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I agree that a lot of what he says and does makes no sense. I was just showing disdain for the "broken clock" insult which is so easy to throw around.
by artursapek 10y ago
I agree that a lot of what he says and does makes no sense. I was just showing disdain for the "broken clock" insult which is so easy to throw around.
- mikeash 10y agoI don't get it. Sure it's an easy thing to throw around, but any brief criticism is. Shouldn't your assessment be based on whether it's based on something of substance, not whether it's easy?
- artursapek 10y agoIt's basically saying "I often disagree with this person, so when I agree with them I refuse to admit that they have some virtue and deserve credit for it - they are still broken and bound to be correct sometimes out of pure chance." You don't see how that's kind of pathetic?
- mikeash 10y agoNo, because that's not how I interpret it at all. I already explained how I interpret it: since he takes virtually every position possible, even contradictory ones, without any apparent thought or reasoning, any positions which are good are that way purely by coincidence, and therefore aren't worth anything. The proverbial broken clock isn't useless because you disagree with broken clocks and refuse to acknowledge when they're correct. They're useless because they have no actual connection to the information they purport to convey, so even when that information is correct, it's still useless. If I make a random number generator that prints out values between 15,000 and 25,000, I will sometimes correctly predict the closing value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the day. That fact is not worth a damn, though.
- ygaf 10y agoThe original poster you replied to already went to the bother of backing that buzzword/phrase up.