Recently, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took to the floor of the House to talk about Wikileaks, transparency in government, and the case of Daniel Ellsberg, the 
Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. He spoke about how the Iraq War was based on lies. He asked how the U. S. government should prosecute a citizen of Australia for publishing classified U. S. documents that he did not steal. Paul also said the following: “Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.”
Paul posed a number of questions at the end of his talk:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.
Source: Huffington Post
– Elaine Magliaro
That’s funny, Tony, because neither do you.
If you don’t think Issa and his witch hunt are a threat, you must have forgotten the damage done by McCarthy and his House committee.
But what else should one expect from someone who dismisses a key underpinning of an entire discipline he’s not trained in.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/cnews/article.php/3919031/GOP+House+Chair+Seeks+Action+Against+Wikileaks.htm
@Swarthmore: You don’t seem to comprehend the rules of our government.
I know I didnt get what I wished for. Maybe next time in 2012 if the repubicans grow a spine and dismantle this welfare state.
Screw the helpless and the poor, most arent helpless and most arent poor.
Make them work for a living for once in their miserable lives and quit sucking off individuals.
Tony C. You don’t seem to comprehend the power Issa’s committee has.
@Swarthmore: As I pointed out a million times: We will not be punished by the Republicans without the complete cooperation of the Democrats: The Senate has a majority and can stop any legislation it wants to stop; the President has a veto and can stop any legislation he wants to stop.
If Issa accomplishes anything he will have done it in cooperation with spineless or corrupt ideological traitor Democrats in the Senate.
Do not forget, under the rules of the Senate, especially if they are not changed, any Senator can put an indefinite, anonymous hold on legislation; any Senator can filibuster indefinitely from a cell phone without ever appearing in the Senate. Even if the rules change, Senators will still have enormous individual powers to slow down or halt new law.
So whine all you want about the problem you caused for yourself, I have no sympathy. It was Democrats electing corrupt, self-serving, corporate-owned Democratic Party politicians that brought us to this point by repeatedly and consistently doing exactly what Republicans do: Whatever the rich and the corporations wanted them to do.
It does us not a bit of good if Democrats pound the podium for social justice in public, and throw it under the bus in private because it would cost money or require corporate regulation and the rich don’t want to pay.
At some point their protestations of “Hey, we tried, maybe next cycle,” stops being good enough.
@CCC L: Yes.
The above was addressed to Tony C.
We are all going to be punished by Daryl Issa. You got what you wished for.
Tony C:
are your eyes brown, blue or green?
Correction: I should have said, I think punishment can work.
I was also unclear on Sweden: Sweden is the #1 government on the planet for freedom of the press and government transparency; their laws are actually enforced. Assange chose Sweden specifically for this attribute. I think Sweden was coerced by the USA into pursuing the charges against Assange (remember at first they dropped them), and the idea that we have that much influence over other sovereign countries, or in the alternative that even Sweden is that corrupt, was both unexpected and distressing to me.
As Glenn Greenwald has documented extensively, Assange has broken no laws, and has done nothing any other journalist hasn’t done. And yet we have Congressmen calling for his immediate assassination and labeling him a terrorist.
@Slart: why did you advocate an electoral strategy of withholding your vote from ‘corrupt’ Democrats, a strategy which you admitted would make things worse in the short term? I can only surmise that your reasons were emotional rather than rational if you were advocating something that you believe would be worse in the short term and had no chance of making things better in the long run. Is there another explanation?
I advocate punishment for betrayal, because I think that works. My current hopelessness is because I think that punishment has failed, and Obama has betrayed us further, and I have learned the problems are more global than I thought.
The evidence of that is recent: The idea that Sweden of all places will trump up charges against Assange, and the USA can have Interpol issue an international warrant and mount a worldwide manhunt over an alleged broken condom during consensual sex is, to put it literally, STUNNING.
That the US can pressure every credit card and payment system on the planet to withhold donations from Wikileaks is stunning.
I thought back in August or whatever we had a chance to punish Democrats and move them to the left financially. Since then they have proven they won’t change a thing with regard to their monied interests.
