On page 183 of Confessions of a Philosopher, Bryan Magee writes

In practice this meant [Popper] was trying to subjugate people. And there was something angry about the energy and intensity with which he made the attempt.

...

Emotionally, Popper understood little if anything of this. he behaved as if the proper thing to do was think one's way carefully to a solution by the light of rational criteria and then, having come as responsibly and critically as one can to a liberal-minded view of what is right, impose it by unremitting exercise of will, and never let up until one gets one's way. "The totalitarian liberal" was one of his nicknames at the London School of Economics, and it was a perceptive one.

... discussions with me were carried on by him in a kind of rage ...

... the angrier he got ...

In later years [Popper] said that in those early meetings I was frequently rude to him, but I do not believe this to be true ... The truth, I think, is that I stood up to his intellectual bullying and hit back hard, and that he was taken aback by this, coming from someone half his age, and he resented it--and then, because he resented it, saw it as offensive.

And on page 198:

I became uninhibited about hitting him with all the artillery I could muster ... [Popper] turned every discussion into the verbal equivalent of a fight, and appeared to become almost uncontrollable with rage, and would tremble with anger

David Miller contradicts Magee:

http://www.law.keio.ac.jp/~popper/v6n2miller.html

[Popper] said that I did a good job as his assistant, and later he trusted me with his writings in a way that he rarely trusted others; nonetheless, I was amazed, and endeared, by the meekness with which he so often accepted my suggestions and emendations.

...

I never really managed to quarrel properly with Popper in all the years that I knew him. We disagreed on many issues, of course, philosophical, technical, stylistic, tactical, and personal. But far from being overbearing, he was patient and tolerant. If there was difficulty in resolving disagreements, it was not tiresome confrontation ... Sweet in argument, Popper was as often as not the one who gave way.

I am inclined to think Miller is correct. There are hints in Magee's story that he himself was not calm during those discussions and may have misinterpreted what was going on. Popper's view was that Magee was rude and Magee, by his own report, "hit" Popper "hard" which supports Popper's view. Magee interpreted their discussions as fights, but that does not mean that Popper did too.

Magee's assertion that Popper was taken aback by criticism -- that he was surprised by it -- is at odds with the facts of Popper's life. Popper was never idolized during his career; he was closer to an outcast; people disagreed with Popper and criticized him all the time, certainly more often than they agreed with him. Being criticized was the status quo for Popper, not something that would shock him.

My guess is that Popper was very accustomed to criticism, and genuinely enjoyed it, and that's why he did not realize his criticisms were offending Magee, who was less open to criticism than Popper.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120106163141/http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gardner_popper.html

Today [Popper's] followers among philosophers of science are a diminishing minority, convinced that Popper's vast reputation is enormously inflated.

This is an insult with no citation. It's also an attempt to deny that there are any Popperians who hold a high opinion of Popper. I am such a Popperian, so Gardner is mistaken.

I believe that Popper's reputation was based mainly on this persistent but misguided efforts to restate common-sense views in a novel language that is rapidly becoming out of fashion.

Popper repeatedly advocated speaking in a simple and clear way, and put a lot of effort into doing so. He was a major opponent of what he is being accused of here. See, for example, The Myth of the Framework page 72-73.

I am convinced that Popper, a man of enormous egotism, was motivated by an intense jealousy of Carnap.

This is an insult which should not be found in any serious essay.

Confirming instances underlie our beliefs that the Sun will rise tomorrow, that dropped objects will fall, that water will freeze and boil, and a million other events. It is hard to think of another philosophical battle so decisively lost.

Popperians today, such as myself, disagree about confirming instances. The battle has not been lost. Gardner is trying, for the second time, to convince his readers that he must be correct because his opponents have conceded, which they have not.

Scholars unacquainted with the history of philosophy often credit popper for being the first to point out that science, unlike math and logic, is never absolutely certain. It is always corrigible, subject to perpetual modification. This notion of what the American philosopher Charles Peirce called the "fallibilism" of science goes back to ancient Greek skeptics, and is taken for granted by almost all later thinkers.

Popper conjectured that the critical rationalist tradition was invented only once by Thales and Anaximander, not by himself. He learned Ancient Greek to help support his position. He repeatedly quoted Xenophanes to show his fallibilism. Popper did not try to take credit for these ideas; he was a major force in spreading knowledge of their origins.

Popper credits "the great American philosopher Charles S. Peirce" as a fallibilist in The Myth of the Framework on page 92 and again on page 48. On pages 91-92 he credits Einstein as a fallibilist who ended authoritarian science perhaps forever. Popper is generally humble throughout his books.

---

Kelley L. Ross criticizes Gardner's essay at http://www.friesian.com/gardner.htm

Here is what he says about fallibilism:

Gardner only sees skepticism as the endorsement of the fallible and corrigible nature of knowledge -- something that goes "back to ancient Greek skeptics, and is taken for granted by almost all later thinkers" [p.15]. Greek Skepticism, however, denied that there was knowledge, not just that it was infallible; and this is only "taken for granted" by later thinkers who happen to be an Anglo-American tradition derived from Hume's own skepticism.

