Wednesday, December 04, 2019

Truth in advertising: Media and politics

Media has an outsized role in the coming election. ‘We Have A Big Responsibility': Facebook Rolls Out New Election Security MeasuresMeanwhile watch AOC ask Mark Zuckerberg if she can run fake Facebook ads, too. Zuckerberg’s answer on whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can falsely claim Republicans voted for the Green New Deal: Probably.

Huh, I spoke at Facebook soon after the 2016 mess and offered FB executives simple, elegant ways to help solve the factuality problem without acting as an unpopular policeman of diverse opinions. They used none of my proposals, all of which would be far better than all of the things they are trying.

Make no mistake. Second only to toppling Pax Americana and wrecking our standing in the world, the top goal of the Putin-Murdoch-led world mafia is to destroy the impartial rule-of-law, enforced by independent civil servants... 

...the very same "deep state" that Trump and every other gopper rails against. They openly call for an end to civil service protections, so that these offices can yet again be filled by "spoils" -- by party hacks or those who are terrorized by party hacks. You need to know the history. This article helps proivide background.  

And sure, there's another argument, that civil servants can become a stodgy, cloying influence, hampering governmental agility, acting to protect their own institutions... see that problem revealed in the hilarious British comedy series "Yes, Minister." It's a legitimate complaint, when made by reasonable-sane-adult conservatives or libertarians (when such existed outside of Utah.)

Only note that it was Democrats who saw that the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had become "captured" by oligarchs, as was the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), both of them destroying competition in railroads and air travel... and Democrats demolished both cloying - obsolete agencies! They broke up AT&T. Al Gore both reduced bureaucratic paperwork by 20% and pushed the bill that unleashed the Internet, and Clinton unleashed GPS. 

The only industries 'freed from bureaucracy' by Republicans have been WallStreet/finance and resource extraction (oil/coal) Gee I wonder why those?

When we again resurrect the extinct species -- reasonable-sane-adult conservatives or libertarians -- they'll be welcome at the table, demanding least-bureaucratic approaches to 21st Century problem solving. But first we need to defeat mad-traitors who seek to destroy the civil services, intel and FBI and military officer corps, our science, fact-professionals and alliances.

== Volatile Politics ==

Market volatility has leaped immensely, reacting to Trump’s sudden blurts and trade wars, as often against allies as adversaries. According the economics analyst Bob Cesca, the top five biggest single-day point declines in the history of the Dow have occurred on Trump’s watch, and all have occurred since February, 2018. “Sure enough, someone — or a connected group of someones — has been making super-colossal trades just prior to Trump’s announcements about the trade war.”

My friend Joe Carroll suggests we go back to the font of most American wisdom - Mark Twain - and ask,,, “Have we been warped in much the same way that Twain portrays in his story: “The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg”? It would not surprise me to learn that Putin read it, back when he was a devoted communist studying American weaknesses at the KGB Academy.

China’s very special agent from Macao, charged with helping to control the Republican Party and use it against us, is now applying pressure to make a trade deal favorable to Beijing.  

Elizabeth Warren appraises the problem of lobbyist power over Congress and legislation. While your average leftist may reflexively attribute this to the corruption and venality if legislators or “corporatist Democrats,” Warren — having worked alongside many of those maligned colleagues — knows it is much more complicated. “While a big part of the problem is a broken campaign finance system, members of Congress aren’t just dependent on corporate lobbyist propaganda because they’re bought and paid for. It’s also because of a successful, decades-long campaign to starve Congress of the resources and expertise needed to independently evaluate complex public policy questionsHow has Congress filled that gap? By turning to lobbyists.”

Zeroing in on a problem that has gown worse every year since Newt Gingrich destroyed the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Warren explains: “Republicans eliminated an independent office of experts dedicated to advising Congress on technical and scientific information. Congressional staff salaries, for most roles, have failed to keep pace with inflation, making it harder to attract and retain staff with scientific expertise. And the committees focusing on science and technology have seen their staff levels fall by over 40% over the past few decades.”

Warren’s plan to end Washington corruption is worth your time and attention. It’s one reason why I am dedicated to having her be in one of the two top slots of the 2020 ticket… and I am leaning evermore toward that being #1… though in that case I hope she’ll appoint an experienced governor to be her #2. And maybe try some of the methods I prescribe in Polemical Judo.

== And... ==

Two articles you should add to your quiver, when you hunt and reel in your smartest RASR… one with enough neurons he or she might yet be hauled back from treason and darkness. The two words they fear most at Fox are not “Elizabeth Warren.” 

The two words that send every Foxite fleeing are “Ocean Acidification.” Because they have no blithe shrug-answer for it. None is possible. You can demonstrate the phenomenon with a glass of water, a drinking straw and two swimming pool test strips. Only human generated CO2 can be causing this disaster. 


And then this from Fox News itself! Ocean acidification was the final straw in the Cretaceous (dinosaur) extinction” A different cause, but similar lethality.

Mark Zuckerberg has offered to toss scraps to the New York Times and other sources of real journalism. That’s not an answer. This article asks: ”Are News Bundles The Future of Journalism?"

No, they aren't. In response: My article "Beyond Advertising: Will Micropayments Sustain the New Internet?" has received a lot of attention as the failures of an advertising-based Internet are becoming ever more apparent and as news media get starved into oblivion.

== And finally, a full-on rant! ==

Ready? Take a deep breath and here goes...

The blatantly extortionist withholding of appropriated aid to Lebanon ended quietly as the Ukraine thing unfolded. But what was Trump extorting? Not 'investigations' of never-stated crimes by Hunter Biden. Could it have been actual emoluments in some form? And while we await John Roberts's betrayal - desperately stopping the tax records and Deutsche Bank revelations from reaching Congress -- we must wonder: when will a log break from the jam and unleash the revelations river? Some brave settlement victim defying Trump to enforce his "Great Wall of NDAs? 

Or maybe Epstein's "insurance" files? Giuliani's? David Pecker's safe? A brave Graham-lover stepping up? Some Koch-scion or conscience-driven Helvetian who realizes that $billions will be useless in a world awash in tech-savvy refugees and streets filling with tumbrels?

My money is on "Little Rocket Man," who is volatile enough not to link arms with others in the Putin-Fox-Saudi-mullah-dominionist cabal, desperately plugging every leak and loose log. If Kim does something to his "lover" in the next few weeks, the dems need to be ready with a unified howl of derision and "kissy" sounds at rallies to mock "we fell in love" Trump's adoration of a mnurderous communist tyrant.

What depresses me is that the dems never agree on unified talking points, while every gopper receives instructions from Rupert Murdoch, every single morning, and has for a decade. Just a few such unified memes would do wonders! 