As I said back then, I don’t think the rich care[d] about DADT, or Gay marriage, or any other social issue as long as it doesn’t cost them money. But they will destroy Social Security and Medicare, they will destroy unions, they will destroy the business regulations that keep us safe financially and physically, they will destroy our infrastructure, because these things do cost them money.
So I am not a static person. Then I had hope. I still think electoral punishment was the only thing that had a chance to work, but with recent events I realize nothing would have worked.
If I seem to flip flop, then that is probably emotionality; I do not want to give up hope, but rationally I do not see any justification for it, not anymore. Our rights were supposed to be inalienable, including the right to life, liberty, free speech and free association. These are all now allowed only at the pleasure of our President.
If new facts emerge that rationally justify hope, I will embrace hope, but my best assessment right now is that the battle has been lost. We are now an authoritarian plutocracy and I see no way out.
Slartibartfast:
don’t you know history? it was Roosevelt that bombed Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were just the vehicle.
@Slart: Or have you come up with an example of an unfalsifiable scientific hypothesis?
Sorry, I am starting on a new grant that extends a previous project and I haven’t had much time.
To have a discussion with you, we will have to define “falsifiable.” This is not to be condescending; but because from what you have written I suspect we disagree on this definition. I will give you my take on it, you can present yours; and I will show some current hypotheses I think are (a) accepted as science, (b) bad science, and (c) unfalsifiable.
My Take: I think falsifiability has to be pragmatic, and because that means different things in different disciplines, that can make it a moving target. Nevertheless, I do not think it is fair to claim a theory is falsifiable because we can think up an experiment that would take a million years. I do not think a fair claim of falsifiability can rely on some chance of a fantastic discovery being made. So we need a timeframe for falsifiability; and as a completely arbitrary number I cannot justify, let us say an experiment must be completed within a few years.
On the pragmatic front still, I also think the means of falsifying the hypothesis must be apparent, and executable.
If you think this is too loose or stringent a definition, submit your own; I am just trying for something we can agree on. And I am also not trying to trap you into giving a definition you will later regret, so here are a few problems where I think we apply it:
1) Falsify the Inflationary Hypothesis. For a little history; severe problems with the Big Bang theory became apparent in the early 1970’s, in that observations of the universe fail to agree with the physics of a simple Big Bang; there is too much correlation, not enough curvature, and (apparently) missing particles. Of course we don’t have a grand unified theory (GUT) of physics, but some of the early failed attempts at GUTs had a commonality: They predicted an easily-observable number of magnetic monopoles which we do not observe in nature. To solve this problem of the missing imaginary particles predicted by failed physics, Alan Guth proposed Inflation; exponential expansion of the early universe. This was driven by unexplained physics and a hypothetical particle called the Inflaton, which is also hypothesized to decay after inflation, which is why we don’t observe it.
Now Inflation explains many observational problems, and has made some impressive predictions, I don’t want to take any of that away from it. But the issue is this: No mechanism is offered that can be tested. (And inflation has been re-jiggered numerous times to address its shortcomings when they arise).
By the theory, inflaton particles only existed for a trillionth-trillionth-trillionth of a second 13.7 billion years ago and immediately decayed into hot photons. There is no model of physics (at my least reading at least) that proposes any candidate particle for inflatons, or any physics mechanism for exponential inflation.
I paraphrase Martin Rees both because he is an expert and because he is funny: Inflation proposes an exotic hypothetical particle impossible to observe, in order to explain the absence of an exotic hypothetical particle [the monopole] which has not been observed but which is predicted to exist by several physical theories which we know are absolutely wrong.
(I cite Rees because he deserves credit for the summary.)
I do not think an experiment can be devised that falsifies the momentary existence of a particle 13.7 billion years ago. Yet Inflation is serious science that explains a host of issues and has been found consistent with numerous subsequent observations.
2) Falsify Einstein’s theory that gravity can crush any amount of matter into a single-dimensional point that then cannot ever be observed. My reading is that most physicists believe Einstein’s infinite density is an absurdity, and incorrect. Quantum theory and general relativity are at odds, and one of them is wrong.
If Einstein’s theory of infinite density is discarded it won’t be because of experimental falsification, it will be because a better theory came along. (Unlike Newton’s theory of gravitation, which Einstein did falsify experimentally).
