US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1556

On June 16 2019 13:51 Danglars wrote:

I'm with you on your point about politicians and the political debates among nominees. I'm even a little optimistic with large fields in that political points and lines of disagreement spawn a host of news articles and provoke reading afterwards. I like the increase in exposure to counterarguments even if they're phrased in sound bites.

My other point is in weighing value judgments. Like it or not, people will vigorously disagree on what law and society should value. They'll do it to the point where it appears to outside observers that they don't have an "open mind" and are unwilling to concede. The societal values disagreements only scratches the surface on that topic. The largest one is weighing freedom vs safety.

Not all policy disagreements stem from big gaps in values, but sometimes the gulf between policies is so large that bridging it in a series of debates is unlikely. It might take over a dozen new individuals debating in some capacity over a period of many years. It's also going to look like somebody's arguing in bad faith, simply because one can't wrap their minds around any of the framework supporting the contrary idea. That relates directly to your point: politicians are better off assuming one conclusion from the priors and debating from that, for example, that increased government control and subsidization of the medical industry is the right direction for prices and availability. It's also a key feature of the American republic. What we can't agree on, we'll take to the ballot box. What most affects me will be decided by state and local, where several states may disagree and have totally different systems and be equally happy with the result.

On June 16 2019 09:19 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


He never would, and there apparently aren't any moderators who would actually hold him accountable. All they need is the power to cut off his mic, and they still wouldn't do that because so many moderators are pushovers unfortunately.

Could you believe if we had a real debate with real accountability? Something like this? This would be amazing.

+ Show Spoiler +

On June 16 2019 15:06 Falling wrote:

The problem with the Newsroom example is that isn't a good debate either, unless it's a debate between the moderator on one side and all the candidates on the other and then you'd have a moderator for the moderator. Properly speaking it is the job of other candidates to cross-examine their opponents, not the moderator. But with 20 candidates on stage, it's impossible to hold a line of reasoning down any one track because the format requires us to bounce from one candidate to the next. Developing any real line of argumentation is impossible.

McLuhan argued the medium is the message, and in this instance, I'd really have to agree. Most of the badness of the modern debates is due to just how bad the format is. Over time candidates have gotten good at dodging the questions- but it's the other candidates job to hold each other to the fire. But you need more room for individuals to argue.

On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:


I wouldn't call it a false belief. In fact, climate change is a good example of facts that are not falsifiable. Based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, we already know that there will be certain things that math or science can never prove conclusively to be true or false.

Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy.

There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing.

The most reasonable argument I have read about climate change is the one Taleb makes in his book Antifragile. If there is uncertainty about the impact of our actions, but if there is a small chance it could be catastrophic, we should not do it at all. If I want to release a gas that might harm people, the burden of proof should be on me to proof that the gas is safe, not on other people to prove the gas is dangerous.

This is an argument based on decision making under uncertainty, and not based on confidence in the correctness of models from "experts" that consume taxpayer money and produce poor predictions.

On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:


I wouldn't call it a false belief. In fact, climate change is a good example of facts that are not falsifiable. Based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, we already know that there will be certain things that math or science can never prove conclusively to be true or false.

On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:


Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time).

For example, in Science class, we memorize facts, regurgitate them, and perform arithmetic calculations. There is very little real application of the scientific method and discussion of epistemological arguments posed by scientific philosophers (E.g. Francis Bacon, Karl Popper).

What we get is polarized left and right wing people who are very good at regurgitating what they have been indoctrinated with. When I see a person whose views all conveniently line up to a particular political party and is incapable of an original thought, I know it is pointless to reason with that individual.

On June 16 2019 16:12 GreenHorizons wrote:


Where on earth have you been hiding lol?

Been a pain critically engaging with communism/socialism as a result of that training and lack of exposure to those systems/ideas. It's also frustrating to see how disinterested in sincere dialogue so many people are, which I believe, is strongly tied to that indoctrination through the banking model of education (Freire).

