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Liberal Redneck - Take a Knee, Y'all

newtboy jokingly says...

It's called social science, Bob. Really, education is a good thing.

Odd, you pontificate on BS almost exclusively. Does this mean you're quitting us?

bobknight33 said:

Where is the science in this??

Seriously there is no need to pontificate on the BS .. BS is BS No need to say more.

Caspian Report - Geopolitical Prognosis for 2016 (Part 1)

RedSky says...

@radx

I tend to see controlling the quantity of money along with the interest rate as a valid way for central banks to influence the economy when necessary but I admit in or after crises they are generally almost useless. Economics being a social science is always going to be notoriously unreliable in both prediction and in isolation the causes of a prior event, some would say almost useless.

Controlling purely the interest rates on overnight bank deposits for banks at the central bank (what setting the rate is, as opposed to the commonly held belief that the central bank dictates lending and borrowing rates) is if anything of little impact. These rates can be at 0% and if banks consider economic prospects poor, that will not cause them to lend any further.

Such was the case in the US in the immediate years after '08. i would argue the only action to have real economic impact was the buying up of distressed mortgage securities by the Fed. The parts of QE1, 2 that involved injecting money into the banks basically just led to them investing in low risk securities and earning interest (effectively just sitting on it) because they were not willing to risk lending it.

While I'm not a big fan of ceding authority to a largely independent organisation, I have to admit that since central banks have become independent, inflation in those countries has become a thing of the past. Now granted they get things wrong (e.g. Greenspan inflating the '08 bubble) but their main advantages is being willing to take measures that cause short term pain but long term gain. I don't think any elected politician would have been willing to take the measures Volcker did to curb inflation for example. In fact, while he was at the Fed, Reagan's government effectively inflated the Savings and Loans bubble.

Infinite Trees Are Super Weird - Vi Hart

Zawash says...

I thought it was clear-cut, but there appears to be some debate:
"Whether mathematics itself is properly classified as science has been a matter of some debate. Some thinkers see mathematicians as scientists, regarding physical experiments as inessential or mathematical proofs as equivalent to experiments. Others do not see mathematics as a science, since it does not require an experimental test of its theories and hypotheses. Mathematical theorems and formulas are obtained by logical derivations which presume axiomatic systems, rather than the combination of empirical observation and logical reasoning that has come to be known as the scientific method. In general, mathematics is classified as formal science, while natural and social sciences are classified as empirical sciences."
More on the subject here.

messenger said:

-science (not about science)

oritteropo (Member Profile)

radx says...

Haven't seen this one in circulation yet:

Dear Chancellor Merkel,

The never-ending austerity that Europe is force-feeding the Greek people is simply not working. Now Greece has loudly said no more.

As most of the world knew it would, austerity has crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt problem escalating to an unpayable 175% of GDP. The economy now lies broken with tax receipts nose-diving, output and employment depressed, and businesses starved of capital.

The humanitarian impact has been colossal – 40% of children now live in poverty, infant mortality is sky-rocketing and youth unemployment is close to 50%. Corruption, tax evasion and bad accounting by previous Greek governments helped create the debt problem. But the series of so-called adjustment programs has served only to make a Great Depression the likes of which have been unseen in Europe since 1929-1933. The medicine prescribed by the German Finance Ministry and Brussels has bled the patient, not cured the disease.

Together we urge you to lead Europe to a course correction before it is too late for Greece and for the Eurozone. Right now, the Greek government is being asked to put a gun to its head and pull the trigger. Sadly, the bullet will not only kill off Greece’s future in Europe. The collateral damage will kill the Eurozone as a beacon of hope, prosperity, and democracy, and could lead to far-reaching economic consequences across the world.

In the 1950s Europe was founded on the forgiveness of past debts, notably Germany’s, which generated a massive contribution to post-war economic growth, peace, and democracy. Today we need to restructure and reduce Greek debt, give the economy breathing room to recover, and allow Greece to pay off a reduced burden of debt over a long period of time. Now is the time for a humane rethink of the punitive and failed programme of austerity of recent years and to agree to a major reduction of Greece’s debts in conjunction with much needed reforms in Greece.

