In this case, it's just the sound of petulant little rebublican feet stamping. They'll get over it and move on soon enough.

How the market changes for one day after a big event like an election is really irrelevent. It's the longer term issues like those Vix mentioned that we need to be watching. Besides which, there are plenty of good market opportunities that are going to come from Obama's strategies (green jobs, etc.). They may be different from the ones under Romney, but they are still there.

@Tzadeck

fair enough. I honestly don't know how much I've read.
I understand what you're saying about heuristics. It's something I've often thought about myself. One thing I've come to realize is that it's often problematic judging the quality of people's opinions based on their perceived volume of knowledge on a topic. A christian theologian may well have read huge volumes of scripture and academic papers, but that doesn't necessarily make their analysis more correct than an agnostic who has simply thought about the topic. Likewise having PHD in economics doesn't necessarily mean your conclusions are correct as you may be fixated on faulty assumptions. There are entire fields of study that end up eventually being abandoned as nonsense. I've found with anything I've studied in any depth, and perhaps you've experienced the same, is that the more I learn about it, the more I start realizing how wrong some of the experts are (even if there is value in some of their arguments/analysis).
So, don't take my word for anything. It's all just my opinion after all.

@vileru
I think if romney won, there would have been a slight rise, because (correct or not) there is greater confidence among investors in romney's ability to at least point the US economy in somewhat the right direction. So I think romney would have been slightly less harmful than obama. Not that that is saying much...as Obama is basically clueless about how money works.

@vix
For many Greeks it would be better to write of the debts and start from scratch with a new devalued currency than be stuck with massive taxes (while getting little in return due to austerity) in order to bail out the financial system and keep the euro zombie alive.

@Icecream
Government can create jobs, but it has a poor track record when it comes to creating jobs that are actually sustainable and promote long term economic growth (increases in productivity).

nadiatims Wrote:@vix
For many Greeks it would be better to write of the debts and start from scratch with a new devalued currency than be stuck with massive taxes (while getting little in return due to austerity) in order to bail out the financial system and keep the euro zombie alive.

I didn't mean to imply the Greeks shouldn't leave and write the debt off. I think they should, living under austerity is ridiculous. My point is that the act of doing so is going to trigger mass Credit Default Swaps across the board and it is these CDSes which we are not sure of as to how deep they go, how much they are, or how intertwined each bank is. These CDSes cover all the bonds that have been bought of Greece's, which is in the billions I imagine. The CDSes are the most salient threat to date, but as I said in an earlier post, there was something else I had read about some months ago that showed that European banks were probably linked criss-cross that would likely cause the boat to capsize as well. I can't remember what that was though.

Quote:@Icecream
Government can create jobs, but it has a poor track record when it comes to creating jobs that are actually sustainable and promote long term economic growth (increases in productivity).

I don't think Obama will be making many jobs because in order to accomplish that he has to pass something in Congress. I think the Republican party is going to fight him even harder tooth-and-nail to prevent stuff from passing. No compromise. No nothing.
I personally would rather like to see Patents and Copyrights reworked; and see more money put into research and into easily accessible entrepreneur programs (free money for starting businesses). What we need to revitalize the economy is some new technological advance to spark a new industry.

nadiatims Wrote:@Icecream
Government can create jobs, but it has a poor track record when it comes to creating jobs that are actually sustainable and promote long term economic growth (increases in productivity).

ah, sorry, i didn't mean that he'd literally go out and make jobs for people, i meant that market opportunities would arise out of the business environment his policies create just like they would for someone else's policies. So, where someone may have been poised to buy shares in coal and oil if Romney got in, they might want to look at investing in green energy instead. Or in something else connected with other industries that will be benefitted by Obama's 2nd term. No matter who is in there are market opportunities.

Saying that Obama is "basically clueless about how money works" seems a bit ridiculous to me, and i didn't see any particularly convincing economic strategy from Romney either. Didn't it basically amount to "give oil and coal a push and give a tax break to the super rich"?