Application to community psychology

Just as it is possible, through the design of sustainable systems of ecological development, to increase the relative contribution of the 'edge' to each adjoining community, so it is possible to create a larger edge effect in organisational and community development and thereby maximise its benefit to the system as a whole.
We need to be clear that we are using 'edge' here as a metaphor. An edge effect in a natural ecological system isn't necessarily the same thing as an edge effect in a human community system - the mechanisms, the transactions, and the mediations will be different. At any rate we remain agnostic about the existence or not of some superordinate systemic principles that underlie both the ecological edge effect and the analogous phenomenon in community and organisational development.
Here, however, is our application of the idea. Quite often community psychological projects involve working across boundaries.
We have used the notion of the 'edge effect' to describe the phenomenon of enrichment in some of these alliances and confrontations. When edge is actually created we notice an increase in energy, excitement and commitment.
What characterises all of these contexts (whether edge is significantly created or not) is the problem of spanning social entities with greatly differing modes of operation, power structures, cultures, physical environments, and ideologies. Not only is it necessary to know something about how to navigate in at least two contexts, but the need to do so increases the demand on resources, of both the participating sectors, and the community psychologists themselves.

On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:
Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy.

There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing.

On June 16 2019 23:51 Dan HH wrote:

I'd usually avoid taking the bait from epistemology knights attempting to find a technicality that would deem science as unscientific but given the importance of this particular topic and the swathes of unnecessary confusion on the topic, here are the claims and why all of them are falsifiable:

1. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 absorb infrared radiation, trapping heat. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence such spectroscopic laboratory measurements showing otherwise.

2. Human activity is increasing the amount of GHG in the atmosphere. This can be falsified by measurements from the atmosphere showing GHG not to follow human trends in emissions OR by finding a different source accounting for more of the increase.

3. The amount of radiation leaving the Earth is decreasing. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence from satellites measuring infrared spectra which would not find drops in outgoing radiation at the wavelenghts at which GHG absorb energy.

4. The Earth is accumulating heat. This can be falsified by direct temperature overall measurements showing otherwise.

5. The GHG increase in the atmosphere is he primary cause of the accumulation of heat. This can be falsified by showing GHG energy absorption to be incapable of accounting for most of the heat increase OR by finding a larger source such as ingoing solar radiation.

6. Where GHG concentrations are decreasing (the stratosphere), temperature is decreasing as well. Again this can be falsified by direct measurements from satellites showing otherwise.

The accuracy of climate models has no bearing whatsoever on GHG being the main culprit. In the same sense that the accuracy of a model predicting what traits species of animals will have in the future has no bearing whatsoever on selection being the main culprit of biological changes.

Your take betrays a lack of understanding of Popper. AGW is not a hypothesis in his sense of the word, it is theory that encompasses a myriad of hypotheses, each of them falsifiable.

The biggest mistake you make is confusing falsifiability with the feasibility of a litmus test. With this mistake, a heliocentric model in the 18th century would be unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. Whereas the different hypotheses encompassing a heliocentric model were entirely falsifiable by various things from shadows to existing mathematical knowledge at the time, despite not being able to go to space and falsify the theory as a whole in one swoop.

To this day we are still testing and providing additional proof for some of Enstein's theories and various other well known accepted theories in a way that wasn't technologically possible at the time, but that doesn't mean that the proofs that could be done at the time weren't enough or scientific.

The falsifiability attack on climate "science" relies on interpreting the scientific method in very much the same manner that a sovereign citizen interprets a constitution.

On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:


Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time).

On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:


Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'.

The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely.

The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course.

On June 17 2019 02:04 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


It sounds like you had a pretty bad experience in school when it came to math and science class, but I would caution you to be careful about generalizing to something like "the modern educational system". If anything, most math and science educators generally understand quite well that the best way to learn math and science is to do math and science- to problem solve, critically think, wonder, tinker, predict, experiment in labs, observe, survey, justify, analyze, etc. I'm not so sure about your use of the term indoctrinate, but I agree with you that teaching critical thinking skills is incredibly important in a successful educational system.