We urge you to take this vital action of leadership for Greece and Germany, and also for the world. History will remember you for your actions this week. We expect and count on you to provide the bold and generous steps towards Greece that will serve Europe for generations to come.

Yours sincerely,

Heiner Flassbeck, former State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance;

Thomas Piketty, Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics;

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University;

Dani Rodrik, Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton;

Simon Wren-Lewis, Professor of economics, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University

Bill Maher and Ben Affleck go at it over Islam

EMPIRE says...

It's not fringe when a good chunk of muslims around the world (not just the middle east) have extremist points of view:


Muslims in most countries surveyed say that a wife should always obey her husband." (including 93% in Indonesia and 65% in Turkey).

Only 32% of Muslims in Indonesia say a woman should have the right to divorce her husband (22% in Egypt, 26% in Pakistan and 60% in Russia)

1 in 3 Muslims in Austria say it is not possible to be a European and a Muslim. 22% oppose democracy

21% of Muslim-Americans say there is a fair to great amount of support for Islamic extremism in their community.

61% of British Muslims want homosexuality punished

Turkish Ministry of Education: 1 in 4 Turks Support Honor Killings

WZB Berlin Social Science Center: 65% of Muslims in Europe say Sharia is more important than the law of the country they live in.

Pew Research (2013): 81% of South Asian Muslims and 57% of Egyptians suport amputating limbs for theft.

Pew Research (2013): 72% of Indonesians want Sharia to be law of the land

Pew Research (2010): 82% of Egyptian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
70% of Jordanian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
42% of Indonesian Muslims favor stoning adulterers
82% of Pakistanis favor stoning adulterers
56% of Nigerian Muslims favor stoning adulterers

MacDonald Laurier Institute: 62% of Muslims want Sharia in Canada (15% say make it mandatory)

Pew Research (2013): 39% of Muslims in Malaysia say suicide bombings "justified" in defense of Islam (only 58% say 'never').

Pew Research (2013): 76% of South Asian Muslims and 56% of Egyptians advocate killing anyone who leaves the Islamic religion.

Pew Research (2010): 84% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
86% of Jordanian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
30% of Indonesian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
76% of Pakistanis support death the penalty for leaving Islam
51% of Nigerian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam

Pew Global: 68% of Palestinian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
43% of Nigerian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
38% of Lebanese Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
15% of Egyptian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
13% of Indonesian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
12% of Jordanian Muslims say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.
7% of Muslim Israelis say suicide attacks against civilians in defense of Islam are justified.


CLEARLY, what we need is more Islam in the world. Such a force for good...

RedSky said:

Beat me by 8 minutes. Seems like a good reference link:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/opinion-polls.htm

Trancecoach (Member Profile)

Trancecoach says...

I'm not saying that "climate change" isn't "real," but that the practice of climate science is highly prone to fraud and conflates natural science with social science.

This matters because one could accept climate change on the basis of natural science but still reject it on the basis of social science given the understanding that the policies normally associated with environmentalism are clearly not the proper ways of addressing the effects of climate change.

As such, there is a lack of scrutiny in much of the discourse about and around climate change (to say nothing of the ridicule and mockery and epithets that are slung on "both" sides). There are a few separate questions worth addressing:

1. Is the planet getting warmer?
2. If it's getting warmer, is it anthropogenic (human-caused)? (If not, then it's unclear how humans can 'reduce' it and/or deal with the consequences.)
3. If it's getting warmer, by what magnitude? (This is a scientific question with many implications for policy.)
4. What are the costs of climate change? (Oft asked/answered)
5. What are the benefits of climate change? (Might it, say, make the arctic habitable and a source of land or food? Might it bring down the costs of heating homes/businesses in colder climates?)
6. Do costs outweigh benefits or vice versa? (This question, while important, is based less on scientific fact than on interpersonal value and depends heavily on the results of the scientific questions above. As such, public policy is based on facts and values, and does not translate science directly into policy.)
7. If costs outweigh the benefits, what policies are appropriate? (This, again, would be determined by the matters of both fact and value -- natural science and social science.)
8. What are the costs of the policies designed to reduce the costs of climate change? (Might the policies imposed to address the costs of climate change have associated costs that may outweigh their potential benefits? Might reducing the effects of global warming slow the economic growth so as to impoverish half the planet, or imbuing powers to governments that're likely to be used in ways having little to do with climate change? Such costs might have grave and devastating effects that far outstrip their potential benefits to say nothing of the perceived costs of climate change, itself.)

