Connecting the dots

The really big puzzle is: What are these folks actually believing? One would assume that it helps to have some grasp of reality in order to make evil things. On the other hand, it “worked” in the Soviet Union without someone seeing clearly.

If liberal hawks like Chait had taken the (correct) view that everything coming out of the Bush Administration and its supporting thinktanks was advocacy designed to achieve a predetermined political goal with no regard for the truth, would they have been so keen to support the war?

Why not? IIRC, Thomas Friedman has all but said that the whole WMD thing was a necessary bit of propaganda designed to get the public on board. As someone who supported the war for reasons wholly unconnected with WMD, he had no problem with the Administration essentially concocting a bogus casus belli out of whole cloth, because what mattered to him was that the project of modernizing the Middle East through the wonders of advanced weaponry was “worth the risk.”

As for the notion of him reconsidering or recanting any of that, dream on. His ire is now reserved for the “liberals” who don’t believe Arabs are capable of democracy.

Shorter answer: you’re giving the liberal hawks far too much credit here.

Confirmation bias is a strong impulse. But as for income inequality vs. absolute wealth questions, there are serious problems with the measures used by those whose main worries include income inequality. The refusal to deal much with technological change is rampant throughout the analysis. There really is a difference between having the freedomand general value a cheap Hyundai offers and not. Cheap cell phones and yes TVs offer a big increase in the quality of life for poor people.

The general response is to say that those aren’t neccessities like health care. But even that analysis is trickier than income inequality advocates (what would the preffered term be?) suggest. For any baseline medical procedure tracked over time, the cost of having it done goes down dramatically (the major counterexample might be organ transplantation but that has all sorts of other problems, especially in the supplying of organs). Drugs go off patent or competitors appear, insurance begins to cover once exotic procedures, there are more practitioners doing them and the procedures become normal which drives the costs down. This is not generally acknowledged, because under the current system (which greatly incentivices medical innovation) there is always a new procedure and a new drug and a new technique. But in the absolute vs. relative wealth/inequality question, so what? Those techniques will also become cheap under the current system.

Putting that question in with the Young Earthers is flatly dishonest.

Oops, make that

Dan Simon, the obnoxious troll whose take on issues concerning world safety consists of launching cheap potshots at random people he doesn’t like.

I’d add ‘Cato on Social Security’. They were formed first and foremost to lie about Social Security, IIRC; they’re still going strong.

There was an argument raging a while back about whether it was legitimate to denounce the new Surge…ish policy simply on the grounds that it came from the Bush Admin, or whether it was necessary to argue for or against a policy “on its merits”. This post points towards why one DOES have to consider the trustworthiness of a policy’s proponent when assessing the worth of the policy, to wit: any evidence presented in support of a policy by a proponent with a long track record of distortion and lying should be thrown out. Argument “on the merits” presupposes some degree of agreement about the basic nature of the universe in which those merits will or will not accrue. When the policy’s proposer constantly lies about that universe of facts, one has to begin with a strong bias against the policy.

It is notable that the case for invading Iraq began with the observation that Saddam had “failed to account for” all of his weapons stockpiles. There was never much evidence showing WMDs; there was mostly evidence that Saddam’s accounting was incomplete. It was the religious belief that, being a bad man, Saddam must be in search of nukes to destroy America, which filled in the rest.

It would be more accurate to refer to “a few conclusions of some researchers in a few disciplines,” but that wouldn’t be quite as thrilling to write.

It would also be less accurate. The Big Bang and the conviction that the universe is some 15 billion years old are not “conclusions” of “some researchers” in cosmology; they are fundamental tenets of the field. The same goes even more strongly for evolution and biology. The GOP base effectively opposes these entire disciplines. One could run through GOP opposition to overwhelming academic consenses in economics (supply-side), sociology and psychology (effectiveness of abstinence-only education, needle exchanges, etc.), and on and on.

What might in fact be worth doing is substituting “hard-right Republicans” for “Republicans”, if it were shown that a large percentage of Republicans in fact do accept evolution, the Big Bang, and the validity of social science data on reproductive health policy, despite the anti-scientific policies embraced by the party itself. But I’ve seen no evidence for this.

That “there is now no academic discipline whose conclusions can be considered acceptable” is a trifle strong. I’ve heard, once, that some fundamentalists take exception to the Uncertainty Principle, viewing it as the root cause of moral relativism, but as far as I know it hasn’t led them to disdain the fruits of solid-state physics, like computers and cell phones.

