Sunstein Becked

Small prediction: if Cass Sunstein is successfully driven out of his appointment, he will write something about what he learned, and it will blame his misfortune on the writers of items like this one.

From the Washington Independent story: “How has Sunstein become so controversial? Basically, conservative Websites have read his iconoclastic, theoretical writing and pumped up the bits that sound really strange.”

An opt-out system is considered “really strange”? I can understand that it’s controversial, but it’s not like he’s the only person to suggest it. Gordon Brown backs it, for heaven’s sake. It’s in operation in many Western countries. And it’s a hell of a lot less strange than the system in the UK, where even if you opt-in, and carry a card to prove it, it doesn’t matter if your family don’t consent as well.

“The right wing partisan crazy is simply a lot worse than the left wing partisan crazy”: because you like it less, or because it is more influential? I don’t think you can objectively rule that crypto-Stalinism is worse than crypto-Nazism [or any other form of rightism], it’s just that apologists for the Great Terror aren’t actively engaged in hounding public appointees from their jobs, and haven’t got a headlock on the political sentiments of a solid 20% of the country… Give them a chance, and see what they’d do…

alex – Crypto Stalinism and Crypto Nazism are both pretty bad. But neither of those seems especially wide-spread at the moment. The bigger issue is people who somehow think it’s controversial to have the president tell children to stay in school, and who think counseling about the potential for hospice service is pulling the plug on grandma, and who think that a Certificate of Live Birth is no substitute for a birth certificate. While there might be more 9/11-truth-ism on the left of the spectrum than the right, the degree of disconnect from reality on some parts of the right that get millions of viewers a night on TV is pretty scary, and pretty clearly a bigger problem.

the more interaction liberals (even those as lukewarm as Sunstein) have with the Republican base the more they will realise that they are dealing with people whose political views are a closed system, impervious to factual evidence or to any form of morality more developed than loyalty to the tribe.

Could you clarify? Are you saying that Republicans are evil, stupid, or evil and stupid?

Sorry, but I’m certain I’ve heard similar sentiments from George Bush when referring to elements of Islam. Certainly it’s a lot easier to justify doing what it takes to get things done if you don’t consider opponents fully human.

It’s beyond me how you’d wish any of that on anyone, really.

It also depends on the undefined “Republican base”. If it means only lunatics, sure, don’t go & try to reason with them. But it rather suggests it might include at least some 40% of citizens, & sounds like it might include Colin Powell …

By the way, what’s the trend in people paying for their indoctrination in the US nowadays; are their significant downward price trends; is it a market attracting many new suppliers ???

Well, I presume Sunstein/Rahm/Obama are about the Republicans like Paulson Bernanke Powell, the military-corporate donors whose craziness would only extend to a mild libertarianism but still identify as Republican.

However, political parties whose elite military-corporate leadership who tolerate, encourage, and nuture a ultra-nationalist religious-fanatical-irrationalist reactionary thuggish worker bureaucrat base for its street-political have been studied enough. Dave & Sara over at Orcinus have put us on high alert recently.

Sunstein and Obama etc just don’t want to accept what they are dealing with. The people they have regular contact with just seem so reasonable and civilized.

The right wing partisan crazy is simply a lot worse than the left wing partisan crazy in US politics at the moment

From the point of view of US politics at the moment, I would propose the following league of craziness:

1) right wing partisan — completely crazy
2) centrist/bipartisan — somewhat crazy
3) left wing partisan — not crazy

Lest we forget, another reason to dislike Sunstein:

https://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/24/deterrence-and-the-death-penalty/

BTW, Charlie Brooker on Beck et al is well worth it:

Alex, I am pretty sure that Henry wasn’t making a universal claim about the cosmic badness of rightness versus leftness, but was talking about the present situation in the US, so incantations of the liberal cliché about ‘extremes’ of left and right being equally dangerous would appear to be somewhat beside the point here.

For sure the GOP is in a very sad state at the moment, and so their irrationality quite OTT. But the hatred of W was quite pathological too: why are we so blind when it comes to ourselves? (Don’t tell me that progressives had something ‘real’ to get pathologically angry about… I found W as much of a nightmare as anybody and especially like Obama because he seeks to build bridges. The point is that the rage was pathological in both cases.)

BTW, I am a life-long Guardian reader and for as long as I could avid consumer of the NYT. I don’t believe in God; I am a non-theist.

But I have been digging into this modern passion for irrationality and it is now clear to me that it has its roots in the Enlightenment (in a technical sense) that has infected all modern thought: conservatives fundamentalist Christians and progressive fanatical atheists alike–these are the wingnuts but the malaise is fairly spread around. The big hint is in the very idea of Enlightenment itself, clear cover for a programme of irrationality in ethics facilitated by scientific cleverness.

Much of this is caught up in religion. There is nothing more truly irrational than physicalism–stuck as it is in 19th century physical reality. Unmodified Neo-Darwinism as such is a meta-scientific dogma that has been mixed up with proper science; just add smoke and mirrors, bullying, bluster and an acquiescent public in awe of their high priests and you have the current scientific consensus. Anyone who seriously doubts this just needs to sample the way establishment science engages with the reasoned critiques of the likes of Behe and Sheldrake: the signal to noise ratio is stunningly low, high on aggressive rhetoric and very low in joined up content.