Speaking of whom, there was a good episode of Bill Moyers about this recently if anyone's interested. http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-...cy-rising/

Actually the economy has pretty much done what you would expect in a recession of the severity we had -- there's not much evidence that Obama's policies either helped or hindered the recovery; most economists seem to agree that the initial stimulus helped stave off what could have been much worse. But the idea that Obama's policies have created a barrier to economic recovery really doesn't have much support.

Quote:Saying that Obama is "basically clueless about how money works" seems a bit ridiculous to me, and i didn't see any particularly convincing economic strategy from Romney either. Didn't it basically amount to "give oil and coal a push and give a tax break to the super rich"?

Although he seemed to imply there was more, he never gave specifics, and so it did seem like he was just pushing the same old trickle-down idea that if you make rich people even richer, it will benefit everyone.

EDIT: To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea of reducing the taxes of rich people, if it can be done as part of an overall strategy of deficit and debt reduction. What I don't like is the cavalier way the Republicans just want to throw money at rich people and hope it benefits everyone else. I actually hope Obama follows through on his promise to lower the corporate tax rate -- my ideal would be to see it set to 0 and replaced with an aggressive pollution/carbon tax. I doubt that will happen any time soon but it would be a nice thing to see.

Didn't Obama try to get legislation through that would do just that before, but it got shot down by the republicans? I don't know much about it though, i only read one really brief thing. But if he did i guess it's not going to be any easier to get anything through that really changes the situation now either...

yudantaiteki Wrote:replaced with an aggressive pollution/carbon tax.

Funny you mention this. I saw an article last week (I believe) that was talking about how studies found that Carbon Emissions trading has done very little to reduce pollution and that taxes were shown to be more effective.

http://phys.org/news/2012-11-taxation-ef...eaner.html

Two people can agree on the facts concerning a scientifically-observable, human action and still disagree on the morality of that action. Two people can agree on the morality of a scientifically-observable, human action and still disagree on the facts concerning that action. In other words, stating a scientific fact/statistic during a moral debate as though if your opponent agrees with that fact he must also agree with your moral view, is a logical fallacy, and stating a moral view during a scientific debate as though if your opponent agrees with that moral view he must also agree with your scientific view, is a logical fallacy.

Let that sink in. Everyone you think is smarter than you makes this type of logical fallacy. Scientists. Economists. Presidents. Super-rich entrepreneurs. Once you realize how often this occurs and how to spot it, you'll see that the emperors have no clothes.

Some examples:
"It's morally good for a person to give money to someone who has less. Most economists agree that such giving (economic stimulus) shortens recessions." Here, the second statement is meant to be the supporting fact for this person's moral opinion. The problem is that it is possible for his opponent to agree that such giving shortens recessions and still think it is immoral to perform such giving. I could hold the view that by helping those with less, you prolong their survival, thereby delaying my ideal world in which only entrepreneurs exist.

"It is morally good for a person to reduce his carbon footprint. Most scientists agree that climate change is real and man-made." But it is possible to agree that climate change is real and man-made and still think it is not morally good for people to reduce their carbon footprint. I could hold the view that by reducing your carbon footprint, you preserve the health of the earth's climate, thereby delaying my dream of humans colonizing Mars and beyond.

"It is not morally bad for person to smoke marijuana. Most studies on the subject agree that smoking marijuana is less dangerous than smoking cigarettes." I can agree that it's less dangerous and still think it is morally bad because in my ideal world, no one would smoke anything.

Don't be distracted by the strangeness of the views others can hold. Concentrate on not using fallacies. You can't logically fight a moral view with a scientific fact, but you can fight it by using a moral view of your own and pointing out your opponent's fallacies, contradictions and hypocrisies.

HiiroYui Wrote:In other words, stating a scientific fact/statistic during a moral debate as though if your opponent agrees with that fact he must also agree with your moral view, is a logical fallacy, and stating a moral view during a scientific debate as though if your opponent agrees with that moral view he must also agree with your scientific view, is a logical fallacy.

You're misusing the phrase logical fallacy. Those are not logical fallacies.

vix86 Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:replaced with an aggressive pollution/carbon tax.

