How to Fix America
Submitted by lukeprog on Sat, 07/26/2008 - 03:43
Tags:
- Dismantle the USPS. Private companies have already shown they can do the same job better, and without government subsidies. Auction off the prime real estate owned by the USPS.
- Legalize marijuana and tax it heavily.
- Legalize prostitution. Let consenting adults do what they want with their own bodies, and destroy a dangerous black market.
- End arts subsidies. Let the arts be funded by patrons and the market. Let America benefit from those countries who throw money at art, as they benefit from our much more expensive task of policing the world.
- End farm subsidies. They rob developing countries of their comparative advantage, which would bring goods to American consumers at lower real costs. Subsidies increasingly go to big farms which are already the most profitable.
- Put criminals to work. Reserve prisons for dangerous and violent criminals. Do not give them cable TV and expensive amenities. Send them out in chain gangs to build highways, move trash, etc. Have non-dangerous criminals do lots of community service instead of sending them to expensive prisons. (But mostly, lower crime by imcreasing wealth with sound economic policy and by improving education.) Better yet, privatize the prisons.
- End corporate subsidies.
- Tax pollution. Companies will quickly innovate cost-effective ways to lower their pollution levels.
- Privatize transportation.
- Abolish child labor laws. If kids want/need to make money, why stop them? Today, their major option is to sell drugs.
Author Comments:
These are not the most important fixes, only the ones I feel fairly confident about given my limited understanding (but please, feel free to disagree well).
I don't know what to do about the core problems of democracy, though.
Tribalism is a tyranny of the most barbaric. Dictatorship, monarchy, and oligarchy are tyrannies of the rich. Anarchy is too unstable to do anything efficiently or safely.
But democracy had better not be the end of history. The incentives of democratic rulers are to get votes from the people. This is less disastrous than the incentives of other systems, but still disastrous. Why?
First, because politicians' incentives are short-term. Policies that will look good for the upcoming election often have terrible long-term consequences. It's hard to blame politicians for this. If they choose wise long-term plans, they will not be elected.
This is also a reason education is never a priority: it takes a long time to see the results, so 4-year politicians have no incentive to improve it.
Second, the incentives in a liberal democracy are dooming because citizens are stupid. They vote for politicians who affirm the citizens' ideologies, who speak in platitudes, who have good stage presence, who avoid educating the citizens on complex (or even simple) topics, who pander to their emotions (family values, religion, patriotism), etc.
Third, democratic incentives oppose a healthy society because politicians must take positions that will attract the largest share of the pie, rather than positions that will improve the long-term health and wealth of their society. In the American two-party system, this means that politicians are forced to the center such that they are virtually identical.
I can't see how to make politicians responsible for long-term consequences. How can we create that incentive?
I can't see how to make citizens more informed and less emotional, either.
And I can't see how to fix the popularity contest problem, either. That is the heart of a democratic republic.
Probably, we need an entirely new type of system. Or we'll just limp along on liberal democracy, the worst political system available except for all the others.
In any case, democracy is not the end of history. All current systems will probably be irrelevant in a galaxy of disembodied, eternal consciousnesses.
Why do I post so much random shit online? Why not just keep a journal?
I do.
I put ideas online so they can be supported by corroborative argument or challenged by counterargument, the two best things that can happen to my ideas (especially the latter).
Landsburg has some suggestions in More Sex is Safer Sex:
1. Give everybody two votes, one in your own district and one in another district of your choice. (I'm not sure how this would help, and Landsburg doesn't explain.)
2. Let congressmen represent people based on the alphabetical placement of their last name rather than geographic region. Goodbye, pork barrel politics.
3. Income tax rates should be applied by district, based on how much spending your representative has voted for.
4. All taxes - including sales taxes - should come as one huge bill on April 15th, and itemized - so you can see exactly how much you paid for defense, education, welfare, faith-based initiatives, and millions of useless wheelchair ramps required by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
5. Nobody over 18 should be allowed to vote on the drinking age, and nobody over 60 should be allowed to vote on expanding social security (since they will feel all the benefits and none of the costs).
6. Pay the commissioners of the FDA in pharamaceutical company stocks. Then they'd share in the benefits (sales of great new drugs that would've been too badly impeded in today's system) and the costs (lawsuits due to inadequately tested drugs) of their decisions. We should also pay airline regulators in airline stocks, auto-safety regulators in auto stocks, etc.
7. Pay the president in a highly diversified land portfolio. As the country becomes a more desirable place to live, land prices will rise, and his income will rise.
8. Eliminate the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor.
9. Split jurors into groups and pay them more if they produce the same opinion. (Anyone who watches The Newlywed Game knows the best way to do this is to judge correctly.)
10. Stop letting judges decide what is relevant. Leave that to jurors.
11. Charge lawyers for court time, so they can't snow the jurors and waste time.
12. When somebody invents something, give them a patent and then immediately put the patent up for auction. When the highest bid is finally reached, flip a coin. If heads, the government pays that amount for the patent and puts it in the public domain. If tails, the highest bidder wins the patent. This rewards invention fairly and spurs innovation. The money will come from taxes, but we'll get back more than we pay (through improved consumer goods and lower prices.)
