Are You Smarter Than A Super Bowl Quarterback? By Paul Hsieh @ 11:37 AM
Both Eli Manning (quarterback for the Super Bowl-bound New York Giants) and his older brother Peyton (quarterback for last year's Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts) are regarded as very intelligent men. What I didn't know is that Eli is considered smarter than Peyton, at least by one standard NFL measure of intelligence. According to this New York Times article:
[Eli] Manning posted a score of 39 out of 50 on the Wonderlic, the intelligence test administered by N.F.L. teams to evaluate draft prospects. It was 11 points higher than Peyton's score and well above the average.
If you want to know how you stack up to the Manning brothers, a sample test is available here. Just multiple the number right on these 20 questions by 2.5 to get your Wunderlich score.
Specifically, 21, considered an average score, is equivalent to the average IQ of 100. Higher scoring applicants are supposed to learn more rapidly, master more complex material, and exercise better judgment while lower scoring applicants tend to require more time, detailed task instruction, and less challenging job routines. 25 is the average score for quarterbacks and offensive linemen. Other positions average about a 20.
(For what it's worth, I did better than Eli on the sample test. But I can't throw a football spiral to save my life.)
1) A pregnant mother who had a prior Caesarean section now wants to deliver her next baby at home.
2) Her obstetrician warns her that it's dangerous and advises the she have the baby in a hospital.
3) The mother ignores her doctor's advice and has a home birth anyways.
4) The baby is born with "severe brain damage".
5) The doctor gets sued. According to the article, "Plaintiffs told prospective jurors earlier this week that they are seeking more than $13 million in damages."
Question: Can you spot the logical fallacy in the plaintiff's case? More importantly, will the jury?
Answer: The doctor's defense lawyer correctly states, "[T]he physician should not be held accountable 'for choices she didn't make, and for choices she counseled against.'"
Extra credit question: Would this sort of thing increase or decrease medical costs?
Effective Standing Orders By Diana Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
Usually, when a person needs to remember to do something, he gives himself a standing order associated with some trigger, e.g. "check the tire pressure and wiper fluid when changing the oil on the car." Sometimes, however, new standing orders will not stick to well-automatized actions. Case in point:
Early last spring, I bought a well-reviewed, cheap car seat heater. I'm using it regularly this winter. Unfortunately, it remains fully operational -- and so drains the car battery -- if left plugged into the cigarette lighter when the car is off. Predictably, I left it plugged in a few times accidentally, despite my best efforts to remember to unplug it when turning off the car. I should just be able to add it to my standard leaving-the-car checklist, I thought. That didn't work at all, however. A few weeks ago, I finally managed to drain my car battery. (Thankfully, I did so at a convenient time, as I was home and didn't need to go anywhere. Paul gave me a jump.) Given the inflexibility of my teaching schedule, that's not a consequence I could afford to risk in the future.
After that, I considered buying a "battery drain guard" (like this one), but I hate to spend $20 on a silly memory problem. So I decided to try a different solution. Instead of trying to remember to unplug the heater, I plug it in in such a way that I can't forget. I run the rather long cord over my thigh so that it's totally out of the way -- until I try to leave the car. Then I need to unplug the heater to get out of the car smoothly. So far, I've found it totally reliable: it's easy to remember to plug it in via that convoluted route and impossible to forget to unplug it.
The basic reason why this new method works whereas my old method failed is that my getting-out-of-the-car routine is very thoroughly automatized. I'm not thinking of the car seat heater; I have no immediate reason to do so. That's not true of plugging in the car seat heater; it happens whenever I notice that I'm cold. So while I'm already thinking about it, I can easily plug it in by a slightly odd route.
So I'd put the general principle as follows: If you're trying to automatize some new action, don't attempt to force yourself to remember ex nihilo, but instead find some way to connect to it to your natural patterns of thought.
Notably, that's precisely what a well-managed (i.e a GTD-type) task list does. Instead of overloading your mind with the task of remembering all that you need and want to do, you only need to automatize checking and managing your task list. For people with lots to do like me, such a task list is essential not only to productivity but also to basic peace of mind.
If I were a betting man, I'd sell Europe short. Assuming that I could find any economically-literate Europeans who'd take the other side of the trade...
I successfully defended my prospectus today. It went fabulously well. The four (of five) faculty on my committee able to attend seemed broadly supportive of my project, with good questions, comments, and challenges. They voted to pass me, so now the only work left for my Ph.D is my already-in-progress dissertation.
Paul and I are headed out to celebrate by consuming vast quantities of delicious calories!