3) Falsify the existence of M theory (in superstring theory). For those unfamiliar with M theory, it is not an actual theory at all! It is an idea that a “Magic” theory (Edward Witten’s words, the originator of M theory, not my words) should exist that, if ever discovered, will have certain properties. Nobody knows what M theory is, it cannot be tested because it does not exist. That is a serious scientific proposition by supposedly the greatest living physicist in the world.
4) Falsify superstring theory. It will be tough, Superstring theory can produce about 10^{500} universes compatible with our own, once all of its tunable parameters are tallied, and I think I read the number of possible string theories is larger than the number of protons in the observable universe. String theory has yet to produce a testable hypothesis that might take an ax to this forest, and it is decades old.
To be clear I do not think String Theory is a science at all; but we are spending billions on it as if it were actual physics; so I include it here.
5) Falsify the Many Worlds hypothesis in quantum mechanics (due to Hugh Everett). It is an actual mainstream theory taken seriously by quantum physicists. The reason they take it seriously is that Everett (and subsequent developers) eliminates the observer effect from quantum physics, and many scientists abhor the observer effect; i.e. the dependence upon an undefined “measurement” process that initiates waveform collapse. Of course, Bohr and Heisenberg were being equally unscientific by proposing the Copenhagen Interpretation in the first place; so that also cannot be falsified: Their claims are without justification, too.
So come up with an experiment to falsify either one of the two most popular interpretations: The Many Worlds approach (no waveform collapse ever) or the Copenhagen Interpretation (waveforms collapse when “observed,” with “observe” in quotes because it is studiously undefined what counts as an “observation.”)
Once more, I think if either of these wins out, or both fall by the wayside, it will be because of new science or new theory supplanting them, not because they were experimentally falsified.
Summary: I am not dismissing these as sciences. I remind you that my argument is that falsifiability is important for experiments within a science, but we can do science, in the sense of accurately describing what we see and can expect to see, with hypotheses that cannot be falsified by any experiment. Like Inflation, Infinite Gravitational Collapse, or the (rather mystical) Copenhagen Interpretation.
I view these with the attitude of useful fictions; meaning I don’t believe in inflatons or infinite gravitational collapse, but if we pretend they exist, we can move forward with the math and it works out. To me these hypotheses are provisional stand-ins for something more justifiable which we just can’t quite formulate yet (kinda like Witten’s M theory!).
So (and I am still trying to be clear, not condescending) I feel like what happened since ‘inflatons’ evaporated into radiation is pretty well-explained and consistent, so that is evidence (to me) that something got us to that point, and we are labeling whatever happened before that point “inflation.” To me ‘inflatons’ might as well be wood elves. I prefer to admit I do not know, than to invent some story that may actually become a roadblock to further investigation.
Obviously we have to be careful with unfalsifiable provisional hypotheses; I include M theory and String Theory for a reason: I think those particular unfalsifiable hypotheses have led to dead ends and wasted both billions and the lives of brilliant people that could have advanced physics, and instead have worked away for decades on a complete fantasy. Maybe I will be proved wrong there, but forty years is a long time to wait for an unfalsifiable hypothesis to produce a falsifiable prediction.
And perhaps that suggests some common ground we can share. Speaking only for myself, I don’t mind having provisional, unfalsifiable hypotheses in science IF they lead, in a reasonable amount of time, to consistent falsifiable predictions of what we should observe either in nature or in controlled experiments. Inflation, General Relativity, and Quantum Chromodynamics all fit that description. M Theory and superstring theory do not. (I also suspect “Dark matter” and “Dark Energy” do not fit.) So that is at least one “dividing line” that can partition these examples, in my opinion, into “science” and “non-science.”
@Slarti: The discovery of a species that inherits traits from two (or more) distinct lines of descent would falsify evolution
I don’t think so; there are many bacteria that cross-inherit genes and abilities from many “lines of descent.” I believe that has even been shown in the lab. It doesn’t falsify Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest”. I don’t see how you falsify a theory that correctly describes reality; except perhaps in the degree of accuracy which it attains.