Re: #4
Why you hatin' on the Americans with Disabilities Act? It's not even half an oreo.
Thousands of bad decisions add up to lots of oreos. And trust me, I'm hatin' on the MIC more than the ADA.
Unless the 8th Army is all on the giggle weed you'd be hard-pressed to tell.
...and I'm pretty sure that raising the minimum wage helps the economy.
It seems most economists oppose the minimum wage.
Ask yourself; if raising the minimum wage will help, why not just set the minimum wage at $20? Why wouldn't that work?
Wage-fixing is similar to price fixing. Why can't we just set the price of gas at $3 a gallon?
This is how you flash-check articles and arguments.
For an article entitled "The Empirical Literature on the Minimum Wage" [emphasis mine] which throws around figures such as "dozens of articles," "[v]irtually every one of these articles," and "[t]he standard finding is that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduces employment... from 1% to 3%" the article by Russell Roberts has a significant number of footnotes. The number is zero. The significance is not good.
There are four links to other sources embedded within the' article/post. Mr. Roberts claims that, of the "many surveys of the literature on the impact of the minimum wage. The only one I could find on the web that is publicly available is this survey." "This survey" is a product of some Republican members of United States House of Representatives... from 1995! Microsoft wouldn't release Internet Explorer for another six months. I recommend that Mr Roberts fire up his Windows 95, get on his Netscape browser and do a Lycos search. It's the latest thing for academics writing in the first week of 2007.
One of the sources in "this survey" from a dozen years ago is from 1946. For you history buffs that is one year after what was called "the Second World War" ended and only forty-nine years before the release Internet Explorer. How am I supposed to take seriously an argument against the minimum wage made less than a year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and just before the greatest, longest economic expansion the world has ever seen?
Fortunately the "pro-minimum wage survey of articles" includes writings from as recently as 1998... but nothing from the past decade. An expired link to a restricted access site and a blog post which links back to another piece of Mr. Roberts' writing round out the rest of the links in the article. And this is supposed to convince anyone of anything? I'm not saying the conclusion is necessarily wrong. Lack of citations, self-referencing links, outdated references and the like do not necessarily mean that an argument is false. But it is a good indication.
I think Mr. Russell Roberts would have done well to purchase one of them futuristic high-tech computing machines in order to read a post written just the previous day by Joshua Holland. Not only does Holland de-pants George Will but he also manages to find fresher information from the Economic Policy Institute and he cuts to the heart of the matter.
I'd love to see the minimum wage set at $20... or $30... or $40. I'd also love to see a maximum wage of $20,000. Raising the minimum wage is designed to allow workers, especially full-time workers, to earn a "living wage." The alternative is more families on welfare, more undocumented workers willing to work jobs that corporate America wants but Americans don't, less purchasing power for low income individuals and an economy which will grind to a halt.Why do you say that "[w]age-fixing is similar to price fixing"? It seems to me that people are doing their best to manipulate the price of gas. It is still the cheapest liquid you can buy at a convenience store. And why do you give any credence to writers who won't (or can't) source their arguments?
Step up...
I was about to post my anti-psychiatry manifesto when I noticed your post.
I read it and thought, This IS a great guide on how to flash-check articles and arguments! I "know" that stuff, but am often too lazy to do it.
But this time I did. After reading your post, I went back to my anti-psychiatry draft.
In it, I quoted from a Levine book, which claimed:
In November 1998 the National Institutes of Health brought together "expert authorities." They were forced to admit that (1) not enough is known about the long-term effects of Ritalin; (2) there is no proof that ADD or ADHD involves neurochemical imbalances that can be corrected with medicine; (3) no blood test, PET scan, or any physical exam can determine ADD; and (4) Ritalin will not boost IQ.
The endnote pointed not to a journal article or NIHS publication, but to a TIME article. Uh oh, I thought.
I got to the paragraph on the NIHS conference, which examined "the data on how well Ritalin works. Conclusion: very well - better than researchers imagined." Nice.
Levine's quoted NIHS "findings" were actually buried elsewhere in the TIME article, unsourced. They apparently had nothing to do with the NIHS conference.
*
Next in my anti-psychiatry draft, I said that Levine said that the Surgeon General said that Jacobvitz et al. said, "Psychostimulants do not appear to achieve long-term changes in outcomes such as peer relationships, social or academic skills, or school achievement." I couldn't find the full text, but the Surgeon General report now says the same thing and quotes this 1998 article instead. Again, I couldn't find the full text, but according to the Surgeon General, the same article also notes that (1) "The improvements in the symptoms of ADHD achieved with psychosocial treatments are not as large as those found with psychostimulants," (2) "the efficacy of behavioral training of teachers is well-established, while the evidence for parent training is less solid," and (3) and CBT "has not been shown to provide clinically important changes in behavior and academic performance of children with ADHD."
I guess I shouldn't expect any better from a book (Levine's) that also says:
"Recognize how television alters your brainwaves and zombifies you."
And, regarding the Internet: "Ask, how much can you track, manipulate, and 'cookie' people before they implode?"