On a more basic level, the progressive attacks on institutional religion are really bizarre, as David Stove pointed out. He had no time for the ‘fairy stories’ (as he saw them) but their social value is obvious to anyone who thinks about it (seriously). Yet this is not the progressive ‘rational’ narrative.

That such clever people (and progressives clearly attract the smarts) should possess so little self-awareness and be so certain and righteous about their rightness, that they are carrying the torch for the ideas that have got us into this pickle, that they abuse their cleverness to destroy the faith systems of conservatives, leads me to wonder whether they might not be truly at the heart of the compulsive irrationality of our modern discourse.

I find Obama’s instincts fascinating. I am glad he and his team are in charge of steering the progressive legislation through congress and not reactionary progressive wingnuts!

(Sorry, I just couldn’t resist, my eyes catching too much self-satisfaction on my way to the bottom, but I am sure it was only a few comments.)

It strikes me that the internet is very effective in bringing people into contact with the very worst representatives of people with whom they disagree. On most political blogs views significantly opposed to the posters are usually respresented by ‘trolls’ — people who argue in an insincere and inflammatory wa,y primarily motivated by a desire for attention. The upshot of this is that most discussions turn into demolitions of a very weak form of an opposing view by people who are somewhat more informed and serious, which surely has the effect of making people more confident in what they believed before the discussion took place.

Sorry, above comment responds to 22, evidently. Meanwhile, Chris Dornan, “they abuse their cleverness to destroy the faith systems of conservatives,” – WTF?? Do you have any inkling how assiduously those ‘faith systems’ have been built over the last half-century, how entirely modern, and in some senses post-modern they are, and how astonishingly powerful and pervasive they have become? Destroyed? You wish… As for the rest of your argument, I think you’re calling for a little of what Rorty called ‘irony’, but it does sound alarmingly like ‘let’s roll society back to the time when fear of eternal hellfire was a useful and universal means of social control’. Might want to parse that out a little.

If Obama’s sincere why does he employ the likes of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers- and Cass Sunstein? Rahm in particular is all about making sure nothing actually progressive ever gets done that might dry up the flow of corporate cash to Democrats.

Sorry, I look at actions ,not fancy words or fanciful mindreading.

I don’t see him putting himself in that danger just to feed at the corporate trough, which he could have done as a Senator anyway. Being elected to the Senate that young, and in a state with reliable demographics, he could have looked forward to great seniority and power just by waiting for it. So what did he risk his career and his life for?

I can’t possibly think of any reason why someone would want to be President. Or the first black President. Nope. Well, other than pure selflessness and a deep desire to do good, of course.

If Obama’s sincere why does he employ the likes of Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers- and Cass Sunstein?

I was thinking about this. What do you do when the opposition has gone full f-word?

I suppose a liberal has to give the opposition military-corporate elite everything and anything they ask for. because liberals don’t want to, and really can’t fight. And in any case, once those elites have threatened or joined the wingnuts enough to not care about tactics, a liberal (or leftist fer sure) can’t win anyway. I figured with a 25% of pop wingnut base, maybe as little as a third of the military-industrial establishment becomes enough for totalitarian takeover. And as Arendt says, could be nobody can control it now.

Because bribing the Right elites, as happened in late 20s Germany, means Obama and the Democrats are going to lose their base, lose 2010, then 2012, then barbarism.

I think the answer is what FDR did in a similar period, “Welcome their hatred” and go as far left as possible. Build a loyal “army of workers” with WPA, PWA, etc that will intimidate the brownshirts a little.

I think the answer is what FDR did in a similar period, “Welcome their hatred” and go as far left as possible. Build a loyal “army of workers” with WPA, PWA, etc that will intimidate the brownshirts a little.

It’s too late, perhaps, for that: back then there were plenty of workers, factory workers; nowadays they are mostly “sales associates” or store clerks. And a lot of those who still do work at a factory are probably employed by the Pentagon, to one degree or another.

Chris Dornan, when you say:

But I have been digging into this modern passion for irrationality and it is now clear to me that it has its roots in the Enlightenment (in a technical sense) that has infected all modern thought: conservatives fundamentalist Christians and progressive fanatical atheists alike—these are the wingnuts but the malaise is fairly spread around. The big hint is in the very idea of Enlightenment itself, clear cover for a programme of irrationality in ethics facilitated by scientific cleverness.

do you have any references? What did you dig up that led you to this conclusion?

“but AIDS denialism is mainly rightwing. It got a run in Tom Bethell’s Politically incorrect guide to science published by Regnery IIRC, which is pretty much a standard text on the right.”