Example: The one common element in every Republican "defense" is "Don't look! You should never have looked! We don't want to look! No one should know!" It is the distilled essence of their attacks on the "Steele Dossier," on Strzock & Page. On "FBI spying." On Schiff's committee proceedings... it is the root of every single whine.

Mock that! A faux cringe (hands up to divert sight) and a cry "Don't look!" 

If any THREE dems did it, the media would catch on.

90 comments:

Don Gisselbeck said...

Someone with good financial expertise should calculate how much money could be made with a few hours advance notice of one of the thin-skinned doofus' tweets.

TCB said...

Dr. Brin says "Clinton unleashed the GPS."

Sorry, gotta disagree on that one. I stumbled on this but recently:

Korean Airlines Flight 007, as some of you may recall, accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace over the Kamchatka Peninsula on August 31, 1983. The Soviets, thinking it a spy plane, scrambled some fighters and a Su-15 interceptor shot the airliner down with missiles, all 269 souls aboard lost. This created a hell of an international incident, during a very nervous year, and a major shake-up in the Soviet defense hierarchy plus some soul-searching in Washington.

One of the results, from that wiki page:

"President Reagan announced on September 16, 1983, that the Global Positioning System (GPS) would be made available for civilian use, free of charge, once completed in order to avert similar navigational errors in the future."

Now, some of you folks might know how much I hate giving that son of a bitch Reagan credit for ANYTHING. But it appears he gets to have this one.

duncan cairncross said...

Re GPS
It's a bit more complex
Reagan permitted the public to use it - but the public version was deliberately degraded so it was less accurate
Good enough for an airliner to avoid being shot down - but not much else

Clinton was the President who had the system unscrambled so that everybody could use it at the military level of accuracy
That was the change that made it useful

TCB said...

Incidentally, I saw the movie The Social Network when it came out. Lots of people think it's fantastic... my complaint, though, is that I felt then, and feel much more strongly now, that David Fincher's film did not capture more than ten or twenty percent of how completely rotten and dangerous Zuckerberg really is.

Duncan Ocel said...

Ocean Acidification is always a good one.
If your RASR has enough of a brain to understand isotopes, you can talk about the "Suess Effect"--where Carbon-13-depleted fossil petroleum carbon has been released into the atmosphere and has diluted the 13C that was previously present there. We can look at historical trends in Carbon-13 in the atmosphere and see how the ratio of 13C:12C has moved closer and closer to the petroleum value over the past 200 years. This I find to be definitive, "unshrugable" evidence for anthropogenic impact.

FYI:Carbon-13 is not radioactive, it is stable, but the processes involved in carbon fixation and fossilization-storage favor the lighter isotope and thereby fractionally reduce the abundance of Carbon-13. Petroleum is a snapshot of the composition of the living organisms from which it is derived, and living organisms are also 13C depleted relative to the atmosphere.

Larry Hart said...

Don Gisselbeck:

Someone with good financial expertise should calculate how much money could be made with a few hours advance notice of one of the thin-skinned doofus' tweets.


I'd expect that at least some of those tweets have been planned for just such a purpose, and that someone already is making money off of them. Not that Benedict Donald is smart enough to plan such a scheme, but someone else could be...colluding...with him and (of course) giving him a kick-back for his cooperation.

scidata said...

Interesting side story. In the early 1980s, I had a burgeoning company that made sophisticated celestial navigation software that could be run on any run-of-the-mill PC from those days. It was a hit with affluent yacht types. I was about to hire a few programmers and expand into other air-and-sea projects. Then Sep 1983 struck. I was wiped out overnight. I've been a rat-racer ever since.

Tribal whinging doesn't impress me much. We're all one whim of fate away from oblivion, and damned lucky to be here at all.

David Brin said...

Hannes Suess was on my doctoral committee. Named a character after him in Startide.

Duncan Ocel said...

Wow! Every week in grad school I realize just how small the academic world is. Plus I should reread Startide after I finish my current Le Guin book.

TCB said...

@ duncan cairncross, yep, that makes sense. The public version of GPS was watered down considerably in the early years; even so, it was accurate to within a hundred yards or so if I recall, while the military version was accurate enough to put a bomb on a house. The brass didn't want to share that capability for a while.

Alfred Differ said...

Don Gisselbeck,

…made with a few hours advance notice of one of the thin-skinned doofus' tweets.

From what I’ve heard, most of the market motion is occurring because of algorithmic trading on news like those tweets. Basically, the algorithms are predicting each other more than they are predicting humans in the first wave. Human traders come on the scene later in response to the algorithms.

Personally, I just assume there will be doofus tweets that move the market every week. Some move it up. Some move it down. To make money at this, you have to be able to trade options or short stocks. I prefer options since I’m not borrowing money when I speculate. If the general mood is sour after a tweet, I wait a day and then buy long range calls on tech companies that trade often. When they recover a bit as human traders snap up bargains, I sell the calls quickly and don’t fret about maximizing my gain since I might mistime things and still be long when the next doofus tweet comes out. If the general mood is sweet, I might buy a moderately out-of-the-money put on those same companies. I sell it back during the algorithmic trading frenzy. This strategy requires you pay attention to the signals, assume the tweets will arrive, and that the market is otherwise trading sideways.

The sideways trading assumption has been incorrect for the last few weeks, so I mostly went to cash on the one account where I speculate like this. I have a few $40 T calls left over that don’t actually move much with those tweets. Things that do move, though, are the semi-conductors. Zip, zoom. You have to be prepared to lose it all, though, so don’t bet your life savings. The small amount I risk is up 60% since early September, but that could be gone in a flash if I get my assumptions wrong. At one point I was down 40%. 8)

I would sure like to believe any money I make I’m taking from gullible doofus voters, but the market doesn’t work that way. I’ll never actually know. It’s not a zero-sum environment, so it’s probably a silly wish.

scidata said...

The view from the bleachers:

Donkey: If you don't act, he'll steal 2020 just like he stole 2016.
Elephant: Umm.

john fremont said...

@TCB
As an avionics technician working in the early 90's the GPS units were usually installed as a supplemental over-the- horizon navigational system to the earlier LORAN equipment in the aircraft I maintained. Some aircraft had dual Nav units that had both LORAN and GPS receivers in box. When Clinton released to the military grade option to the civilian I do recall many private pilots at the time concerned with how long they had to change over to the higher standard GPS. Some grumbled that that meant their LORAN unit would be useless in a few years.

Zepp Jamieson said...

Doctor, on the lack of consensus amongst Democrats. Yes, herding cats is frustrating. But the marching morons of the GOP are all going straight off a cliff right now, something no self-respecting herd of cats would ever do. Enjoy the frustration, and don't be those guys.

