@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:

@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/

Last edited by IceCream (2012 November 08, 7:29 pm)

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...

Last edited by IceCream (2012 November 08, 8:50 pm)

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.

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-e … 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.

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:

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).

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 November 09, 6:17 am)

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.