More Football By Diana Hsieh @ 3:32 PM
During this football season, Paul and I have taken to watching The NFL Channel if we have some extra time while exercising but nothing to watch on DVD. The analysis shows are reasonably good -- although we definitely prefer HBO's "Inside the NFL." The essentialized "NFL Replay" games are fun to watch, as are the significant games from past seasons. When listening to some lecture or fiction on my iPod, I'll often watch games on the NFL channel with the sound off, as that keeps my brain occupied enough to concentrate on the audio material.
A few days ago, I watched a portion of 1998's Superbowl 32: Denver vs Green Bay. (I was also listening to Onkar Ghate lecture on philosophy!) That's ancient history for me, as I only began watching football two seasons later.
When I began watching football, my goal was to be nothing more than a very casual fan. I thought I'd know which teams were doing well each season, enjoy watching a few games, but not much more than that. In fact, I even said that I couldn't imagine learning the names of players.
How times have changed! Of course, I recognized tons of players from this old game, most notably the very young-looking Brett Farve, but also McCaffrey, Davis, Sharpe, etc. The two head coaches were also familiar faces. I recognized the commentators: Phil Simms looks so much older today. However, what blows me away is that I recognized Ed Hochuli. He wasn't nearly so buff then as he is now. And he isn't the only referee I know on sight! Plus, I now have very definite preferences for in-the-booth commentators: I adore Chris Collinsworth above all others.
If someone had told me ten years ago that I'd be such a devoted NFL fan, I would have gotten a good chuckle from such crazy talk.
Utah Supreme Court justices acknowledged Tuesday that they were struggling to wrap their minds around the concept that a 13-year-old girl could be both an offender and a victim for the same act -- in this case, having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend.
The Ogden, Utah, girl was put in this odd position because she was found guilty of violating a state law that prohibits sex with someone under age 14. She also was the victim in the case against her boyfriend, who was found guilty of the same violation by engaging in sexual activity with her. "The only thing that comes close to this is dueling," said Associate Chief Justice Michael Wilkins, noting that two people who take 20 paces and then shoot could each be considered both victim and offender. And Chief Justice Christine Durham wondered if the state Legislature had intended the "peculiar consequence" that a child would have the simultaneous status of a protected person and an alleged perpetrator under the law.
...State authorities filed delinquency petitions in July 2004, alleging that each had committed sexual abuse of a child, a second-degree felony if committed by an adult. The girl appealed the petition, saying her constitutional right to be treated equally under the law had been violated. Her motion noted that for juveniles who are 16 and 17, having sex with others in their own age group does not qualify as a crime. Juveniles who are 14 or 15 and have sex with peers can be charged with unlawful conduct with a minor, but the law provides for mitigation when the age difference is less than four years, making the offense a misdemeanor. For adolescents under 14, though, there are no exceptions or mitigation and they are never considered capable of consenting to sex.
I do agree with the general principle that children below a certain age cannot genuinely consent to sex with an adult. But I'm not sure what the proper legal approach should be for two such children who engage in sex with one another.
Dolphins Create Rings of Air Bubbles By Paul Hsieh @ 6:00 PM
Cool video: "Dolphins have been observed to create bubble rings by exhaling air carefully in the middle of the vortices caused by the motion of their fins through the water, among other techniques. Besides being nice to look at (and a neat demonstration of fluid mechanics), this phenomenon also might throw some light on dolphin cognition, since the skill to create the rings is a bit subtle and tends to be taught from one dolphin to the next via careful observation and practice."
The article does not state any conclusions about the factors that give rise to this result. Of course, my own guess is that the medical practice is relatively more free (i.e., less socialized) in the US than in those other three countries, thus making it a more desirable place for doctors to work and live.
What: A talk making the case that capitalism is the only moral social system. A Q&A will follow.
Where: Kimmel Center, Room 914, New York University, 60 Washington Square South, NY, NY 10012 Maps and directions: http://www.nyu.edu/about/virtual.html.
Description: Despite the enormous success of American capitalism at producing material abundance and political freedom, critics continue their assault on the system, calling it immoral. In this lecture, Dr. Eric Daniels makes the case that capitalism is the only moral social system. He also examines the conventional defense of capitalism, which relies on the practical, economic argument, and illustrates why only a defense of pure laissez-faire capitalism can succeed.