Alfred Differ said...

Donkey: If you don't act, he'll steal 2020 just like he stole 2016.
Elephant: He did nothing wrong... and we get judges? ... and a chance to piss off the liberals?
Non-voters: Huh?

Alfred Differ said...

Louie Gohmert (TX-01) offered up a salvo in the war on the fact professions.

"If you love America, mamas, don't let your babies grow up to go to Harvard or Stanford law school."

Larry Hart said...

scidata:

Donkey: If you don't act, he'll steal 2020 just like he stole 2016.
Elephant: Umm.


More like,
Elephant: Let the election decide whether he can get away with stealing an election.

Larry Hart said...

Whoever it was a post or two back with the characterization of conservatism as a clade that the law protects but does not bind was right on the money. A lightbulb went off in my head at that comment, because it makes clear so much of what the current Republican Party is all about.

Why do conservatives--especially religious conservatives--support Trump even though he's the opposite thing from anything they've ever claimed to stand for? I've opined that it's because he lets them be mean to people they don't like, and because he gives them their activist judges, and because he owns the libs, and all of that is part of it. But I think the heart of the matter is that he's the advocate for the sensibility that the law is there to protect but not bind them.

Article II says he can do whatever he wants? Check. Pardons for criminal activity by his sort of people? Check. Support for police brutality and abuse of power? Check.

Even pre-Trumpian Republican absurdities make sense from this POV. Why is George Zimmerman legally allowed to shoot Treyvon Martin, but not the other way around? Because the law exists to protect Zimmerman and to bind Martin. Gerrymandering and voter suppression? Because the law exists to protect white voters and bind others. Financial institutions have to be allowed to do whatever they want with "their own money" even after a $700 BILLION bailout from the commons? The law exists to protect the financiers and to bind the public.

This is so contrary to the words and the clear intent of the Constitution that it somehow never occurred to me quite so clearly that the party who insists they are "Constitutionalist" patriots who love America could advocate such a doctrine. But as Dave Sim often put it, "Once a thing is seen, it can't be un-seen." Every single Republican who has taken an oath to obey and defend the Constitution is a lying traitor. Making America Great Again apparently means going back to the time when we had a king.

Ahcuah said...

Do you all know who Andrew Tobias is? He's the author of "The only investment guide you'll ever need" (from way back in 1978 and updated many times since) and many other books. It also spawned a very popular program (also, long ago). He's a pretty cosmopolitan New Yorker, but is also is pretty heavily involved with the Democratic Party. For a long time he was the treasurer of the party.

In his blog post today, Dinner with Republicans, he talked about some recent dinners he had recently that included some old Republican friends. Of course, talk turned to Trump, and again we see this willful blindness. I wanted to scream "Wagers! Wagers!" at the screen. He did bring up Snopes, but that's not the same as wagers.

I did make a comment about wagers on his facebook posting that pointed to the blog entry, and pointed him here. As with our host, I'm frustrated by trying to figure out how to get the attention of those with the ability to affect things. Don't know if this will help or not, or like so much else, it'll just drop into a deep, dark well.

Duncan Ocel said...

@Larry Hart
Spot on on the assessment of Republican motivations. It seems to me, however, that liberals often fall prey to "not in my backyard" mentalities as well. Maybe more when their proximate lands' and waters' cleanliness is threatened by industry. "Don't install that factory in Oregon" results in factories accumulating in low-income rust-belt communities or minority communities. And as a socialist-endorsing green-party far-leftist myself, I am often encountering laws and rules that I try to flout and I believe that ecoterrorism is not playing a large enough role in the world today. The more moderate lefties may be happier with Rule of Law and cooperation with the police, but they are definitely part of the problem, too. And, like Brin has sometime preached, the moderate left is certainly often guilty of addictive indignance.

I am always vassilating between embracing the regressivist, community-in-isolation, Amish-or-Unabomber-or-Wendell-Berry sustainable future and the sustainability-through-technology future, but environmental justice ideas like factory siting and cancer risk by demographic push me to lean toward agrarian isolation.

Robert said...

Sane adult (i.e. real) conservatives outside Utah? Holding their noses and voting Democratic, of course, in a steady trickle since the turn of the century, now accelerating into a torrent.

Much of the original Republican base is almost entirely out of the GOP, or, more accurately, whatever the hell has replaced it. Two groups that come to mind are college-educated suburbans and outside-the-machine conservative intellectuals.

Some examples. While William F. Buckley didn't make a sharp open break, he had remarked that, under a parliamentary system both Clinton and Bush II would (and should) have been removed from office by their own parties within two years by their own parties (I think he was entirely correct about this). His son Christopher endorsed Obama. For Andrew Sullivan, Abu Ghraib was the last straw.

Closer to home, I left when we failed to protect the Iraqi National Museum from looters, though I started packing after the "Mission Accomplished" charade. My sister, who had lived in New Orleans, left because of Katrina. The rest of my family fled in horror from Sarah Palin.

And all the people I mentioned are conservative, and say so. Fox disagrees, but, frankly, they have no standing.

So what are the current GOP and Movement Conservatives? First, they are clearly every bit as radical (and obnoxious) as the Sixties Left, which is about as un-conservative as it gets. I think Madeleine Albright put it best when she said that Trump wasn't organized enough to be a Fascist. She gave no other reason why he wasn't one. I think that pinpoints it perfectly.

Finally, someone who should be leading the intra-party resistance has caved completely. Lindsay Graham is adrift: the lover he never had is now dead and completely out of reach, and he clings to office in the most rabid state of the Confederacy. There probably also Kompromat: Cherchez le garcon.


Bob Pfeiffer.

DJM said...

On the lighter side, I think this is the best headline of 2019:

"North Korea threatens to call Trump ‘dotard’ again, if he calls Kim Jong Un ‘rocket man’"

Larry Hart said...

@DJM,

"Now, go away, or I will taunt you a second time!"

A.F. Rey said...

Goes along nicely with Trump patting himself on the back for name-calling Canadian President Justin Trudeau:

"That was funny when I said that guy was two-faced."

Larry Hart said...

Robert on Lindsey Graham:

There probably also Kompromat: Cherchez le garcon.


When we finally learn what hold someone has over Lindsey Graham, I hope to GOD that it's something more incriminating than just "I'll let everyone know you're gay." Because that cat has been out of the bag for a long time already.

If Trump's worst nightmare has become a sycophantic toady just to keep that secret, he really needn't bother.

OTOH, if Trump has Mule powers that can turn the former Warlord of Kalgan into his viceroy, that would explain a lot.

Larry Hart said...