They’re nearly always willing to use the technological products — you don’t see anti-evolution ideologues refusing antibiotics, for example. There’s a total disconnect between the anti-intellectual undermining of science and any concept of where these things come from.

“Let them eat cake” all over again.

How many Democrats are trumpeting the clear fact of embryology that a new human entity’s life begins at conception? Not many. Hence, Democrats hate “science.”

Marc: boom.

Functional:

Show me one scientific paper which manages to scientifically hypothesize in a falsifiable way, and prove by empirical observation, that “a new human entity’s life begins at conception”. Wait: there’s no such paper!

The conclusion, of course, is that whatever “science” the GOPers claim to base their conclusions of is simply made up.

= = =

The sad thing, of course, is that extreme Republicans, and Functional himself, hates the very scientific method, which is (surprise!) the basis of all scientific research. Heck, these people hate the very idea of facts — and this observation is one which you don’t need scientific jargon to grasp.

People are proving my point! Thanks.

Oh, and all of the points in your last paragraph are either 1) disputed (there is a volume of contradictory data on so-called school choice);

No there’s not. There are a few studies showing that there is little benefit in terms of grades. No study shows a disadvantage, and plenty of studies show small benefits both to academic achievement, racial diversity, and parental satisfaction.

Show me one scientific paper which manages to scientifically hypothesize in a falsifiable way, and prove by empirical observation, that “a new human entity’s life begins at conception”. Wait: there’s no such paper!

Dumbass. Look up any obstetrics textbook. There’s no debate on this point. You can debate all you want about “personhood” or other philosophical topics, but not about the proposition that I stated.

Oh, functional, I forgot to call you a dumbfuck. My bad.

Thanks, John.

But: The “life of the embryo” question is a red herring. The question is, when should we start giving human rights to the embryo? Right-to-lifers believe that an blastula should be treated as a human being. Maybe it’s alive, and it’s got human DNA, but an blastula is not a human being.

Right-o. You recognize that there’s a moral question. Still, just by scrolling up in this very thread, you can see a liberal taking the same attitude towards embryology that some conservatives take towards global warming: Insisting that the most obvious facts have never been proven. I take it you use the Internet quite a bit — surely you’re aware that we haven’t here, in this Crooked Timber thread, spotted the only liberal in the world who takes an anti-science view as to the beginning of human life.

“What the hell are you arguing? The question is whether income inequality is increasing.”

No the social question is whether or not we should care. You can’t address the question of whether or not we should care without looking at absolute wealth.

s/and his/and this/

If you know anything about American politics, you’d realize that a lot of those young-earth creationists are Democratic voters—working-class whites, blacks, Hispanics, etc.

Well, if you knew anything about American politics, you’d know that the leadership comes exclusively from Republican, culturally conservative sectors.

Conversely, there are a ton of elite Republicans who are just fine with evolution.

Who have done nothing to stop the evisceration of biology textbooks. And they are quite fine making proto-creationist positions part of their party plank or campaign talking points. You find this rare (if they ever occur at all) with Democratic candidates.

bi wrote: The sad thing, of course, is that extreme Republicans, and Functional himself, hates the very scientific method, which is (surprise!) the basis of all scientific research. Heck, these people hate the very idea of facts—and this observation is one which you don’t need scientific jargon to grasp.

Or as CS Peirce called it, the method of authority:

In judging this method of fixing belief, which may be called the method of authority, we must, in the first place, allow its immeasurable mental and moral superiority to the method of tenacity. Its success is proportionally greater; and in fact it has over and over again worked the most majestic results. The mere structures of stone which it has caused to be put together-in Siam, for example, in Egypt, and in Europe-have many of them a sublimity hardly more than rivaled by the greatest works of nature. And, except the geological epochs, there are no periods of time so vast as those which are measured by some of these organized faiths. If we scrutinize the matter closely, we shall find that there has not been one of their creeds which has remained always the same; yet the change is so slow as to be imperceptible during one person’s life, so that individual belief remains sensibly fixed. For the mass of mankind, then, there is perhaps no better method than this. If it is their highest impulse to be intellectual slaves, then slaves they ought to remain.