I don’t know if the fact that Tom Bethell’s craziness is published by Regnery means that AIDS denialism is mainly rightwing. It may just be that my experiences are from California, where the political bent skews left, but AIDS denialism (even in the gay community, yikes!) seems primarily a left wing phenomenon. This is especially true in black churches, which seem to have an unusually high number of preachers who believe either that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, or that AIDS was designed by the government to try to kill black people. (Both of which show disturbing misunderstandings about the state of the biological sciences). In the gay community in CA there is a disturbingly large number of people who have some sort of New Agey HIV denialism (which almost caused one of my friend’s deaths) and/or people who interpret the fact that transmission is more prevalent under the influence of fairly hard drugs (crystal and crack) as evidence that HIV isn’t what really causes AIDS, that it is drug use.

You may be picking up the black ministers as right-wing, but if so they are right-wing staunch Democrats. The New Age AIDS denialists are definitely left wing. I’m not sure where the weird illicit-drugs-cause-AIDS people fall. They may tend toward right wing, but they have a lot of cross-over.

The autism/vaccine craziness is definitely split. On the right it is found mostly among homeschoolers. On the left it tends to be found as a more extreme subset of the people who obsess over genetically modified food and/or organic stuff.

On the contrary, the more interaction liberals (even those as lukewarm as Sunstein) have with the Republican base the more they will realise that they are dealing with people whose political views are a closed system, impervious to factual evidence or to any form of morality more developed than loyalty to the tribe.

Well, if anyone here in interested in empirical tests of such statements, you could spare a few minutes to watch this video: Al Franken talks down angry mob. (OK, he doesn’t get anywhere with the guy who doesn’t know what ‘demographic’ means.)

If I understand Chris Dornan correctly by the reasoned critiques of the likes of Behe and Sheldrake… he doesn’t mean their own writings, he means criticism of them by their enemies. However, he doesn’t point to any examples of these, so I’m in the dark as to why he thinks they show up their writers.

Kathleen-

I suggest you check out Ames’ 2004 piece comparing working-class Bush voters with the Serbs who “voted for Milosevic precisely because he was a vote against hope.” It’s still timely and quite brilliant in its way.

Because you need money to get anything done and he can’t change that by wishing.

So much for the bullshit about Obama’s supposed ability to blow off the lobbyists by raising lots of money from small contributors. At least you’re honest enough to acknowledge that was a scam.

You mean like the way he killed the stimulus?

He certainly contributed heavily to crippling it, which is going to have dire electoral consequences down the road.

Actually, I think Obama could largely blow off the lobbyists because of his small donor machine. He also has a lot of independence because his ascent was so rapid; he didn’t have time to accumulate the career’s worth of owed favors that most politicians who reach that level must. The fact that he is nonetheless tepid or actively bad on the major issues is therefore all the more disappointing.

I don’t understand the frantic efforts to find comparable levels of insanity on both sides of the political spectrum. Any objective observer nust admit, it aint there. What might be, or what could be (under the right circumstances), or any other scenario under construction, will not match the squirelshit nuttiness and proud ignorance I’ve experienced from the right wing in America. Just of the charts.

Lemuel Pitkin — I don’t think that analysis is quite right, but it takes a few good whacks at Thomas Frank’s anyodyne analysis which is always a welcome addition to the discourse. thanks for the ref.

Kathleen ‘what really gets me are lady-haters who insist on being hailed as allies’ Jeez! Do you really want to go back over that?

Sunstein has been one of the strongest, and, given his closeness to Obama, the most influential advocates of the view that the polarization of US politics is the result of a failure of communication, and that if people on both sides only talked more, they would realise how much they had in common.

Though I for one am confused as to the extent to which he actually thinks this. For sure, his recent thin book on the topic seems to be claiming this for most of its length, but then there comes a moment at which he appears to realize that his arguments are terminally muddled, so in conclusion he claims that what is best for democracy is lots of wingnut groups shouting at each other. Something like that, anyway.

I’m going to make a different wager about ol’ Sunstein — unlike someone really on the left, he can use the Beck attacks to shore up his centrist cred. ie, “the left thinks I’m too right, but lookee here, the right thinks I’m too left, ergo I am Le Totes Awesome”.

I’d be surprised if, in his case, any of this ends up hurting him at all.

who doesn’t like instant vindication?
thanks for sharing the anecdote :)

Haha. Good one. Behe’s “reasoned critiques” consist of a) “If you define evolution in a way that no evolutionary biologist does, evolution is impossible!” and b) “If you do an experiment designed to be as favourable as possible to the ID hypothesis and in the process demonstrate evolution, evolution is untrue!”

If you want a high signal to noise ratio in that “debate”, I suggest you read Ken Miller or Barbara Forrest.

Thanks: I have come across Miller but I haven’t read Forrest; I would have thought Ruse would be interesting or is he now beyond the pale?

It is so refreshing to hear the points at issue actually being addressed, and very reasonably too! The problem is that this is really more of a philosophical issue than a scientific issue. In my experience scientists–even the very best–make lousy philosophers. It seems to me that Behe ought to be free to frame the analysis so that he can proceed with that analysis, provided what he is doing is basically coherent. Whenever I have heard him explain what he is up to he has made perfect sense. Whenever I have dug into what his critics have been saying they have–to my mind–not made perfect sense at all. His concept of irreducible complexity is not that difficult to grasp, and the repeated wilful efforts to misunderstand it by his critics doesn’t fill me with confidence that they are at all in control of the issues.

