{"id":525,"date":"2007-12-14T08:51:56","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T12:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=525"},"modified":"2007-12-15T13:27:47","modified_gmt":"2007-12-15T17:27:47","slug":"may-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=525","title":{"rendered":"May only"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I have nothing to say, I&#8217;m going to borrow wholesale from <a href=\"http:\/\/sadlyno.com\/\">Sadly, No!<\/a> an entertaining blog.  <\/p>\n<p>First, some set up.  Glenn Reynolds, a kind of conservative law professor and well known blogger, cites with approval the following passage:<\/p>\n<p>>LEE HARRIS ON UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: \u201cIt is simply a myth to believe that <strong>only<\/strong> interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all <strong>may<\/strong> produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be <strong>different<\/strong> from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.\u201d  posted at 02:21 PM by Glenn Reynolds.<\/p>\n<p>This remark produces the following hilarious retort from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sadlyno.com\/archives\/8163.html\">Gavin M. of Sadly, No!<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>>Well, that\u2019s certainly one way to look at things.<\/p>\n<p>>For that matter, if I hadn\u2019t accidentally flushed my wallet down the toilet, who\u2019s to say that some maniac wouldn\u2019t have come along and flushed it down a toilet anyway? It would almost certainly have been a different toilet, but there is no obvious reason to think that the result would have been better.<\/p>\n<p>>It is simply a myth to believe that only self-wallet-flushing yields unintended consequences, for doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. Say, can I see your wallet for a second?<\/p>\n<p>I suppose the unfunny thing I would have said was that this is what you call the argumentum ad ignorantiam&#8211;i.e., when one turns the lack of evidence for a belief into evidence for it.  If that sounds too dumb to be true, just reread Reynolds&#8217; original post.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I have nothing to say, I&#8217;m going to borrow wholesale from Sadly, No! an entertaining blog. First, some set up. Glenn Reynolds, a kind of conservative law professor and well known blogger, cites with approval the following passage: >LEE HARRIS ON UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: \u201cIt is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=525\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">May only<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[19,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appeal-to-ignorance","category-bloggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","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=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}