Bio: Dr. Eric Daniels is a visiting scholar at Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He taught for five years at Duke University, in the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, and at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his doctorate in American history. He has lectured internationally on the history of American ethics, American business and legal history, and the American Enlightenment. Daniels's publications include a chapter in Abolition of Antitrust and five entries in the Oxford Companion to United States History.
Eric Daniels is one of my favorite speakers. So go, if you can!
Three Bourne Movies?!? By Diana Hsieh @ 8:30 PM
Over the past week, Paul and I watched all three Bourne movies: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum.
In a sense, they weren't terrible. The plots were basically coherent. The characters were mostly consistent. Yet the movies added up to nothing but a series of totally forgettable zeros.
The action, particularly the all-too-regular chase scenes served no purpose, except to inadvertently suggest (1) that Jason Bourne wasn't terribly good at the stealth for which he was supposedly trained to perfection and (2) that for all his angst about his prior killings, Jason didn't mind killing and maiming commuters and pedestrians.
The characters were just puppets acting out their parts, without rhyme or reason beyond "that's just who he/she is." Heck, they weren't even interesting puppets. Jason Bourne is driven to uncover his past, whatever the cost, but without any compelling reason for doing so except some nightmares. His years-long love affair with Marie was absurd: two people meet accidentally then fall deeply in love for no reason whatsoever.
None of the movies had any theme or purpose or point whatsoever. They were just playing out the plot for its own sake. Basically, the movies consisted of very boring naturalism marginally spiced up by one chase scene after another.
Paul and I both regarded them as a waste of time. Honestly, I think I'd rather endure the active pain of watching The Last Samurai again than endure the numb boredom of watching the Bourne movies again!
In essence, the Democrats stand for socialism, or at least some ambling steps in its direction; the Republicans stand for religion, particularly evangelical Christianity, and are taking ambitious strides to give it political power.
Socialism--a fad of the last few centuries--has had its day; it has been almost universally rejected for decades. Leftists are no longer the passionate collectivists of the 30s, but usually avowed anti-ideologists, who bewail the futility of all systems. Religion, by contrast--the destroyer of man since time immemorial--is not fading; on the contrary, it is now the only philosophic movement rapidly and righteously rising to take over the government. Given the choice between a rotten, enfeebled, despairing killer, and a rotten, ever stronger, and ambitious killer, it is immoral to vote for the latter, and equally immoral to refrain from voting at all because "both are bad."
He concluded his statement by saying that, "If you hate the Left so much that you feel more comfortable with the Right, you are unwittingly helping to push the U.S. toward disaster, i.e., theocracy, not in 50 years, but, frighteningly, much sooner."
In response, many people denied -- even scoffed at -- the possibility of theocracy in America.
I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the Living God. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."
Here's the video:
Even if Mike Huckabee doesn't win the Republican nomination, more explicit calls to entwine government with Christianity should be expected in 2012.
My point? In less than two years, the natural course of politics in America has proven Dr. Peikoff right about the prospects of theocracy in America, "not in 50 years, but, frighteningly, much sooner." Frankly, I wish the definitive proof offered by Huckabee's candidacy had trickled in rather more slowly.
(As for the much-asked question, "But shouldn't we vote for the better Republicans?", you can find Dr. Peikoff's reply to that and more in his fifth podcast, starting at 2:50.)
The Tribunal de Grande Instance (a French appeals court) in Versailles ruled back in December that Amazon was violating the country's 1981 Lang law with its free shipping offer. That law forbids booksellers from offering discounts of more than 5 percent off the list price, and Amazon was found to be exceeding that discount when the free shipping was factored in.
The company was told to start charging within ten days or pay a daily fine. It also owes €100,000 to the French Booksellers' Union for the court battle and for the losses it has apparently caused them. With the holidays over and the ten-day grace period over, Amazon has officially announced its plan to ignore the court order and pay the fine instead, according to the International Herald Tribune.
Amazon can do so for 30 days (€30,000), but after that time the court will review the fine. They could raise it, or they could lower it, but given that Amazon has chosen to flip the justices the bird, guess which outcome is more likely? At some point, if Amazon doesn't change its ways, the fine will probably be jacked up so high that the company has no choice but to comply.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, has taken to the virtual airwaves to rally the French public in support of Amazon's free shipping. He sent out a recent e-mail to French customers in which he claimed that "France would be the only country in the world where the free delivery practiced by Amazon would be declared illegal." He then asked people to sign an online petition that has so far garnered more than 120,000 signatures.
I am glad that an American CEO is defending his company's right to engage in mutually voluntary rational trade (and in the process save money for his customers). I don't know whether Bezos is doing it in a principled fashion that gets to the moral fundamentals or if he's only making a pragmatic argument.
