There I was, heaving a bow saw against the shrubbery, sweat running into my eyes, red-faced, and maybe looking a little over-stressed, and my wife gives me one of her looks and tells me that maybe I ought to call it a day, she was about to drive off to the dump with a load of brush and was a little bit afraid that she’d find me slumped into an unconscious heap when she got back.
Now you know, this is an affront to my manhood. I quickly marshaled many fierce replies, but I was slowed in delivering them because I was panting so hard. Otherwise, I was ready to tell her…
“At least I will have died like a man, with my tool in my hand!”
Or maybe the classic,
“We all gotta go some time.”
But then it sunk in that if I said anything like that, I would sound like Gary Johnson.
My gob, what an idiot. Aren’t you New Mexicans a little embarrassed about having elected this guy?
So I surrendered meekly and have gone into the house. I guess being sensible and cautious is one way to avoid surrendering to our fate.
Oh! And as I walked into the house, I got handed some bulky certified mail. Richard Carrier is suing 7 entities, and I’m two of them. He’s demanding $1,050,000 in compensation and another $1,050,000 in punitive damages. So there’s another fate I won’t be surrendering to.
Have you seen Gary Johnson’s tongue debacle?
yuk yuk yuk not even wrong.
long term view does not mean Billions of year timeframe.
what a dimwit.
I could not get 2 minutes into what he was saying. I take it he does not live near a sea port any where in the world. It will be really expensive to relocate all of the sea ports in the world to higher ground. I have no idea how to even estimate what it will cost, probably considerably more than switching to alternative energy sources could cost.
I have learned that when I start to throb and sweat profusely from exertion I am getting old and am not in the condition I was when I was in my 20’s and 30’s. It means it is time to take a break and maybe not try to accomplish too much all at once. And remember I am getting “payed” by the hour not by the piece .
uncle frogy
Well, serves you right. I reckon that the nothing that you and your pals did to him must have been quite devastating to his bottom line.
“At least I will have died like a man, with my tool in my hand!”
You have no idea how lucky you are that you didn’t say that! Your wife probably would have died laughing.
Gary Johnson is truly an idiot.
“Since the sun will go red giant in 2 billion years, we don’t have to worry about global warming in the next century.”
It’s basically, we are all going to die someday so why worry about anything?
We are all going to die someday. So why bother even getting up in the morning?
For a lot of reasons. We don’t own the earth. We just take care of it for the next generations, some of whom are our friends and children.
He’s suing? Wow, any plans to setup some kind of GoFundMe or for legal costs? It’s a model that worked well for Steven Novella I understand.
I’ll contribute!
He’s demanding $1,050,000 in compensation and another $1,050,000 in punitive damages.
What a schmuck. Whatever else it was, proving deductively that Jesus didn’t exist was mostly harmless. Now he’s graduated from abusing history to abusing the legal system–where a lot more damage can be done.
Yeah, we’ll probably have to set up something. It involves several specific individuals, the FtB network (which, according to the suit, I totally control), the Orbit network, and Skepticon, Inc, though, so we’re probably going to have to coordinate something.
It’s just so ludicrous, though. He feels justified demanding a million dollars in lost compensation from FtB? I had no idea we paid so well!
Dr. Evil: “One million dollars!”
Dr Evil’s lawyer: “Don’t forget my fee?”
Dr. Evil: “One million and fifty thousand dollars!”
No big deal.
1. I’ve been threatened with lawsuits so many times, I’ve lost count. All that happened was two guys ended up in federal court, charged with felonies.
2. I’ll echo some of the above.
Set up some sort of defense fund. I’ve contributed to many. We’ve never lost one yet.
I’m in for a few bucks. And a few more if it is needed.
I really, really don’t like bullies!!!
PS The truth is an absolute defense.
PPS Carrier is an idiot. Most of us had forgotten all about him and his problems. He just reminded us again. Really, he should sue himself for being an idiot.
Hmmm, I just called him an idiot. Twice. Maybe he will sue me. I can hope anyway.
Carrier seems to be all Wave and no Modulation.
Well, that goes a long way towards clearing him of the charge of being unethical.