I don’t doubt the powers of Behe’s critics to conduct science–the stuff that leads to predictions. Their grasp of the wider issues seem to be very poor, certainly judging by their critiques of Behe. Equally, if they would listen to what Behe is saying, open their positions to the possibility he may be right I, don’t doubt that they would make even better scientists and might find many new fruitful avenues of enquiry. (Equally, if he really is wrong, they would find that out much more quickly too.) I say this simply because I think it is better to operate without dogmatic blinkers.

This is a prime example of my point. To listen to the scientific establishment, it is the IDers who are operating with dogmatic blinkers, but it is actually the reverse. The general situation is that X% of biological systems have been generated though natural selection. Behe is saying that X is less than 100 and the orthodox situation is that X is 100. That everything arose out from natural selection is an utterly fantastical claim: the hypothesis may be productive, and you could argue so productive that it shouldn’t be abandoned so lightly. This is indeed a rational argument.

But if Behe has found an angle on the problem that shows that not everything can have arisen from NS then that is tremendously exciting. That someone should have found a way of thinking about this that might help us move forward should be welcomed by those who truly interested in increasing their understanding of the natural world.

Of course, it might all be a mirage, and the tyres do need to be thoroughly kicked.

But this is not my sense of the way the dialogue is going at all. I get the strong sense that any enquiries into this area are very unwelcome and to be repulsed by all means.

That everything arose out from natural selection is an utterly fantastical claim

Biologically speaking, the fantastical claim is that any part of that ‘everything’ arose out of anything but natural selection (operating on descent with modification). Abandon the watchmaker and Paley’s watch must be the outcome of understandable processes in the natural world, even if we haven’t observed them all; deny that, and you surely have to bring the watchmaker back in.

Behe is a crackpot. The definition of science he offered at the Dover trial would, by his own admission, include astrology. He continues to repeat arguments which have been soundly refuted, which is hardly the behavior of an honest man (although it’s possible that he has not studied or understood the refutations; at the trial he dismissed countervailing work with a wave of the hand).

John-61, I’m not American so I don’t know the situation and I have no issue to acknowledge it’s something you’re in the right about substantively. But it still remains beyond me why anyone is wanting that type of treatment on anyone else, let alone someone with wrong tactics.

I don’t mean this personally (I can understand somebody like that getting on your nerves to get the better of your sober judgment for a moment) but seems a bit of hysteria, really. Exactly the type of thing a Beck is feeding on to further his substantively idiotic ideas.

John, I beg to differ. Whether or not somebody will be doing that all the time or not, it’s a bitch and should never be preferred on anyone. Also – as much as I agree Obama should go on a front foot on this one; the thing is far from clear cut enough to even go close to the end justifying the means. But I understand where the frustration is coming from; he’d be well advised to risk some filibustering – it’ll be the best boomerang ever.

I agree with JoB again.

More specifically, loading all of this onto the crazies just doesn’t make any sense. The hold up has very little to do with Obama and the crazies and everything to do with undemocratic senate procedures and the centrist democrats.

So why this big emphasis on demonising the GOP base–asserting they are not interested in reason and therefore need to be ignored or crushed; things have got bad when we are hoping the more pathological conservative elements will attack ‘liberals’ looking for an accommodation.

Maureen Dowd has a interesting column critiquing Obama’s hands-off approach today.

What Zamfir said. Behe’s critique has failed. Yet he keeps on repeating it, backing off from his strongest claims, perhaps, but sticking with the central premise, even when his own research has proved it wrong. Behe admitted under oath that his own paper with Snoke showed that an ostensibly irreducibly complex system could evolve, even given unrealistically constrained parameters. Given that the whole point of Behe’s argument is that IC systems cannot evolve through natural selection, what’s left exactly?

Chris – the choice is not between “theory A explains everything, so it’s right” and “theory A doesn’t explain everything so it must be wrong“. The choice (in this specific case) is between

– evolution means natural selection operating on descent with modification, just as Darwin said
– evolution means NS and other mechanisms which aren’t incompatible with it, which we’ve learnt to understand since Darwin
– evolution doesn’t mean NS, it means Something Else

The catch is that anyone adopting position 3 has to specify what they think is in the black box. It’s elementary intellectual hygiene – if you haven’t got an alternative model that fits the data better, the chances are that the data fits the model you’re criticising better than you realise. In Behe’s case, his argument needs skyhooks to make sense – if NS didn’t make bdelloid rotifers*, well, what (or who) did? The efforts to distinguish ID from creationism strike me as either dishonest or deeply confused.

*Spoiler: it did.

But if Behe has found an angle on the problem that shows that not everything can have arisen from NS then that is tremendously exciting.

If.

Chris, your key problem appears to be that you are a Rationalist and dealing with Empiricists. You appear to think that you should start with the model of reality. Most of us think that models should be discarded if the reality disagrees.

In the case of Behe, the response always comes down to one of two things. “Yes, but we have never seen a time when it has worked that way.” or “Even if your ideas (which are not robust enough to dignify with the term ‘theory’) were right, this would be the outcome” (as in the case of Irreducible Complexity.