A.F. Rey:

Trump patting himself on the back for name-calling Canadian President Justin Trudeau


I have never seen or even heard of another US president who has to work so hard to explicitly assert his own greatness, his own innocence, his own victimhood in every sentence he speaks.

Does his base really perceive this snowflakeness as strength?

Darrell E said...

On the subject of the strong conservative Christian support for Trump, have all'ya'll seen this yet?

To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.’ — Trump’s faith adviser and ‘Righteous Gemstones’ character come to life Paula White is now an official White House employee

She even speaks in tongues. This woman is a perfect fit for Trump. My read on her is that she is just as full of shit as Trump is and that she doesn't believe a word of her con. This is funny as shit. Except for the whole these are the people running my country thing.

Larry Hart said...

@Darrell E,

I've been getting the idea for some time now that Trump gets an indignation high from doing purposely outrageous things that discomfort and enrage others--liberals especially, but anyone really. And as in Dr Brin's Existence, the level of ridiculousness and outrage probably has to keep increasing in order to maintain the high.

Darrell E said...

Larry,

I think you've got it right. Another thing that occurs to me is that Trump isn't all that bright (though he does posses a certain low cunning) and his tastes are impressively low aesthetically speaking. These traits contribute to a characteristic of having no sense of subtlety. Just about anything he does would immediately be suspected of satire by anyone with any exposure to something like a reasonable education coupled with reasonable cognitive function and social-ability, if it weren't for his history of repeatedly demonstrating that he really is that, errr, unsubtle.

And this fits perfectly with many conservative Christians given that neither a capacity for or appreciation of subtlety is common among them.

Robert said...

There are the Christians who are not of this world, and then there are the ones who are not of this planet... As our host knows, it all started when that UFO crashed on the isle of Patmos in AD 100.* I think we know which book it was that Luther almost dropped and that was also the only book of the Bible that Calvin wrote no commentary on.

As for Graham, the world may know, but does Foxworld? That's the real threat.

*Probably Tandu. Neither the nasty librarian teddy bears, the psychotic stacks of inner tubes, or the primary-colored Super Chickens are quite evil enough.


Bob Pfeiffer.

Zepp Jamieson said...

Oh, surely the Book of Revelation was dropped off by the Tymbrimi as a practical joke...

David Brin said...

Huh didn't know that about Calvin, Robert. Thanks.

Larry Hart said...

@Zepp Jamieson,

I was so going to say that about the Tymbrimi.

Good one, though.

the hanged man said...

The U.S. provides aid to over one hundred countries. Knowing that Trump has withheld aid to Ukraine and Lebanon, we can probably assume he has been shaking down many other countries as well. Everything with Trump is transactional, so I would assume he has been asking for kickbacks and favors, perhaps asking that big contracts be awarded to his donors.

Trump and the Republicans are not only ruining themselves, they are are dragging our country down with them.

Putin must be savoring every moment as his unraveling unfolds.

yana said...

David Brin thought previously:

"The mass of the proposed superheavy gravitino lies in the region of the Planck mass..."

David Brin quoted:

""wouldn't need very many of them to explain the dark matter content in the universe and in our galaxy""

Oh for goodness sake, has it been so long since the last attempt to explain gravity with an absurdly heavy particle? Again, doomed to bananaland. It's geometry, just geometry. Fermat's "last" theorem was just geometry after all, and so is the mystery of "dark" matter, and please help physicists stop using the word "dark" all the time.

It's just geometry, there's no missing matter. As with Fermat, it's the geometry of fractional dimensions. a^2 + b^2 = c^2 can't be true for any scalene nor isoceles, it's a solid proof. But why not a^3 + b^3 = c^3 for a right triangle? Because look what happens to the shapes between a^2.01 + b^2.01 = c^2.01 all the way up through to a^2.99 + b^2.99 = c^2.99

And that's why. Look what happens to the squares as they become cubes. They pass through fractional dimensions, the very first of which ensures that a^x + b^x can never, ever = c^x.

Pump this thought into cosmology. If space is a side-effect of matter, then where there is low matter, there is low space. Another way to express the mathematic idea of low space, is to use the fractional dimensions below 3. If so, then the yearn to supergravitate some hypothetical semiatomical cupcake is gladly, relievedly, shed.

It is our fault, for assuming that intergalactic space is the same as interplanetary space. We'll get over it.

 Ashley said...

First time poster here, so an introduction. I'm British, and therefore American politics falls into the not my monkey, not my circus category. I'm also a soft science, cognitive behavioural therapist, which means I tend to view the world through behaviours.

However, I also write SF. I'm a bit of an Americanophile, and wish I was a citizen of what I think is the greatest country on Earth. You guys proved that after WW2 when instead of conquering the world you chose to spread your values through media, finance, and industrialization.

Of course there are caveats. No system is perfect, because the human condition arose from evolutionary forces that were present in the past, on the metaphorical plains of the Serengeti. But enough logophilia or logorrhea.

My observation is that our culture is under pressure from processes that radicalize people to extremes, and neither the left or right seem able to dial down the rhetoric.

Not helped by the fact the rhetoric of the right plays into human responses driven by strong emotions, whereas the left's rhetoric seems emotionally tone deaf, because as soon as you start labeling people as deplorables you've lost the debate.

So, from my psychological perspective, the left has basically shot itself in the foot.

And as a therapist I can tell you that facts don't change opinions. One description of my job role was to change people's beliefs, and even when people want to solve problems by changing the core beliefs/underlying assumptions/thoughts that make up their schemas, one is left with the best outcome being around 50% of your clients able to do so.

TCB said...

On the other hand, if a certain percentage of people act deplorably (embracing racism and fascism, among other things), and you're not allowed to call them on it...

Ashley, you're a therapist. Ever hear the observation that "the most dysfunctional person in the household is the one with the most power"? Because all the healthier family members must spend energy, time and resources dealing with that person's dysfunction. In extreme cases, ALL their energy, time and resources, and maybe at risk of their lives. And then what? In a family, you may end by disowning, institutionalizing, or otherwise casting out a member who threatens to destroy them all.

But what is a polity supposed to do with them?

Larry Hart said...

Ashley:

...the left's rhetoric seems emotionally tone deaf, because as soon as you start labeling people as deplorables you've lost the debate.

So, from my psychological perspective, the left has basically shot itself in the foot.


First of all, welcome aboard. :)

I'd say you are correct on a technicality that liberals seem tone-deaf to how the right-wing spin machine will portray their comments and arguments. We live in the world as it is, not the world we wish would be, after all.

But for the record, Hillary did not say that Trump supporters were all deplorables. She made a distinction between the deplorables (whose minds were not open to change anyway) vs other Trump supporters who might be open to persuasion. The point of her statement was that we should not be discouraged by the deplorables from engaging with the rest.