‘science’ meaning ‘the study of nature in a systematic way’
This is a fair description of how I think of science, but I’d say “the study of anything in a systematic way.” You use a different and narrow definition with which I disagree.
Mathematics is not a science – it does not use the scientific method, nor is it a study of the physical universe or anything in it.
Yes it is. Mathematics makes a systematic study of abstractions. Mathematicians propose relationships between these abstractions, and then try to prove or disprove that such relationships exist. They invent rules to characterize abstract objects and prove those rules are consistent (or not), that objects exist that satisfy those rules (or don’t), etc. Science does not have to be about physical objects in the physical world. That is my view.
if you’re aware of anyone doing this before Ibn al-Haytham, please let me know…
Archimedes, in 250 BC or thereabouts. The Eureka! Story; he used water displacement to determine volume; which (with weight) he could use to determine density, from which he could determine composition (either pure gold or alloyed gold). Before that (I’m not sure by how much) the inflow water clock was a scientifically justified advancement in accuracy; it fixed a centuries-old problem of diminishing drip rate or flow by keeping the source vessel always full to overflowing. This led to the invention of accurate time-keeping, which in turn was critical to much of science (including astronomy). But I understand if you disagree, because our definitions of “science” differ.
This is just semantics as I pointed out to Buddha.
That is an opinion, and one you do not justify, and I do not share it. You do this often; quote me, claim you responded, when in fact you just dismissed my claim without justification. This is why I say you don’t answer: I claim Smith and Malthus were, in your words, studying their separate academic worlds in systematic ways and trying to uncover the rules of the domain, and using the rules they devised making predictions and prescriptions for success (or in Malthus’ case, a prediction of disaster). To me, that is science, and the distinction is not just “semantics.”
the problem comes in when we consider systemic rather than individual corruption.
NO, it does not. I think, with evidence I have read, that Harry Reid is corrupt in the FIRST sense. I was not talking about his campaign fund; I was talking about his six million dollars worth of personal wealth, the origin of which he refuses to disclose.
? At what point does white turn to black? When a politician betrays the public trust or exploits his position for personal gain. Before you tell me how gray an area that is, we have laws against insider trading and we can make it black and white, and we can let juries decide any borderline cases. A politician is in the same position as a corporate officer in the sense that the politician has inside knowledge of the future fate of laws, and can have direct influence on that.
All of your “nuance” about Reid is smoke, I think he is corrupt in that sense we can all agree upon. He refuses to detail or document the “investments” that he claims earned him six million dollars, despite repeated demands to do so. Only his Senate colleagues could demand he do so, but they do not; as recently demonstrated (in the House) with Rangel, politicians are perfectly happy to overlook rampant corruption in their ranks. I think Reid is the equivalent of an inside trader.
asking whether or not someone is corrupt requires some sort of subjective standard.
No it doesn’t. The standard is objective: Did he use his influence or not? Did he use insider knowledge or not? It IS black and white, he is corrupt or he is not, and he has a large and unexplained fortune and a history of purposeful obfuscation about his holdings that makes me think he is a crook.
where you were railing against the use abstract constructs like ‘state of nature’ in a discussion about the law because no one had ever chosen to trade rights for membership in society – what makes you think that any of us should have the right to make that choice? Since, as you point out, we are born utterly dependent on society for survival, does that not create an obligation to fulfill the conditions for that membership?
ARE YOU ILLITERATE? That is precisely what I was arguing! Read it. I am arguing that we are born into society without a choice; there is no ‘contract,’ we owe our entire lives and who we are to society, and we have an obligation to it because of that. Read it!
My argument is that there is no contract because contracts are entered into voluntary and society is not. My argument is that nobody ever chose to give up some rights for the benefit of society, and my argument is that nobody ever lived in perfect state of nature where they had “all rights.” Read it!
My argument is that this so-called “social contract” is just so much bullshit, a dumbass way of casting people’s rights in terms of property rights, and that is the wrong approach.
My argument all along has been that we have a significant responsibility to our society and our fellow man because without them we’d all be dead or never born. So I will say again, read what I wrote, and stop making shit up.
