Tzadeck wrote:

I was a philosophy major, and HiiroYui's post really reminds me of all the bad things about doing philosophy.  Or at least, all the habits of mediocre philosophy students.

So mediocre philosophy students say stuff like:

“…and his complete lack of humanity.” Can you define this objectively? If so, make a moral statement about it.

Because this made me laugh. As if everything must be stated as right or wrong. Hiiro's whole post just sounds awkward to me really. I don't know what he's aiming for but maybe it wouldn't sound so funny to me if it was simply stated like: "Can you explain what you mean by 'lack of humanity?' And after that, can you explain whats wrong or right about that?"

Tzadeck wrote:

I was a philosophy major, and HiiroYui's post really reminds me of all the bad things about doing philosophy.  Or at least, all the habits of mediocre philosophy students.

As I read the post, I couldn't help but think, "This person just took, or is taking, introductory logic." Anyone can nitpick poor word choices or omissions of details, but it takes actual effort and ingenuity to build up an argument as best as possible, well beyond its original form, and then tear it down.

HiiroYui wrote:

だから議論はどうあるべきかを説明しています。嘘と偽りを使えば人を騙すことができるけど、論理と事実を使えば議論の質が高くなりリベラル派・保守派の人々の心を抜本的に変えてしまうことができます。 いずれも主観的なことなので評論家・視聴者の過半数の意見に頼るしかないんですね。もっと客観的な基準を使わないと “he said, she said”のままでつづき、政治は変わりません。

These are ideals. Yes, we want politicians to actually debate and hold high quality discussions, use facts, and only speak the truth. Except that it doesn't matter really because such a majority of the populace doesn't care about that sort of stuff. For many people, their decision on who to vote for in the election comes down to "Who looks like a leader." Facts don't "win" debates, a mix of personality and half truths usually do. Maybe the system will change in the future but for now its stuck the way it is; this 2 party system.

------------

So on the recent debate. I caught some of it while at work and I can say that it turned out better for Obama. I think the format helped a lot. The standing and talking I think was very in line with Obama's style. The town hall format is rough for both of the candidates though since it allows for a lot 'being blind sided' by questions you aren't prepared for, hence a lot of dancing around the actual questions.

A lot of the news was afire about the Libya thing that happened with Romney, I'm curious to see how that will stick. That was suppose to be something that Romney was suppose to hammer Obama with and he pretty much got knocked down.

Overall Obama came out swinging and I think he landed lots of hits. He nailed him on all the points that the democrats have been wanting him to hit him on. I felt Romney did ok-ish but to my ear he always sounds like he's struggling to convince everyone that everything is true instead of talking like its true.

Obama won the debate, but not by some landslide. I'm expecting Fox to talk about moderator bias though.

HiiroYui wrote:

Tzadeck, I didn’t miss the point of the presidential debates. I’m saying it shouldn’t work this way. I want to change this game-like atmosphere politics has. If you’re frustrated with the fakeness of politicians like I am, we, the people, can change the system. If you think I’m mistaken, use what you learned as a philosophy major to show me I’m wrong.

Well, you said what determines the winner of the debate is subjective.  Then you say that a debate should be about changing the opponent's mind.  It's unclear whether you mean that because it's subjetive you've simply chosen the standard that most agrees with you, or that defining winning as changing your opponent's mind removes the subjectivity of who wins.

That seems like it's missing the point to me.  When the two people who are having the debate have a clear goal in mind, and that goal is the same, and that goal is understood by the moderator of the debate and the majority of people watching, and the achievement of that goal is measurable (i.e., in poll numbers), it's ridiculous to call that goal subjective.  That's what you would call 'objective,' not 'subjective.'

Now you say your point was that it shouldn't work that way.  I agree that politics shouldn't work the way that it does, and that the debates highlight some of the disappointing truths about modern politics in America.  But that's not what you said originally, and not what I responded to.

Also, I think defining winning a debate as changing your opponent's mind shows a degree of naivete.  The two major parties in America more than anything divide themselves based on a different sense of values, motivations, and sense of identity (a famous example: you meet a young woman who's a yoga teacher and a vegetarian--do you think she's a republican or a democrat?).  The candidates who represent the parties share a lot of values with their base.  Even among friends with similar values, it's usually impossible to change a friend's mind about a certain issue--how do you expect people with different values to?  Defining winning a debate as changing your opponent's mind would therefore result in 90%+ of debates having no winner, which makes that standard of winning--here's a nice philosophy word for you--supererogatory.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 October 17, 8:33 pm)

Tzadeck wrote:

a famous example: you meet a young woman wo's a yoga teacher and a vegetarian--do you think she's a republican or a democrat?.

Neither. She's Green party, a Hipster, owns every Apple product, drives a Prius, volunteers with PETA, and pickets somewhere over environmental issues on the weekend.

vix86 wrote:

These are ideals.

Everyone has ideals. Keynesian economics forms part of your ideals.

vix86 wrote:

Yes, we want politicians to actually debate and hold high quality discussions, use facts, and only speak the truth. Except that it doesn't matter really because such a majority of the populace doesn't care about that sort of stuff.

You didn’t define “we”, so it sounds like “we want politicians to be better, but we don’t care.” Because I can assume you were at least talking about yourself, you revealed more of your ideals. The next part is important: do you want people to try to change each other’s minds using logic and facts? Stop telling me about what other people think -- I’m asking YOU. It’s illogical to say, “Yes, I want people to try to change each other’s minds, but most people don’t, so I don’t want to try to change people’s minds.”

vix86 wrote:

For many people, their decision on who to vote for in the election comes down to "Who looks like a leader."

