Oh, but I am fun at parties.
So it’s ok for you to correct our interpretation of what you’ve said, but not for the reverse to happen. I see.
You’ll notice I made no comment about any polarization of American society or the media’s role in that process. You’re the one that’s accusing me here- I’ve not made any opinion public in this thread.
Regardless, I wish you well and hope you have a great day.
All the best.
9 Likes
I think it’s our inability to listen to one another, that is than further complicated by the complete abuse and misuse of statistical analysis, especially in regards to the social sciences. Over half of psychology tests are not reproducible, and you can’t go one day without hearing about some study or other showing this or that, which then turns out to have not been what the study was, or some other misrepresentation, but the correction is in small print on the last page. Don’t even get me started on the issue of food. 
What does the scientific community do instead of taking responsibility for the misuse and misinformation that is being generated by their research, they blame the people, And the politicians being the great manipulators that are, just eat it up and use it to their advantage.
So you think bad journalism is a human problem more than an economic deregulation problem? Is that fair to say?
3 Likes
More like we are looking for the answers in the wrong place The human condition, just like biological systems is complex and humans are stupidly smart, always tinkering, altering, tweaking, manipulating, never taking the time to fully understand the ramifications of our actions. I think the world just needs a pause. Sometimes when I have problem I will think and think about it unable to find a solution, but as I’m drifting off to sleep it’s like the answer just comes. The solution was there the whole time I just couldn’t hear or see it because all the other thoughts were getting in the way.
Once you paused and thought about the problem of concentrated, democratically unaccountable corporate media as you were drifting off to sleep, what answer came to you?
4 Likes
When I read the tweets I thought his mocking of media reports was totally fair. “Sources close to…” spouting BS.
I actually like seeing former politicians do stuff like this. He’s been “acting presidential” for a year and now it’s time to say “Oh, fuck off” to a stupid media report instead of being polite about it.
“Babyfaced Rightwing Jerk” pays like at least $400k, he will probably pull in $2M+ for it.
I don’t think this was your central point, but in defense of psychology, that’s the scientific process. The problem is that people should be doing replication studies all the time, rather than continuously doing exploratory studies. It’s fine that half the exploratory studies give flawed results as long as we robustly check which ones are flawed, which is what science is supposed to do.
8 Likes
I’d settle for knowing some of the 1% of media sources that aren’t corrupt.
2 Likes
No, here is an example. I have client who is the president of small bank. He pays $350,000 a year to employ three people just so the bank can be sure it is compliant with all the regulations that have been put into place regarding Dodd Frank. Two other small banks in the town I live in have been swallowed up by bigger banks. The percentage of GDP contributed by small businesses is declining. Many of the regulations that are implemented come with costs that small businesses are unable to absorb because they lack the economics of scale. The same goes with media consolidation it is caused by over regulation further complicated by the shift towards a global economy leading to greater price competition. Economics while manipulated and controlled by humans was not created by humans any more than music and dance or math. The ability to trade stems from our propensity for cooperation, the various components of the economic system emerged and were discovered not created. We didn’t create absolute or comparative advantage, opportunity costs exits whether we are able to calculate the costs or not.
Could you cite a specific example of this? The “scientific community” is not a monolith and is composed of people.
3 Likes
This is what economists call “regulatory capture.” The regulations that make it very hard to small businesses to operate weren’t put there by well-meaning public servants, they were put there by people in the pocket of big business. A lot US laws are written completely by industry and handed to federal or state congresses to pass. Not that well meaning regulations don’t cause problems - they do - but if your friend can’t manage to keep a bank open and gets bought out by a large bank to have the assets sold off that’s a feature of the system, not a bug.
If small business is shrinking as a percentage of the economy, it’s not globalization, it’s US law. It isn’t happening in Canada, It doesn’t appear to be happening in Europe from the stats I’m finding (not great).
We did invent economics. Contemporary economics doesn’t even make sense without contemporary ideas of property ownership which aren’t actually that old (only a few hundred years). If you don’t accept the idea that people have the right to exclude others from using things based on abstract ideas of ownership, then the kind of trade we are talking about doesn’t even exist. There is nothing intuitive or natural about property ownership. The intuitive and natural state is that you have only what you can keep and that you are at the mercy of larger things with sharper teeth.