But no institution can undertake to regulate opinions upon every subject. Only the most important ones can be attended to, and on the rest men’s minds must be left to the action of natural causes. This imperfection will be no source of weakness so long as men are in such a state of culture that one opinion does not influence another-that is, so long as they cannot put two and two together. But in the most priest-ridden states some individuals will be found who are raised above that condition. These men possess a wider sort of social feeling; they see that men in other countries and in other ages have held to very different doctrines from those which they themselves have been brought up to believe; and they cannot help seeing that it is the mere accident of their having been taught as they have, and of their having been surrounded with the manners and associations they have, that has caused them to believe as they do and not far differently. And their candor cannot resist the reflection that there is no reason to rate their own views at a higher value than those of other nations and other centuries; and this gives rise to doubts in their minds.

“How many Democrats are trumpeting the clear fact of embryology that a new human entity’s life begins at conception? Not many. Hence, Democrats hate “science.” ”

No, idiot, you hate science, as you continue to prove with every post you make in this thread. The fact that there is a living entity at conception does not tell you that this entity is human. Science has nothing to say on this, since the definition of what qualifies as “human” is a moral and legal one. This is all obvious enough. But since for you the sole purpose of science is to defeat your political enemies, and science is to be rejected when it does not do this, you seem incapable of seeing it.

Conversely, there are a ton of elite Republicans who are just fine with evolution. Who have done nothing to stop the evisceration of biology textbooks.

CT certainly seems to draw a lot of serial exaggerators. Evisceration? Where and when? There are a few local school boards that have tried to put small “make up your own mind” labels on biology textbooks, but that isn’t even remotely in the same league as “evisceration,” and it certainly isn’t happening because of elite Republicans.

Functional, at this point you’re being completely obtuse. Nothing in what I, or anyone else, wrote requires that all creationists be US Republicans. I was observing that the creationist segment of the public is large, not the tiny fringe that you dismissed in your comments. More to the point, you’d be hard pressed to find Democrats in the US advocating anti-scientific public policy, and you find plenty of examples of GOP leaders doing so. Science (and scientists) have not always been at odds with the republican party – but they are now, make no mistake about it.

Your comments put you pretty clearly in the anti-science camp, which I see that you don’t dispute. And you’re pretty clearly a conservative republican (and, I’d wager, a creationist) from your comments. Your other points are argument by assertion. The subject of vouchers is llustrative of your approach and reliability. See, for example,

http://pewforum.org/issues/files/VoucherPackage.pdf

and in particular the discussion starting on p.27 on the outcomes of studies of school vouchers. There are some cases where voucher students do worse than students in public schools – this is true also for charter schools. To expect otherwise would be surprising, unless one holds a (US republican) attitude that private solutions are always better than public ones. Any gains are modest, and the subject is contentious.

Functional: define, “new” while you’re at it.

And you’re pretty clearly a conservative republican (and, I’d wager, a creationist) from your comments.

No, emphatically not a creationist. Still, I’m capable of figuring out the difference between 1) young earth creationism, 2) old earth creationism, 3) people who are just skeptical about the information-generating powers of random mutation (this in turn requires knowing the different between random mutation and natural selection, which is apparently lost on some people around here). In the interest of accuracy, I’m just disputing the stupid suggestion that all “orthodox Republicans” believe that the earth is 10,000 years old. You can repeat it till you’re blue in the face, but it ain’t so.

Marc s3z to Functional,

Your other points are argument by assertion.

Right on. This can’t be overemphasized.

And, Functional, this also applies to your latest post.

I’m just disputing the stupid suggestion that all “orthodox Republicans” believe that the earth is 10,000 years old. You can repeat it till you’re blue in the face, but it ain’t so.

Where’s your proof, Functional?

…clear fact of embryology that a new human entity’s life begins at conception

Where’s your proof that it’s a “clear fact”?

Look up any obstetrics textbook. There’s no debate on this point.

Where’s your proof that “obstetrics textbooks” agree with you? Did you actually read any obstetrics textbooks? If so, then why can’t you even cite one concrete example? If not, then where in the first place did you get the idea that the textbooks agree with you?

Where did you get all your “facts” from, Functional?

(I’m sure Behe didn’t talk about obstetrics textbooks. Or did he?)

“So you’re saying that people are “dishonest” because they happen to discuss a question which is different from your “social question”

No. When people around here criticize their opponents about the inequality question, it is about a question of social or moral judgments. So if Reynolds says for example that one of the reasons that inequality is expanding is because those measuring it are looking at ‘household inequality’ of smaller and smaller households, there may or may not be a fruitful debate about whether or not ‘household’ is the proper focus. If you are going to propose changes in social structure based on ‘inequality’ however defined, it may be fruitful to look at the intersection between wealth creation and inequality. It may be important to focus on technology accessability as a function over time (it may be interesting to note that, yes the rich can get the most cutting edge tech, but cutting edge tech becomes routine poverty-level tech in Western societies at an increasingly fast tempo).

