Thread by @AriSchulman

They did it. Quillette published the @neiltyson mass shootings tweet defense.

Turns out it's #actually about "better...marshaling the available data," allocating "our resources most effectively," and responding based on "facts, rather than feelings." quillette.com/2019/08/29/pre…

Neither. Even in Rationalia, there could never be such a button to push. The idea that political life could be structured in such a way is the fantasy of a freshman comp sci student, and the question serves no end other than shaming us for having felt moral lives.

The unrivaled king of this is Peter Singer, who's made a career telling people they're emotional Neanderthals for feeling sad at pictures of starving kids, and as a result has been dubbed a heroic expander of the circle of moral concern.

Oh, you were sad about JFK getting assassinated? Do you know how many Americans died in 1963 of calcium deficiency? No, I'm just interested to know about the conditions in Paleolithic sub-Saharan Africa that might explain your emotional response, it's fascinating really

There are some dark places to which one could take this — consider how grotesque to the rationalist are our emotional responses to, say, the death of a loved one — but even for the purposes of satire the logical conclusions of this line of thought are beyond decency.

I am at a bus stop discussing arrival times when the young man next to me suddenly says: "The name of the common wild duck is Histrionicus histrionicus histroionicus."

I heap the scorn of Reason upon those who criticize him for injecting Facts into an emotional debate.