Funny you mention this. I saw an article last week (I believe) that was talking about how studies found that Carbon Emissions trading has done very little to reduce pollution and that taxes were shown to be more effective.

http://phys.org/news/2012-11-taxation-ef...eaner.html

The Economist has been pushing a carbon tax for at least as long as I've been reading it (5 years or so) and probably longer than that. I think that a carbon tax on top of our (rather high) corporate income tax would not work. But in my opinion (maybe I said this earlier in the thread), climate change is the single biggest threat that humanity faces in the next century. It's a much bigger problem than the US economy, unemployment, or terrorism. I think that only nuclear proliferation can come close to the threat of climate change.

The wealthy and even the middle class have trouble seeing this, because the wealthier you are, the less likely you are to be seriously affected by even the worst of climate change.

I don't think climate change will be avoided. I think its pretty inevitable. Its simply not easy for people to understand the effect that raising the temperature of the Earth on average by 2-3C has. I think most people think "Oh nice, winters will be warmers, summers maybe a bit hotter." I think younger generations understand it maybe a bit better, but there are still far more older generation people that don't. In addition, I always feel like when people realize that the weather has gotten wonky, they just sort of shrug and go "Darned, global warming!" like there isn't anything that can be done about it.

I think this year and next will be the first marked time in the US where people start to realize climate change is occurring in a non-weather way. Droughts have hit much of the US and weather has destroyed a lot of crops (corn). This has resulted in higher food prices all around. But if you can't spin climate change into something as scary as "brown people with nukes!!!!!11!11" I doubt you're going to get traction on a national level, especially when you have a party still fighting it like its a myth.

Tzadeck Wrote:You're misusing the phrase logical fallacy. Those are not logical fallacies.

Okay, you don't agree with my word use, but do you agree with my point? What do you call it when someone says, "If you agree climate change is real, you must also agree that it is morally bad to contribute to it"? Some Republicans fight against the science of climate change because they think if they acknowledge it, they would have to agree with Democrats that it's morally bad.

HiiroYui Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:You're misusing the phrase logical fallacy. Those are not logical fallacies.

Okay, you don't agree with my word use

This is a good site about logical fallacies http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

HiiroYui Wrote:Okay, you don't agree with my word use, but do you agree with my point? What do you call it when someone says, "If you agree climate change is real, you must also agree that it is morally bad to contribute to it"? Some Republicans fight against the science of climate change because they think if they acknowledge it, they would have to agree with Democrats that it's morally bad.

No, I don't agree with your point. There are times when you are having a moral argument and the presentation of a scientific fact logically puts your opponent in the position that if he accepts that fact he must agree with you.

Let's say you're A and you're arguing with B.

A) It should be forbidden to have an abortion after 23 weeks into a pregnancy.
B) No, that's bullshit, a fetus at 23 weeks is not a person, so that fetus has no right to life and it's okay to abort.
A) Why do you say that it's not a person?
B) Because it wouldn't survive outside of the womb on it's own yet.
A) Wait a minute, the more premature a birth is the higher the likelihood that the fetus won't survive. So you have to say it as a percent. At 8 months maybe 95% of babies would survive, but at 7 months it would be less, and so on. So at what percent do you think we can count a fetus as a person because it can survive outside the womb?
B) I'd say if it has above a 50% survival rate. More likely to live than die. Seems fair to me.
A) Okay, let's look it up...
(They Google it)
A) Hah! The survival rate of a fetus at 23 weeks is 55% percent. By your own standards, that fetus is a person.

In this situation a scientific fact (the survival rate of fetus at 23 weeks) would require B to admit that he was wrong and he would have to concede to A as long as he is being honest in his premises.

Now, the moral premises or B are arbitrary, but ultimately so are scientific premises if we're strictly speaking logically (i.e., science relies on the assumption that the test of whether something is true is experiment).

I don't think that a lot of people who are well informed about climate change would say that it's a morally good thing. Especially not if you live near the sea.