6 Likes
Please, show me all of the non-human economics, non-human music, non-human dance, and non-human math.
5 Likes
Fibonacci sequence, pi, golden rectangle, golden triangle, fractals, birds sing all the time, bees dance. There is a big difference between discovery and creation.
6 Likes
Again opportunity costs exist, it is the costs of the next best alternative. It is a consequence of a choice being made. Being able to calculate the consequence is what we have contributed. We didn’t create the model it is a result of the what happens when you engage in trade. Economics is an emergent system, that is responsive to the actions of people, which can than be modeled, and manipulated.
I’d really appreciate it if you could cite a single instance of what you’re describing here.
2 Likes
If you’re talking about the golden ratio in nature, that’s largely [bunk] (The Myth of the Golden Ratio - Home).
There being a consistent ratio of circumference to radius of a perfect circle is not “mathematics” (especially since perfect circles don’t exist in nature). Calculating that ratio is mathematics.
A repeating pattern (even if the pattern repeats itself on a smaller and smaller scale) is not mathematics - it’s just a pattern. Modeling that pattern requires mathematics, but the pattern itself does not. Also — similar to pi, every “fractal” in nature eventually breaks down because the atoms become too large, so the only real fractals are in mathematical models created by humans.
Birds communicate all of the time. A bird singing the same three notes — a long note, and then a lower, short note, twice — over and over (does anyone know what bird I’m talking about? That bird call drives me nuts) is not music. Music requires movement, requires thought.
Again, bees communicate, which, to humans, looks like dancing. Unless you consider the perceived motions of the LED lights on a road sign, directing you to merge because a lane is closed, to be dancing, a bee taking up certain positions in the air to indicate “Go that way!” isn’t dancing either.
9 Likes
No. Fucken. Contest. Rubio would be reduced to a blubbering pile of goo on the floor continually asking for another bottle of water.
And HST would be all manners of fucked up on pharma. But he’d still (entertainingly) whoop Rubio in just about any contest. Other than contests involving being exactly sure that Obama knows what he’s doing. I think Rubio’s got the edge, there.
5 Likes
HFS!!! @Moerae1 is Rubio’s sockpuppet!!
he knows exactly what he’s doing, too
Didn’t need it–he was a born writer from day one. And although he’s been a hero of mine for some time, this wiki quote about his high school days makes me love him even more:
As an Athenaeum member, Thompson contributed articles to and helped produce the club's yearbook The Spectator. The group ejected Thompson in 1955, citing his legal problems. Charged as an accessory to robbery after being in a car with the perpetrator, Thompson was sentenced to 60 days in Kentucky's Jefferson County Jail. He served 31 days and, a week after his release - and one day after sinking nearly every boat in a local harbor by shooting holes beneath their waterlines - enlisted in the United States Air Force. While he was in jail, the school superintendent refused him permission to take his high-school final examinations, and as a result he did not graduate.
Yeah, Rubio’d be done before he even started with HST.
5 Likes
With the EU going after Google’s Android on anti-trust grounds (and Microsoft before that), I saw an argument on Slashdot that nicely summed up the European position, even without regulatory corruption involved:
In Europe we already tried allowing a winner-takes-it-all strategy where a very good leader keeps the monopoly over a (market/region/population), it was called an absolute monarchy.
It looks good for as long as the original manager (who reached the position as the best in a meritocracy) stays in place. It lasts for a generation, when the competent leader legates the role to their heirs, who may or may not be prepared to maintain the same level of quality service.
By that time, it is too late to displace the incompetent newcomers - all the network effects that entrenched the original leader as a monopoly are still in place and are too strong to overcome even when there are better alternatives, except by a disruptive process that redefines the rules of the game in full. I heard you Americans didn’t like absolute monarchies? You should then understand the EU’s position.
2 Likes
Are you thinking of a black-capped chickadee call? They do a three note call with one high-pitched note followed by two lower ones…
Agreed that a bird isn’t singing but rather communicating.
Tangential: Interestingly, chickadee communications are heard and understood by many other species of birds. Their alarm calls not only communicate information about the size/type of predators they spot, but are understood by many species of birds, and even some rodents. Passerines have semi-shared calls for when they decide to mob a predator as well (which some birders imitate to bring birds out into the open to get a better look/id).
3 Likes
