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anonymous

The Ideological Turing Test, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty - 0 views

econlog.econlib.org/...the_ideological.html

politics partisan criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 23 Jun 11 - Cached
  • [I]f you ask a liberal or a saltwater economist, "What would somebody on the other side of this divide say here? What would their version of it be?" A liberal can do that. A liberal can talk coherently about what the conservative view is because people like me actually do listen. We don't think it's right, but we pay enough attention to see what the other person is trying to get at. The reverse is not true. You try to get someone who is fiercely anti-Keynesian to even explain what a Keynesian economic argument is, they can't do it. They can't get it remotely right. Or if you ask a conservative, "What do liberals want?" You get this bizarre stuff - for example, that liberals want everybody to ride trains, because it makes people more susceptible to collectivism.
  • It's easy to scoff at Krugman's self-congratulation, but at the meta-level, he's on to something.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 23 Jun 11
       
      Let's see about that...
  • There are important caveats.  Don Boudreaux wisely observes that we should compare liberal intellectuals to non-liberal intellectuals, and liberal entertainers to non-liberal entertainers, not say Krugman to Beck.  I'd add that we should compare people in the same field: Rand's inability to explain Keynesian economics would be no more telling than Krugman's inability to explain Nozickian political philosophy.  (Of course, if Krugman could correctly explain Nozickian political philosophy, that would be fairly impressive).
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  • Set up a rough-and-ready ideological Turing Test.  I'll take it first.  Then invite Krugman to make me eat my words.
  • How?  Here's just one approach.  Put me and five random liberal social science Ph.D.s in a chat room.  Let liberal readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn't really a liberal.  Then put Krugman and five random libertarian social science Ph.D.s in a chat room.  Let libertarian readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn't really a libertarian.  Simple as that.
  • anonymous on 23 Jun 11
     
    I still don't know what to make of this, but it's worth investigating, if only to put it to rest or flog it with a whip made of angry horses. "According to Krugman, liberals have the ability to simulate conservatives, but conservatives lack the ability to simulate liberals" Thanks to Adam Gurri for nudging me toward this line of inquiry.
anonymous

Rand & Aesthetics 19 - 0 views

aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/...rand-aesthetics-19.html

objectivism criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 06 Jul 11 - Cached
  • A certain type of confusion about the relationship between scientific discoveries and art, leads to a frequently asked question: Is photography an art? The answer is: No.
  • Beyond demonstrating her lack of specific knowledge about photography, this passage also shows the weakness of her theory of definitions. Much of Rand's argument against photography as art stems from her entirely arbitrary definition of art as "selective recreation."
  • There is no such thing as a right or wrong definitions: there are merely definitions excepted by most people and definitions accepted only by individuals or eccentric groups (e.g., Objectivist definitions).
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  • She tries to defend this point of view by emphasizing the importance of selecting only those concretes that are "abstract essentials."
  • On purely philosophical grounds, therefore, Rand's assertion that photography is not art is insupportable. Yet, curiously enough, it's not even consistent with Rand's own definition. Rand's belief that art photography involves only an insignificant bit of selectivity demonstrates her ignorance of that particular art. It also demonstrates the dangers of making dogmatic assertions about subjects you don't know much about.
  • Photography, she claims, is mostly a technique; but the same could be said of painting and sculpture. The main difference between painting and photography is the tools: one creates images with paint, brushes, and canvas, the other with a camera, lenses, and filters. Otherwise, they are merely two means of achieving the same end: creating two-dimensional images.
  • anonymous on 06 Jul 11
     
    "Photography. Ayn Rand, to the bewilderment of photographers everywhere, denies that photography is an art" Par for the course, really.
anonymous

Salt: More confirmation bias for your preferred narrative - 0 views

www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/...s-for-your-preferred-narrative