This is a social scientific question that is no less important than the natural scientific questions listed above. There are many more questions in addition to these, but this is perhaps sufficient to make my points:

* It's possible to accept the natural science of climate change, but reject the policies proposed to combat it.
* It is possible to think that climate change is anthropogenic, but to humanely conclude that nothing should be done about it.

However unpopular it is (on videosift especially) to dissent to the claims that anthropogenic climate is "real," it should be noted that such dissent does not, de facto, "deny" the science, but does, instead, take a far more considered approach that accepts the natural science in light of its many social scientific implications.

RedSky said:

<snipped>

Bill Nye: You Can’t Ignore Facts Forever

Trancecoach says...

My doctorate is in psychology -- a social science, which includes coursework in epistemology. I am also the executive director of a peer reviewed psychology Journal which incorporates quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method methodologies.

If science was driven purely by consensus, than the upending of long-held scientific understanding (as achieved by the likes of Galileo, or Darwin, or Einstein -- who, incidentally, upended some theories about how something as "self-evident" as gravity works -- in more notable ways and by lesser known scientists in still significant ways) would never come about. Science is not practiced by "votes," whereby the majority determines what theories are most accurate. Rather, evidence (whether it be rationally deduced, rationally induced, empirically demonstrated, or hermeneutically interpreted) serves as the basis for scientific progress, whether the majority of scientists agree with it or not.

(Climate change, itself, is rationally deduced, since empirical models of the earth are so difficult if not impossible to design, let alone run controlled trials.)

You are actually going a long way to make my point that those who are "believers" in climate change are missing the value and indeed necessity for ongoing skepticism in the scientific literature (rather than the name-calling and vilification that constitutes much of the "OMG! Climate Change!" discourse of late). That point, along with illuminating some of the citations I linked to above, is the purpose of my comment -- and not to argue (or name-call or "debate" as many on the sift waste their time doing).

I do concur that the manner in which I posted the links may not have been "fair," and so I apologize for that, but the content of the links themselves raise significant questions as to the unilateral "belief" in "OMG! [andropogenic] Climate Change!" I encourage anyone who is seriously interested in the scientific basis for skepticism around such a belief, to consider reviewing the literature cited in those links before arriving at an incontrovertible conclusion.

But in light of your request for a single link, I recommend you visit the NPCC's website and perhaps attend, specifically, to their literature about temperature changes (PDF), which I believe serve as valid refutations of the literature upon which the climate change "believers" tend to base their adrenal-freakouts.

dannym3141 said:

<snipped>

dannym3141 (Member Profile)

newtboy says...

I think your efforts are commendable, but doomed to fail. Trance is not interested in learning, and when you teach him something he can't find a crazed, wrong link to discount your knowledge with, he'll simply ignore it and move on to more and more infantile argument. He recently became my second ignore.
I am glad you called him out on his doctorate in underwater basket weaving, unfortunately for us all it does not help him understand science in the least, or the scientific method, but somehow convinces him that it does.
EDIT: Oh, "doctorate in Social 'science'", which he must mistakenly believe is a true science and not a misnomer.
I see he continues with his intentional miss-reading and/or miss-quoting, claiming you said purely consensus is the ONLY way science progresses, not that it's the way that progression is accepted by the scientific community. Me thinks this miss-understanding is an intentional miss-statement in order to continue his 'debate' by constantly changing either his own, or your stance on the subject.
I also noted the passive aggressive (and terrible English) statement " the manner in which I posted the links may not have been "fair," ", to me implying you just couldn't assimilate that much information, not conceding that it was all an attempt at an overwhelming avalanche of BS propaganda.
Kudos on your reasoned, patient approach. I ran out of patience with the kindergarten argument style and quit him.

dannym3141 said:

@Trancecoach holding a doctorate doesn't make you capable of understanding the scientific literature.