Tzadeck, in that debate between A and B, B changed the subject. Basically, A said “it is morally bad to abort after 23 weeks of pregnancy”, and B said “it is not illegal to abort after 23 weeks of pregnancy”. If B had said, “abortions after 23 weeks of pregnancy don’t occur often”, he would have committed what I referred to as a logical fallacy because even if A and B agree those abortions don’t occur often, they don’t necessarily have to agree on the morality of those abortions. Assuming this was supposed to be a moral debate, B should have said, “it is not immoral to abort after 23 weeks”. Only after B says this can A ask him “why?” He may choose to base his moral view on a statistic/fact (and if he does, his view would have to change along with the most recent statistics/facts on the subject), but he could say, “because it is not immoral to abort before the 24th week. In my ideal world, parents would have until the 24th week to choose whether or not to abort.” A can again ask “why?” and the debate will progress without logical fallacies.

Eikyuu, you made a factual claim about the number of people with a certain moral view. That’s not the same thing as saying, “it is morally bad to contribute to climate change”. Until you say this, you are not participating in a moral debate (hint: this is a trap—don’t say this. By merely breathing, you contribute). Maybe you believe that “it is morally good for a person to reduce his carbon footprint on a yearly basis.” Feel free to word it however you want, but you need to make a moral statement before the debate can really begin.

I still don't even know what the point of HiiroYui's posts are. He hopped in 3-4 posts up and started randomly talking about "logic fallacy" and science, with no context. Half a page later and I still don't know what this line of talk is save that it sounds like someone wants to talk about logic and philosophy.

re: global warming

the obvious low hanging fruit if you want to reduce greenhouse gases is to become vegan. Also support nuclear energy (though I'm less sure abut that one). Just throwing it out there.

By the way for everyone flipping out about CO2, lets keep in mind the actual amounts we're talking about. CO2 is currently at 0.039% of the earth's atmosphere up from 0.028% 200 odd years ago. Take a look at temperature graphs (ice core data) going back beyond a thousand years and you can see temperatures have varied much more historically than what we have seen in the last 200 years.

HiiroYui Wrote:Tzadeck, in that debate between A and B, B changed the subject. Basically, A said “it is morally bad to abort after 23 weeks of pregnancy”, and B said “it is not illegal to abort after 23 weeks of pregnancy”. If B had said, “abortions after 23 weeks of pregnancy don’t occur often”, he would have committed what I referred to as a logical fallacy because even if A and B agree those abortions don’t occur often, they don’t necessarily have to agree on the morality of those abortions. Assuming this was supposed to be a moral debate, B should have said, “it is not immoral to abort after 23 weeks”. Only after B says this can A ask him “why?” He may choose to base his moral view on a statistic/fact (and if he does, his view would have to change along with the most recent statistics/facts on the subject), but he could say, “because it is not immoral to abort before the 24th week. In my ideal world, parents would have until the 24th week to choose whether or not to abort.” A can again ask “why?” and the debate will progress without logical fallacies.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Neither person ever mentioned whether or not it was legal. Read it again.

HiiroYui Wrote:Eikyuu, you made a factual claim about the number of people with a certain moral view. That’s not the same thing as saying, “it is morally bad to contribute to climate change”. Until you say this, you are not participating in a moral debate (hint: this is a trap—don’t say this. By merely breathing, you contribute). Maybe you believe that “it is morally good for a person to reduce his carbon footprint on a yearly basis.” Feel free to word it however you want, but you need to make a moral statement before the debate can really begin.

In the real world, people don't debate like machines. They don't say things like: "it is morally good for a person to reduce his carbon footprint on a yearly basis." And please don't talk to me like you were a professor of philosophy.

nadiatims Wrote:re: global warming

the obvious low hanging fruit if you want to reduce greenhouse gases is to become vegan. Also support nuclear energy (though I'm less sure abut that one). Just throwing it out there.

By the way for everyone flipping out about CO2, lets keep in mind the actual amounts we're talking about. CO2 is currently at 0.039% of the earth's atmosphere up from 0.028% 200 odd years ago. Take a look at temperature graphs (ice core data) going back beyond a thousand years and you can see temperatures have varied much more historically than what we have seen in the last 200 years.

For CO2 concentrations, here are the graphs (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_diox...atmosphere): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...400kyr.png The point is that before the Industrial revolution, the level was below 200ppm and now it's above 385ppm (they give 395ppm for 2012). Yes, that translates to 0.0200% and 0.0385%. It might not sound like much, but if you look at the relative increase (almost double) and compare it to the historical level, than that's a huge increase. Seemingly small things often have big impacts (how about adding just a little bit of arsenic to a glass of water).