*
So, I'm revising my psychiatry post. (Though already I'd come to a different conclusion than I'd begun with.)
On to the minimum wage.
Most economists do oppose the minimum wage. (See page 378 here and page 4 here.) But there are at least 659 economists who want the minimum wage raised. Experts can be a nice shortcut, but let's check the studies.
Recent papers by the EPI and NCPA claim that a higher minimum wage results in fewer demand hours - perhaps a 1.5% decrease in hours for every 10% increase in minimum wage. The OECD basically says results are mixed, and the ILO thinks a minimum wage can alleviate poverty in developing countries. The JEC says that 50 years of research opposes the minimum wage.
Card and Kreuger are the main source for those who support the minimum wage, but their research methods have been heavily criticized by many.
The last Economic Report of the President to mention minimum wage, the 2003 report, says an Earned-Income Tax Credit would be better than a minimum wage, and doesn't cite many sources.
It's also possible that the minimum wage happens to be near where it would settle under market forces anyway, and that's why our measured effects are often minimal or contradictory.
Wage fixing and price fixing are similar because they are both markets under supply and demand forces. Fixing the "price" of laborers at an artificially high level reduces the demand for them.
Looks to me like the data on minimum wage fixing isn't conclusive yet. I took it off my list.
*
Thank you for your admonitions to Step Up. You challenge me to check my thinking, check my sources, and say "I don't know" more often.
I'm toying with another crazy idea. I could make a rule for myself to cite legit sources for every non-obvious empirical claim I make in every book and essay I write. That would be costly, though not as costly as in all previous eras.
That's excellent.
Let me ask you: Did it take more time to write your anti-psychiatry draft or to wrangle the footnotes that you do cite? I'm guessing the writing took muuuch longer. Sometimes I don't bother reading an article, if I read it at all, until I've scanned the footnotes. Just one of the many tricks I employ to remain lazy, wily and lazy.
I admire your ability to integrate new information, perspectives and the like. My personality is either increasingly ossified or I immediately forget that I ever held a different opinion... ohhhh, sweet sweet endorphins. The second technique is quite effective in maintaining the fiction that I have never been wrong. Which I haven't.
I really like the meta-narrative/case you tell explaining why you've had second thoughts about posting that anti-psychiatry manifesto. I think it's a very effective and subtle way to explain the how and why. (Perhaps too subtle because I'm not sure whether you're arguing for or against psychiatry (or psychiatric drugs) in the paragraph beginning, "Next in my anti-psychiatry draft..."
To add a point of etiquette to your intellectual probing: If you're going to question common wisdom and people's beliefs AND you "know that stuff [but you are] often too lazy to do it..." I don't believe you are lazy but, if so, you should either get better at your laziness or get so lazy that you stop throwing cats among pigeons.
So I actually intend to read the above post, most likely after the citations... and after lunch. Perhaps before I do any work. Maybe after a nap.
From scanning the links above I have to warn you that citing the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute and an economic report from the Bush Administration is not only repetitive it is also redundant. And the JEC link is the Republican Congressional talking points with the 1946 study... and a 1959 study from South Africa that says increasing the minimum wage hurt black employment. Under apartheid four years before Nelson Mandela went into prison.
And the alphabet soup of organizations without full names makes it difficult to wade through the information... and nobody wants feet in their soup.
Read the footnotes first; nice trick. I like to think I'm already good at being lazy, but I can always use more tips.
Cato, Manhattan, and the Economic Report of the President cite different sources and offer different logics. I found the pro-minimum-wage literature much more redundant, as they all cited Card and Kreuger. But I'm sure you'll notice that after your nap.
You keep saying I shouldn't challenge people's beliefs so much. I keep wondering, Why?
If people have good reasons for their beliefs, I am easily rebutted. Or ignored. If people don't have good reasons, then I give them an opportunity to re-evaluate their beliefs. If they are upset by mere words, that is only an indication of the insecurity of their beliefs.
I suspect your answer may have something to do with "feelings," of which I do admit ignorance. People seem to experience feelings in a very different way than I do.
Your last sentence intrigues me. Would you mind expanding on that?
Dude, he's bipolar. He don't know yet.
My ego is happy to oblige.
As a teen, I was depressed and occasionally suicidal because I was a tall white American male and life was just so unfair. Most of my emotions were bad ones, so I turned off my emotions. Some people do that with drugs. I just chose.
Two unaffected years later, I epiphanated. I saw a curled autumn leaf spinning and dancing in the wind, ala the American Beauty bag.
In that instant, I saw that all the beauty in the world was a personal gift from God to me. Dogs, humans, ants, paintings, tragedy, music, economics, the cosmos, ugliness, celebration, evolution, breakfast cereal - and especially trees - flooded me with joy, each day. Emotion was back.
I studied Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and found I was pretty good at choosing my thoughts, which in turn created my emotions.
Later, I learned that emotions were designed by evolution as useful shortcuts to behavior that fostered social ties and promoted reproduction. Emotions didn't require the time and processing power of logic and careful inference. They were pretty bad at doing things they weren't designed to do - like forming true beliefs or managing rational systems.