But if Behe has found an angle on the problem that shows that not everything can have arisen from NS then that is tremendously exciting.

He hasn’t. So far his ideas have all been shown to either (a) not match up to reality, (b) not show what he claims them to, or (c) some combination of the two. And it isn’t hard for someone scientifically educated to see why in many cases.

So tell me, why should critics of Behe open their mind to the idea that smooth sounding mendacity and incoherence should be taken seriously after it has been exposed? There is a reason Behe’s position in the Dover Trial was found to amount to “Breathtaking inanity”.

And tell me, if you can’t see through Behe and indeed support him, why should we take anything you have to say on the nature of science or reality seriously?

alex: I don’t think you can objectively rule that crypto-Stalinism is worse than crypto-Nazism

By Godwin’s Law this thread should have ended dozens of comments ago. The OP was about the Republican base whom no one has characterized as “crypto-Nazi.”

Barry: I really, really hope so.

I agree, because if they are playing solely for short-term advantage, they are sure to lose.

So, if I’m understanding the OP correctly, people who have more contact with (certain kinds of) Republicans realize it’s impossible to work with them and become more polarized left. Polarization is a bad thing. Therefore, it must follow that non-Republicans ought not to be allowed any contact with that kind of Republican. This, to repeat, has nothing to do with ensuring the Republicans don’t lose any of their electoral or congressional power. On the contrary, it should ensure the progressive/liberal policies can be enacted, as developed in the famously left-leaning social science departments and law schools of our universities. That right?

Barry: I really, really hope so.

bianca steele 09.09.09 at 2:11 pm
“I agree, because if they are playing solely for short-term advantage, they are sure to lose.”

Unless, of course, they have some other advantage, like the support of the economic elites.

Barry: Unless, of course, they have some other advantage, like the support of the economic elites.

There are some tried and true methods, like throwing infantry under the enemy’s guns for as long as possible. The ability to disarm the opposition by lying about what you’re up to might also help (and as you suggest, the proles don’t have to believe what the leadership believes either).

I guess these all count as “support of the elites” though, so maybe I’m missing the point. I don’t understand all the theory and maybe I should educate myself before I dismiss a theory that might be widely acknowledged as “productive.”

The general situation is that X% of biological systems have been generated though natural selection. Behe is saying that X is less than 100 and the orthodox situation is that X is 100.

Also, the general situation is that X% of things falling to earth have been acted on by a force we call gravitation. Lono is saying that X is less than 100 and the orthodox situation is that X is 100.

This probably isn’t a fair response in toto, and is meant to be playful. I’d be open to some justification for Behe’s point, but I wanted to clarify the basic point that X < 100 is not somehow automatically any more reasonable than X = 100 just because there exist lots more numbers less than 100.

salient, LOL.

PHB @82:

The rise of the ideological right has precisely coincided with the collapse of the GOP’s political fortunes.

Forgive me, but I don’t think I understand you here. Firstly, what do you mean by the ideological right – and for that matter by rise? Your statement seems to me to have been pre-gainsaid, so to speak, by Nixonland. Both Cheney and Rumsfeld are right-wing ideologues (yes?) and both worked for President Ford. Reagan, in my book anyway, was ideological and right-wing. Shorter me: nothing in the ideology of Bush or the wingnuts is particularly new. Glenn Beck’s audience is merely the ‘moral majority’ going by a new name. This is rump which refuses to evolve or move. Incredibly, it’s not even dying out.

The only thing that matters to the progressives is whether he gets health care through or not.

Oh come on, it’s not the only thing. There’s the economy, there’s who the US at war with and how it’s doing. What kind of legacy Obama leaves should also be important to progressives. Of the 40 years since LBJ, only 12 of those have seen a Democrat in the White House. If you have any concern for posterity, you have to hope that a progressive party wins most of the elections for the 10 terms after Obama,

Chris Dornan @ 73:

Since when was a law court a good place to settle science or philosophy

This seems to get to the nub of your method, if I may say so. First, a law court is a good place to determine if someone is telling the truth. As has been shown elsewhere in this thread, Behe was not notably honest in his testimony to the court. Second, you seem to prefer to argue through the use of rhetorical questions and snark. You don’t, however, tell us where a better place would be. So let me make a suggestion. Is Behe accepted by his peers as a scientist? Are his papers cited? Answers: not particularly and not often. Would this do?

Steve LaBonne

But I think if you stand back and look at the orthodox narrative in biology it is clear that natural selection is supposed to give rise to all the diversity we see in living systems.

No. Genetic drift also has an important role.

Of course genetic draft and all kinds of other mechanisms come into play. The point as we all know, is to explain where the complicated mechanisms came from, and the standard answer–according to the orthodox narrative is NS.

Steve LaBonne

Behe is NOT a reputable scientist, period. If you pay any attention to him you are being misled by a charlatan. I don’t care whether you like being told this, it remains true.

Why people like you who know absolutely noting about evolutionary biology feel entitled to mouth off about it, I’ll never understand. But hey, it’s a free Internet so feel free to keep making a fool of yourself.