That non-deplorables took offence as if she had called them deplorable says more about them than it does about Hillary.

Larry Hart said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/trump-impeachment-2020.html

...
If left unchecked, the president’s abusive behavior stands as a clear and present danger to the future of our democracy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said as much on Thursday when she announced that the House Judiciary Committee would begin drafting articles of impeachment. “The facts are uncontested,” Ms. Pelosi said. “The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit, at the expense of our national security.”


In one sense, Nancy Pelosi is self-evidently correct. The facts are what the facts are. In another sense, her assertion is quaintly irrelevant. There is a reason why facts don't change minds on the Trumpist side, and per discussions here on this blog, we can easily explain why. Because for Republicans, they in general and Trump in particular are protected but not bound by any law, custom, or norm.

What Trump did or did not do is almost irrelevant to the argument at hand. The point of impeachment, even knowing that conviction is not forthcoming, is to assert that no one is above the law. The point of the Republican response is to assert that, in fact, they are above the law.

Larry Hart said...

Oh, and the assertion that both sides have dug in and neither will have their minds changed by the facts is a deliberate attempt at clouding the issue. If the fact confirm what you already suspected was self-evident, then it is not a failing when your mind isn't changed by them. That's a different thing, in fact the opposite thing, of not letting your mind be changed by facts that contradict or disprove your initial position.

 Ashley said...

Excuse me for contradicting you Larry; but no it's not clouding the issue. I'll repeat, since you seem to have skimmed my post to find offense where none was intended.

"And as a therapist I can tell you that facts don't change opinions. One description of my job role was to change people's beliefs, and even when people want to solve problems by changing the core beliefs/underlying assumptions/thoughts that make up their schemas, one is left with the best outcome being around 50% of your clients able to do so."

Changing people's beliefs is damn hard. The strategy of quoting facts won't work. How many more years do people want to carry on doing what doesn't work?

The research shows explicitly that facts won't change people's minds, my experience supports this hypothesis. To change another person's opinion you have work through the chain of inferences that support their beliefs. Only then can you begin to hope to change said beliefs, and even then the odds are not in your favour.

PS: I don't wish to start an argument with you.

Larry Hart said...

Ashley:

since you seem to have skimmed my post to find offense where none was intended.


If I sounded offended, that was not my intent. I was sincere in welcoming you aboard.

Since you're new here, there are nuances you might not be aware of. One is that many of our posters are on the west coast, whereas I am in Chicago. So I tend to post a bunch in my early morning before many of the others are awake. The fact that I made multiple posts in a row is normal, and is not intended as being fired up in response to anyone in particular.

Another is that defending Hillary's comment as not equating Trump supporters with deplorables is an argument I often engage in. It's a losing battle, as "Hillary called us/them all deplorables" is now accepted wisdom. Every so often, I feel the record needs correcting. Having said that, I did essentially agree with your evaluation that the left is tone-deaf. I just qualify that belief with the caveat that what they're actually saying isn't so wrong, but the right-wing spin on what they say is predictable and should be taken into account.

If you're saying that no one should expect anyone's mind, liberal or conservative, to change in response to any information, well, that does seem to be the case in the short term in the middle of an argument. But over time, repeated conflicts with reality have to have some evolutionary effect on one's perceptions. George Orwell once wrote--and I'm paraphrasing from memory--that people who blind themselves to reality eventually have to end up recognizing it, usually on a battlefield.

I also don't intend to start a fight, and I'm apologetic that I came across that way.

Larry Hart said...

...Oh, and if you saw the phrase "clouding the issue" as directed at you, no, I was off on other tangents by then. It's something I read in news stories or hear on tv way too often--that both Trump's defenders and his opponents are simply too set in their ways to let anything that comes to light change their minds. And while that may literally be the case, I see a big difference between "I won't let facts that hurt my argument change my mind" and "I won't let facts that support my argument change my mind." And yet, the narrative seems to be that both of those points of view are equivalent.

 Ashley said...

My apologies for misreading your posts.

I am tired of the political left giving away own goals.

I usually find Americans respond to me as left wing, especially when I use the shorthand of lesbian to describe myself, because a deeper explanation means unpacking how bisexual tastes lead to erasure when in a long term monogamous relationship with another woman.

Though, it should be said that I identify as a centrist, but what that means in Britain versus America might well lead to misunderstanding.

Robert said...

So the Tymbrimi abducted John? Cool!

However the real Revelation is at http://www.fredvanlente.com/cthulhutract/

If you like practical jokes, check out the Practical Koans by the mad monks of A Deeper Sea, by Alexander Jablokov. It also contains good-as-Brin, but very different, dolphins.


Bob Pfeiffer

john fremont said...

A judo move from some House Democrats:


Two House Democrats push a clever plan that calls Republicans’ bluff on their Biden attacks

Democratic Reps. Katie Porter of California and Max Rose of New York introduced a clever plan this week that will expose whether Republicans’ criticisms of former Vice President Joe Biden in the Ukraine scandal reflect good faith — or if, as many assume, they are just a shameful distraction and a bluff...


https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/two-house-democrats-push-a-clever-plan-that-calls-republicans-bluff-on-their-biden-attacks/

Zepp Jamieson said...

Debate is normal around here, and shouldn't be mistaken for just argument. In any event, welcome aboard.

I understand your frustration with the left, especially being British as you are. First the Lib-Dems sell out, and then you have Jeremy Corbin.

The left here is pretty much non-existent, due to massive propaganda, trillions spent since the 1920s to equate liberalism to Stalin. Just last week I got compared to Hitler and Stalin for being socialist, part of a machine that killed 80 or 100 million people. Yes, here, on this board. A few months ago I was accused of supporting "after birth abortions" because I support a woman's right to choose. Hilary got pilloried in the right wing media for calling some of Trump's supporters "deplorables" and they tried to pretend she was talking about ALL Republicans, and not just the neo-nazis and the other violent nuts on the fringe of the GOP.

The right will take offence, or at least make a big display at being offended, It's all part of a vast, well-organized propaganda machine that Clinton once memorably called "a vast right wing conspiracy".

Watch the media here, especially Fox News. Adam Schiff remarked that Donald Trump "doesn't give a shit about the country" this morning. Demonstrably true, but watch and see what the propaganda machine does with it.

The equivalence between "left and right' is well shattered, and doesn't fit our current paradigm.

Zepp Jamieson said...

