I have no more use for “centrisim” than the linear thinking that would make it mean anything, but the beyond that, every modern western liberal society outside of the United States takes the benefits of mixing capitalism and socialism for granted.
Out of curiosity, what fields do these young-earth creationists work in? Is this an example of the Salem hypothesis, or are these people who would be expected to need to understand evolution/cosmology on an intuitive level in order to be able to do their jobs?
The United States does this too. It’s just that you can’t use the word “socialism” in support of the socialist elements of our economic and political systems, because it happens to be a snarl word in our political discourse.
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The mouse-over text here might be relevant.
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I’ve actually never heard of the Salem Hypothesis, but the people I’m specifically thinking of are Physicists working in an engineering discipline…So I think it fits the model.
Perhaps this illustrates the problem with the first straight line graph. Its simplicity with prosperity is inversely proportional to Swedishness. The only way it can work is for the US to be given a higher prosperity score. The model chosen determines the result. In the second model either US or Sweden could have high prosperity.
You are doing the thing that Ellenberg pointed out was wrong. Stop trying to simplify the situation beyond reason. Torture policy and economic policy are inherently different [citation needed, but if you really feel the need for proof of this I’m not sure there is any helping you.]
Ellenberg’s point isn’t that the second graph is right, but rather that it might be right, and is almost certainly more correct that the linear graph. In reality the graph probably is way weirder than a simple parabola.
It doesn’t matter which model is correct – ideologues ignore data that doesn’t fit their model, which was chosen not for correctness but to justify whatever it is they wanted to do anyway.
There is no contradiction in saying that the US should engage in more torturing and Russia should engage is less. There’s also no contradiction in saying that something is not contradictory and that is it also wrong. I didn’t think anyone was trying to sneak in the conclusion that the second graph must be right.
As for the rest of the discussion, I’d like to point out that if you look at how the market functions in the US and in Sweden there is a good case to be made that Sweden is more capitalist than the US as well as more socialist. Capitalism is not allowing a class of ultra-rich to do whatever they want outside of the law and then bailing them out when they lose their money.
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“Although Ellenberg doesn’t make this case explicitly, there’s an argument to be made that the brand of mathematical thinking that he’s embracing overlaps heavily with a broadly liberal style of thinking about politics and the world.”
From what the article details: Ellenberg doesn’t say there’s an association between math and liberalism. However, the author of the article does say so, and he goes off on tangents unrelated to Ellenberg’s work so he can make the point he wants to make, which is that math is liberal.
Chris Mooney, the article author, decides that since Ellenberg is saying mathematics involves nuanced thinking about a problem, and since psychological studies say liberals are more tolerant of nuance and willing to dwell on things, then math must lead to liberal decisions (even though the provided example suggests math could help illuminate a compromise between left and right ideology) because liberals and math both allow for nuance and conservatives talk about liberal biases in universities and they don’t like nuance, so there you go!
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I think the problem is that people try to generalize from the US to a broader reality. The US left would be right-wing extremism in many other places. It’s no wonder that academics tend to lean left in the US - the right relies on a sometimes explicit denial of facts and reason in order to support otherwise unsupportable positions.
If an ideal “Swedishness” does exist between the US and Sweden, it is far more Swedish than the Democrats. So it’s not necessarily that math favours progressiveness, but it does favour reasonableness, and in the US, that’s progressive.
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Shhhhhhhh! Don’t reveal the secret! Keep your gub’mint hands off my medicare!
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Far as I can tell, religion and journalism.
There probably are a few academics, but they’re more of a rounding error than a force to be reckoned with…
Interesting that you immediately equated Republican with Fox. I mentioned both major parties in the next sentence, so that couldn’t be why.
I guess that means this country leans female, then.
Seriously, it’s true that I assumed you meant a more extreme difference because that’s what I’ve heard over and over again from my various Fox-like sources. If you meant “lean” the way you say, then yes, I’d totally agree with that.
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