In the first place I will form my own judgements, especially when folks seem to have difficulty explaining themselves clearly, and when they become intellectual bullies. Those that care about their area and want people to understand it better ought to welcome the chance to clear up confusion. But I see a very different pattern, one that seems to seek confusion.

All I can do is read what someone is saying and what their critics are saying. For sure there will be areas where I just don’t have the knowledge to draw any conclusions. But there will areas where it is certainly possible to draw conclusions, and if in those areas, the areas that are open to analysis, one side consistently exhibits confusion and signs of ideological fixation and the other side tends to shows clarity and coherence then one has to start wondering. When the matters under discussion are intimately connected to the metaphysical presumptions of of the party that isn’t making sense then I have to really wonder.

phil:

The choice (in this specific case) is between
– evolution means natural selection operating on descent with modification, just as Darwin said
– evolution means NS and other mechanisms which aren’t incompatible with it, which we’ve learnt to understand since Darwin
– evolution doesn’t mean NS, it means Something Else

Thanks Phil: you are as clear as a bell. Unfortunately, and this was alluded to futher up in the comment thread, it looks as if establishment science (if I can call it that) is insisting on a formulation that protects their metaphysical predilections . Everyone agrees that natural selection needs to be combined with other mechanisms to do the job (e.g., genetic drift, as Steve LaBonne said). However, Behe is making the point–a highly contentious point–that there are mechanisms in the cell for which it is entirely implausible that they could have emerged though a combination of natural selection and any mechanisms we can see. But under the orthodox understanding of science, as you have outlined it, you are saying that Behe has to come up with a mechanism that explains how those structures emerged naturally from simpler structures, that such a negative result is inadmissible in biology without presenting an alternative naturalistic mechanism.

If I have understood you right then I completely agree; this seems to be the heart of the disagreement. I think once you see this as the heart of the problem it isn’t so difficult to see why there is ample room for disagreement on the substantial issue of whether NS plus all the other things we know about (and likely future variants), is incapable of generating a cell from relatively simple chemicals (and time, lots of time).

To be able to make any sense of Behe’s arguments you have to let go of the NS+the-rest-is-enough hypothesis (or fact, depending on your POV), so all of Behe’s arguments are going to get quickly smashed up in the minds of his critics because to make sense of them you need to be able to countenance his hypothesis (i.e., for the sake of argument, suspend the standard hypothesis about the adequacy of NS).

Salient

Also, the general situation is that X% of things falling to earth have been acted on by a force we call gravitation. Lono is saying that X is less than 100 and the orthodox situation is that X is 100.

The situations aren’t dissimilar in a crucial way. Science has every reason to believe that gravitation models things falling to earth very well. For sure this is a provisional conclusion and may be modified in the future. Anyone suggesting a modification needs to present a good alternative or explain just why the current theory is inadequate.

We have no similar reasons for believing the hypothesis that NS+the-rest is adequate to explain the evolution of all living things. It has been very fertile and it shouldn’t be discarded lightly. However, when someone presents candidate counter-examples, this should be a matter of great interest. Setting aside Behe for the moment, I am absolutely gobsmacked that this isn’t a thriving field of research. If folks truly saw this as belonging in the field of knowledge then they would be vigorously trying to break it–there would be journals and symposia devoted to trying to shoot it down.

I know this from experience in computer programming–when it comes to testing you have to turn your mindset around (which is why it is generally better to get someone else to do it) and try and destroy the thing you have been creating.

In science, when you really want to find out whether a given hypothesis is true you expend great effort trying to shoot it down. In the case of NS, I don’t see this. Instead I see a compulsive efforts to reaffirm it, and woe betide anyone who tries to do otherwise.

Salient: I think you should carry on your playful ways. I think they can be very productive.

Substance McGravitas: (88) Point well taken, though I think it is nearer the topic than you think.

However, Behe is making the point—a highly contentious point—that there are mechanisms in the cell for which it is entirely implausible that they could have emerged though a combination of natural selection and any mechanisms we can see.

And all his examples are complete crap. Furthermore, he has dishonestly refused to acknowledge the extensive research that SHOWS they’re complete crap. What’s YOUR excuse?

We have no similar reasons for believing the hypothesis that NS+the-rest is adequate to explain the evolution of all living things.

How the hell would you know?

I know this from experience in computer programming

Google “Salem hypothesis”.

I am sorry for the confusion.

You ought to be sorry for ALL of your confusion. But trolls never are.

OK, people, sorry to contribute to the threadjack. Back to topic, hopefully.

However, Behe is making the point—a highly contentious point—that there are mechanisms in the cell for which it is entirely implausible that they could have emerged though a combination of natural selection and any mechanisms we can see.

To say that he is “making” this point seems an overly charitable description, given his total failure to produce evidence supporting the point he is claiming.

Plausibility is weak tea at the best of times, for a reason that goes right back to Bacon: “The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.” Implausibility is not impossibility and sometimes we’re just plain wrong about what sounds right. Many of science’s most famous discoveries are spectacularly implausible. India crashing into Asia, a giant fusion reactor floating in space 93 million miles from Earth, cannonballs and feathers falling at the same speed when there is no air to slow them down, etc.