Ah. I seem to have misquoted Adam Schiff. First cuppa coffee, you know. Here's the lede on that story:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/dec/06/trump-news-today-live-impeachment-inquiry-pelosi-2020-democrats-latest-updates
Schiff: Trump 'doesn’t give a shit about what’s good for our country'

In an interview with the New Yorker, Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, said Trump “doesn’t give a shit about what’s good for our country”.

The New Yorker’s Susan B Glasser asked Schiff whether he “hated” Trump after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, shouted down a reporter who asked her the same question. “No,” Schiff replied, “but I do hate what he is doing to the country.”

Larry Hart said...

@Ashley,

This is not a trick question. May I ask what led you "here"? Are you, by any chance, a fan of any of Dr Brin's books?

Larry Hart said...

Zepp Jamieson:

The right will take offence, or at least make a big display at being offended,


The right makes a big point of calling the left "snowflakes" obsessed with political correctness, and yet, the right are the ones who whine at the slightest deviation from their own political orthodoxy. They're the biggest snowflakes around, and Trump is the Snowflake in Chief.

And that's without my even resorting to a punchline, that Republicans are the real snowflakes, because they're cold, and they're white, and if you get enough of them together, they'll shut down the public schools. :)

Larry Hart said...

Zepp Jamieson:

The New Yorker’s Susan B Glasser asked Schiff whether he “hated” Trump after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, shouted down a reporter who asked her the same question.


As usual, the pundits are focusing on the wrong question. The idea that Democratic leaders are going after Trump because they "hate" him for their own reasons--maybe because of how he acted on "The Apprentice", or maybe because they're jealous of his financial and sexual success--puts the cart before the horse. It presumes that the emotion precedes the activities rather than the other way around.

I had a similar vibe during the 2016 Democratic debates when a moderator asked both Hillary and Bernie to answer, "Is it 'Black Lives Matter', or 'All Lives Matter'?" The point was to make the candidates choose between saying black people deserve support or that everyone deserves the same rights, as if the two are mutually exclusive. I felt at the time that the correct answer was (and is) "Black lives matter because all lives matter." I wish there were candidates capable of saying that.

Likewise, I don't call Benedict Donald a traitor because I hate him. Rather, I hate the fact that a traitor is in charge of the country, and that his party enables him.

Now, back in the day, did anyone ever ask a right-wing talker whether he hated President Obama? In a bad way, I mean?

 Ashley said...

I have read a bunch of David's books: the Uplift series for starters.

David Brin said...

Ashley you are most welcome here. I lived in the UK for a couple of years, in the 80s and we have a child there, now. Certainly we wish you lot a revelatory success with “I am Brin” in your coming elections. See www.tinyurl.com/BrinCrossing. ;-)

Yes, people are remarkably-resistant when facts threaten their beloved biases. That’s why I focus two chapters of Polemical Judo on potential methods to restore fact-primacy. It will be hard and in fact I believe that’s the core issue of our civil war.

Yes it would be fine for ‘both sides” to tone down the rhetoric. Alas, the fact that left-vs-right dominates is due to the fact that the vast liberal center has been forced to ally itself with the left, in the face of a malignant, existential threat by world mafia-oligarchy. I hate it. But we’re now in trenches and subtlety is hard to come by.

One thing Ashley. Except for a couple of moderately harmless loonies, most everyone is well-intentioned in one of the oldest blog communities anywhere. But often brash or brusque and disputational. Folks do re-evaluate and apologize when needful. But do try to have a thick skin and shrug off the small stuff. You seem a person with many interesting perspectives!

john fremont said...

Welcome aboard Ashley,

I'm more of a lurker here. Speaking of books and your profession, are you familiar with the work of George Lakoff and his ideas on neuro linguistic framing?

Zepp Jamieson said...

The reporter in question was from Sinclair Broadcasting, which is probably the most egregiously propagandistic outfits around. The reporter reminded me of nothing so much as that gay hooker they managed to slip into a WH briefing back in Obama's first year who asked why all Democrats were so crazy. James Cannon, I think he called himself. It was actually his webcam pseudonym.

The right really attract the classy talent, don't they?

Larry Hart said...

Zepp Jamieson:
The right really attract the classy talent, don't they?

The right wingers seem to have read the same comic books I did as a kid, but took the super-villains as their role models.

Larry Hart said...

Zepp Jamieson:

The reporter in question was from Sinclair Broadcasting, which is probably the most egregiously propagandistic outfits around.


Do you mean the reporter who asked Schiff the question? Because Pelosi's attacker also worked for Sinclair. Which really doesn't surprise me at all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/us/politics/pelosi-articles-of-impeachment.html

As the speaker turned to leave the lectern, James Rosen, a correspondent for the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, shouted out to ask if she hated Mr. Trump.

 Ashley said...

@john fremont

I'm aware of George Lakoff. His approach takes a different direction than my medical driven model.

@David Brin

Amusing link, thank you. I have Polemical Judo on my Amazon wish list.

As for a lack of a thick skin, I like to think I do, but the reality might not match my belief. Only time will tell whether my assessment is correct.

Zepp Jamieson said...

@LH: I meant the reporter who queried Pelosi. The Schiff reporter worked for the New Yorker, which is reputable. And he was asking about the Pelosi question.

Polemical Judo time: seek out right wingers and ask them what's to like about what Trump is doing to the country.

Larry Hart said...

Zepp Jamieson:
Polemical Judo time: seek out right wingers and ask them what's to like about what Trump is doing to the country.


Didn't we see the answer from Maureen Dowd's conservative brother in the NY Times? The stock market is booming! He's appointing judges which will outlaw abortion and protect gun rights! He's making sure white Christianists are protected and not bound by the law.

What's not to like?

There are these three guys I work with. One is an unabashed Trump supporter. He sounds just like Tim Allen on "Last Man Standing". He was incensed about the treatment of Kavanaugh during those hearings. Afterwards, he said, "Ok, now the Democrats have set the new standard for investigations into someomene's past," as if Kavanaugh had not actually been confirmed for the seat. I mean, between him and Trump, they're the sorest winners I've ever seen.

Another guy is an expatriate Iranian. He has no love for the regime there now, so he likes Republicans for their anti-Iran stance. Also talks all the time about how great the stock market is doing. He seems to have forgotten how well it did under President Obama. No, it's all Trump's doing.

The other guy is just sick of hearing me and the first guy argue about Trump. He doesn't want to hear any more--a pox on both our houses and that's that. Insists that nothing we've seen of Trump actually indicates the corruption I keep accusing him of. Oh, and since we're in Illinois, what about all those corrupt state-level Democrats, huh?

That's what we're up against.

David Brin said...

Ashley you might find these pertinent.

TEDxUCSD talk on “The addictive plague of getting mad as hell." http://tinyurl.com/wrathaddicts

And the scientific background: http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/addiction.html

 Ashley said...

