A history of FLICC: the 5 techniques of science denial — John Cook

This is useful not only as a primer on recognizing and rebutting science denialism but also as a contribution to critical thinking in general.

I should be obvious by now that dismissing something as "conspiracy theory" without an adequate foundation is just another means of discrediting opponents and  achieving narrative control. But there are conspiracy theories out there that need debunking based on sound reasoning grounded in evidence.

Crazy Uncle
A history of FLICC: the 5 techniques of science denial
John Cook
hat tip to Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

See also by John Cook

Using critical thinking to analyze misinformation

Timothy Taylor — I Don't Know So Well What I Think Until I See What I Say

I've known writers who have the essay almost fully formed in their mind, and it just pours out on to the page. It's happened for me a few times. But most writing for me, and I suspect for others, starts from a place of less clarity. There's an idea, to be sure, and some support for the idea. But as you try to put the ideas into concrete words, you become aware of a lack of precision in what you are saying, of a failure to capture what you really mean to say, of holes and inconsistencies in the argument, of places where the argument is not persuasive or connected or fluent. I sometimes find this hard to convey to students: Writing isn't (usually) about transcribing thoughts, but instead is intertwined with a process of developing insights that are more accurate and complete.…

This is the process of applying critical thinking to creative thinking, of which Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "The purpose of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity... Philosophy should clarify and sharply bound thoughts that would otherwise be cloudy and blurry, as it were. " (Tractatus 4.112)

Rigorous thinking need not be formalized, since that is not always possible. For example, this may occur when quality predominates over quantity, or quantity is not sufficiently measurable for the degree of precision needed. or the number of variable and parameters involved makes formalized models intractable.

It's also a reason for using math where measurement is possible and quantity is a factor. For example, a lot of apparently promising entrepreneurial ideas are deflated when one puts numbers on it.

But logic is always applicable is some form, and logic is one pillar of critical thinking. The other pillar is substantiation, e.g., through evidence or authority such as expert testimony or documentaion.

 Another aspect of critical thinking is tacit knowledge. This is a reason that experts in a field are more reliable on matters in that field that non-experts. Their tacit knowledge provides the necessary background upon which to draw.

Critical thinking combines the categorical and dialectical, the dialectical aspect considering possible errors and objections by playing the devil's advocate.

Ideas of any degree of complication or complexity should be discussed in a team that brings may inputs to bear in a dialectic process. RAND Corporation invented the Delphi method for this purpose, for instance. Academics do this by passing their papers around among colleagues before releasing them. Working papers are also used to solicit feedback.

The Internet both helps and hinders this process. Obviously, I think it helps more than hinders.

It helps by forcing clarity, brevity and precision in thinking and expression, as well as training in drawing on and distilling tacit knowledge as background.

It hinders owing to the limited scope of the media, e.g., blogs and social media posts, and the breadth of scale, which necessitate a certain degree of "dumbing down" to reach the broad non-expert audience. As a result the output may be somewhat superficial and even be misunderstood, which poses a reputational risk that some are not willing to accept. There is also the risk of appearing foolish if one exceeds the bounds of one's field of expertise and makes errors, revealing lack of discrimination.

Conversable Economist

"I Don't Know So Well What I Think Until I See What I Say"

Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

Kevin Garnett — A Short Guide to Hard Problems

A bit wonkish, but interesting.

Big implications for the transition from the analog era that has lasted throughout history up to now into the digital age. An important iteration in the digital age has taken place already. (This has some people concerned that humans will lose control to AI.)

Quantum computers appear to be different from classical computers such that they may result in different categories of problems that the machines can respectively handle. This can be seen by examining algorithmic problem solving capability and computational power.

So in addition to the size of problems that can be solved, there may also be a categorical difference, putting some problem types beyond the ability of human intelligence not only in terms of size in relation to speed, but also category.

Quantum computing may not just be faster but also of a different order than human intelligence. Are we facing looking like great apes relative to human beings as the digital age unfolds. It also raise questions about just who owns and controls the computing power, since it will profoundly affect the social, political and economic aspects of life as a whole. 