Your ideal could only work in an abstract, idealized situation
As you say, your opinion, offered without evidence or argument, it is just an assertion that does not even attempt to refute my logic or justify this statement. Obviously my opinion is different, but at least I offered some justification for it.
but I believed Dr. King
I believe people have to risk physical violence to get justice; as Dr. King did. He recruited young men around him that agreed, explicitly, to be beaten bloody and not fight back. There is no universal principle of tending toward justice; there is the opposite, and it is the Darwinian, Malthus-inspired view: The strong will kill the weak to take their resources. We are tending in the opposite direction from “justice” because the strong (in our case the rich and their puppet government) are taking our rights away from us, because our rights are getting in the way of their agenda.
I’m at a loss as to how someone COULD take consequences of which they were unaware into consideration…
Precisely the point. CEO’s demand results without wanting to know the consequences. For example, “Cut 5% off your budget and add 5% to your output.” They don’t want to know that this requires layoffs and suicide-inducing demands on workers. They don’t want to know they are endangering the health and safety of employees or customers. The CEO doesn’t take these facts into account because he doesn’t want to know the consequences of his demands.
‘Don’t know’ is different than ‘don’t care’
Not really, not when ‘don’t know’ is purposeful ignorance and insulation, so that it won’t bother you. They don’t want to care, and they accomplish that by purposely not knowing how their orders will be carried out; or by abstracting their people into statistics, or as BP did, by purposely gaming the risk of employee death and letting people die because the expected cost of the lawsuits was less than the expense of preserving the lives. Or as the health insurance executives defrauded patients out of coverage by gaming the cost of lawsuits against the cost of providing the coverage they promised. The remoteness is a device to allow corporate executives to be more sociopathic.
if the customers are made aware of the suffering inherent in making the stuffed animals,
Perhaps. But maybe they don’t want to know, either. Remoteness (it’s in China!) allows them to focus on the price instead of the suffering. The CEO of the toy store knows it, and does his best to ensure customers don’t know, so the customers can be more sociopathic too, and concentrate only on their savings, and not the lives destroyed to get them.
That just seems to be sloppy thinking to me – why don’t you just pick a definition that comes close and refine it until it’s accurate?
I am comfortable not knowing something as long as I know I don’t know it, it isn’t sloppy thinking. I have no pressing need for a precise definition of what is and is not science. I am perfectly comfortable with a “good enough” definition, and I will refine it if and when it stops being “good enough.”
Um… if by ‘small part’ you mean ‘a central element which is essential’
Is it more central than repeatibility? Is it more central than being predictive, or explanatory? Perhaps “small” was the wrong adjective, but I think there is more than one necessary characteristic of a science, and in particular I think “falsifiability” is a feature of an experiment within a science, not of the science itself.
To me […] science (in the modern sense) has proved to be the best methodology for doing so by the standard of making useful and accurate predictions.
Evolution and Astronomy and Geology and Anthropology and Paleontology don’t exactly make accurate predictions; they generally explain things that have already happened and why we find the things we do. Studying dinosaurs and fossils and ancient atmospheres from ice bubbles is not a way of making accurate predictions; but discovering an unknown past. Is it actually useful to know how fast a Tyrannosaur could run, or whether velociraptors had feathers or hunted in packs? I don’t think it is. I am interested, but I don’t think this information has any practical application outside of the study of dinosaurs.
So there are some examples of why I think your definition of science is lacking.
[Martial Arts] are the art of rendering another human being unable to continue fighting.
You seem hung up on labels. If I call physics an “art” of determining the outcome of high speed particle collisions, or the “art” of explaining particle tracks in cloud chambers, is it suddenly not a science anymore?
Kung fu is derived from experimentation in both “laboratories” and “field experiments”, and teaches the lessons learned there. It is an attempt to systematically understand what works and does not work in fights with other people, and it has proved effective. It is no different than the systematic investigation of chemical interactions to understand how they work. Kung fu, at least during its development phase, can reasonably be considered an applied science of fighting.
clearly I was completely off-base characterizing that as ‘nothing’…
Yes, you were. It was punishment, not nothing, and your claim that punishment couldn’t work is refuted by the change in Republicans. So we shall see if the punishment changes anything in the Democratic party or not. I am not hopeful; recent events suggest to me the parties are both owned by monied interests. But we shall see.