My first sexual relationship was very emotional. After escaping it, I realized more than ever how silly, irrational, and destructive my emotions had made me.
I started to develop some filters. Whenever a harsh word or bad circumstance tried to create a negative emotion in me, I cut it off and assessed the situation as distantly as possible - as if I was controlling a character in a videogame or pulling the strings from outer space to control that Earth creature called Luke.
At first this took a lot of work. Now I hardly think about it. People say the most "offensive" or "mean" or "demeaning" things to me and it doesn't even seem like it has to go through a filter any more - I just process the circumstance rationally and respond as if there was no emotional content in the scene.
Also, I can create a positive mood whenever I want (which is most of the time) by thinking good thoughts. This is pretty easy because there are so many beautiful and fascinating things in the world. Sometimes I think I would be happy locked in a jail cell my whole life as long as I could just think. Listening to good music helps, too.
I laugh at jokes and cry at music and "awe" at great ideas. But when I'm making decisions or thinking about my beliefs or making moral choices, I turn emotions off.
This new way of experiencing life - or rather creating it - has become more routine over the past year.
I feel like I have a superpower. Everywhere around me I see people with up days and down days. They get hurt when people say mean things. They make decisions based on emotion - even when they realize it's based on emotion. They form beliefs based on emotion. They carry themselves differently based on emotion. They abdicate their role in creating their emotions, and give it over to the events of the day.
And those are the men I know.
Now, I'm not a perfect machine. But there are a few areas where I've forgotten what it's even like to experience feelings the way I used to - the way most people seem to.
"Taking offense" is the clearest example. I have no idea what it feels like to take offense at something. I'm not even sure what the phrase means. When I read about it in a dictionary or ask other people what it's like (yes, I do creepy things), it's as if someone is trying to explain "purple" to an alien without a visual sense.
In the past few months, I've tried a few times to "force" myself to "take offense." I don't know how to do it. The failed attempt feels so silly to me I just end up laughing.
"Feeling lonely" is another. I'm not sure what that feels like. My best guess is that it feels kinda like the neediness I can remember feeling toward my first girlfriend.
I can remember "anger," but I haven't felt it in a long time. I still say, "I'm angry that" but I mean it as a shorthand for "It is unfortunate for the flourishing of that one Earth species called humans that..."
So anyway, I could never be an actor.
But golly, this journey is fascinating to me! What else am I capable of? What are the consequences of having such emotional control? Will my control be lost if I meet extreme pressure? Which emotions are best substituted with rational inquiry, and which ones serve a beneficial purpose?
And, can other people do this? Most probably can't. Their brain chemistry is different. Their life experiences are way different. Their genes and development were different. I've tried all the techniques to fight procrastination and none of them work for me; other people fix themselves right away.
Would other people want to do this? It doesn't seem like it. Emotions are a romantic idea, and humans like to think they are somehow more "true" than, say, neuroscience. Maybe they think that even if we were more productive, peaceful, and moral without emotions, we wouldn't be "human" - and that is more important to them than being productive, peaceful, and moral.
It feels really good to have this part of my life "handled." (I know wise octogenarians who haven't got this handled.) Next up for "handling"? If I'm lucky, writing and women, then travel.
Well, that was fun. I've never told that full story before. Thanks for the opportunity.
Tell me if this post sounds haughty. It wasn't meant to be. Heck, I don't even believe in free will, so I can't take any credit for my superpower. And even if I could, I'm just a bundle of par and sub-par features like everybody else.
Very interesting! I wanted to see what you had to say in part because I sometimes feel like I experience fewer negative emotions than many people do as well. I think about this in different terms than you, though. I've never felt like I had to work to filter out negative emotions, I've never felt like I had a superpower, and yeah, it is possible to offend me. However, your paragraph that begins I feel like I have a superpower particularly resonated with me. Frequently my friends tell me about completely irrational feelings they have and justify them by saying, "They're emotions, they don't have to have any basis in logic." I want to respond, "The hell they don't!"
So yeah, I don't filter out everything, but I don't have down days or bad moods unless something particularly unfortunate has happened to me; I feel that everyone deserves fair judgment if not the benefit of many doubts, and tend not to feel annoyed with people unless they particularly and consistently irk me; I don't feel lonely unless I'm actually experiencing a lack of real human contact; I too feel like the world is a fascinating place; and my feelings tend to have more basis in reality than most people I know. I don't really understand people who express emotions that are really based on fabricated feelings rather than what is actually going on; I would feel pretty silly doing that.
I want Hume or Kant or Bertrand Russell or Wittgenstein to jump into our conversation and talk about their inner experience.
You think emotions should be based in logic? I think that is like requiring lions to be engineers.
It's easy to validate people's feelings as feelings when one doesn't believe in free will, but I do not validate feelings as valid argument.
To you, what is the difference between "fabricated feelings" and "feelings based on what is actually going on"?
Hmm. Good question. I don't really know how to answer it without using examples.