 

Quanta
A Short Guide to Hard Problems

Kevin Garnett, senior writer

See also

It may surprise some to learn that one in three start-ups in the Arab World is founded or led by women. That’s a higher percentage than in Silicon Valley. Women are becoming a force to be reckoned with on the start-up scene across the Middle East. Because the tech industry is still relatively new in the Arab world, there is no legacy of it being a male-dominated field. Many entrepreneurs from the region believe that technology is one of the few spaces where everything is viewed as possible, including breaking gender norms, making it a very attractive industry for women....

World Economic Forum
How women are transforming the Arab world's start-up scene

Kelly Ommundsen and Khaled Kteily

Chris Dillow — Rationalism, rationality & reasonableness

Chris Dillow is writing bout the dialectical approach in contrast to the categorical approach and apparently doesn't realize it even though he is a Marxian economist. What is is saying is to adopt the principle of rational inquiry in one's own thinking by critiquing oneself and becoming one's own interlocutor and devil's advocate. This is fundamental to critical thinking, in contrast to dogmatic thinking, for example.

Stumbling and Mumbling
Rationalism, rationality & reasonableness
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Lars P. Syll — Abduction – the induction that constitutes the essence​ of scientific reasoning

Abduction in this sense is reasoning to the best explanation based on relevant information available. (The use of "abduction" by C. S. Peirce, the originator of the term, is somewhat different. See abductive reasoning)

Math is an instrument of deduction. Deductive reasoning proceeds logically from a stipulated starting point, e.g., axioms, postulates, using deductive logic or mathematics.

Abduction involves constructing conceptual or mathematical models based on what is given. To simplify, abduction begins as a "word problem" involving observation and conceptual understanding. From this a model as a candidate for providing best explanation is developed and then tested against that which is being modeled.

Abduction stand in contrast to the intuitive approach to stipulating axioms as the basis for a deductive system. Conventional economics based on assuming equilibrium and maximization is intuitively based rather than abductive.

Induction is reasoning based on observation of particulars and assuming that the past resembles the future, eg., path dependence, hysteresis ergodicity. Abduction may employ induction, usually thought of in terms of probability and statistics.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Abduction — the induction that constitutes the essence​ of scientific reasoning
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Noah Smith — "Theory vs. Data" in statistics too

Important.

I think Noah has this right. Fit the tool to the job, rather than the job to the tool.

Aristotle defined speculative knowledge in terms of causal explanation. This definition stuck although Aristotle's analysis of causality did not.

In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle places the following crucial condition on proper knowledge: we think we have knowledge of a thing only when we have grasped its cause (APost. 71 b 9–11. Cf. APost. 94 a 20). That proper knowledge is knowledge of the cause is repeated in the Physics: we think we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause (Phys. 194 b 17–20). Since Aristotle obviously conceives of a causal investigation as the search for an answer to the question “why?”, and a why-question is a request for an explanation, it can be useful to think of a cause as a certain type of explanation. (My hesitation is ultimately due to the fact that not all why-questions are requests for an explanation that identifies a cause, let alone a cause in the particular sense envisioned by Aristotle.) — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

There is a distinction between reasons and causes. Some types of explanation seek only reasons, while other seek causes. Causation subsequently came to be viewed in terms of articulating mechanisms or lines of transmission (models) that are substantiated in evidence.

Explanation by reasons is different since the strict criterion of articulating mechanisms or lines of transmission that can be checked against evidence is not required.

Explanation by reasons rather than strictly by establishing causation is based on the principle of sufficient reason, which is usually credited to Spinoza and Leibnitz.

In philosophical logic, two negative criteria are foundational. Valid reasoning is vitiated by 1) arguing in a circle and 2) infinite regress.

Without recourse to checking against evidence there is no stopping point in assigning causes other than stipulation, e.g. of a first cause.

However, there may be a reason for a stopping point that doesn't involve causality based on evidence from observation or only stipulation, for example, principles that are "self-evident" based on intuition such as Aristotle's conception of intellectual intuition, or Kant's synthetic a priori propositions as articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason. 