Tom Cruise, Scientologist Nut By Diana Hsieh @ 7:46 AM
"We are the authorities on getting people off drugs, we are the authorities on the mind, we are the authorities on improving conditions. We can rehabilitate criminals, we can bring peace and unite cultures."
Oh, and only a Scientologist can really help at the scene of an auto accident.
Yup, that's what Tom Cruise says in this leaked Scientology video interview. It might not be available for long, so I'd recommend watching it sooner rather than later. It's definitely ... um ... interesting.
Some terminology: An "SP" is a "suppressive persons" or critic of Scientology. KSW refers to L. Ron Hubbard's letter "Keeping Scientology Working" that demands accepting Scientology beliefs and practices wholesale, as dogma.
IQ by Profession By Diana Hsieh @ 8:10 AM
I have no definite opinion of IQ tests. The simple bubble-type tests are too narrow in scope to be of much value, I suspect. Some years ago, I was given an individually-administered WAIS-III test. I was impressed with the wide range of cognitive skills that it tested. I've never made any serious study of the subject though.
So with that proviso, I offer the following fascinating graphs of IQ distributions of various professions. (Click to view the full-size version.)
(I originally found that on Neatorama, but it's actually from Hauser, Robert M. 2002. "Meritocracy, cognitive ability, and the sources of occupational success." CDE Working Paper 98-07 (rev). Center for Demography and Ecology, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin. The PDF from which the graphs are taken is available here.)
In particular, most of the older leadership of the evangelical Christians have chosen not to endorse Huckabee, instead dividing their support amongst the other Republican candidates:
While Dr. Dobson and Mr. Perkins remain on the sidelines, many in the old guard are actively backing Mr. Huckabee's rivals: Pat Robertson is for Mr. Giuliani, Gary Bauer for Fred D. Thompson, and Paul Weyrich, a founder of the movement, for Mr. Romney. The few national conservative Christian political advocates who have rallied to Mr. Huckabee say they are dismayed by the reluctance of their best-known leaders to do the same.
These are the ones that have some fading attachment to capitalism, even though it conflicts with their explicit Christian philosophy.
In contrast, many of the younger evangelicals are fervently drawn to Huckabee precisely because of his support for the environment and his "populist" economic views. At some level, they recognize that these positions are more consistent with their altruist Christian philosophy:
...Rick Scarborough, an aspiring successor to the previous generation of conservative Christian leaders... recently argued that his allies were wrong to balk at Mr. Huckabee’s turn toward environmentalism and "social justice."
"Can you imagine Jesus ignoring the plight of the disenfranchised and downtrodden while going after the abortionist?" Mr. Scarborough wrote on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com.
Brett and Alex Harris, the young evangelicals who created the online network of Huckabee supporters "Huck's Army" explained:
...[H]e believed in a Christian obligation to care for prenatal "life" and also education, health care, jobs and other aspects of "life." "It is a new kind of evangelical conservative position," Brett Harris said.
Huckabee's appeal has crossed over to many Catholics, for similar reasons:
Although mainstream conservative publications like the Wall Street Journal have correctly categorized Huckabee's views as "religious left", that's entirely all right with these young evangelicals. The NY Times quotes one of them as saying, "Huckabee is a change for the conservative Christian movement, and a welcome one."
This is yet another instance of the playing out of the principles identified by Ayn Rand in her classic essay, "Anatomy of Compromise" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:
In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.
...When two men (or groups) hold the same basic principles, yet oppose each other on a given issue, it means that at least one of them is inconsistent. Since basic principles determine the ultimate goal of any long-range process of action, the person who holds a clearer, more consistent view of the end to be achieved, will be more consistently right in his choice of means; and the contradictions of his opponent will work to his advantage, psychologically and existentially.
Psychologically, the inconsistent person will endorse and propagate the same ideas as his adversary, but in a weaker, diluted form and thus will sanction, assist, and hasten his adversary's victory, creating in the minds of their disputed following the impression of his adversary's greater honesty and courage, while discrediting himself by an aura of evasion and cowardice.
Existentially, every step or measure taken to achieve their common goal will necessitate further and more crucial steps or measures in the same direction (unless the goal is rejected and the basic principles reversed) thus strengthening the leadership of the consistent person and reducing the inconsistent one to impotence.
The conflict will follow that course regardless of whether the basic principles shared by the two adversaries are right or wrong, true or false, rational or irrational.