Plausibility judgments are also highly subjective, and the spontaneous existence of an intelligent designer — an entity much, much more complex than a cell — is (to many people, including me) many times more implausible than cells arising out of simpler entities by some process as yet unknown.

The United States is a whole lot closer to presumed consent than most people know. Most people think you’re assumed not to be an organ donor unless you sign up to be one. That used to be true, but it’s not true any more.

Under the 2006 Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, an organ procurement organization (OPO) can assume you are an organ donor while they search for evidence of your true intentions. They can hook you up to artificial life support machines to keep your organs fresh, even if your advance healthcare directive says you don’t want artificial life support. They can ask your family for permission to harvest your organs. They can ask a government bureaucrat for permission if they can’t find your family. They can do all this even if the “organ donor” box on your driver’s license is blank.

The 2006 UAGA has been enacted in 39 states and the District of Columbia, including eight of the ten largest states by population (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina). Over 80% of the U.S. population lives in states that have enacted this law.

The 2006 UAGA stacks the deck against people who don’t want to be organ donors. Unless your decision not to donate is documented in exactly the right way, OPOs can ignore your decision and ask your family or a government official to overturn it.

State organ donor registries, which OPOs must search under the 2006 UAGA, are also biased against non-donors. None of them, not a single one, will record your decision not to donate. They literally won’t take “no” for an answer.

DoNotTransplant.com operates the only online donor registry that allows you to say “no” to organ donation in a way that will stand up under the 2006 UAGA. OPOs are required under the law to check this registry. If they find your name in the registry, they’re legally forbidden from harvesting your organs.

bianca steele:

“I have read IIRC that Behe cites others (orthodox scientists) when he makes this argument, claiming that they really prove his point for him. If so, then everybody agrees with him, and why would his point be contentious?”

Um, could you please rewrite that – it’s unclear just what you’re saying. For example, I could cite others as agreeing with what I say. That doesn’t mean that (a) my cites are true, or that (b) their agreement with certain specific statements means anything beyond that.

John — I agree with your strategy recommendation as regards Democrats-in-public-office. But *somebody* is turning up to the Tea Parties, and townhalls, and demanding the President not be allowed to speak to children, and they aren’t *all* astroturfed. We regular citizens can’t just ignore our fellow regular citizens in hopes they’ll be “replaced” (although this sentiment is behind some cheery left observations that the loonies skew geriatric). We could pay less attention to them and carry on with progressive reforms, figuring they’ll settle down if they are ignored (using the tricks of the trade of parents of small children and animal trainers). But some of them look desperately, wildly unhappy — maybe it’s just the softy leftist in me, but just abandoning them feels like walking away from a hurt dog because it growls when you approach. Something is really wrong, they need some kind of help.

Steve LaBonne: For the record, I never claimed I was a scientist.

Dave Weeden: I honestly think law courts are good fora for settling law cases, but terrible places for settling points of science or philosophy. I am sorry if I caused offence; I see now that I should have been more careful in making that point.

bianca: This discussion isn’t an up or down issue of whether to believe in natural selection, but about whether NS can account for all living systems and the strength of the evidence to support the hypothesis.

As we are too far off the thread and the tone has turned ugly, I will stop.

From my end, it was an interesting and productive. Thanks. If anyone would like to take anything up I have posted an article, Natural Selection, Faith and Reason, on my blog and the comments are open.

We in Australia had an upsurge of this kind of thing a decade or so ago

These things do seem to come in waves. My money is on a major resurgence of the “angry white male” meme from the 1994 midterms next year. (And Newt Gingrich is still around to lead the charge, bless him.) Let’s just hope it doesn’t extend all the way to “angry white men blowing up buildings full of people” this time around.

Barry:
No, you’re going to have to read it again.

John Quiggin:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to misrepresent you. I did mean the argument to be seen as obviously sarcastic though. I was trying to address the question why Democrats/the left seem to be rolling over and playing dead, which is not really on-topic to your post.

Uncle Kvetch 09.09.09 at 9:06 pm

“These things do seem to come in waves. My money is on a major resurgence of the “angry white male” meme from the 1994 midterms next year. (And Newt Gingrich is still around to lead the charge, bless him.) Let’s just hope it doesn’t extend all the way to “angry white men blowing up buildings full of people” this time around.”

The ‘angry white male’ meme is upon us again – who is showing up at town halls, and shooting people? And (a) it did work against Clinton, so it’d be quite reasonable for the right’s leadership to do it again; (b) the liars who did it got away with their lies, so they’ll feel free.

And I do expect more right-wing domestic terrorism in the next couple of years; if the Gulf War could produce McVeigh, what could three years in Iraq produce?

Barry, your argument is with Chris Dornan, not with me.

Bianca, at this point it’s clear that your lying.
Your original post on this topic was:

[bianca steele 09.09.09 at 6:41 pm

Chris Dornan: Behe is making the point—a highly contentious point

I have read IIRC that Behe cites others (orthodox scientists) when he makes this argument, claiming that they really prove his point for him. If so, then everybody agrees with him, and why would his point be contentious?]