To classify that debate as akin to those who assert that the Earth is 6000 years old (and are thus flatly wrong) is frankly illegtimate. It dishonestly smears those who question the leftist orthodoxy on inequality and it dishonestly portrays the state of the argument as settled.

To provide some actual evidence here, this survey states
“Nearly six-in-ten conservative Republicans believe that living things have always existed in their present form, while just 11% say that evolution occurred through natural processes.”

Quiggin — you should read further into that link. Or quote less carefully. Here’s some more of what that survey found:

Support for teaching creationism along with evolution is quite broad-based, with majority support even among seculars, liberal Democrats and those who accept natural selection theory. At the same time, not all creationists believe that creationism should replace evolution in the schools: 32% of those who subscribe to the creationist view do not think it should be taught instead of evolution. These findings strongly suggest that much of the public believes it is desirable to offer more viewpoints where controversial subjects in the schools are concerned. White evangelicals and black Protestants are the only religious groups expressing majority support for teaching creationism instead of evolution in public schools. Majorities of mainline Protestants, Catholics and seculars oppose this idea. Politically, a majority of conservative Republicans favor replacing evolution with creationism in the classroom, but support for this proposal falls below 40% for all other political groups, including moderate and liberal Republicans. Regionally, only among Southerners does a plurality (45%) support replacing evolution with creationism in the schools.

But there are also inconsistencies in peoples’ responses that point to confusion regarding the meaning of terms such as “creationism” and even “evolution.” For example, among people who oppose teaching creationism either along with or instead of evolution, 27% personally take the creationist position on human origins. Similarly, 19% of people who think creationism should be taught instead of evolution nevertheless personally believe in evolution through natural selection.

So there are majorities even of liberal Democrats who think creationism should be at least taught alongside evolution. Notice also that even 32% of creationists don’t want it taught in schools. Notice also that a lot of people are just plain confused — the 19% of people who personally believe in evolution but who say that creationism should be taught instead of evolution.

Moral is, it’s very hard to look at all of the data in that survey and come away thinking: “Orthodox Republicans! They’re behind it all.” Unless, that is, you’re just looking for any excuse to beat up Republicans.

Also, notice that I highlighted the bit of text about black Protestants’ belief in creationism. This is just for “bi,” who apparently has never met a black person, and who thought I was just inventing the fact that many black Americans (most of whom vote Democratic) are creationists.

I’m not sure what to say to someone who think that there is any question about whether a human life begins at conception. Human life (that is, of an individual human being) begins at conception. There’s no question about that. Granted, our law doesn’t protect that life, because many people don’t think it worth protecting at that stage. But to say that conception isn’t the beginning of a new human life is fundamentally anti-science. It’s letting pro-choice politics blind oneself to one of the most elementary facts of biology.

And you should call some of your fellow liberals on it, if you don’t want to be a sheer partisan hack.

“The other way of measuring the dates of the pregnancy is to measure the fetal age. The fetal age of the pregnancy is measured from the time of conception or the estimated time of conception (ETC).”

Wow. So this clearly illustrates the scientific consensus that a foetus is… a foetus!

And I thought the whole pro-choice/pro-life circus was about whether foetuses are new humans! Sorry, my bad.

I’m just trying to come up with a term…

In other words, it wasn’t in the obstetrics textbooks. You made it up. Thank you for telling us.

Sebastian Holsclaw s3z,

So if Reynolds says for example that one of the reasons that inequality is expanding is because those measuring it are looking at ‘household inequality’ of smaller and smaller households,

Well, if Holsclaw hates facts… but I digress.

Let’s take a look at one of the criticisms Reynolds actually made, as described in Chait’s article:

Reynolds lists a series of potential flaws in the Piketty-Saez data. Most of the complaints are simply picayune details. He writes, for instance, that “not everyone files tax return, not all income is taxable (e.g., municipal bonds), and not every taxpayer tells the complete truth about his or her income.”

In other words, Reynolds is contesting the conclusions obtained on income inequality as it is currently defined.