layscience salt criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 21 Jul 11 - Cached
  • When it comes to health, it’s the hard outcomes we care about. We pay attention to measures like high blood pressure (hypertension) because of the relationship between hypertension and events like heart attacks and strokes. The higher the blood pressure, the greater the risk of these events. The relationship between the two is well established. So when it comes to preventive health, we want to lower blood pressure to reduce the risk of subsequent effects. Weight loss, diet, and exercise are usually prescribed (though often insufficient) to reduce blood pressure. For many, drug treatment is still required.
  • There is reasonable population-level data linking higher levels of salt consumption with higher blood pressure.
  • From a population perspective, interventions that dramatically lower salt intake result in lower blood pressure.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • the causality between salt consumption, and all of these negative effects, is less clear.
  • So does reducing dietary salt reduce cardiovascular events? That’s the key question.
  • When it comes to clinical practice guidelines, low salt diets are the mainstays of pretty much every set of guidelines on the management of high blood pressure.
  • The evidence supporting the relationship with hard outcomes is robust, but not rock-solid. We don’t have causal data, but we do have considerable epidemiologic evidence to suggest that reducing dietary salt consumption is likely to offer net benefits in the management of hypertension.
  • The vast majority of the salt we eat (75%) is from processed foods. Restaurants are a large source, too.
  • Few foods in their original state are naturally high in salt, and in general, we don’t add that much at the table.
  • Seven studies made up this meta-analysis, including 6,489 patients in total. Three studies looked at those with normal blood pressure, two included patients with high blood pressure, and one was a mixed population, including patients with heart failure. The overall effect? Interventions had small effects on sodium consumption, which led to small effects on blood pressure. There was insufficient information to analyze the effects on cardiovascular disease endpoints.
  • The authors go on to make the following point, which was ignored in the media coverage: Our findings are consistent with the belief that salt reduction is beneficial in normotensive and hypertensive people. However, the methods of achieving salt reduction in the trials included in our review, and other systematic reviews, were relatively modest in their impact on sodium excretion and on blood pressure levels, generally required considerable efforts to implement and would not be expected to have major impacts on the burden of CVD.
  • The authors did not conclude that reducing salt consumption is ineffective.
  • Despite the modest and equivocal results, the authors seem to have lost the narrative on their own research findings: Professor Rod Taylor, the lead researcher of the review, is ‘completely dismayed’ at the headlines that distort the message of his research published today. Having spoken to BBC Scotland, and to CASH, he clarified that the review looked at studies where people were advised to reduce salt intake compared to those who were not and found no differences, this is not because reduced salt doesn’t have an effect but because it’s hard to reduce salt intake for a long time. He stated that people should continue to strive to reduce their salt intake to reduce their blood pressure, but that dietary advice alone is not enough, calling for further government and industry action.
  • The true finding from the Cochrane review is that dietary interventions to reduce salt intake are largely ineffective at reducing salt consumption.
  • Until the data are more clear, you can find the data to support whatever narrative you believe. If you want to demonize salt and ignore other factors that contribute to poor cardiovascular outcomes, you can do that. And if you believe that interventions to reduce salt consumption are misguided and unwarranted, and symptomatic of an overreaching nanny state, then you can find data to support that position, too.
  • anonymous on 21 Jul 11
     
    "Judging by the recent press reports, the latest Cochrane review reveals that everything we've been told about eating salt, and cardiovascular disease, is wrong."
anonymous

Rand & Aesthetics 17 - 0 views

aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/...rand-aesthetics-17.html

objectivism criticalthinking music

shared by anonymous on 21 Jun 11 - Cached
  • In her haste to find a pretext for calling "modern" music non-art, Rand, in her carelessness, has once again presented a hollow argument. It may be annoying and even aesthetically viscious for avant-garde composers to introduce taped sounds of machine and street noises into their musical compositions. But that, in itself, doesn't render the musical portions of such compositions any less musical. Before one denounces a given aesthetic style, one at least has to take the trouble to understand that style. Otherwise, one comes off as prejudiced rather than insightful, as an aesthetic ignoramus rather than a knowledgable critic.
  • anonymous on 21 Jun 11
     
    "Ayn Rand's most extended published take on "modern music" appears in her "Art and Cognition" essay. It features all the usual Randian intellectual vices: tendency toward over-generalization, vagueness, lack of specific examples, and condemnation via implicit suggestion and innuendo:"
anonymous

Learned Helplessness - 2 views

youarenotsosmart.com/...learned-helplessness

criticalthinking misconceptions

shared by anonymous on 05 Jul 11 - Cached
  • If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you learn over time there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act – you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism. Studies of the clinically depressed show that when they fail they often just give in to defeat and stop trying.
  • Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn’t matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn’t count? Yeah, that’s learned helplessness.
  • anonymous on 05 Jul 11
     