Yes, I falsely interpret what you wrote by including (nearly*) everything you write verbatim in my replies… Wait – how does that work?
You include my statements but you do not address my logic with logic, instead you routinely characterize my statements as naive, or misguided, or just assert they are wrong, but without any attempt at logically justifying those characterizations. It is typically just assertions and nothing more than that. You don’t attempt to follow my logic to an absurd conclusion, you just assert it must result in one. When you assert that “punishment won’t work,” in politics, I point out that assertion goes against decades of behavioral experiments in both lab animals and humans and even recent history in 2006 and 2008. But you ignore that evidence and that logic and just re-assert your pronouncement that my conclusion is absurd. Cut and paste all you want, if you do not answer logic with logic, you are pretending to debate when you are really just pontificating. And that is false debate.
Are you calling Gyges a peasant?
No, I am saying you think of Gyges and the other posters here as your charges in need of your protection, as evidenced by your need to justify your interactions with me as being done on somebody else’s behalf; both in this thread and in the political thread you mentioned earlier.
but I’ve documented you using straw-man arguments several times.
No you haven’t. You think you have, but I don’t use them. Just because you say they are doesn’t make it so; and again, this is just you asserting something that is not true and is not supported by any logic.
Which is why you are continually talking about your long and varied experience?
My long and varied experience is the source of my observations about the world. I am using my own first hand field observations to illustrate counter-examples or to supply counter-examples to a claim. That is not arguing from authority; that is arguing from observed facts in the real world. That is a scientific approach.
Can you point out an example where I appealed to authority rather than the merits of my argument?
You appeal to authority by citing your credentials. I understand you are proud of them, but it is a means of lending weight to your arguments among laymen that your arguments do not deserve. You (and I) are laymen in political science, not experts.
And many of the posters here have rejected your arguments because… ?
Because they disagree with them, or because I have in-artfully argued them, or because they cannot follow reasoning that does not produce an acceptable answer — The same reason 95% of them are religious; they cannot emotionally tolerate the answers that rationality demands. So your point is…?
I have been, on several occasions, the only person in the world that knew a scientific truth. Presumably, so have you. Like Wegener’s formulation of tectonic plate theory (without me claiming any presumptuous equivalence of import), whether people accept my reasoning does not make my reasoning wrong.
Here you are simultaneously implying that I don’t understand their logic and making a backhanded appeal to authority (we should believe you because you understand their logic)
Oh, bull. You cannot tell what I am implying, you are inferring that, and incorrectly. And I am also not implying anybody should believe me because I understand them. I wasn’t talking about you at all, I was saying that authorship means nothing and I am not somebody that uses fame or standing as a proxy for merit, quality or reliability. I have respect for ideas alone. This was not really about you, other than to say I don’t award extra points for fame, credentials, accomplishments or community standing. I care about the merits of arguments.
The same goes for the infallible bit: Many people think Adam Smith, or Jefferson, or the Pope are basically infallible: If they wrote it, it must be true. I do not feel that way, and I am talking about myself and making no reference to what you believe in any way.
But Harry Reid is so corrupt that he can’t accomplish anything positive?
Harry Reid could accomplish something positive by donating his ill-gotten gains to a battered women’s shelter. Of course his six million is probably just a 1% commission on the amount of our money he has diverted into the pockets of insiders, so in my book he cannot be forgiven, but it would be a positive act, along with his resignation.
. (See how that comes across as implying that you don’t have faith in the scientific method in a condescending way?)
I can have faith (and do) in the scientific method without thinking it is the only tool in the drawer. I think “science” is a way of finding and understanding the rules of relationship in how something works or operates or behaves (or the past tense of those). The “something” may be fractals or dinosaurs, volcanoes or superconductors; the politics of the Akkadian Empire or the rules for carving Easter Island ancestral heads.
Which influences the style of my response, not the substance.
Incorrect; you typically have no substance, you rely on assertions of falsehood without justification. Notice I did not say “proof,” I said “justification.” You don’t even try for substance.