A friend of mine is extremely close to a guy who is very nice but ultimately somewhat fickle. She told me she feels jealous when he does things that make it seem like he would rather spend time with other people than her. I told her it doesn't make any sense to feel jealous about something you know isn't true, something that only seems true because he is fickle.
A friend of mine had sort of an on-again, off-again relationship with this guy. During their off-again stage, he tried to date a prudish girl who didn't really have much interest in him, and then when the two were back on again, my friend started to hate this girl and badmouth her all the time. She admitted that she should maybe feel angry at the guy instead, but she was quite fond of the guy at the time, so she blamed the girl for it even though the girl's desires were never any threat to their non-relationship. This makes no sense to me.
Once I was broken up with; my ex had basically said that she wasn't feeling it. I was talking to a friend to try to figure out what went wrong, what I could've done to screw things up. "Those feelings have to come from something, right?" I said. My friend replied, "No... but you're you, so you might not understand that."
Sometimes I hear people say "I hate that person" or "That person is so annoying" after having very little experience interacting with them. I wouldn't make this kind of judgment after such a minimal encounter.
I've thought of some other examples, but I guess they all result from this overreacting and overdramatizing of events. Maybe it's not that these feelings don't come from reality, maybe it's just their own personal reality which is different from my reality. In which case, I think some people need to develop more realistic realities.
Amen to that.
BOOM! goes the dynamite!
SPOILER -highlight to read
Let no one doubt my diagnostic powers... even through a series of tubes.
"Lazy" probably isn't the right term. My brother prefers to call it "minimalist in effort." Or I'd like to pretend he does.
Let me just say from the very beginning: The 378th page! Even if the piece is only 379 pages long with lots of big pictures there is no way I can get even a sense of the context of page 378. Except maybe I have...
It's a nasty piece of work to point in the direction of several hundred pages, the relevant page being a chart that is displayed on its side. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you've read a dozen or more of the surrounding pages before you point people to it in support of your case. Even so, I remain unconvinced by the 30th Proposition of TABLE 1. Distribution of Responses for the 2000 and 1990 Surveys and Measures of Consensus that "Minimum wages increase unemployment among young and unskilled workers.."
In the 1990 survey 62.4% of the respondents agreed that raising the minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers. That's almost two thirds of the economists while just over one in six flatly disagreed. Ten years later, in 2000, only 45.6% agreed, less than half, while more than one in four now flatly disagree. Even if you can accept a plurality being referred to as "most" the question remains... Why the substantial shift? Whatever your answer it can't escape notice that neither the 2000 survey results nor the 1990 results rise to the standard of consensus as defined by the authors.
Fuller and Geide-Stevenson "chose a relative entropy value of less than or equal to 0.8 as indicative of a consensus (i.e., a substantial majority selected the same response)." (370) In 1990 ?=.83 and in 2000 ?=.97. The authors, both opponents of raising the minimum wage, selected the survey pool, the criteria for inclusion, the survey questions and the standard of "proof" for consensus over an issue. Not only is broad agreement lacking but opinion seems to be breaking in favour of increasing the minimum wage.
You do realize that your source for "there are at least 659 economists who want the minimum wage raised" is a survey conducted by Daniel Klein... an opponent of raising the minimum wage... and an economist... from George Mason University? What is it with you and GMU economists? Do they owe you money?
As for the alphabet soup studies there is a recurrent theme of a 10% rise in the minimum wage leading to a 1.5% decrease in hours for teenage and/or unskilled workers. The studies don't say whether the 1.5% decrease is in total hours allocated to those jobs (fast food and otherwise) or if it is a decrease in the hours worked by the teens/unskilled themselves. The first would imply an adverse economic affect... but still one that is miniscule when compared to the increase in wages. If it the second case then I can imagine a variety of reasons, all of them good. For example: teenagers might be able to make the choice to work less hours, for the same amount of money. As virtually all teenage earnings are disposable income, this would be nothing but positive for the economy and for education.
In any case, the economy of the 90s might be proof enough for some that raising the minimum wage, at the very least, does not hurt the economy.
For the last time: the JEC are talking points for Republicans in the middle of a political fight thirteen years ago against raising the minimum wage which cite studies from the Truman Administration and South Africa under Apartheid in the 1950s. Also, your original citation of the JEC was as evidence of a history of study, not anything which came to a conclusion.
The Cato and Manhattan Institutes are conservative "think" tanks. Their very purpose is to echo and support the economic objectives of the rapaciously big business agenda of President Bush and his administration. I don't think you've met the burden for showing consensus against raising the minimum wage much less making the case against (raising) the minimum wage. I'm not particularly invested in proving my preconceptions. I will observe that Card and Kreuger appear to by the pivot point in a paradigm shift
whuf! You say that "Wage fixing and price fixing are similar because they are both markets under supply and demand forces. Fixing the "price" of laborers at an artificially high level reduces the demand for them." Did you read the Joshua Holland post? Or at least the quote above? Because that doesn't seem to engage with the ideas I put forward.