    Another great bubble bursting from David McRaney at You Are Not So Smart. "The Misconception: If you are in a bad situation, you will do whatever you can do to escape it. The Truth: If you feel like you aren't in control of your destiny, you will give up and accept whatever situation you are in."
  • Erik Hanson on 06 Jul 11
     
    I wouldn't consider this the whole story. There's certainly a bad extreme to fatalism, but there's an alternate wrong in supposing that all things are achievable through fiat of will. A weakness of Classicism and PoMo may lie in resigning oneself to fate or the whims of complex systems, nut Modernism certainly had problems not only with those who successfully asserted their wills, but also in the psyches of the many who were unsuccessful supermen and were left to conclude that they must be inherently worse people.
anonymous

Misattribution of Arousal - 3 views

youarenotsosmart.com/...misattribution-of-arousal

criticalthinking yanss emotions

shared by anonymous on 11 Jul 11 - Cached
  • In 1974, psychologists Art Aron and Donald Dutton hired a woman to stand in the middle of this suspension bridge. As men passed her on their way across, she asked them if they would be willing to fill out a questionnaire. At the end of the questions, she asked them to examine an illustration of a lady covering her face and then make up a back story to explain it.
  • The scientists knew the fear in the men’s bellies would be impossible to ignore, and they wanted to know how a brain soaking in anxiety juices would make sense of what just happened.
  • they had their assistant go through the same routine on a wide, sturdy, wooden bridge standing fixed just a few feet off of the ground.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • After running the experiment at both locations, they compared the results and found 50 percent of the men who got them digits on the dangerous suspension bridge picked up a phone and called looking for the lady of the canyon. Of the men questioned on the secure bridge, the percentage who came calling dropped to 12.5. That wasn’t the only significant difference. When they compared the stories the subjects made up about the illustration, they found the men on the scary bridge were almost twice as likely to come up with sexually suggestive narratives.
  • Arousal comes from deep inside the brain, in those primal regions of the autonomic nervous system where ingoing and outgoing signals are monitored and the glass over the big fight-or-flight button waits to be smashed.
  • Misattribution of arousal falls under the self-perception theory.
  • Arousal can fill up the spaces in your brain when you least expect it. It could be a rousing movie trailer or a plea for mercy from a distant person reaching out over YouTube. Like a coterie of prairie dogs standing alert as if living periscopes, your ancestors were built to pay attention when it mattered, but with cognition comes pattern recognition and all the silly ways you misinterpret your inputs.
  • The source of your emotional states is often difficult or impossible to detect. The time to pay attention can pass, or the details become lodged in a place underneath consciousness. In those instances you feel, but you know not why. When you find yourself in this situation you tend to lock onto a target, especially if there is another person who fits with the narrative you are about to spin. It feels good to assume you’ve discovered what is causing you to feel happy, to feel rejected, to feel angry or lovesick. It helps you move forward. Why question it?
  • The research into arousal says you are bad at explaining yourself to yourself, but it sheds light on why so many successful dates include roller-coasters, horror films and conversations over coffee.
  • There is a reason playful wrestling can lead to passionate kissing, why a great friend can turn a heaving cry into a belly laugh. There is a reason why great struggle brings you closer to friends, family and lovers. There is a reason why Rice Krispies commercials show moms teaching children how to make treats in crisp black-and-white while Israel Kamakawiwo’ole sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow. When you want to know why you feel the way you do but are denied the correct answer, you don’t stop searching. You settle on something – the person beside you, the product in front of you, the drug in your brain. You don’t always know the right answer, but when you are flirting over a latte don’t point it out.
  • anonymous on 11 Jul 11
     
    "The Misconception: You always know why you feel the way you feel. The Truth: You can experience emotional states without knowing why, even if you believe you can pinpoint the source."
anonymous

Ten Common Fallacies Everyone Should Know - 2 views

www.chopcow.com/...fallacies.php

criticalthinking Logic argument

shared by anonymous on 11 Jul 11 - Cached
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 11
       
      Yeah. Some of the others discussing this article had some valid nit-picks about some of these items. It coulda used another editing pass, but who am *I* to talk about that, right? :)
  • anonymous on 11 Jul 11
     
    Fallacies: Incorrect or misleading beliefs or opinions based on inaccurate facts or invalid reasoning.
  • Erik Hanson on 13 Jul 11
     
    Note, of course, that a logical fallacy is not always a rhetorical mistake.
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