Ah, the usual. He is free to express himself, anytime, anyplace, and in any situation, including criticizing you. You aren’t free to criticize him at all. Somebody who doesn’t truly understand free speech due to ego problems, like Trump.
…and predatory.
How is Johnson any different from any other Republican ex-governor? Just because he’s running as a Libertarian doesn’t cover up the basic insanity of the modern Republican party, to which he used to belong. (I’ll make an exception for Jon Huntsman. In 2008, he was pretty reasonable. so far as one found out anything about his opinions.)
Rabbit in the headlights stupid. SNL should do a skit on him, every time I see him he looks like he has no idea what he’s doing, and was some how talked into running due to a bet.
Is Richard suing for defamation, or is he going the full thunderf00t? Either way I don’t like his chances.
PZ et al./FTB’s should try to get this declared a SLAPP suit. Which it is.
Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.
Losers of SLAPP suits pay your attorney fees and court costs.
Minnesota is an anti-SLAPP state.
This will BTW, end up in federal court. Not all the accused live in the same state as Richard Carrier.
Pretty much this. The “compensation”, I’m willing to bet, is not for supposed lost revenue from FTB, but lost revenue because he thinks the reputation hit will affect his book sales. Thing is, if he’d just left peaceably and just gone somewhere else, and just kept doing his thing, he’d have been better off. Yeah, he’d get talked bad about in some circles, but he’s had plenty of defenders and I’d imagine most people who find his books for scholarly reasons won’t have been digging into his past before deciding on whether or not to buy. By filing a ridiculous (and ultimately doomed) lawsuit and making a complete spectacle of himself, he’s just reminding everyone of the very thing he’s worried people will think of when they hear his name. He really is his own worst enemy here.
1. He has forgotten the First Rule of Holes.
When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is…stop digging!!!.
This is really dumb.
2. He has turned something nebulous and minor into some major issue that is going to last for years. The federal courts are backlogged due to the GOP not letting any judge appointments through.
3. My knowledge of this whole situation is cursory. But from what I’ve seen, he is dead wrong and going to lose badly. He really doesn’t have a case at all.
4. I’m guessing based on how flimsy his case is, that he is simply trying to bully people. A lot of the time, they hope the accused get scared and refuse to show up. This actually works a lot of the time and they get a default judgement easily. They’ll keep the case going until the first day of court.
It wouldn’t work on me. I’ve been in federal court before on high stakes IP cases. I was nervous until after the first day. It’s no big deal.
The Plaintiff’s pulled a bunch of pathetic tricks to try to intimidate me. It didn’t work but it did make me mad.
1. The federal courts are seriously backlogged.
This article called it a crisis, a year ago.
2. I don’t know exactly how this translates into when a civil case filed now, gets heard.
3. I’m guessing the wait time will be a few years.
No point in waiting up on this one. Most likely, nothing is going to happen for years.
Regarding Carrier, didn’t he leave FtB voluntarily and on his own initiative?
@ 22 Gregory in Seattle
He’s said so himself.
(Source: richardcarrier.info/archives/586)
Wow, is he representing himself or did he somehow find a lawyer who has somehow missed the last 20 years of US legal history?
The magic word in this context is “47 USC 230(c)(1)”, and anyone who knows anything at all about Internet law knows about this one. (It has even been relevant specifically to the skeptic movement: Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch lost a case because of it, see Barrett v. Rosenthal.)
Carrier in a comment on his own blog made it clear that he believes that a blog network is subject to the same rules regarding liability as a print newspaper; this hasn’t been the case since 1996, and there’s a long list of legal precedents about it.
RIP my respect for Carrier as a human being (arrogant, entitled prat is how this makes him look) As far as I can see he’s pissed at people discussing women complaining about his flirting/inappropriate sex-talk, he’s enraged anyone can call it harassment/a mistake. Which seeing as he’s trying to be open and above-board poly is something he should take as an expected risk. If he cared about his reputation, he’d admit, apologise and try to do better (even if causing harm was never his intent – misunderstandings are miscommunications, intentional or not).
But his scholarly work remains interesting and worthwhile.
I’m choosing to read that as German numbers. He’s suing for 1 dollar 5 cent, which seems about right.
