And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020

[SimonNZ]

But insect life doesn't confine itself to one backyard, and if agribusiness are dumping heavy pesticides across large sections of the land then those individual efforts amount to little. It requires the regulating of damaging business practices.

[JBS]

But insect life doesn't confine itself to one backyard, and if agribusiness are dumping heavy pesticides across large sections of the land then those individual efforts amount to little. It requires the regulating of damaging business practices.

That doesn't invalidate the ideas proposed in the article.

I do note that I made a mistake. The article does refer tangentially to government action via targets for pesticide reduction.

[Florestan]

Do you see the irony in hunting out a paper on confirmation bias to the end of confirming your bias?

I didn't exactly hunt it out. The article is cited in the bibliography of Wikipedia's entry on "Confirmation Bias".

In the bibliography for "Argument from Authority" I found this one, which is not related to the topic (except perhaps the next-to-last paragraph) but is fun to read and aligns rather well with my own experience with mathematicians as described a few pages above.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160304042349/http://users-cs.au.dk/danvy/the-ideal-mathematician.pdf

[Florestan]

I could imagine that many would make up some reason that the scientists are corrupted because the majority are male, therefore influenced by the "patriarchy" or something and want to push an agenda of conservative policies (men are more conservative, on average, to begin with). Or some other reason.

Feminist attacks on science is actually yesterday's news.

The feminist 'philosopher' Luce Irigaray is another who gets whole-chapter treatment from Sokal and Bricmont. In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton's Principia (a "rape manual"), Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation". Why? Because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us" (my emphasis of what I am rapidly coming to learn is an 'in' word). Just as typical of this school of thought is Irigaray's thesis on fluid mechanics. Fluids, you see, have been unfairly neglected. "Masculine physics" privileges rigid, solid things. Her American expositor Katherine Hayles made the mistake of re-expressing Irigaray's thoughts in (comparatively) clear language. For once, we get a reasonably unobstructed look at the emperor and, yes, he has no clothes:

    "The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids... From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders. "

You do not have to be a physicist to smell out the daffy absurdity of this kind of argument (the tone of it has become all too familiar), but it helps to have Sokal and Bricmont on hand to tell us the real reason why turbulent flow is a hard problem: the Navier-Stokes equations are difficult to solve.

RTWT here: https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html

See also here: https://philpapers.org/archive/SOBIDO

[dissily Mordentroge]

I can't imagine how you lot got to here from the original 'And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020' and I'm too scared of all the philosophic word salad to read my way back through it all. My simple comment on the original post is to simply state my bias. Even though an Australian and unable to vote in US elections I'm sporting a 20PETE20 T-shirt and am over the moon to have lived long enough to see Mr Buttigieg, an openly gay candidate, run for the US presidency.
And no, I'm not willing to debate the minutia of the various candidates policies or list Trumps sins on this forum.

[JBS]

I can't imagine how you lot got to here from the original 'And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020' and I'm too scared of all the philosophic word salad to read my way back through it all. My simple comment on the original post is to simply state my bias. Even though an Australian and unable to vote in US elections I'm sporting a 20PETE20 T-shirt and am over the moon to have lived long enough to see Mr Buttigieg, an openly gay candidate, run for the US presidency.
And no, I'm not willing to debate the minutia of the various candidates policies or list Trumps sins on this forum.

Mayor Pete is one of the few candidates who radiates normalcy and wholesomeness, and therefore probably doesn't stand a chance.

[71 dB]

I can't imagine how you lot got to here from the original 'And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020' and I'm too scared of all the philosophic word salad to read my way back through it all. My simple comment on the original post is to simply state my bias. Even though an Australian and unable to vote in US elections I'm sporting a 20PETE20 T-shirt and am over the moon to have lived long enough to see Mr Buttigieg, an openly gay candidate, run for the US presidency.
And no, I'm not willing to debate the minutia of the various candidates policies or list Trumps sins on this forum.

So it's not an issue for you Buttigieg takes corporate/millionaire money, doesn't support real medicare for all (instead talks about "choice", what choice? Choice to select which mafia takes your money?). You think Buttigieg is for real systematic change? No. He is an establishment candidate, plan B if Biden goes down (as he will). Buttigieg is young, gay, educated, intelligent and speaks Norwegian. That's nice, but he is not what the US needs, especially taking into account what he did or rather didn't do to racism in South Bend police department. It is a clear signal he is in the race for himself, his own political career, not to make a real change that would help regular people.

[Todd]

I wonder what position Deval Patrick is angling for since he obviously can't get the top job.  Maybe Education.  I would have thought his job at Bain Capital cushy enough to preclude any further public self-aggrandizement.