And they are hypocrites. Are you?

vix86 wrote:

Maybe the system will change in the future...

The future starts now.

Tzadeck, there is a kind of debate where two people stand on stage and argue opposing views. At the end the audience decides who wins. (As for objective/subjective: if you ask an audience member, “who won the debate”, he will use his personal preferences to decide. If you ask, “who said ‘I changed my mind and I agree with you’”, he will base his decision on something more objective.) I’m advocating a different type of debate, and I usually refrain from using the word “win” to avoid confusion. I am still hoping to someday be able to use “to win a debate” to mean “to change your opponent’s mind”, but I better put that off for now. Now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn’t use “politics” either.

Tzadeck wrote:

I agree that politics shouldn't work the way that it does, and that the debates highlight some of the disappointing truths about modern politics in America.

It’s good to know you don’t think of me as a mediocre philosophy student any more. Can I count on you to back those words up with some actions? You see, part of changing people’s minds will involve proving your actions are less hypocritical than theirs are.

Tzadeck wrote:

But that's not what you said originally,…

I didn’t mention “winning” in my first post. I also mentioned how to resolve the issue of party affiliation there. I’m not sure what everyone’s level of Japanese is here, but I was hoping for a place to practice my Japanese while debating.

Last edited by HiiroYui (2012 October 18, 9:38 pm)

http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20076298
http://www.ustream.tv/cbsnews
http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/electio … video-chat (watch this for the LoLs)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/

So obama won and as predicted stocks are down despite all the predictions that an end to uncertainty would be good for markets.

Anyone able to take a guess at the date for total economic collapse?

lol

as I predicted stocks are down despite all the predictions in the media that an end to uncertainty would be good for markets.

The stocks being down had very little to do with Obama being re-elected.

It had a lot more to do with the looming fiscal cliff in the US as well as worry over the EU which still has economic rumbles going on.

Total economic collapse will be brought on by the EU. Probably when the coalition in Greece collapses (very soon, since a new round of austerity measures just passed) and the Neo-nazi party, the Golden Dawn, comes into power; we'll have trouble. Because they'll probably put to vote the option to leave the Euro and it'll pass probably, sparking a chain reaction through the markets.

I'm curious nadiatims, did you ever study economics?

nadiatims wrote:

Yes.

Though not at a university (which is I'm sure exactly what you wanted to hear).

I've been interested in economics as a hobby for a good 5 years or so, and like to consider myself reasonably capable of logical thinking (scored very highly in maths/sciences etc in school).

That's fine, though I hope when you say you have studied economics as a hobby you don't mean that you read 6 or 7 non-fiction books about economics that make it interesting for the layman.

I don't know anything about economics myself, so I'm not disagreeing with you or mocking you as much as I'm exploring.  Anytime you don't know anything about a topic (me), and someone else is talking about it (you), you use heuristics to try to figure out whether their information is trustworthy.  You come off as being a lot more confident than you should be about your conclusions, but that's just a guess.

nadiatims wrote:

I don't think Golden Dawn is a problem yet. They only have like 7% of the vote.

This was posted yesterday before the austerity vote. Of note is the end bit.

The journal notes "If elections were held today, only 20% of Greeks respondents said they would vote for New Democracy—down from 29.7% in June—while Pasok saw its support cut almost in half to 6.5%, and Democratic Left by a third to just 4% and Syriza would garner 23% support, down from 26.9% in June."

Those percentages total only 53.5%. If all of those parties are losing votes then where are the votes going? Here's the depressing answer: the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.

I do hold a bit of skepticism since I can't see the actual data. However the Golden Dawn has been rising quite a bit recently and I'm pretty confident I recall hearing double digit figure support for them some months ago. Hell, the Greek police have started even referring people with immigrant problems to the Golden Dawn due to staffing issues.

Greece exiting the Euro wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing by the way.

This depends on who you ask and where you read. The biggest point of issue is that leaving the Euro means massive inflation on the dracma and means that most debts will default and trigger the insurance claims (blanking on term). No one really knows how intertwined the system is with these insurance claims but it has the potential to bankrupt some banks and create a domino effect. There are some other things I heard as well some months ago that go unmentioned in the media as well that could cause the system to go up in flame as well due to a domino effect. And if Greece exits and writes off all the debt like its nothing, you can probably expect Spain, Portugal, and Italy to leave as well.

In my opinion its only a question of when they leave the Euro not "if." Because of the public opinion in Germany about supporting these nations, no one will want to finance a deep Greek recovery on their tax dollars.

Another deep global recession is in the works. I don't believe Romney nor Obama can waylay it so to me, finger pointing and saying "Obama broke the economy." just seems stupid to me. None of the bad debt (ie: mortgages, etc) from the last recession was written off, it was merely consolidated and spread back out; its still in the system. The only sign I have for something like this is how the market can be sitting at near market highs before the last crash and 15% of Americans are still unemployed or working shitty jobs. The administration has gamed the reporting system to exclude large swaths of people from even being counted as possibly "unemployed" so unemployment numbers look nice, but only cause the workforce keeps shrinking. (And again, this is just capital hill politics, Reps. would have done the same dam thing)