Doctor Disobeys Gun Free Zone -- Saves Lives Because of It

Doctor Disobeys Gun Free Zone -- Saves Lives Because of It

Trancecoach says...

Are you joking or are you honestly comparing social science to engineering?
Really? Oh boy.

ChaosEngine said:

@newtboy has already explained the difference very well, so there's nothing for me to add other than I'm glad you weren't teaching any real science, otherwise we'd have a bunch of engineers building bridges or doctors curing patients on the basis of "this one guy did it this way before and it worked for him!"

Doctor Disobeys Gun Free Zone -- Saves Lives Because of It

Trancecoach says...

When I earned a doctorate, I co-taught several graduate level classes on research in the social sciences, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research design. What difference between anecdotes and data, specifically, are you referring to? What specific anecdote and what data specifically? How do you know?

ChaosEngine said:

Learn the difference between anecdote and data.

Tim Harford: What Prison Camps Can Teach You About Economy

Trancecoach says...

Videosift is clearly not the forum on which to teach economics (let alone philosophy or epistemology), but suffice it to say that logic applies to economics, just as it applies to geometry, and the other natural sciences.

Economics follows axiomatic-deduction. Human behavior is too complex to treat empirically (thereby precluding experiments that would be similar to, say, chemistry, which replicates the same results over and over again). With economics, such experiments are impossible because there are too many variables for which there are no controls, so therefore, a deductive approach is used, like with geometry which, if you recall, experiments aren't conducted in geometry, but logical deductions are made based on self-evident axioms.

This is in contrast to what, say, econometricians do. They try to make economics into an empirical science, like physics or chemistry and so they focus on the "science" and ignore the "social" in "social science."

Hermeneuticians/rhetorician on the other hand, ignore the "science" and focus on the "social."
Economics cannot be properly studied as a natural empirical science, but it also cannot be properly studied as rhetoric.

Deductive rationalism is the best fit for economic study.

ChaosEngine said:

"No one is talking about a comprehensive view of everything relating to the world. "

So why are you bringing it up?

We can discuss physics, math, engineering, logic, chemistry without human behaviour. Hell, we could even talk about accountancy.

But economics focuses on the interactions of economic agents and economies. True, some economic agents are perfectly rational and act according to predefined rules (these are essentially software), but almost all other economic agents have a degree of human control to them.

Even if the degree is relatively small (a single person on a board), economies are inherently chaotic systems and a small variance in inputs can radically change the outputs of the system.

The system is essentially stable, but unpredictable.

The ultimate refutation of your theory is quite simple.

If economic systems are inherently rational, we should be able to perfectly model them and predict them. That is clearly not the case.

Milton Friedman puts a young Michael Moore in his place

RedSky says...

@enoch

I'd agree Friedman wasn't directly responsible, but served more as an academic influence and a proponent of a particular approach because many of the Chilean economists who influenced policy had studies in Chicago.

As far as exploiting a crisis, arguably the crisis itself warranted dramatic action. High levels of inflation caused by Allende's money printing to support wholesale nationalisation of industries pretty much required this.

As inflation is self perpetuation by its continuous expectation and can continue even after the original stimulus is gone, there was little choice here. After all it took Volker nearly half a decade of high interest rates to tame it in the US in the early 80s, to do that after an economic and political crisis in a undeveloped country was an entirely different scale of difficult.

Successive governments likely reversed some of the economic policies enacted under his regime, but the foundation I meant was particularly the budgetary position, free trade, and a competitive cadre of private sector exporters. The welfare, health and educational spending were all made possible by this. Without a credible tax base, trying to enact spending on this level while also raising the tax rises would have just precipitated another crisis.