I'll check them out over the weekend, but now it's time to shutdown the computer for the night.

jim said...

HI Ashley
Welcome, I hope you stick around, there is a distinct lack of female voices and viewpoint’s.

I would say sometimes facts do change peoples beliefs, but only if those beliefs that are not central to a persons identity. For example, if a space probe fly by changes our estimate of the mass of an asteroid, almost everyone will be fine with the new estimate, because almost nobody cares about that fact.

But if you say it is the surplus energy that we get from burning fossil fuels that allows us to have a modern society and doing so is also causing climate change, it does threaten many peoples core beliefs.

Confirmation bias is strong in all of us. So, there are plenty of “facts” for each viewpoint / belief.
As Upton Sinclair said “ it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” .


In your practice, do you try to get behavior changes first and let the cognitive changes follow after?

jim said...

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-smart-simulations-behavior.html

this is super interesting work for fundamental mathematical (geometrical) research. You really need to watch the video that goes with the article.

“AMOLF researchers are studying three-dimensional prismatic structures that can assume different shapes with the aim of producing metamaterials that have multiple properties. Researchers have found a new way to simulate the deformations in such structures, and in doing so, they discovered a wide range of unexpected shapes. The results will be published today in the scientific journal Nature Communications.”

Zepp Jamieson said...

That's what we're up against, all right. It's a sort of a quatum reality, one that exists only as long as it is unexamined.

I have my hopes that the upcoming impeachment trial will cause a partial probability collapse. Most of these worldview bubbles are popped by defeat.

jim said...

David Brin said
" due to the fact that the vast liberal center has been forced to ally itself with the left in the face of a malignant, existential threat by world mafia-oligarchy. I hate it"

Hrmmm,
Is it any wonder that those of us on the left are distrustful of the liberal centrists. if you liberal centrists are being "forced" into something you "hate" it does not seem to basis for a trusting relationship.

Larry Hart said...

@Zepp Jamieson,

I don't know that you'd be familiar with the chapter of Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" graphic novel called "A Dream of a Thousand Cats". But tweaking the plot just a bit, imagine that Democrats used to run the world, until Republicans got together and dreamed into existence a world in which they were the dominant species, and it had always been that way.

A small number of Democrats--perhaps no more than a thousand--could dream a world in which Democrats have always been the dominant species. Problem being that, as with cats, it is nigh impossible to get even 10 Democrats to agree on the same thing at the same time.

Sigh.

A.F. Rey said...

As Dr. Brin has repeatedly stated, once the existential threat to your worldview has been defeated, feel free to advocate for your leftist position. You will have your opportunity. Right now, you have none.

Larry Hart said...

jim:

Is it any wonder that those of us on the left are distrustful of the liberal centrists. if you liberal centrists are being "forced" into something you "hate" it does not seem to basis for a trusting relationship.


Think of it like the fifth season of Game of Thrones. The Crows and the "free people" north of the wall don't like each other, don't necessarily trust each other, don't forgive each other. But they know that they need each other against the existential threat of the White Walkers.

Zepp Jamieson said...

"Alas, the fact that left-vs-right dominates is due to the fact that the vast liberal center has been forced to ally itself with the left, in the face of a malignant, existential threat by world mafia-oligarchy. I hate it."

Hate all you want, but you're always very quick to credit liberalism for the leftist policies of the New Deal. 40 hour work week? Minimum wage? Health and safety standards? Wasn't liberals that brought those about; it was full-throated lefties, beginning with the Wobblies and continuing to the Democratic Socialists of America. Outside of Bernie Sanders, how many of the Democratic candidates talk about the rights of workers these days?

Zepp Jamieson said...

"Dream of 1,000 Cats" is one of my very favourite stories from Sandman. And yes, that particular allegory has occurred to me, and I'm quite certain it was at the back of Gaiman's mind when he penned it.

Zepp Jamieson said...

LH: " they need each other against the existential threat of the White Walkers."

Sure you mean "they need each other against the existential threat of the Scott Walkers."

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Duncan Ocel said...

Thanks Zepp. Didn't we have a whole bunch of new Joe Hills this century? There may be less media coverage for the ideologies, but more for the killing itself. Is that worth it?

Zepp Jamieson said...

It's possible. Back in the 80s, a term was in vogue for people driven to extreme violence by hostile work-place situations: "Going postal". A fair number of mass shootings in America happen in the workplace, and while the servile media is eager to assign such to romantic entanglements, religious zealotry, and the like, I often wonder how many of them was some poor schlub getting screwed over by the shop boss or laid off due to bad management decisions. And no, it's never worth it.

Zepp Jamieson said...

As Not-Dr Zepp has repeatedly stated, once the existential threat to your worldview has been defeated, feel free to advocate for your liberal-centist position. You will have your opportunity. Right now, you have none.

There. Fixed it for you.

A.F. Rey said...

That works, too.

The bottom line is that we can figure out how to govern Moria once we've evicted the Balrog. :)

Zepp Jamieson said...

That works for me, too. Fortunately, our Balrogs don't ride dragons.

A.F. Rey said...

I thought Balrogs ate dragons?

Still, point well taken. I'd rather wield a subpoena than a burning sword to defeat our Balrog. :)

David Brin said...

Good lord, ease up a bit, man. What does "left" mean when the chief effect of FDR era endeavors was to buy the workers into the bourgeoisie by raising up a dominant and well-off middle class? A middle class filled with empowered competitors and entrepreneurs? Marxists deemed it impossible and hated seeing it.

It's not leftism. It is liberalism. And the Socialist aspects mostly served to raise up children to be skilled, eager competitors.

Zepp Jamieson said...

"It's not leftism. It is liberalism. And the Socialist aspects mostly served to raise up children to be skilled, eager competitors."

It's both, a melding called Democratic Socialism. Neither can prevail without the other.

scidata said...

Re: Inventiveness and Innovation (from earlier)

No man is an inventive island. Humanity is a hive mind, and its power of invention is analogous to the processing power of a distributed computer. Here's the weird part: the individual cells compete with one another. Even contrarians play their part in the whole entity (think of the tenth man rule). For those Ben Goertzel fans here, he has some musings about how human hives (cities) may actually spawn strong AI.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/10/30/rethinking-smart-cities-as-early-stage-agis/amp/

This is why I often say that either we all get to the stars, or none of us do. It's not mushy sentiment. Pollyanna was an idiot. Kumbaya is nails on a chalkboard to me. Soma is deadly poison. I detest the whole 'lillies of the field' sensibility -- whither posterity? Getting to the stars will require not harmony, but productive diversity (positive-sum competition in this blog's parlance). There is no seive of virtue; it's all of us or none of us, simply because of Fisher's Theorem. Or Star Trek TOS "The Enemy Within".