This is in direct contradiction to Popper. In 'Back to the Presocratics' Popper argues that his fallibilist approach is in keeping with a tradition going back to Xenophanes and before. Here are two Xenophanes quotes from page 205 of Conjectures and Refutations:

Through seeking we may learn, and know things better

These things, we conjecture, are somehow like the truth

Apparently Kelley L. Ross is unaware of this essay. Xenophanes was not a skeptic who "denied that there was knowledge" but was a part of the Presocratic fallibilist tradition.

Even Popper's defenders do not carefully read his work. What's going on?

Anthony O'Hear is quoted at http://www.friesian.com/ohear.htm as saying:

The first problem for a Popperian to consider, though, is whether he can really talk of a severe test [of a theory] without the use of inductive reasoning....

For a severe test is one which is unlikely on past evidence. Without using some sort of inductive assumptions, how can one move from past experience to calculations of present (or future) probability?.... All we have, on non-inductive grounds, are reports of past experience, and generalization from them is forbidden. [pp. 39-40]

The reason he thinks that the inductive reasoning comes into play is that he is in the habit of making inductive assumptions. A Popperian can see at once how to avoid them. It is the same way we approach problems in general. Make a guess at the solution, then subject it to criticism and try to find mistakes or better guesses. So if we want to know how severe a test is, that's what we'll do, not induction. Before criticizing Popper in published work, one should make a serious attempt at understanding Popper.

Each quote is from The Myth of the Framework by Karl Popper, which is an excellent book.

If the many, the specialists, gain the day, it will be the end of science as we know it - of great science. It will be a spiritual catastrophe comparable in its consequences to nuclear armament. (pg 72)

Popper wrote this around 1970, long after it was known that nuclear weapons did great good at the end of World War II. Presumably he means to say the Cold War is a comparable catastrophe to the end of science. In hindsight it is easy to see how false that is; the Cold War was expensive, but it did not ruin us; the world is still improving dramatically despite the presence of nuclear weapons. In large part it is improving due to the progress of science. Losing science would be a truly massive setback. Science is behind everything from farm equipment to cars to household appliances to lightbulbs to modern medicine to computers and the internet.

It is a crime to exaggerate the ugliness and the baseness of the world: it is ugly, but it is also very human. And it is threatened by great dangers. The greatest is world war. Almost as great is the population explosion. (pg 80)

Under free markets, people who produce less than they consume are no danger to the world. Either they receive voluntary aid from people with extra or they starve. That does not put me in danger. By contrast, a world war puts everyone in danger, not just the incompetent.

It is only under a system of redistribution of wealth at gunpoint that additional people can be a burden, but even then it is a smaller burden. Feeding one inept person costs less than feeding and arming one soldier.

Further, it is considerably easier to achieve free markets than world peace. Free markets are freedom applied to property. A free market means we tolerate each person to use his own property as he chooses. Peace requires that we tolerate each person to live his life as he chooses, which includes tolerating his decisions about his property, his religion, and more. Because peace requires a superset of what a free market requires, it is more difficult to attain.

I certainly agree with this idea, the idea of a society of free men (and also with the idea of loyalty to it). It is an idea that inspired the American and the French revolutions. (pg 80)

In contradiction to Popper, I assert that the French and American revolutions were drastically different in motive and inspiration, and that only the American revolution had liberty as its reason.

The reason for the American Revolution was that Britain was not granting its traditional and reasonable liberties to the American colonies. Britain understood liberty well but refused to apply it to America. America needed a revolution so it could have the same liberty that British citizens had.

The French Revolution was not a matter of reason at all. If they had used reason they would not have had a revolution. Reforms were taking place, but the revolutionaries irrationally decided a bloodbath would speed things along. They were utopian idealists who thought if their enemies were dead then the world would soon become the world they envisioned. Of course that didn't work; it made matters much worse.

One issue which Popper's view does not account for, and mine does, is that the American Revolution gloriously triumphed whereas the French Revolution met with miserable disaster.

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman pg 4-5

Under property institutions, private or public, a person who wishes to use property that is not his own must induce the individual or group controlling that property to let him do so; he must persuade that individual or gorup that its ends will be served by letting him use the property for his ends. (my emphasis)

This quote illustrates a primary way libertarians conceive of 'persuasion'. It means, roughly, to get someone to do something voluntarily. Many people think the word 'persuasion' has hidden undertones of controlling people; it's not meant to.

Friedman explains the three ways you can get the use of someone's property: love, trade, and force.

He means love broadly to include anything where you want to give me something for nothing because you love, value, appreciate, or approve of the goals I'm working towards, or otherwise want to see the resource used in the way I will use it.

Trade includes any scenario where I give something in return for the property.

And force, like love, is something for nothing, but in this case it's not voluntary.