In other words, the less-consistent older evangelicals who still support some diluted form of capitalism, because they (erroneously) believe that their economics follows from their Christian philosophy will eventually lose to the more-consistent evangelicals who (correctly) recognize that their Christian altruist ethics will require government redistribution of wealth, "universal health care", environmentalism in the name of "Christian stewardship", etc.
Even if Huckabee does not win the Presidency in 2008 (and I do not believe he has quite enough support to do so), his candidacy will have seeded the ground for a future Christian president much like Huckabee, but who is even more explicit and consistent in his opposition to capitalism and individual rights due to his Christian philosophy. And that is the real danger that Huck's Army poses today.
The emotions are all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgments, and that are also attended by pain or pleasure. Such are anger, pity, fear and the like, with their opposites. We must arrange what we have to say about each of them under three heads. Take, for instance, the emotion of anger: here we must discover (1) what the state of mind of angry people is, (2) who the people are with whom they usually get angry, and (3) on what grounds they get angry with them. It is not enough to know one or even two of these points; unless we know all three, we shall be unable to arouse anger in any one. The same is true of the other emotions.
Aristotle's subsequent dissection of anger is particularly interesting for its view of proper and improper humor. (I've added some paragraph breaks to the online text to make it more readable. And yes, it's well worth reading in full.)
Anger may be defined as an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight directed without justification towards what concerns oneself or towards what concerns one's friends. If this is a proper definition of anger, it must always be felt towards some particular individual, e.g. Cleon, and not 'man' in general. It must be felt because the other has done or intended to do something to him or one of his friends. It must always be attended by a certain pleasure--that which arises from the expectation of revenge. For since nobody aims at what he thinks he cannot attain, the angry man is aiming at what he can attain, and the belief that you will attain your aim is pleasant. Hence it has been well said about wrath,
Sweeter it is by far than the honeycomb dripping with sweetness, And spreads through the hearts of men.
It is also attended by a certain pleasure because the thoughts dwell upon the act of vengeance, and the images then called up cause pleasure, like the images called up in dreams.
Now slighting is the actively entertained opinion of something as obviously of no importance. We think bad things, as well as good ones, have serious importance; and we think the same of anything that tends to produce such things, while those which have little or no such tendency we consider unimportant.
There are three kinds of slighting--contempt, spite, and insolence. (1) Contempt is one kind of slighting: you feel contempt for what you consider unimportant, and it is just such things that you slight. (2) Spite is another kind; it is a thwarting another man's wishes, not to get something yourself but to prevent his getting it. The slight arises just from the fact that you do not aim at something for yourself: clearly you do not think that he can do you harm, for then you would be afraid of him instead of slighting him, nor yet that he can do you any good worth mentioning, for then you would be anxious to make friends with him. (3) Insolence is also a form of slighting, since it consists in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to yourself, or because anything has happened to yourself, but simply for the pleasure involved. (Retaliation is not 'insolence', but vengeance.)
The cause of the pleasure thus enjoyed by the insolent man is that he thinks himself greatly superior to others when ill-treating them. That is why youths and rich men are insolent; they think themselves superior when they show insolence. One sort of insolence is to rob people of the honour due to them; you certainly slight them thus; for it is the unimportant, for good or evil, that has no honour paid to it. So Achilles says in anger:
He hath taken my prize for himself and hath done me dishonour,
And
Like an alien honoured by none,
meaning that this is why he is angry. A man expects to be specially respected by his inferiors in birth, in capacity, in goodness, and generally in anything in which he is much their superior: as where money is concerned a wealthy man looks for respect from a poor man; where speaking is concerned, the man with a turn for oratory looks for respect from one who cannot speak; the ruler demands the respect of the ruled, and the man who thinks he ought to be a ruler demands the respect of the man whom he thinks he ought to be ruling. Hence it has been said
Great is the wrath of kings, whose father is Zeus almighty,
And
Yea, but his rancour abideth long afterward also,
their great resentment being due to their great superiority. Then again a man looks for respect from those who he thinks owe him good treatment, and these are the people whom he has treated or is treating well, or means or has meant to treat well, either himself, or through his friends, or through others at his request.
It will be plain by now, from what has been said, (1) in what frame of mind, (2) with what persons, and (3) on what grounds people grow angry. (1) The frame of mind is that of one in which any pain is being felt. In that condition, a man is always aiming at something. Whether, then, another man opposes him either directly in any way, as by preventing him from drinking when he is thirsty, or indirectly, the act appears to him just the same; whether some one works against him, or fails to work with him, or otherwise vexes him while he is in this mood, he is equally angry in all these cases.