Personally, I have a lot of hope for intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic. Not Martian, but synthetic.

Larry Hart said...

Zepp Jamieson:

"Dream of 1,000 Cats" is one of my very favourite stories from Sandman. And yes, that particular allegory has occurred to me, and I'm quite certain it was at the back of Gaiman's mind when he penned it.


Good, I'm glad you got the reference. I've intended to write "A Dream of 1000 Democrats" for some time now, but the exercise seems more and more futile and disheartening as time goes on,


LH: " they need each other against the existential threat of the White Walkers."

Sure you mean "they need each other against the existential threat of the Scott Walkers."


And I was sure someone was going to point out the appropriateness of the white part of the term.

David Brin said...

"It's both, a melding called Democratic Socialism. Neither can prevail without the other."

Both yes and no. The EFFECTS are much the same. But I am talking about an AWARENESS that liberalism - which aims at removing unfair advantages and cheating so that competitive markets can thrive and produce best-outputs - is compatible with social liberalism, because equalizing opportunity requires major interventions in civil rights, in cheating prevention, in infrastructure, in the uplift and health of all children and in a safety net so that middle class folks can take risks, now and then, without fear of an irreversible plummet.

The core difference is that a true liberal supports all of that not only for fairness and justice (subjective and subject to possible populist manipulation) but also for the utterly pragmatic and measurable/verifiable reason of maximizing competitive outcomes.

The mad right and its feudalist-mafia-oligarch owners have developed means to neutralize the fairness and justice pleadings of the left, by dismissing them as smarmy, lecturing bullies -- with just enough anecdotal truth to the accusation that it gets polemical support.

What they cannot do is refute the pragmatic outcomes justifications for liberal interventions - especially of the FDR era - and hence we can draw one conclusion.

Liberals are stoooopid. For not emphasizing the pragmatic outcomes justifications for liberal interventions.

David Brin said...

You guys might recal Rob Prior. He passed along the following message, primarilly for Zepp.

"I'm not using Google these days, so can't comment on your blog anymore,
but I have a book recommendation for Zepp:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64821.Going_Postal

"Not certain I agree with the links to slave rebellions (don't know
enough about them to have a real opinion, but it sounds a bit forced).
But Ames seems to do a pretty good job of chronicling the motivation
behind contemporary workplace shootings."

Zepp Jamieson said...

Tell Mr Prior my thanks, and I'll look it up.

Now, Doctor, I don't consider you 'stooooopid'; in fact, I self-describe as a liberal as well as a leftist. It would be a bit self-defeating to call liberals stoooopid.

The problem with competitive outcomes is that without regulation, you end up in a Randroid nightmare much like what we have now. Business cannot self-regulate, since competition is the seeking of advantage, by any means possible. Fairness and justice are not parts of that equation.

The left is a mechanism by which pressure to control capitalism and make it an asset rather than a parasite. Where the left fails is that to goes too far to stifle competition; unions are notoriously antipathetic to such spread-the-wealth measures as civil rights, free trade, and are subject to corruption. That's why the left needs liberalism. Whether it likes it or not.

Liberals tend to be inert on their own, since they are generally middle-class and above, and thus don't feel the economic pressures and privations that working and poor people feel. In a best case outcome, they simply petition the rich to share the wealth. Usually they self-nullify. They need pressure from the left to fight for economic as well as social equality, since you can't have one without the other. So, no matter how much you hate us, you need us to get you to press for the needs of people whose votes you cannot win without.

duncan cairncross said...

I am 100% with Zepp

Just as Dr Brin's sports analogies competition needs rules and regulations

David Brin said...

Not so sure I'd see the same spectrum. The left is tempted by central command... for the good of all, of course. Liberalism shares with libertarianism a skepticism toward concentrations of power.

onward

onward

Alfred Differ said...

Zepp, (posting below the fold so I don't mess up the next thread)

Oh good grief. 8)

Just last week I got compared to Hitler and Stalin for being socialist, part of a machine that killed 80 or 100 million people. Yes, here, on this board. 

No. You were not so compared. Since I was the one doing it, let's compare.

You>>Here's why I'm a socialist: 'Eye-Popping': Analysis Shows Top 1% Gained $21 Trillion in Wealth Since 1989 While Bottom Half Lost $900 Billion

Me>>Here's why I'm not a socialist... I lay at the feet of Socialism the deaths of about 80-100 million people in the 20th century.


I'm kinda picky about making distinctions about what people believe and the person's doing the believing. In other words, you aren't a 'deplorable' unless I specifically say so. What you did was take is more personal. I blamed Socialism. You think I blamed all socialists. Not so. My beef with all socialists is that the system of belief to which you hold has an inherent inefficiency AND a very slippery slope (not ensuring a fall, but it's not easy to avoid it) that allows for horrible people to be supported by your clade in a 'boiling the frog' approach.



The problem with competitive outcomes is that without regulation, you end up in a Randroid nightmare much like what we have now. Business cannot self-regulate, since competition is the seeking of advantage, by any means possible. Fairness and justice are not parts of that equation.

You aren't a liberal in the classical sense in the US. You are a progressive with little trust of the markets and see the role of authority as the enforcer of morals on an (at best) amoral system.

You are simply mistaken. Competitive outcomes PRODUCE regulation because Justice is a meta-market. The Randroid nightmare (rightly called that) is actually a form of cheating occurring in the meta-market. Our 'market' isn't amoral unless someone gets to dictate in a VERY illiberal manner, what the rules are.

_______

I stopped responding in the previous thread because
1) I like you and Matthew
2) We were beginning to insult each other

Understand this, though.
1) I believe your belief system is dangerous and we could do better.
2) I am also quite convinced you don't understand mine. Same goes for Matthew. The proof is in how quickly you both took this personal.

 Ashley said...

@Jim "In your practice, do you try to get behavior changes first and let the cognitive changes follow after?"

Yes, while my degree is in cognitive behavioural psychotherapy/psychology, I tend towards behavioral changes, but I don't discard cognitive interventions, with the caveat that they take longer are more difficult to do.

Larry Hart said...

@Ashley,

Just so you know, when Dr Brin posts "onward", it means there's a newer main post up, and we move over there to keep current with the comments. Occasionally, someone (ahem!) misses the cue and continues to comment under the old post even after the "onward". We usually catch on eventually. Even less often, but it just happened here, someone intentionally keeps an old conversation going under the old post rather that pollute the new one with it.

All by way of saying, most of us are probably already commenting under the later post of Dr Brin's. "See" you there.

onward!

onward!