Logically these three categories cover all cases, but it's awkward where to put getting something via psychological manipulation because it's not obvious whether it counts as voluntary or not. So perhaps we should add a fourth category for it.

With that category in place, then persuasion means love or trade, but not force or manipulation. You can persuade someone to give you a car by trading him some money, or by explaining that you're going to use it to do something he approves of, such as use it in a well publicized race (so he'll enjoy having his car featured in the race). But if you use force or manipulation that is not something we would refer to as persuasion.

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman page 13

Naturally, the socialist or the bluenose always assumes that if the state decides what people 'should' want, it will, since his values are 'right', decide his way.

page 11, quoting George Bernard Shaw who is "an unusually lucid socialist"

But Weary Willie may say that he hates work, and is quite willing to take less, and be poor and dirty and ragged or even naked for the sake of getting off with less work. But that, as we have seen, cannot be allowed: voluntary poverty is just as mischievous socially as involuntary poverty: decent nations must insist on their citizens leading decent lives, doing their full share of the nation's work, and taking their full share of its income. . . . Poverty and social irresponsibility will be forbidden luxuries.

Compulsory social service is so unanswerably right that the very first duty of a government is to see that everyone works enough to pay her way and leave something over for the profit of the country and the improvement of the world.

It is interesting to wonder how someone could see those consequences of socialism so clearly and still advocate it.

The Great Melody by Conor Cruise O'Brien page 42 quoting Burke on why more Catholics didn't convert to Protestantism due to the Irish Penal Laws:

Now as to the other point, that the objects of these Laws suffer voluntarily ... it supposes, what is false in fact, that it is in a man's moral power to change his religion whenever his convenience requires it. If he be beforehand satisfied that your opinion is better than his, he will voluntarily come over to you, and without compulsion; and then your Law would be unnecessary; but if he is not so convinced, he must know that it is his duty in this point to sacrifice his interest here to his opinion of his eternal happiness, else he could have in reality no religion at all. In the former case, therefore, as your Law would be unnecessary; in the latter, it would be persecuting; that is, it would put your penalty and his ideas of duty in the opposite scales; which is, or I know not what is, the precise idea of persecution.

Reminds me of Godwin. It has the same concept of persuasion. Either I, in my own judgment, come to see your idea as best, and so compulsion is unnecessary, or I don't, in which case you can't reasonably expect me to change my mind. Godwin would say in the second case you should rethink whether you are correct if you can't be persuasive; Burke here says in the second case you can't say people are volunteering to suffer, because they'd suffer either way they chose.

I started reading The Great Melody by Conor Cruise O'Brien. comments and summary of notable bits follow.

Churchill had a very good interpretation of burke! ^_^

man, you hear about Churchill in school of course for his role in WWII, but no one tells you he was a skillful historian and epistemologist. and the commie WWII hater types who bash Churchill certainly are ignorant of it!

so the good interpretation of burke is roughly: Burke is a classical liberal. a very important one who revived that way of thinking. he was consistent in this throughout his entire political career. he hated tyranny and abuse of power. Conor calls this the Whig interpretation, and it was dominant until ~1930.

some very harsh and false attacks were made on Burke by James Mill (John Stuart Mill's father).

a bastard named Namier trashed Burke's reputation and held major sway from 1930-1970 and beyond. he didn't ever refute the good interpretation. he just pretended it had already been refuted and referred to it that way and implied only a simpleton would think otherwise. he also focussed his writing mostly on second and third rate people. seems like something out of Atlas Shrugged. "give the little guy a chance; the important people already got to be important in their own time, just ignore them now to even things up"

one of the bastard's books trashing burke only mentions burke 8 times. he's subtle. one could read the book and not realize burke was the primary target. he acts like burke doesn't matter to history, and is only worth mentioning in passing. he talks about issues where burke was very influential and fails to mention burke's famous speech and sort of takes it for granted that it's too ridiculous to bother examining. in the few passing remarks, and with no evidence to support it, and ignoring that these interpretations were refuted at length in existing books, Namier says Burke is a lackey without special skill who spreads myths. then Namier went back to talking at length about people he admitted weren't very important, but were evidently more important to discuss than Burke. Namier tries to get reader's to accept his statements about Burke on authority; he supplies no evidence for them. it's true that Namier did a lot of research, but he didn't spend that time researching Burke, he instead focussed on the second-raters.

Namier's next book is worse. this stuff is really wicked. but conor is dignified and objective and unemotional. i guess that's more effective. he just points out the facts and lets the reader use his own judgment, without ever suggesting what is the appropriate feeling.

it's pretty frustrating how such a bastard with such anti-truth-seeking and immoral tactics -- which are despicable even by mainstream standards -- can be so influential. Besides the obvious, Conor should never have had to waste his time reading that filth, let alone commenting on it; it'd be nicer if his book was about good things. but i don't disagree with his judgment that including the Namier stuff was for the best. Namier did exist and does need discrediting. sigh.