On the other hand, Hume argued that causality is merely over-interpretation of constant correlation, there being no knowledge of the world other than that based on sense data. There is no observable causal link.

Cutting to the chase, scientific explanation based on causality is grounded in models that articulate causal mechanisms or lines of transmission that show how things change invariantly, which is the basis for deterministic functions. Where this is not possible, then there are two other avenues. The first is explanation by giving reasons, which is the domain of speculative philosophy. The second is employing statistics to explore patters of correlation. The question then is to what degree causal models can be gained from statistical methods, or whether it is possible at all. 

This is the issue that Noah Smith's post is getting at.

Noahpinion
"Theory vs. Data" in statistics too
Noah Smith | Bloomberg View columnist

William K. Black — Howard Dean Wants to Continue Austerity’s Assault on the Working Class

The Democrats are never ever going to figure this out because they are fixated on the Clinton surplus.

And even if they do figure it out, in order to be effective politically, persuasion has to be based on a moral argument rather than reasoning in terms of economic theory and providing facts and figures.

The fundamental problem is that a majority of Americans of all classes view indebtedness as immoral and irresponsible, especially growing indebtedness . 

This is going to be a tough nut to crack. 

While reasoning may be part of the argument, it is unlikely to carry the day with enough people to reverse course in the polls that politicians look at.

The framing must be based on morality rather than reason to work politically, and the argument must be based chiefly on rhetoric (persuasion) rather than logic (reasoning from evidence).

Conservatives figured this out long ago. Liberals are still clueless about it for the most part and when they attempt to use it they are clumsy with it because it doesn't fit their thinking style.

This does not imply countering the indebtedness is immoral view with arguments against that view, which will only reinforce it in the minds of those holding it. Cognitive scientist George Lakoff observes that most people  "moderates" comprising the political "center." They are biconceptual and hold aspects of the conservative and liberal world views characterized by the strict father world view and nurturing partner world view respectively. Even those whose view is dominated by the strict father are susceptible to appeal to the nurturing parent view. Moreover, dominance can shift through persuasion. The "Reagan Democrats" are a good example.

Rather than argue against the strict father-conservative point of view, liberals should instead appeal to the nurturing parent world view that they hold. Polling shows that most Americans are more inclined to the nutting parent world view and can be persuaded by arguments based on the morality of this point of view.

New Economic Perspectives
Howard Dean Wants to Continue Austerity’s Assault on the Working Class
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Andrew Gelman — If Karl Popper edited the New York Times

As a matter of logic, scientific theories are never "confirmed," although they are "corroborated" by evidence.

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
If Karl Popper edited the New York Times
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science, and Director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University

Russ — Religion is All Good and Well….

This is a nice short post on abstraction and reification of ideas. Most of what we deal with today in the "Antropocene epoch" is human artifacts, some of which actually exist along with natural objects as modifications of natural objects. But many and many of the most significant are mental constructs. These mental constructs then take on a reality of their own through the social construction of reality.

While you are reading this, keep Citizen's United in mind and remember than the people who gave it to use are dressed in robes and sit in high seats.

Voltaire
Religion is All Good and Well….

Russ

Lars P. Syll — Econometrics — rhetorics and reality

The principal objective in teaching Logic 101 is for student to come away with the knowledge of the conditions for a sound argument.

A sound argument is one in which the logical form is valid and the premises are (known to be) true. 

Logical form is matter of rules that are independent of reality. Valid logical form is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sound argument. 

The truth of the premises is also required that is not and cannot be given by looking at the premiere alone. Premises are models that make existential claims about what is modeled that so the proposition as model can be checked against the assertion or negation that the statement makes about how things stand in the world. If and only if the state of affairs that the proposition models corresponds with fact is the propoistion true. Understanding a descriptive proposition requires knowing what would have to be the case if the proposition is actually true. This enables testing propositions as models of possible states of affairs against what is modeled, that is, putative facts.