There are several reasons why I feel you shouldn't challenge people's beliefs so much. (You see, you were right. It is about feelings.) Most of them have to do with you and not the people you challenge. Challenging people who "have good reasons for their beliefs" and who have neither invited challenge nor challenged you is simply picking a fight. Doing this in spite of the fact that you might be easily rebutted, should those people feel strongly enough to devote time to such a rebuttal, is being (needlessly) offensive for no other reason than one's love of chaos or inflated sense of vanity. There's a distinction between being provocative and provoking others. Putting forth a provocative argument open to challenge by all is constructive. Attacking others, especially when you might be "easily rebutted," is what a jackass does. It is truly lazy and cruel and, contrary to your belief, it is not easily ignored. At least not by people who respect you, of which I am one. But, for my part, if you start an intellectual fight with other people's arguments and without your own intellect I will dismiss you. That is so much worse than being ignored.
Finally, if you go to War without evidence then the struggle isn't about the beliefs you think you are challenging. The central issue is you and your impulse, your drive, to go to War, to challenge people's beliefs, to fight. And for what?
Why set good standards if you don't try to meet them?
Criminy, how do you parse so much data so quickly? You must have more tricks up your chiton. It will take me a long time to respond to your thoughts on minimum wage, and longer still to revise my psychiatry post.
Oddly, I think I understand the feeling of your final paragraphs, but not their logical content. Given our history, I suspect that has more to do with my understanding than with your logic.
Vanity and ego certainly motivate me to pick fights. Those two forces have - throughout history - fostered great art, great rebellion, great scientific advancement, great charity, great destruction, great waste, and great ignorance.
I don't love chaos, but I do love to upset and be upset. (And I don't mean the emotion. I find the emotion useless.) I always benefit when people turn things over on me. And a few people have expressed gratitude - or at least delight - when I've turned something over on them (invited or not).
All the great ideas upset. Heroes upset. Progress upsets. Often (usually?) these upsets are uninvited, even when they improve lives or, at least, do some consciousness-raising. Many of these upsets are unappreciated even by those whose lives have been improved, or the consciousnesses that have been raised.
There is a name for periods of few upsets. They are called "dark ages."
Many who have upset were wrong - even ignorant and illogical. Nevertheless, they kept the pot of ideas stirring. The good news is that no matter how many ideas are in the pot, the truth slowly rises, because it works. The truth rises more slowly when the pot isn't stirring at all.
I know that "argument", "confrontation", and "challenge" are unhappy words for many people not monikered lukeprog. Still, I suspect but am not sure that debate, consciousness-raising, and the search for truth are more important than being pleasant. Certainly, it is more important to me. For now. I'm certainly willing to be persuaded otherwise.
You say that "Putting forth a provocative argument open to challenge by all is constructive." Isn't that exactly what I've been doing with lists like "Things that are bullshit" and "How to Fix America"?
You seem to imply instead that I am attacking others. When have I attacked others? It wouldn't surprise me to have done it, but to my recollection I haven't been posting on individual's lists saying, "Come, now, you don't really believe in God, do you?" and "Parapsychology is stupid!"
To my knowledge, I have only "attacked" beliefs (in the same way as you have challenged my sloppy research methods) when it was relevant to an existing conversation or started by someone else.
Are you making a semantic distinction, perhaps? Were you "challenging" me during our epic radiocarbon debate years ago, but I am "attacking" people because I use more callous language? I don't understand.
Surely I regret not doing more research and thought before saying... well, anything! I'm growing those habits. You're helping.
I do try to meet my "standards." I do many things that most people don't do in order to reduce my bias, inform myself, think clearly, etc. I may not be meeting my standards but that doesn't mean I'm not trying.
When did I go to war without evidence? I never have as much evidence as I would like, but I can't think of when I've asserted something without knowing anything about it.
Clearly, I have much to learn. I don't "grok" the idea that people can be threatened by propositions. I see that it happens but I really don't understand that inner experience. That probably leads me to be insensitive. To confuse things even more, sensitivity is not very high in my moral hierarchy... unless I'm in the mood to get laid.
My initial reaction is to thank you for the compliment/credit. I try to be helpful and I can see you trying to meet the standards you have set for yourself. Standards which are often unattainably high.
If you "never have as much evidence as I would like" then why would you ever go to war? Being skeptical is wise; to base one's argument on the contents of a skeptic's web page is foolish. If all you know is a skeptic's take on an issue then how can you ever expect to understand one who believes in that issue?
If you don't "grok" fear of propositions I might point you to the works of Jesus Christ, Socrates, an Italian critic and Britney Spears. And if you are unable to be sensitive to the fear that their (or anyone else's) propositions generate then this makes you even more responsible for paying close attention to those fears.
If your moral hierarchy allows you to move sensitivity up and down in importance based on your, erm, situation then I would say: Your moral hierarchy isn't much of either.
...and you will find yourself getting laid increasingly infrequently no matter what your mood.
I did not post any item to my "things that are bullshit" list after having read a single skeptical article. I read proponents, opponents, and disinterested parties, and tried to triangulate.
I don't see myself as "going to war," but instead "putting forth a provocative argument open to challenge by all." And I did more research on each issue than you seem to think.
