“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
— Thomas Paine
or in short,
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason, is like administering medicine to the dead.”
Sometimes you find yourself going in circles around a person who has renounced all plausible reason. Not by their own cognition, because they keep rambling, trailing the path left by the circle you traversed in an attempt to infuse common or – daringly – less common sense in this person.
Proximal development can only expand the fractal of a person’s comprehension level by so much. And when you notice they have reached their max it is time to leave the debate behind, and leave people where you found them.
Some people cannot be changed for the better. No matter how hard you try. And poignantly, a meritocracy upon which human evolution depends has no respect for consensus, so do not fret.
Thanks, Thomas, you were a wise man.