If you look at the impacts of Global warming, they're going to be huge. Arguably, Sandy was a product of global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea...ed_impacts

Edit: about your claim that the ice core data shows much higher levels in the past: "The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800 ka (800 000 years). During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied between 180–210 ppm during ice ages, increasing to 280–300 ppm during warmer interglacials."

So the ice core data doesn't show anything higher than 300ppm, lower than the current concentration. Now, if you go back to the time of the dinosaurs (150 million years, Jurassic period), then yes the concentration might have been higher, but we don't have good data.

What do make of the fact that temperature rises/falls seems to lead CO2 by around 800 years? The obvious conclusion would be that temperature rises/falls cause C02 rises/falls, not the other way round. So it doesn't matter that we may have added 40% more c02.

Eikyu Wrote:about your claim that the ice core data shows much higher levels in the past: "The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800 ka (800 000 years). During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied between 180–210 ppm during ice ages, increasing to 280–300 ppm during warmer interglacials."

I was talking about variation in temperature, not co2 levels. Temperatures have been both much hotter and much colder.

nadiatims Wrote:What do make of the fact that temperature rises/falls seems to lead CO2 by around 800 years? The obvious conclusion would be that temperature rises/falls cause C02 rises/falls, not the other way round. So it doesn't matter that we may have added 40% more c02.

The most obvious answer is that we know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and has a warming effect. So it has to cause warming, not the other way around.

But actually there seems to be more to it. There does seems to have been a lag between warming and CO2 concentrations, but only during the interglacial periods. I found an explanation here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags...rature.htm

The gist of it is that: 1) there's a warming of the earth and oceans that occurs because of the sun's orbital cycle (Milankovitch cycle) 2) that warming of the oceans causes a release of CO2 from the oceans and then further warming.

So that's why you see in this case the temperature warming before the increase in CO2. The sun causes a warming and a release of CO2, and then the CO2 causes further warming. But still, most of the warming happens after the release of the CO2 "Overall, more than 90% of the glacial-interglacial warming occurs after the atmospheric CO2 increase"

nadiatims Wrote:I was talking about variation in temperature, not co2 levels. Temperatures have been both much hotter and much colder.

Yes, sorry. Well, temperatures have varied a lot, but this has also had major impacts on the planet: mass extinctions for example. If we have to face a major event of climate change, this is going to be very costly. Most of humanity lives on the coast. All of these cities will be flooded. We will have to change all of our crops and where we grow them. We get bigger and more dangerous storms. Oceans will be hard hit: we depend on them for our food. This will be a major catastrophe. It's much cheaper to just release less greenhouse gases.

vix86, the last time I addressed you in Reply #294, I pointed out problems in your thinking. You then ignored me, as did the others. This time I decided to take a more indirect approach so I don't scare you guys off again. I thought you guys went silent because you were contemplating the possibility that I'm right and you guys need to change the way you argue, but you've come back and started making the same types of mistakes in logic you were making before. I thought that by telling you the general principle I use to find other people's flaws, you might learn how to catch your own mistakes.

nadiatims, I'm giving you gold. If you use my methods, you might be able to push back against liberals by pointing out their utter hypocrisy on everything. You won't need to point out evidence that this climate change is cyclical, nor will you need to defend trickle-down economics to explain why Romney would have been better for the economy.

Tzadeck, okay, A said it should be forbidden. B said it is not forbidden. B changed the subject assuming A's "should" was a "moral should".

Eikyu Wrote:In the real world, people don't debate like machines. They don't say things like: "it is morally good for a person to reduce his carbon footprint on a yearly basis." And please don't talk to me like you were a professor of philosophy.

Eikyu, I am real. I debate "like a machine". Philosophy professors don't what I do (or do they, Tzadeck?). Besides, I'm giving you gold. If you use my methods, you might be able to push back against conservatives by pointing out their utter hypocrisy on everything. You won't need to point out evidence that this climate change is man-made, nor will you need to point out research explaining why Keynesian economics is better for the economy.