I was joking about changing my morals to get laid. I haven't had time to get laid for months. Which doesn't bother me. Twenty years of Christian repression was good training for dry spells. I have more interesting things to work on at the moment. One of them is learning how to communicate better.
You've chastised me for only reading a skeptic's page, which is false. You've chastised me for "going to war", but I don't understand your distinction between that and "putting forth a provocative argument open to challenge by all."
And now you want me to take some responsibility for other people's fears. What exactly do you recommend? It sounds like you're disagreeing to my tone. Should I voice my ideas with more qualifiers? Nicer words? Should I not voice them at all? Should I bookend my ideas with respectful compliments? Arguments can be made for all these, but I don't even know what you're trying to say.
You didn't ask me, and I haven't followed this whole conversation, but I think part of what some may find objectionable about your "Things of questionable truth or effectiveness" is that there are no tiers. You just make a list of everything you're tempted to dismiss and then throw it all out there in one fell swoop. Simpler for you, but it does mean "Psychiatry" and "True love" have equal standing on the list as "Santa Claus," "Witches," and what you refer to as "Butt reading." I mean, I have a friend who has wrestled with depression all his life, been in and out of hospitals, and tried to kill himself multiple times. He's now on a series of medications that works for him and told me he feels emotionally stable for the first time in a decade. I feel that the person who invented these meds deserves more caveats than the woman who attempted to eat Hansel and Gretel.
Same with true love - what does that even mean? How can you even come up with a conclusive enough definition of this vague term to be able to put it on this list? The complexities make the concept deserve more thought than, say, butt reading, although I couldn't bring myself to read the article on that particular topic so I couldn't tell you for sure.
I'd never have to defend my opinions on movies or videogames this extensively. Looks like the only way to satisfy people on these topics would be to write lukeprog's guide to things of questionable truth and effectiveness, which would only outsell bad authors without mothers. Maybe.
Well, imagine if I made a list called Stupid Movies and included such films as Who's Your Caddy?, the Baby Geniuses dilogy, Kazaam, Epic Movie, and then threw on 2001: A Space Odyssey. One would hope I'd offer an explanation for such behavior.
Similarly, I think people can get a pretty good sense of your taste by reading your Best Films of the 00s list. It's fairly consistent. If you included Daddy Day Camp at #8, however, one would hope you could back that up extremely well.
That's what the other list is like to me. I don't think you actually put psychiatry in the same category as Santa Claus, but someone reading the list might think so because you just lump everything together indiscriminately.
Of course, you are also right that people can be more sensitive about their belief system than about their taste in movies.
Ah, I see. Yes, Santa Claus is not in the same category as psychiatry.
Slooow down. I'm not attacking you. I'm perfectly willing to explain what I'm trying to say.
I admire the research that went into your "list-that-was-formerly-named-things-that-are-b******t." I just found it difficult to discern the time you spent and the attention you paid when each item is listed in isolation and has/had a single link leading away from it.
I'd be grateful if you threw up your research on *spinnnnn* Cryptomnesia. Or, at a minimum, the links to proponents other than those the Skeptic's Dictionary has debunkified. Where you see "putting forth a provocative argument open to challenge by all" I see a group of things, philosophies, practices, whatever all lumped together under the rubric of "Questionable." I think it would help both to tone down any war-like appearance and to generate better debate if you added a precis of your argument... your "questionablenessity" basis for including *spinnnnn* Faith Healing.
Putting forth an argument is more than argument. It is making the argument not just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says. You are not responsible for other people's fears. The responsibility is yours to pay strict attention since you are already aware of the difficulty you have in grokking the sensitivities of others.
If anything, I think you should voice/articulate your ideas more extensively. I think your reasons and reasoning for rejecting these things would be interesting.
Respectful compliments are a great idea whatever the setting.
"Chiton." Through my love of dating horseshoe crabs (it's not what you think) I was familiar with chiton (and chitin.) I didn't know that chiton was also the proper term for my threads.
In any case, allow myself to quote myself: "Just one of many tricks I employ to remain lazy, wily and lazy." There's no need to respond to my thoughts on the minimum wage... unless you want to convince me of something. The same goes for psychiatry.
If you're compelled to foster any of the more than a half-dozen "great[s]" then you should be judicious about unleashing the forces of your vanity and ego. Mindless, knee-jerk, reactionary and ill-informed provocation might yield modest results... but so does spam.
I'm having trouble reconciling your claim "I don't love chaos" with your desire " to upset and be upset." Do you want yourself (and others) to become "upset" in a calm, regulated and orderly way? Do those " few people [who] have expressed gratitude" give you license to turn something over on others uninvited... and what of the many people who are not the few?
I'm not sure I agree with the contention that "[A]ll the great ideas upset." But I would say that you are not putting forward great ideas. Or, if you are, you are doing so without the understanding, context or intellectual investment that great ideas deserve.
This responsibility applies especially if you think you are raging to bring enlightenment to the dark ages. Give others the respect they're due by bringing your own argument, reasoning and/or evidence. Be kind and remember that the mind you change might be your own. Hopefully others will treat you with the same respect and care.
