{"id":339,"date":"2007-03-15T07:52:22","date_gmt":"2007-03-15T11:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=339"},"modified":"2007-03-15T07:52:22","modified_gmt":"2007-03-15T11:52:22","slug":"welcome-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"Welcome Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those with “edu” email accounts, the New York Times Select pages are now free. That means once again we can read David Brooks, a man who has been wrong about everything. It’s been a while. But maybe some will remember David Brooks<\/a>‘ favorite logical trope: the false dichotomy<\/a>. For Brooks, the false dichotomy results from a straw man. First, he caricatures the opposition viewpoint, then he sets up that caricature as the unacceptable alternative in a false dichotomy. So today<\/a> he misreads Carl Levin’s speech<\/a> yesterday in the Senate. Brooks says:<\/p>\n

>The intelligence agencies paint a portrait of a society riven at its base with sectarian passion. They describe a society not of rational game theorists<\/strong> but of human beings beset by trauma \u2014 of Sunnis failing to acknowledge their minority status, of Shiites bent on winner-take-all domination, of self-perpetuating animosities, disintegrating bonds and a complex weave of conflicts.<\/p>\n

The problem is that no one argues (and no one’s view can be taken to imply) that Iraqi society is composed of “rational game theorists.” And the falsity of that claim does not imply the somewhat orientalist notion that Iraqi society is “riven at its base with sectarian passion<\/strong>.” So not only does that claim infantalize the Iraqis, grossly mischaracterize Levin’s argument, but it also fails to take into account the obvious fact that sectiarian passions can take shape in the mind of rational game theorists. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those with “edu” email accounts, the New York Times Select pages are now free. That means once again we can read David Brooks, a man who has been wrong about everything. It’s been a while. But maybe some will remember David Brooks‘ favorite logical trope: the false dichotomy. For Brooks, the false dichotomy results … Continue reading Welcome Back<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brooks","category-false-dichotomy","category-straw-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}