Hence people who are afflicted by sickness or poverty or love or thirst or any other unsatisfied desires are prone to anger and easily roused: especially against those who slight their present distress. Thus a sick man is angered by disregard of his illness, a poor man by disregard of his poverty, a man aging war by disregard of the war he is waging, a lover by disregard of his love, and so throughout, any other sort of slight being enough if special slights are wanting. Each man is predisposed, by the emotion now controlling him, to his own particular anger.
Further, we are angered if we happen to be expecting a contrary result: for a quite unexpected evil is specially painful, just as the quite unexpected fulfillment of our wishes is specially pleasant. Hence it is plain what seasons, times, conditions, and periods of life tend to stir men easily to anger, and where and when this will happen; and it is plain that the more we are under these conditions the more easily we are stirred.
These, then, are the frames of mind in which men are easily stirred to anger. The persons with whom we get angry are those who laugh, mock, or jeer at us, for such conduct is insolent. Also those who inflict injuries upon us that are marks of insolence. These injuries must be such as are neither retaliatory nor profitable to the doers: for only then will they be felt to be due to insolence. Also those who speak ill of us, and show contempt for us, in connexion with the things we ourselves most care about: thus those who are eager to win fame as philosophers get angry with those who show contempt for their philosophy; those who pride themselves upon their appearance get angry with those who show contempt for their appearance and so on in other cases. We feel particularly angry on this account if we suspect that we are in fact, or that people think we are, lacking completely or to any effective extent in the qualities in question. For when we are convinced that we excel in the qualities for which we are jeered at, we can ignore the jeering.
Again, we are angrier with our friends than with other people, since we feel that our friends ought to treat us well and not badly. We are angry with those who have usually treated us with honour or regard, if a change comes and they behave to us otherwise: for we think that they feel contempt for us, or they would still be behaving as they did before. And with those who do not return our kindnesses or fail to return them adequately, and with those who oppose us though they are our inferiors: for all such persons seem to feel contempt for us; those who oppose us seem to think us inferior to themselves, and those who do not return our kindnesses seem to think that those kindnesses were conferred by inferiors. And we feel particularly angry with men of no account at all, if they slight us. For, by our hypothesis, the anger caused by the slight is felt towards people who are not justified in slighting us, and our inferiors are not thus justified.
Again, we feel angry with friends if they do not speak well of us or treat us well; and still more, if they do the contrary; or if they do not perceive our needs, which is why Plexippus is angry with Meleager in Antiphon's play; for this want of perception shows that they are slighting us--we do not fail to perceive the needs of those for whom we care. Again we are angry with those who rejoice at our misfortunes or simply keep cheerful in the midst of our misfortunes, since this shows that they either hate us or are slighting us. Also with those who are indifferent to the pain they give us: this is why we get angry with bringers of bad news. And with those who listen to stories about us or keep on looking at our weaknesses; this seems like either slighting us or hating us; for those who love us share in all our distresses and it must distress any one to keep on looking at his own weaknesses.
Further, [we feel angry] with those who slight us before five classes of people: namely, (1) our rivals, (2) those whom we admire, (3) those whom we wish to admire us, (4) those for whom we feel reverence, (5) those who feel reverence for us: if any one slights us before such persons, we feel particularly angry. Again, we feel angry with those who slight us in connexion with what we are as honourable men bound to champion--our parents, children, wives, or subjects. And with those who do not return a favour, since such a slight is unjustifiable. Also with those who reply with humorous levity when we are speaking seriously, for such behaviour indicates contempt. And with those who treat us less well than they treat everybody else; it is another mark of contempt that they should think we do not deserve what every one else deserves. Forgetfulness, too, causes anger, as when our own names are forgotten, trifling as this may be; since forgetfulness is felt to be another sign that we are being slighted; it is due to negligence, and to neglect us is to slight us.
The persons with whom we feel anger, the frame of mind in which we feel it, and the reasons why we feel it, have now all been set forth. Clearly the orator will have to speak so as to bring his hearers into a frame of mind that will dispose them to anger, and to represent his adversaries as open to such charges and possessed of such qualities as do make people angry.
Just consider the contrast: in our modern world, expressing any anger in response to insolent remarks suggests the grave moral defect of failing to laugh at yourself. What a horrible package-deal that is! To laugh at one's own trivial, silly errors is a far cry from laughing at one's most precious values. Yet so many people fail to see the difference -- or refuse to do so.
