to her keen intellect, we got on famously because she was without pettiness. There was no rivalry in the relationship just good intellectual rapport. I’d say she combined the emotional intimacy and empathic qualities often associated with women and the rationality and clear thinking identified with men. Although I still think that to make people fairer, kinder, and more compassionate, one has to first teach them to think and reason.

About such generalizations: Individualists, libertarians in particular, think that broad statements about aggregate group characteristics are collectivist, ergo 1) forbidden 2) erroneous. This is a confusion—it demonstrates an inability to jump a level of abstraction. Generalizations, provided they are substantiated by hard evidence not hunches, are not incorrect. Science rests on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample. People make prudent decision in their daily lives based on probabilities and generalities. That one chooses not to live in a particular crime-ridden area, for example, in no way implies that all residents there are criminals.

Men and women do in general display a different emotional and intellectual make-up, but this doesn’t preclude countless individuals from transcending the stereotypes associated with their gender. True, Oprah’s target market is huge—distressingly so. But a lot of women are not prone to becoming addled by Oprah.