I understand that, in the confucianist view, the animal spirit enters the fetus at conception, but the human spirit enters at birth.

Functional – As far as I can see, for the last zillion comments or so you have essentially been repeating, ad nauseum, your “point” that as there is at least one Republican who is not a creationist, the statement “all Republicans are creationists” must be false. So perhaps you would be so good as to point out where John or anyone else actually said this.

Anyway, this is veering away from my original point, which still stands: Quiggin is overwrought in claiming that “there is now no academic discipline whose conclusions can be considered acceptable to orthodox Republicans.” That just isn’t true, as it suggests that all conclusions of all academic disciplines are in doubt by “orthodox” Republicans (whatever that means). Even as to economics, where Quiggin should know better, the most you could say is that there are *some* Republicans who disagree with the conclusion of some economists that supply side economics is bogus. What Quiggin is doing is dishonest in two ways: 1) He treats supply side economics as if it represented the entirety of economics (as if there aren’t about a thousand other things that economists study); 2) He lumps all “orthodox Republicans” into one box.

In other words, Quiggin’s post is just as if one said, “Orthodox Democrats do not accept economics,” when one really meant that 1) *some* Democrats disagree with 2) cost-benefit analysis of regulation.

functional,

Good at ignoring disconfirming evidence, aren’t you? That is the hallmark of a nonscientific view.

When the largest and most influential state Republican party officially endorses I.D., that is enough to validate the anti-science credentials of Republicans.

The next paragraph of O’Rahilly and Müller points out that
Debate has occurred over the philosophical conclusion whether the human organism is (1) ab initio, i.e. from fertilization, an actual human person in a philosophical sense, or (2) a potential person becoming actual at a later time. In order to justify the latter assumption, it is claimed that a certain degree of bodily complexity is necessary for the attainment of human personhood (e.g. Maritain, 1967), the presence of a human individual with a human nature.

And things get more interesting immediately after that:
Particular significance is often assigned to the first 2–2½ postfertilizational weeks [footnotes] because monozygotic twinning can still occur during that time; … Monozygotic twins are genetically but not ontologically identical, and so it has been maintained that the non-individuated embryo of 2–2½ weeks has yet to acquire determinate individuality, a stable (ontological) human identity. It is quite possible, however, that twinning may be determined extremely early.

If you want to quote people out of context, can you at least refrain from doing it in such an obviously stupid way?

anyone who takes the standard scientific view of human development hasn’t met your concocted burden of proof.

Hey, look here. And you know, I actually wrote very clearly that it’s not what “view” you take, it’s what you present as being objectively true. In this case, your ‘objectively true’ claim P is not “a foetus is a new human being”, it is “any obstetrics textbook will say that a foetus is a new human being”.

Then again, why should I expect you to care about any of this? You’re clearly refusing to actually learn anything about how science, logic, and fact-finding works — even as you claim to be pro-science.

Well, Functional, you want to split tiny hairs? Let me point out that the quote talks about a “new human organism”, not a “new human life” or a “new human entity’s life” as you put it. The text even says that “life is a continuous process” and that “fertilization … is not a ‘moment'”.

Bi, you’re moving the goalposts. If my original claim were that “all obstetrics textbooks say X,” then it would be OK to ask for proof.

My original claim (which you misquote egregiously) was this: “clear fact of embryology that a new human entity’s life begins at conception.”

Your response, which I will actually quote (rather than making up a quotation and putting it in quotation marks, as you did): “Show me one scientific paper which manages to scientifically hypothesize in a falsifiable way, and prove by empirical observation, that “a new human entity’s life begins at conception”. Wait: there’s no such paper!”

So you made an affirmative claim here: There’s no such paper. Prove THAT, oh expert embryologist.

My dear functional, you are confusing the concept of individual Republicans with the official policy of the party. By your logic, you would not be able to find any policy or idea that “Republicans” believe in because you can always find some individual Republicans that disbelieve in any single policy.

But as much as you try to avoid it, the official policy line of the Republican Party of Texas endorses creationism. The national party doesn’t say this as boldfacedly, but most people understand their kowtowing to local control of schools as a coded way of saying this.

Your problem with your phrase “human entity” is that you have not defined it. So Bi’s assumption that you meant both the “human” soul and the “animal” soul (following from Confucious’ definition) is natural. Even your own reference doesn’t use the term entity, rather uses the more specific word “organism.” So all you have to do is to state that you meant the “animal” soul and not the “human” soul.