What a fucking child.
Johnson is just a boob. Glad his chances of a presidency are less than zero.
he thinks the reputation hit will affect his book sales.
That’s bestseller territory. Carrier’s in no danger of losing that kind of money from his books.
Just one note because it was something that annoyed me: I read Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus when it came out. It was interesting. But – I didn’t become aware until after I’d purchased it that it was essentially the first part of an argument about Jesus that he would continue in another (and more expensive) book. That should have been made plain in the book’s description itself; better yet, it should have been one book. Proving History had far too much about Bayes’ Theorem in general and far too little about its application to the existence of Jesus. I haven’t read, and won’t read, On the Historicity of Jesus because I was and remain thoroughly ticked off by the bait and switch, which has no place in scholarly publishing.
Lofty@#12:
Clever signal!
SC @29: I’ve read a few reviews of that book by mathematicians, and they all seem to be rather critical of his use of Bayes’ Theorem, even ones who are sympathetic to his views;
To be sure. But that’s the whole point of the suit anyway, to start with a ridiculous sum and hope to bully the other parties into settling for less. His argument will be that he is losing or will lose book revenue, but his goal is probably to NOT have to defend that in court. When he does have to though, he’s going to like how it ends.
He’s NOT going to like how it ends. Dammit, still too tired to type.
themadtapper
Just another way US let’s-settle-that-in-court culture is maddening. There is not sense of justice or respect for the legal system in that, it’s just using the legal system to bully and harass people.
It seems to me that Carrier’s approach may be an attempt at a Streisand-Trump PR move.
I clicked on the Johnson video but then decided I really didn’t want to listen to him being stupid again, and started watching it with the sound off. His doofus act is even more effective when you just look at his facial and body movements. Try it.
You should have said, “At least I will have died in your arms.”
whheydt
Bob Inglis was also outstanding (until he was knocked out of selection by a tea-partier).
@31 Rob Grigjanis
I never have gotten a real feel for Bayesian statistics—but I’m still working on it!
However my first thought when reading about Carrier using Bayes Theorem was the thought that Bayes Theorem is history’s new Quantum “whatsit” in medical woo.
That review seems to support me. Thanks
Not sure that’s a real quote?
Snopes rates the 2011 press club luncheon Mostly True, but gives a very different quote:
It gives the quote, in context, as (all emboldening in the original):
Snopes points out he is acknowledging AGW, and after some additional analysis concludes he seems to think spending money on AGW is pointless. He certainly does not seem to get it; e.g., that silliness about building new GHG generators (). (I myself also detect hints that he may think AGW is, with apologies to Douglas Adams, “mostly harmless”.)
jrkrideau @39: My own way of coming to grips with Bayes’ Theorem back in the day was to draw pictures. No idea if this will help you or anyone else, or if I’m telling anyone anything they don’t already know, but what the heck…
Draw a circle to represent the entire population. We’ll call the area of that circle 1 unit, so that areas correspond to overall probabilities. Within that, draw a circle to represent people with red hair; call that area A. Draw another circle to represent people with blue eyes; call that area B. Those last two circles will overlap, because some people have both red hair and blue eyes. So we have four distinct regions;
1) The one excluding all people with either red hair or blue eyes. Call this area w.
2) The one with red-haired people without blue eyes; that’s A excluding the overlap with B. Call this area x.
3) The one with blue-eyed people without red hair; that’s B excluding the overlap with A. Call this area y.
4) The overlap between A and B, which has people who have both red hair and blue eyes. Call this area z.
The probability of finding someone with red hair is P(A)=x+z
The probability of finding someone with blue eyes is P(B)=y+z
The probability that you will find someone with blue eyes among people with red hair is the conditional probability P(B|A), and that is the area of the overlap divided by the area A;
P(B|A) = z/(x+z)
The probability that you will find someone with red hair among people with blue eyes is the conditional probability P(A|B), and that is the area of the overlap divided by the area B;
P(A|B) = z/(y+z)
You can see right away that
P(B|A)P(A) = P(A|B)P(B) = z
So, assuming P(B) isn’t zero, we can write
P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)/P(B)