Just as William of Ockham had his razor, I have my bin.
Armstrong’s Bin contains every explanation, no matter how implausible, for every particular thing I might currently have under consideration. The more flattering explanations rise to the top.
As Arthur Schopenhauer says:
There is another trick, as soon as it is practicable, makes all others unnecessary. Instead of working on your opponent's intellect by argument, work on his will by motive; and he, and also the audience if they have similar interests, will at once be won over to your opinion, even though you got it out of a lunatic asylum; for, as a general rule, half an ounce of will is more effective than a hundredweight of insight and intelligence. This, it is true, can be done only under peculiar circumstances. If you succeed in making your opponent feel that his opinion, should it prove true, will be distinctly prejudicial to his interest, he will let it drop like a hot potato, and feel that it was very imprudent to take it up … All the bystanders will find that your opponent's arguments, however excellent they be, are weak and contemptible; and yours, on the other hand, though they were random conjecture, are correct and to the point; you will have a chorus of loud approval on your side and your opponent will be driven out of the field with ignominy. Nay, the bystanders will believe, as a rule, that they have agreed with you out of pure conviction. For what is not in our interest mostly seems absurd to us.*
*Arthur Schopenhauer, "The Art of Controversy”, The Pessimist's Handbook, A Collection of Popular Essays, T. Bailey Saunders (trans.), Hazel E. Barnes ed., (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), pp.587-8.
Enough said.
I received two insightful comments by direct mail, and I'd like to share my responses:
Armstrong's bin and Schopenhauer's comments are both a sweet kind of sarcasm, only slightly sharper than Socrates.
Schopenhauer was a contemporary of Hegel, who was rockstar-famous at the time. Somewhere in his writings he actually called Hegel a charlatan. I think his comments about self-interest as the strongest argument had Hegel's dialectical nonsense in mind. Schopenhauer has been important to Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein. And me as well, which puts me in awfully good company. He successfully brought the wisdom of the Hindu Vedas into Western philosophy. https://wegway.substack.com/p/armstrongs-bin