What Baldur is describing is not uncommon. It is what makes Ethan both so stubborn and so irritating on the issues of contact.

I assume by "reality-distorting" you mean some kind of cognitive dissonance was appearing which I don't see.

They are out there and I pointed them out.

[[Hard work creates value]] but [[soldiers and mercenaries are useless]].

Both cannot be true. (I happen to believe both are false, but the direct counter I did was that both cannot be true).

Dissident's answer is that the professions of soldiers and mercenaries do not help society. (Again I believe that to be false, but I never made that point). That answer there is a recognition that work, indeed, is not what creates value -- but rather, something else, something like "making society better off". Work may be a prerequisite to make society better off; after all, Edison needed workers to lay electrical lines out, after he discovered how to transmit electricity and what its uses could be. But it cannot make society better off by itself, just by existing: hence my example of the Nazi camp prisoners who carried rocks from one place to another over and over. He does share that view with regard to certain professions, as he made clear. Yet he doesn't see that is an implicit recognition that work is not what creates value. Definitely not alone; at best, when it is work "that helps society". That is, a refutation of LTV.

[[Accountants and corporate lawyers are useless]] but [[regulations and taxes are good]].

Accounting is essentially the science of complying with tax codes. If it wasn't for tax codes, individuals and small companies would be able to calculate the money going in and going out on a single sheet of paper, and the mathematically challenged could just use a basic spreadsheet app on their phone. Accountants exist because tax codes are so cumbersome. Dissident likes cumbersome tax codes, but then is horrified at their logical outcome: people specialize on learning how to comply with them, and get hired by individuals and companies to do their taxes. Corporate lawyers worry themselves with taxation somewhat, too, but mostly they exist as a specialized branch of law to comply with regulation. Cumbersome regulation requires corporate lawyers to tell a company how to comply and to defend them when they don't. Again, he likes cumbersome regulation of corporations, and then is horrified at the logical outcome of creating the profession of helping comply with regulations.

but qtns stopped 'debating' and became arrogant and started 'making fun of' the supposed ignorance of an opposing view, namely the value of hard work or The Labor Theory of Value. 

My style is no secret. Ask Todd.

Piling on with an absurdity that the rich give to charities and create museums and nature preserves out of generosity to the masses instead of tax write-offs and monuments to themselves in name.

I am not a telepath. This is as true talking to Ethan and Todd as to Dissident. I cannot know motives. So I should not attribute motives.

Still... if tax write offs are motives for rich people financing good causes, do you care more about the tax write off motive or the good cause financed as a consequence?

And if monuments to themselves in name are a motive, does that not contradict that profit trumps everything? Egotistical as it can be, maybe a name is a better motivator than a dollar sign?

And . . . I have some experience with so called "reality distorting substances". They don't always distort reality. Sometimes they expand it.

Likely shorter than yours but I do have it. He is right that I should stop posting sober.







Cuteness is to die for
Cuteness cannot fail
Cuteness knows no limit
Cuteness will prevail