Logic and math are about possibility. Empirical testing is about actuality.

The sciences prefer to employ mathematical models instead of that conceptual models wherever possible since they are more rigorous and precise. Rigor comes from following the rules and precision is dependent on accuracy of measurement. A model can be made precise to whatever degree the model builder desires, but the actual degree of precision is limited by the ability to measure accurate. That is an empirical matter.

In a mathematical model, the model must valid, which can be known simply by looking at its construction in terms of definitions, formation rules and transformation rule. In math this is called consistency. It results in syntactical truth. 

The syntactical truth of consistency implies absolutely nothing about the semantic truth of the model as a faithful representation of reality. The output of the model is necessarily true semantically if and only if all the input is true semantically. Then the model necessarily corresponds with the modeled. The necessity involved is logical necessity whereas semantic truth is matter of empirics. Both are required for a scientific hypothesis to be significant as a test of the model. An untested model remains a description of a possible world that is not known to actually exist. 

This is the difference between theory and experiment. For example, physics is divided into theoretical physics, in which theoretical physicists develop models of possible worlds, and experimental physicists design experiments to test these models agains the real world though observation. The creative physicists that apply the resulting knowledge are called engineers and their output is called technology. It is through technology that the public learns pragmatically about advancements in the natural sciences.

Science is about constructing a general description of the world. To be testable, the general must be reducible to the the particular so that hypotheses can be generated that can be compared with the how things actually stand in the world. There are rigorous procedures in scientific method for doing this. 

Failure to conform to this widely accepted understanding of scientific method result in conclusions that are not based on sound argumentation.

While scientific modeling may be extremely complicated and highly technical, anyone that has taken Logic 101 would easily be able to grasp the basic justification behind the process. Of course, only highly trained professionals are capable of rigorously critiquing the application of method, including the empirics, and this is what the peer review process is designed to do. Then, the results are offered for debate and counter-argument in the profession.

How does this compare with the current practice and outcomes of conventional economics?

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Econometrics — rhetorics and reality
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Lars P. Syll — On the value of theoretical models in economics

Constructing simple macroeconomic models somehow seen as “successively approximating” macroeconomic reality, is a rather unimpressive attempt at legitimizing using fictitious idealizations for reasons more to do with model tractability than with a genuine interest of understanding and explaining features of real economies. Many of the model assumptions standardly made by neoclassical macroeconomics – simplicity being one of them – are restrictive rather than harmless and could a fortiori anyway not in any sensible meaning be considered approximations at all. 

If economists aren’t able to show that the mechanisms or causes that they isolate and handle in their “simple” models are stable in the sense that they do not change when exported to their “target systems”, they do only hold under ceteris paribus conditions and are a fortiori of limited value to our understanding, explanations or predictions of real economic systems. 

That Newton’s theory in most regards is simpler than Einstein’s is of no avail. Today Einstein has replaced Newton. The ultimate arbiter of the scientific value of models cannot be simplicity. 

As scientists we have to get our priorities right. Ontological under-labouring has to precede epistemology. 

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
On the value of theoretical models in economics
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Lord Keynes — The Left needs to abandon Postmodernism

It is high time that the Left dispensed with and put an end to the fashionable nonsense that is Postmodernism (or “Poststructuralism” as the French intellectual movement which gave rise to it was originally called).

I can, incidentally, speak on this subject from personal experience. When I was an undergraduate I learnt a lot of this Postmodernist nonsense myself, and encountered it frequently at university, but I had the great benefit of learning a considerable amount of analytic philosophy (an acid under which Postmodernism dissolves) and listening to, and reading, no-nonsense Leftists who always understood it for the idiocy that it was and still is.

This subject is relevant to economics, because there are some actual Post Keynesians who seem to think that they can adopt a serious “Postmodernist” methodology and epistemology as a foundation of Post Keynesian economics. This, in my view, is a terrible delusion.…

The logical issue involved is criteria, a subject which underlies both meaning and truth as the necessary grounds for communication.

Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
The Left needs to abandon Postmodernism
Lord Keynes

See also

Steve Keen on Yanis Varoufakis

Gotta Be Honest First, Or Math Is Useless.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Because there's no logic without "lo".

Bill Mitchell: "Still sinning … a German economist who cannot face facts"

Those that just can't - or simply won't - see, never put 2+2 together.

No wonder they don't - or won't - get to 5th grade math. Gotta be honest first, or math is useless.

You do the calculus of honesty.

The residual is that data is always meaningless without context.

You can IMAGINE any context you want, but that doesn't help when it comes to helping fellow citizens survive REAL context.

Unfortunately, The "Formulization" Of Other Disciplines Is Also Proceeding. Institutional Momentum vs Aggregate Adaptive Momentum.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

(evolving hitching patterns in different size mule teams)

And you thought that NeoLiberalism in economics was bad!

Rebels in many professions are resisting our current period of systemic decline. Take DoD Personnel Doctrine. Please! Or law enforcement mis-training. Or mis-education in general.

And now we can add sociology. For example, the following paper strikes me as an infatuation with formulae, in this case computer modeling.  The article may make some people think (about SOMETHING), but it is functionally useless as a guide to practitioners of Democracy in the real world.

Conditions for the Emergence of Shared Norms in Populations with Incompatible Preferences

"By means of computer simulations, we study conditions ... "

Is it different this time? Have new tools made distributed logic* obsolete? No.

If there's a computer, there's programmed software. And if there's a software program, 99.999% of the time, there is still a presumed formula for handling a presumed static context.

The insidious, main outcome? Creeping acceptance of formulaic methods reinforces a VERY BAD HABIT. Namely, the naive, underlying belief that systems adapt by predictively reorganizing previously describable degrees of freedom, rather than by completely unpredictable & constantly changing sorting following repetitive trial and error. That sort of institutional momentum delays our endless pursuit of Outcomes Driven adjustments and prolongs wasteful wanderings in Ideologically Driven dead ends.

The simpler, more useful message was already and always known. There are no Cookbook Recipes for adapting and evolving - i.e., no formulae, and no reliable program to use. Our degrees of freedom grow faster than our knowledge, habits, methods and practice base.

Our only recourse is ceaseless expansion of distributed trial-&-error, and frantic selection from our own aggregate feedback. No new tool changes the fundamentals of evolution.

1) We always face new aggregate challenges and capabilities, both demanding and bestowing orders of magnitude more degrees of freedom than we currently perceive. Constant exploration is required.

2) We have zero predictive power, yet seemingly unlimited adaptive power.
We can leverage that adaptive power IF we industriously utilize our full distribution of feedback and analysis. Tempo matters. [None of us is as smart as all of us, or as quick thinking when it comes to aggregate context.]

3) How do we survive every new niche we drag ourselves into? We start trying many things, and then start finding out - ASAP! - what starts to work. In the process, we reshape and tune ongoing, distributed momentum, based on distributed feedback.

4) So please cease, forever, the habit of trying to predict unpredictable adaptive formulas beforehand, and in the process constraining the very distributed activity & feedback which we need to drive massively parallel SELECTION.

5) Preserve fundamentals AND evolve more variables. Constantly retune a GRADIENT involving re-standardizing carefully selected infrastructure, while simultaneously promoting active diversification near the outer edge of your evolving system. [To use a building analogy, consolidate nearer to the foundations, and ceaselessly innovate nearer to the top floors. Our spectrum of innovation must include highly conserved elements as well as increased variance in some elements, just for OUR system to evolve. While not letting innovation fall completely to zero anywhere. To survive, EVERYTHING in our system must change. Just not at the same rates everywhere.]

What we have here - 2014 in the USA - is a lull in an unceasing civil war to evolve.

One combatant is our own urge to rapidly over-adapt to transient context, leading to efficiency traps.

The other combatant is our own requirement and urge to re-orient to changing context, sometimes leading to complacency about transient contexts.

Survival, obviously, requires surviving today as well as endless different tomorrows - but never any of those in isolation.