You were the one who posted the text starting at ‘I have read IIRC…’; it wasn’t Chris.

It’s clear that you’re a creationist, so stop lying about it. Frankly we’re used to creationists, so your lies and BS aren’t going to convince too many non-creationists.

Barry, you broke my head. If you can’t see that Bianca is being sarcastic (or whatever the word is for asking a rhetorical if-then question with a false hypothesis), I don’t know if this will help either, but:

Take the approximate contrapositive. Because Behe’s point obviously is contentious, Behe was probably incorrect when he said these orthodox scientists prove his point for him.

salient, you mended my head for which I thank you a lot, but from experience I feel the need to warn you that words with ‘*’-s in them will be coming your way soon. So: fix your head quickly, before all of that flows right into it!

The absence of any reaction to ‘The Speech’ here is, well, strange.

Want mine? In a word, meh. Mealy-mouthed equivocation on public option, check. Hippie-punching re. single-payer (“there are those on the left…”), check. As expected. Yawn.

Try again in 20 years, I guess. (If the insurance companies haven’t killed off much of the population before then.)

Actually, the modern relativistic theory of gravity doesn’t hold that the force acts instantaneously, but rather propagates at the speed of light.

And even that’s not quite right. But shucks, did you miss where I said: (And of course, it’s a naive thing to accept; reality actually behaves rather more strangely.) I did not want to break out the partial differential equations on a CT thread about Glen Beck. :-)

Salient: I’d quite like to hear Glenn Beck’s theory of gravity. It’s probably a conspiracy by ACORN to drag us all down to their level.

BTW, Bianca, I have a pretty firm rule about never clarifying my apologies (it turns apologies into non-apologies); the reason I did that was that you did have me fooled, and people like Chris are as common as rocks. I’m surprised that more creationists haven’t turned up yet.

Barry: I’m surprised that more creationists haven’t turned up yet.

Why? Do you think they are very numerous and are simply hiding because they aren’t treated deferentially enough, or because they’re constantly reminded that their actions demonstrate they’ve forgotten theirs is not the predominant view?

Maybe they think Chris Dornan presented a good case and they don’t see a reason to answer him. We’ve only seen a very small number of attacks on what he posted (very strong attacks, to be sure), which is not evidence of what the others think. I suppose it’s even possible there might be creationists who find him embarrassing.

Any other thoughts?

Listened on radio while doing laundry. Obama’s inflection was great, toward the end especially. He managed to plead without sounding like he was pleading. Lots of booing, I thought, at weird times.

I was nonplussed, unmoved, given less reason to be optimistic. Empty rhetoric about “getting things done” doesn’t impress me. Does it impress anyone? Doesn’t everyone react the same way to that rhetoric: by rolling their eyes and recalling every excuse-making braggadocio they’ve ever known?

I guess we’re going to get an individual mandate to buy insurance that is maybe slightly less crappy, and plenty of people will be expected to pay 13% of their income to get that insurance. I somehow doubt Parallel Universe President McCain’s plan could be get much worse, except possibly by eliminating Medicare.

I am, in fact, discouraged enough by the whole thing to be actively disengaging from pretty much every place I talk about most American politics, and pressing on with my program to budget for a donation to activists I approve of each month. Funding good work helps me feel less helpless.

As you say, we’ll see what comes out in the end but I think salient is wrong. Wrong in general on rhetoric but specifically wrong here.

Would be glad to be wrong, too, especially when it comes to my suspicion that any public option we’ll get will be weak and unsatisfactory.

And it shouldn’t surprise me that people are genuinely moved by the “we will fight the battalion and win the charge and save the day from the evening sun and we will be on the last frontier and we will win it” style rhetoric, but all it does for me is make me wonder how the Medium Lobster would have spun it.

@141: You seem to be assuming that government will do wrong everything that it could possibly do wrong, and evaluating the proposal through that lens. Reagan would be so pleased, but ISTM that (a) this assumption is not particularly fact-based since government does in fact do many things reasonably competently, and (b) if you really thoroughly believe that government can’t deliver on anything, then why support government involvement in health care at all, or for that matter, civil society? Grab your gun and find a cave to live in (surely you’re not going to rely on *government* building codes and building inspectors who say your house isn’t going to collapse tomorrow?)

What if affordability credits are as reliable as Social Security checks, and insurance regulation is as well enforced as food safety regulation? (That is to say, imperfectly, but you don’t have to send every food product you buy to a lab before eating it.)

The failures of the Bush Administration are not merely a reflection of the Platonic essence of government, no matter how badly the Bush Administration would like you to believe that. Government can do better than that, and in fact, usually does.

I thought Chris kinda caught the essence of 141. I thought the criticism of Obama was he didn’t really stand behind a specific proposal, so surprising people are taking issue with a proposal he isn’t courageous enough to stand behind.

On the update: or, like per the update, convince a couple more Republicans that don’t want to be associated with the rural born-again swearers, leave the Blue Dogs to support what’ll be a short-lived filibuster (after which it’ll be easier to unfilibuster the process)