[Borodog]

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Then ask how many of them have thought deeply about it.

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This is why I wasn't taking part in this thread. I consider myself pretty on the ball wrt evolution and I'm certainly not an anarchist. But then you could just trot that out that little gem "You haven't thought enough about the other part." and where can the discussion go from there?

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Well, it can go in the direction where people admit this this is actually the case. That anarchy is an extremely deep subject with a history and literature that goes back hundreds (indeed thousands) of years to some of history's most brilliant thinkers, and their knee-jerk "anarchy lol" default attitude just might be ill informed.

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I've said in the past that you can have this kind of condescending color to some of your posts where it comes off like you think that you're the only person that have given these topics any real thought.

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Perhaps true. Does this change the fact that the vast majority of people who so casually dismiss anarchy in their single paragraph posts have never studied it, or that there has been a steady stream of intelligent posters who have adopted the philosophy after months of argument and study? No.

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There are certainly large similarities between evolutionary theory and economics. However, many people that make these analogies use only a few aspects of evolutionary theory.

There's a lot going on there that they seem to minimize that does not fit the rigid logic (maybe the realpolitik of evolution?) that they see.

I've joked with you before about your damned physicist logic and I think it's your training as a physicist that gives you this view. I think AC works fine theoretically with a constrained set of information - much like certain evolutionary ideas do. However, when you look at the evolution behind our species' behavior, potential constraints, and evolution's "dirtiness" in getting to a solution for a problem (should have that in quotes too) then I see problems occurring.

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But you've never really been able to elaborate on any of this. Frankly, it makes little sense to me. The market is every bit as "dirty" (whatever this means) as evolution and vice versa. Clearly evolution can't be so "theoretically dirty" as to prevent it from operating. Why do you so nebulously assume that the market must be?

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No offense, but I think the subject is just beyond you.

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This is unfair. I would say I have had some of the more serious, and occasionally ugly (although I think we've gotten much better) disagreements with Phil153, I think he's very intelligent and educated and I get a lot out of his posts - even when I disagree with them. Even the posts that I think he's most wrongheaded make me re-evaluate and defend my position - which I find very useful.

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The problem with Phil is that either the subject is beyond him, or else he simply isn't interested in an honest discussion on this topic. He has his preconceived notions, and his participation is limited to coming in to threads like this one and pissing all over them (like he did here), creating strawman caricatures of arguments and theory (as he did here), hurling insults and then feigning indignity or righteousness, etc. At no point in this thread did he actually quote anything I said and deconstruct it and attempt to show that it was wrong. Rather he constructed a fallacious argument and claimed that it was analogous to mine, thus claiming mine is somehow fallacious. I can never tell if he actually believes these kinds of things are legitimate arguments, or if he is just being intellectually dishonest and just arguing for the sake of arguing on the internets.

So either the subject is beyond him, or else he isn't interested in an actual discussion. Which is it? Probably some of both. Either way, he's a waste of my time. I would ignore him completely if it weren't for the possibility that the casual reader might take my non-response to his pseudo-arguments as some sort of concession inability.

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At no point (that I can recall - there may be a heated or drunken post or two out there somewhere) did I just dismiss the debate with something like the above. What are we here for anyways?

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I know what I'm here for. It's what Phil is here for that I have misgivings about.