[Then there is also the constant burden of the untrained zombi or deadweight element, which actively resists any and all change, and actually believes that sitting in the middle of the road isn't suicide. They're not on anyone's side. They're just in the way. If we stop our civil war and pay a bit more attention to education and training requirements, the zombies should soon become statistically insignificant.]

Clearly, we need transient efficiency on demand, plus resiliency on demand, not either in isolation.

Right now, we've hitched up half or more of our own team backwards! Some are demanding too much efficiency, and some are demanding too much resiliency. How do we actually get our swelling ranks of combatants to lubricate all the random frictions, and make recombinant love, not factional war?

Since a formula for solving one, static context can be optimized ... does that mean that EXTENSION OF THE SAME FORMULA can provide optimal solutions bridging multiple, different contexts?

No. Most grandparents learn that the hard way, yet most fail to adequately teach it to their kids. Hence - SO FAR! - most grandchildren must relearn many things that their grandparents learned, but didn't pass on as a permanently incorporated part of our expanding cultural toolkit.

Ok. Does that mean that ANY particular formula will work for the unending stream of different contexts we face? NO!!! We've also learned that too, by trial and error. 

You might say that the only formula that works for any system, is to permanently discount excessive belief in any PERVASIVE formula whatsoever. The only formula that's workable long term is to decline all formula except that of a shifting gradient of distributed innovation.

Slowly change foundations, while rapidly sifting through new experimental variables.

That's how we preserve our aggregate adaptive momentum, while varying it too.

Does this work? Yes. And we actually have a tremendous opportunity to increase our Aggregate Adaptive Rate! 

How? By remarkably subtle and simple tuning of our citizen-development methods. It's a given that all citizens will face new horizons that none can predict or specifically prepare for. The most valuable talent to practice is comfort and familiarity with embracing and extending NEW perspectives on our own aggregate and it's situation.

Practice at audacious innovation - not formulas - is what used to drive American Ingenuity.

There's a difference between Aggregate Adaptive Momentum, and Institutional Momentum, and the former always wins in the end.

There's no reason why most citizens can't learn all this by age 10. Unfortunately, we're not even trying to prepare them!

Summary. New tools and methods are:

a) always prompting us to slowly, recursively improve our highly preserved foundation or "logistic" formulae,

b) while also distracting us from practicing further aggregate innovation.

There's a required duality between foundation and exploration. We survive by coordinating, not consolidating those complementary activities.

Aggregate success means grandparents embracing the inventions of grandchildren PLUS challenging them to explore agile vs formulaic applications of new capabilities.

Youth or beginners start with Institutional Momentum in perceived static contexts, and must grow into perceiving Aggregate Adaptive Momentum in unpredictably evolving contexts.

Without adequate aggregate challenges to generate experience, new generations inevitably get stuck in Static Context outlooks, which reduce their Adaptive Rate.

Our current challenge is to invent AND USE subtly altered education and training methods which permanently capture and preserve a higher adaptive rate in yet a larger population.

Froebel seems to have come close to realizing that, 200+ years ago, and most disciples of Kindergarten promptly forgot it! Go figure.

* Casey Haskins defines logic as "using evidence to draw conclusions".
Evolving, distributed logic is therefore: "using accumulating, distributed evidence to draw NEW conclusions about always changing aggregate situations." Clearly there are multiple, simultaneous levels of logic, and the very concept of logic, like data, is meaningless without context.

Is another generational "silly season" reaching its peak? The two contestants are the GOP & DEM parties. That's the bad part.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

The good part? There's another generation coming, which grew up watching this one self destruct. Let me know if you find evidence that our next crop will be less silly.

In the meantime, here's some commentary by Chuck Spinney, and an opinion piece by Pat Buchanan - who finally sounds more pragmatic and less knee-jerk conservative.

Which of the following would logic dictate you employ, in different contexts? Say, Domestic Politics vs International Relations? The only thing riding on this is how our electorate will spend the fiat it's told we're low on and running out of.  Of course there are other options to explore, but few seem to be able to see them, and certainly not fast enough.