I do agree that "[m]any who have upset were wrong - even ignorant and illogical." This should not be a point of pride and certainly not a qualification or license to upset others. They have names for those who stir "the pot of ideas" without contributing ideas of their own. The mildest moniker is "agitator." There are other names that also begin with 'a'.
If you truly want the truth to rise I believe you should bring truth and your ladle of reason... a bowl full of intelligence, your spoon of humour and a soupçon of kindness. It's a lot of tableware but it is the big pot of ideas.
"[D]ebate, consciousness-raising, and the search for truth" can, in some cases be "more important than being pleasant." But this does not excuse us from the obligation to be pleasant. If being unpleasant (or confrontational) is the way to join in the debate then it is a debate I do not care to have. It is also a sign that the debate might not be worth having or worthy of us.
I intend the phrase "provocative argument" to mean a considered, well-reasoned idea or proposal which is exciting, appealing and enticing to engage with. "Provocation" or "provoking" is picking fights.
You can attack others (and regret doing so) unintentionally. There is nothing so personal as ones beliefs. From "Tastes great! Less filling!" to the Crusades it creates conflict/harm. Even characters from the past can get the feeling of being under attack which, for them, is no different than being attacked.
I might have taken offense when you labeled several things central to my life as b******t. Chiropractory, psychiatry, dolphins, time-travel, gods, paganism... all of those are of varying importance to me. Simply lumping Prayer, Santa Claus, Intelligent Design and Mathematics in with Fox News, Raëlians, Bigfoot and Phrenology is insensitive or ridiculous at best; at worst it is cruel and laughable.
It doesn't matter how questionable any of those things are to others if they are important to you. To lump them all together, label them and then link to other people's sites, pages and posts is... lazy. Again, I do not think you are lazy.
I don't believe that I have attacked your beliefs (ever.) If I have it was not my intention and I apologize for that. I think that, beyond not attacking, I have treated your beliefs with respect and care.
I'm glad that you mentioned carbon-dating. (And you might need it to remember the three-year-old posts.) Are you sure it was a "debate"? I don't recall ever calling one of your beliefs "questionable" (or worse) no matter what I thought of it. I can point to one single issue on that lengthy page where I thought you were wrong and I posted without a specific invitation. In that particular case I posted the evidence without comment.
Every other post (to my recollection) was in reaction to an invitation by you and others. Any disagreement was phrased in terms of my understanding without calling into question your philosophy. I tried/did not ask you to explain yourself if I thought you were wrong. I asked you to explain it to me. Perhaps I should tell Merlin about this.
I'm not certain if that conversation had any impact although I think it might have. I am certain that if either one of us had thrown up our hands, called b******t! or just pointed to a web page/site to make our case that both of us would have lost an opportunity. I think both of us are the better for that whether or not we see the value in one another's viewpoint.
One of the peeves in my petting zoo are the people who "debate" by insult and then tell their "opponent" that they should just read a specific link and then they'd see the light. If you can't explain it you shouldn't espouse it... you can believe it. You just shouldn't try to make others believe it.
You put a smile on my face. (Hmmmm... people don't say that when I argue with them...) Now I'm starting to understand you.
When I put up the ****shit list, I put it up in the same spirit as Best Films of the 00s and Most Expensive Videogames Ever Produced. It's a list, not an article, not an argument.
Nobody complained that I didn't exhaustively defend my choices for best films or most expensive videogames. I have no authority to proclaim the gospel on Best Films or Most Expensive Videogames or Things That Are Bullshit. These pages are just "my opinion, in brief list format; feel free to disagree." Isn't that understood to be the case with every personal list here?
The distinction I didn't see is that people aren't threatened about film opinions or videogame opinions, but they can be threatened about ontological opinions or efficacy opinions.
I think it's too bad that people fear opinions and propositions. But I'm not going to change that in people by pushing their buttons. Probably, I'm just not going to change that. ← period
I'm starting to see another way to communicate, which might involve:
1. Focusing on what I'm good at, what I know well, where my relative advantage lies.
2. Focusing on what I'm good at, what I know well, where my relative advantage lies.
3. Saying and arguing less and better.
4. Citing good evidence when making a controversial claim.
5. Saying things bluntly when appropriate, and respectfully when appropriate.
6. Good humor.
You've certainly never attacked my beliefs. Wouldn't mind if you had.
Please don't think that just because you don't like unpleasantness or confrontation, they are therefore wrong. I love being in blunt, to-the-point, "unpleasant" and definitely confrontational debates who also like that stuff. It's fun for both of us. I would like to debate Christopher Hitchens.
On the problems of democracy: futarchy might fix things up.
Dude, stay away from George Mason economists. They seem to be crackpots.
I have no idea if futarchy would work, but the prediction markets sound like a great idea to me: "Put your money where your mouth is." The ignorant are forced to shut up, and those who know what they are talking about take a long, hard look at their proposals before sticking to them.
If I had to put significant coin on everything I said at Listology, I'd have said almost none of it.
But then, I (and perhaps others) wouldn't be learning as much.
Then you may enjoy this hour of Russ Roberts getting dominated by William Bernstein with regard to the effects of inequality on happiness, health, and crime.