I agree, yours is a more reasonable interpretation. I think I was interpreting “winds” as referring to “the winds of evidence,” which is not reasonable in this context.
I do think your accusing me of “tribal affiliation signaling” was unnecessary and uncharitable: I don’t consider Bush to have been a significantly worse a president than any other recent presidents. I just happened to have run into the quote awhile back, and in my misinterpretation thought it was a good anti-rationality quote.
Edit: I did some thinking to try to figure out how I could have missed the obviously correct interpretation of Bush’s words. The first hypothesis (which Constant first put forth) was that I was signalling tribal loyalties—boo Republicans, yay Democrats. That does not make much sense, however, because I pretty solidly dislike all major political parties and the entire politics theater of the U.S. Maybe I was attempting to signal loyalty to the “boo politicians” tribe, but I think there’s a better explanation: a cached thought. Even though I do not currently belong to the anti-Republican tribe, I did belong to that tribe in my high school years (i.e. during Bush’ presidency), and I was most likely operating on a “Bush is stupid/irrational” cached thought.
I do think your accusing me of “tribal affiliation signaling” was unnecessary and uncharitable:
I swear that it was not my intent to make any statement about your motivation, and I have evidence of my intent. In another comment in this discussion I wrote:
I offer the hypothesis that the function of the repetition of these quotes down the years has been to signal tribal affiliation.
Notice that I wrote “down the years” and “has been”. I put in those words intentionally, to direct attention toward the repetition of the quote down the years and not toward the occurrence here in this forum.
Imagine if I had instead written:
I offer the hypothesis that the function of the repetition of these quotes was to signal tribal affiliation.
I might have written that because that still allows the intended historical interpretation, but it is more ambiguous because it also allows an interpretation that attacks you for posting the quote here now. I took pains to add words to avoid that interpretation.
Admittedly, I was not as careful over in this part of the discussion.
The memes you carry are not all your fault. I know that.
I agree, yours is a more reasonable interpretation. I think I was interpreting “winds” as referring to “the winds of evidence,” which is not reasonable in this context.
I do think your accusing me of “tribal affiliation signaling” was unnecessary and uncharitable: I don’t consider Bush to have been a significantly worse a president than any other recent presidents. I just happened to have run into the quote awhile back, and in my misinterpretation thought it was a good anti-rationality quote.
Edit: I did some thinking to try to figure out how I could have missed the obviously correct interpretation of Bush’s words. The first hypothesis (which Constant first put forth) was that I was signalling tribal loyalties—boo Republicans, yay Democrats. That does not make much sense, however, because I pretty solidly dislike all major political parties and the entire politics theater of the U.S. Maybe I was attempting to signal loyalty to the “boo politicians” tribe, but I think there’s a better explanation: a cached thought. Even though I do not currently belong to the anti-Republican tribe, I did belong to that tribe in my high school years (i.e. during Bush’ presidency), and I was most likely operating on a “Bush is stupid/irrational” cached thought.
I swear that it was not my intent to make any statement about your motivation, and I have evidence of my intent. In another comment in this discussion I wrote:
Notice that I wrote “down the years” and “has been”. I put in those words intentionally, to direct attention toward the repetition of the quote down the years and not toward the occurrence here in this forum.
Imagine if I had instead written:
I might have written that because that still allows the intended historical interpretation, but it is more ambiguous because it also allows an interpretation that attacks you for posting the quote here now. I took pains to add words to avoid that interpretation.
Admittedly, I was not as careful over in this part of the discussion.
The memes you carry are not all your fault. I know that.