Coming back to inflation and economics, I believe policies against inflation especially, are generally misunderstood in the short term and their benefits unrecognised in the long term. I would probably say the reverse of what you said, economic policy rarely shows tangible results in the short term but almost always in the long term.

It's certainly not perfect. After all economics has the unfavourable position of being the combination of social science, lacking the ability to test results in clinical conditions isolating a single factor and yet requiring highly specific answers to solve its questions. At its best, it offers answers based on the cumulative knowledge accrued from iterative policies, at each point being based on the 'best available knowledge at the time'.

But it has worked, as I like to often mention, with independent central banks, essentially the most technocratic and pure application of economic theory, inflation has become a thing of the past in those countries that have adopted it.

Then again I'm biased as I majored in it at uni

Sticker shock: Why are glasses so expensive?

RedSky says...

Well, as far as I know, I don't have any corporate sponsors that are financing the dissemination of my opinion for their own interests ... that I know of?

Hold on, you're twisting my words. I'm making a statement of social science, not of ethics. I'm not in the mood to argue ethics, generally have a mixed opinion, and don't like discussing it since it becomes purely an emotional argument.

On a theoretical basis, you would say in the market for labour, competition pushes labour costs down to their equilibrium demand/supply level. If there are a shortage of skilled workers for an X industry or skill set, the price or wage goes up, or vice versa. That's why you typically see union structures in less skilled or more standardised rather than specialised job types. Those, with a high quantity of people possessing said skills for the job.

But as always it's a trade-off. If firms in a particular industry or skill subset start paying too little for their workers, less people will decide to study it, and they will miss out on the talent and skill pool of those who were incentivised into other industries. On that basis unions aren't necessarily good or bad for industries.

On a personal level, I'd say that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with unions and they make perfect sense. Firms organise themselves into trade associations and it would be naive to say that they don't share information on wage levels, or for that matter that this kind of information is not freely available. Why shouldn't the counterparty in the so-called market for labour not be able to organise themselves equally?

As for your last comment on whether competing is always necessary, I tend to have a pretty cynical view of the world and believe that people are generally consciously or subconsciously acting in their own interests. You may point out altruism and I will say people are satisfying a innate biological need to help others, a characteristic that would have come about in our cavemen days when co-operating distinguished your survival ability from other tribes, but ultimately something motivated in you by the evolutionary survival advantage that it conferred to you rather than any pure form of altruism.

Economics as a theory of study is pretty much predicated on this notion. What is the extent of the truth of this in reality? Who knows. I have little ability if any to truly glance into the mind of what anyone else is thinking or what motivates them.

renatojj said:

@RedSky when you accuse different opinions of special interests, it makes you seem unaware of the special interests in your own opinions. I want to address some statements you made.

If putting downward pressure on prices is always desirable, aren't you just thinking as a consumer and specifically in regards to goods? If downward pressure is put on, say, the price of wages or services, would that be desirable for workers or servers?

Saying unions don't affect competitiveness, makes me think you're missing something fundamental about the nature of unions: workers coming together so they can keep the price of their wages and benefits above what companies would pay them if they were competing with each other instead. That's anti-competitive.

Is that good or bad?

Neither. You see, that's the problem with bad economics: trying to assert that something is good or bad, without taking into account all the groups involved, without considering all the angles.

Unions are usually bad for companies, but they're good for workers. So, are unions bad for competitiveness? YES, they obviously diminsh competitiveness among workers. Is that a failure of the market? NOOOO, the market is not failing there. People don't always have to compete, they should compete when they should, and shouldn't when they shouldn't, it's up to them to figure it out.

There is no "compete as much as possible" rule to make a market work. Competing also wastes resources, you know? Otherwise no one would ever see a benefit in cooperating instead of competing all the time.

Richard Feynman on Social Sciences

gorillaman says...

Social sciences are real sciences; the problem is they're startlingly unsophisticated compared to their cousins.

All knowledge doesn't progress at the same rate. At the moment we're stuck with comparatively a mediaeval or pre-mediaeval understanding in some fields. As astrology is to astronomy, as alchemy is to chemistry, so the modern social sciences are to their future successors.

Give it a few thousand years...



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