(Note that feedback significance includes tempo!)

From: Chuck Spinney (by permission)

"A nation’s foreign policy is a reflection of its domestic politics.

Today, it is an undeniable fact that US foreign policy is now, like its domestic politics, a shambles of non-cooperative centers of gravity.

One need only consider Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Africa, Yeman, spying on our closest allies (esp. Germany), the perpetual drone war, Ukraine, etc. US leaders flit from one crisis to another in what has become a Whack-a-Mole game. The chaos abroad mirrors the chaos and reactiveness in our broken domestic politics at home, where special interests are running amok. 

Lest you think the chaos cannot get worse, think again. Patrick Buchanan's powerfully argued essay will get you started in this direction. Among other things, Pat shows how the foreign policy shambles is directly linked to 2014 election politics via fueling the rise of anti-Russian right-wing militarism (and, while unstated, the 'requirement' to protect the MICC from the mild budgetary implications of the now forgotten Sequester).

Lest you think this desire to protect the MICC during an election is a right-wing Republican phenomenon, President Obama is fighting back in a last minute effort to buy off the defense contractor wing of the MICC with a doubling down of foreign sales of high tech US weapons, as part of a larger Clintonesqe triangulation strategy that includes privatizing infrastructure to keep the senate from going Republican. (H/T Pierre Sprey for this observation).

And of course, looming in the offing, is the inevitable ‘bipartisan' competition to see who can take the most political credit for increasing the weapons and aid flowing to the Israel’s to compensate Israelis using up US-provided weapons to massacre Palestinians in Gaza — an operation that is clearly inimical to the long-term national interest and security, not to mention what little is left of our moral stature in the world."

A GOP Ultimatum to Vlad

4.5 Billion Years of Evolution on Planet Earth is NOT Physical "Continuous Growth"

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



Yet another, quite well meaning, person fails logic 101, yet nevertheless rails against the most fundamental flaw of capitalism. Even, supposedly, one more fundamental than the "r > g" dilemma that Marx & Piketty highlighted. The author's big insight?

"... the assumption that exponential growth can continue forever on a finite planet."

To his own, undetected, embarrassment, the author goes on to invoke thermodynamics.

Oh my. This is tragic.

Somebody please stop him before he sticks yet another foot in his mouth.

(One of his friends? Please take him quietly aside & explain that evolution is NOT commodity growth - or expanding mass - but rather reorganization.)

The only "growth" that has occurred on planet Earth these last 4.5 Billion years comes from that fraction of the incident solar wind of particles & photons that isn't diverted by our magnetic field ... plus the ongoing rain of cosmic dust, occasional meteorites & hopefully VERY infrequent comets. Does he really think that evolution can't continue? Nothing's stopped it yet. I'll take the word of Mother Nature over this confused rhetoric.

Anyone who's ever taken apart a motorcycle, washer, & tractor and used the parts to make a frankenstein machine called a snowmobile knows that no "exponential growth" occurred, only the repurposing of existing materials into new combinations.

Now if we start mining moons, comets & asteroids on a truly cosmic scale, THEN we might have to worry about growth. Until then, hopefully we'll stick to evolving more logical humans, capable of even slightly greater ranges of abstract reasoning.

It really does seem to be true that "People will do anything in their power to avoid thinking." [Forgotten, 18th century naturalist.]

ps: Running out of oil/gas carbon deposits to oxidize? That's the same argument touted in the 1830s, when panicked people predicted the world would go dark, because they were exhausting the supply of whale oil! And that wasn't the first panic!

Roughly one billion years before 1830, maybe prokaryotes even panicked at the thought of running out of space for regulatory proteins to regulate their increasingly complex dna "plasmids."

That was just before eukaryotes discovered that repurposing tiny viral siRNA microstrands could disintermediate many dna-regulating proteins. The rest is continuous growth of evolutionary history, as they say. We may need cultural-siRNA to organize on a greater cultural scale, but don't hold your breath waiting for human culture to stop evolving.