I believe that I have adequately supported my claims that you repeatedly narrow a spectrum of possibilities into a polar choice and in doing so your analysis loses the ability to discern the nuances of complex systems, in my opinion.
In my opinion you see nuance where there is none, or where nuance exists but is of little importance, or you are distracted by detail and call it nuance. In my opinion this leads you to recommend answers that will fail to accomplish a stated objective, or will accomplish the opposite.
I do indeed narrow a spectrum of possibilities into a polar choice if I think that helps cut through nuance and explain observations. If I can say “Ninety percent of the points on this side of the dividing line have characteristic X, only ten percent of the points on the other side have X,” then the line I found encodes some kind of information about X and reduces uncertainty. It is predictive. I don’t claim it eliminates uncertainty.
I’ve proved that I have written scientific papers, how about you?
There you go, arguing from authority again. Do your scientific papers have anything at all to do with the discussion at hand? Yeah, neither do mine. Do your credentials or mine lend any weight to our arguments here? Only to people incapable of comprehending the arguments as they stand, and I don’t care what those people think (because they aren’t really thinking at all).
When I say, “You are not a scientist,” I am speaking relative to this conversation, and I am saying you are not behaving as a scientist in this discussion, you are behaving and arguing like a child. You spend hours on insults and assertions of how wrong I am. You criticize my writing without reading it, you mischaracterize it and then attack it (hilariously, by insisting upon precisely the argument I was making and almost verbatim), your “refutation” of my arguments is typically shouting “you’re wrong!”, and you have refused in the past to engage in any search for common ground or axioms from which we can argue.
ekeyra,
Just so we’re clear, I believe that there is still hope… nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?
Tony,
Okay, so you believe that there is no hope of fixing things – then why did you advocate an electoral strategy of withholding your vote from ‘corrupt’ Democrats, a strategy which you admitted would make things worse in the short term? I can only surmise that your reasons were emotional rather than rational if you were advocating something that you believe would be worse in the short term and had no chance of making things better in the long run. Is there another explanation?
Buddha,
I accept your assertion that I am not ‘most people’ and I agree that not all art is equal in its impact. I’ve never gotten emotional over a particularly good proof of the Cauchy-Swartz inequality but I know a beautiful proof of the Pythagorean theorem when I see it and the first (and to date, only) time I proved an original theorem is one of the intellectual highlights of my life.
To Tony and Slarti and everyone else who thinks there is no hope:
… I dont know why theres a dog, just ignore it listen to the greatest speech in movie history.
@Slarti: I will answer the rest separately, but one particular point deserves it’s own post, so it does not get lost in the shuffle.
I said: I also do not think there is nothing we can do;
and you pointed I have said the opposite.
You are right, I was wrong. I do, in fact, believe there is nothing we can do, and I was wrong to have said the opposite.
Our rights are now essentially meaningless. As American citizens we no longer have the right to habeas corpus, a trial by jury, the right to life or freedom of speech. We can be ordered killed by executive decree; or by executive decree detained indefinitely without charges, tortured, and denied legal representation. We are not free from search without warrant or cause; we are not innocent until proven guilty. If we do not obey law officers without complaint or argument, they can use deadly force against us and never be prosecuted. (Tasers have produced fatal heart attacks, and have been used on pregnant women and the elderly). If a cop claims he found drugs on you, or that you resisted arrest, his word is taken as fact and excuses a vicious beating; you are not innocent until proven guilty; and he is not punished even if his lie is on tape. All of this is now the bipartisan political consensus of how it should be for us. In the face of these facts and the implications thereof, I do indeed believe it is hopeless.
I believe I just had a contrarian moment there; an emotional and irrational response to what you had written, and it was wrong of me to write without thinking.
Buddha,
Of course the boundary is artificial. Look at it this way, words are symbols, symbols never perfectly reflect the thing they represent. I think the best description of that is in Huxley’s “Island.”
Ekerya,
You know, despite your constant grouching, you’re growing on me. You’re wrong, but unlike some, you’re the kind of wrong that’s nice to talk to.
Slart,
I’m admittedly biased, but I can’t think of another domestic Pilsner I like better.
And I drink a lot of beer.