One has to have some imagination in order to trust in future developments, and evolution. Otherwise, you're painted into the NeoCon Corner - "If We Can't Imagine It Yet ... It Can't Ever Exist (not to mention that someone must be hiding what our paranoid imagination DOES come up with.)" :(

Do we have problems? Yes. Are we shooting  half or more of our own emerging feet? Yes. Does that mean that evolution will stop? Hell no!

If anyone thinks otherwise, I have a tinker toy bridge in Arizona that they may buy, take apart, and reassemble into a faster than light space ship, for their escape from this dead end planet.

Unlearning Economics — Unlearning the History of Capitalism

Argument versus narrative. Facts versus ideology. This would be a good example for a class in critical thinking, comparing and contrasting logical argument and rhetorical persuasion.

Pieria
Unlearning the History of Capitalism
Unlearning Economics

See also Izabella Kaminska, For the benefit of new readers at Dizzynomics. Skip down to the eighth paragraph, "As to my overall position."

Oh Context! Where Does One Begin To Repair Out Of Context Logic?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Distracted, confused, divided & conquered.

Ten years ago, I would have been daunted into grudging silence by the operational details of this same sort of rhetoric.* So you can't blame Joe & Jane Sixpack. When an entire electorate is discussing details while missing context, then extreme patience and graceful discourse is called for.

It now seems clear that US politics works continuously for the 1%, through the simple technique of alternately discrediting one party, then the other, like a ping pong ball. How does such a continually re-divided and re-conquered electorate ever escape the trap it's in?

The answer seems to be known.

1st, ya gotta have (or instill) an initial doubt;

2nd, ya gotta actually look at & rethink context

3rd, ya gotta honestly reassess meaningless data, no matter the source

4th, ya gotta quietly build a context model that makes better sense

5th, ya gotta allow time to get comfortable with the new context, so that repeated logical review gradually undoes all the PRIOR CONDITIONING,** and thereby defuses the significant initial conflict between what you previously believed and what you now know as a point of logic.

* analogous statement list:

   a) Earth is flat.

   b) You should learn math and geometry.

   c) You should learn to read and write.

   d) Eat healthy & get plenty of exercise.

     Do you support the aim of this list?

       (?? There's only ONE aim? Despite contradictory items in the list?

             "TINA" Inc seems to be expanding, by acquisition ... of contradictions?)

** Doubting any previously widely held belief is almost as difficult as accepting that apple pie*** may NOT be good for you ... AND that maybe your momma WASN'T an all-knowing saint, AND that experts with "credentials" are eventually completely out of context ... AND ..... that America isn't always right, just because our out of control political lobbies claim that they're infallible.

*** At least not the modern, diabetes promoting variety (sugar, corn syrup, wheat starch, corn starch, chemicals; and maybe a GMO apple_flavored_product).

Reduce Public Fiat, to GET Public Fiat?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Someone please point out the logic. I'm not seeing it. Maybe Congressional logic is currently an oxymoron.

Hammer the disabled to pay for unemployment benefits

"It would take the pen of Jonathan Swift to fully describe Congress' willingness to beat up on the least fortunate members of society to protect the richest. The latest example is a plan to pay for a one-year extension of unemployment insurance by cutting Social Security benefits for the disabled."

Can you imagine a bird, flying at 1000 feet, saying to itself: "Look, I have to balance my fiat (the "public initiative" of all it's cells) ... so, we'll start by closing down the left wing. Let's see what happens if we fund only the right wing."

Yeah. I found a dead, healthy looking, young bird in my driveway yesterday. It looked to be VERY healthy. Seemed to have fallen out of the sky, or got careless, didn't steer well, and ran into something. It's still dead.

Paul Rosenberg — Stop enabling the right: The media just makes dysfunction worse

Our politics are a disaster because the media -- and the president -- pretend conservatives are dealing with facts

Examines some logical fallacies used in sophistical reasoning to “make the worse case the better” (Protagoras, DK80b6).

Salon
Stop enabling the right: The media just makes dysfunction worse
Paul Rosenberg