[drogulus]

     Science is not affected by the interpretations of advocates. That's an individual choice. The advocate is always you. Pushing advocacy back onto the fact finders is a way of justifying a weak choice.

     Arguing the facts won't work. They will catch up with you. It doesn't matter how socialist you believe climate science is or how Jewish you think physics has become. Ideology can warp your perspective, especially if you approve of the warpage. I prefer to let what's true guide my beliefs to letting my beliefs determine what's true. By continuing to do that I have no difficulty understanding the difference between what finders of fact are saying and what advocates say about what they have found.

Feminist attacks on science is actually yesterday's news.

     Such attacks are being resurrected in a thinly disguised form and that's what I'm arguing against. I think there is more wrong with "feminist epistemology" than they chose the wrong epistemology/god. You do see my point, don't you?

     

     

[71 dB]

I wonder what position Deval Patrick is angling for since he obviously can't get the top job.  Maybe Education.  I would have thought his job at Bain Capital cushy enough to preclude any further public self-aggrandizement.

How about "Change is not possible, because my rich donors don't what it." ?

[Todd]

     Science is not affected by the interpretations of advocates. That's an individual choice. The advocate is always you. Pushing advocacy back onto the fact finders is a way of justifying a weak choice.

     Arguing the facts won't work. They will catch up with you. It doesn't matter how socialist you believe climate science is or how Jewish you think physics has become. Ideology can warp your perspective, especially if you approve of the warpage. I prefer to let what's true guide my beliefs to letting my beliefs determine what's true. By continuing to do that I have no difficulty understanding the difference between what finders of fact are saying and what advocates say about what they have found.

     Such attacks are being resurrected in a thinly disguised form and that's what I'm arguing against. I think there is more wrong with "feminist epistemology" than they chose the wrong epistemology/god. You do see my point, don't you?

Ten bucks to the person who can take away something meaningful from this.

How about "Change is not possible, because my rich donors don't what it." ?

I thought you were using the "ignore" feature on me.  Oh well, all good things must come to an end.

[drogulus]

That's how social justice advocates talk here in the States.

     Being a social justice advocate usually means you're arguing with other social justice advocates over who signals virtue better. I approve of the process. It does work better if the parties stipulate to facts outside the boundaries of interpretation.

     Advocacy must be judged first on fidelity to underlying facts, and then on other grounds. It's not a good move to try to disestablish a common fact basis in advance as though the facts were fiddled with before any consideration of their consequences began. This clearly regresses into faith based relativism.

[drogulus]

     

Mayor Pete is one of the few candidates who radiates normalcy and wholesomeness, and therefore probably doesn't stand a chance.

     Ideological normalcy changes over time. Not all voters subscribe to "pundit determinism". Voters will choose the candidate that will get them more of what they want, partly based on a candidates programs and partly on the candidates chances of getting elected. A more flexible understanding of normalcy will include how voters will modify it.

     Voters elected a Kenyan Socialist President who created a new normal with OCare, which was unpopular enough that Repubs took control of Congress and dedicated their sacred honor to destroying it. Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act.

     What will normal be next? I figure it will be redefined repeatedly the way it has been. The future is not fixed, the past is.

[Karl Henning]

I can't imagine how you lot got to here from the original 'And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020' and I'm too scared of all the philosophic word salad to read my way back through it all. My simple comment on the original post is to simply state my bias. Even though an Australian and unable to vote in US elections I'm sporting a 20PETE20 T-shirt and am over the moon to have lived long enough to see Mr Buttigieg, an openly gay candidate, run for the US presidency.
And no, I'm not willing to debate the minutia of the various candidates policies or list Trumps sins on this forum.

More than once have I longed for the climate issue(s) to have a separate thread.

[drogulus]

So it's not an issue for you Buttigieg takes corporate/millionaire money, doesn't support real medicare for all (instead talks about "choice", what choice? Choice to select which mafia takes your money?). You think Buttigieg is for real systematic change? No. He is an establishment candidate, plan B if Biden goes down (as he will). Buttigieg is young, gay, educated, intelligent and speaks Norwegian. That's nice, but he is not what the US needs, especially taking into account what he did or rather didn't do to racism in South Bend police department. It is a clear signal he is in the race for himself, his own political career, not to make a real change that would help regular people.

     I don't think voters are going to choose a candidate the way you think they should. Voters want things to happen, and they want someone who can succeed at getting the things they want. What voters want in terms of health care, the economy and the environment doesn't neatly fit the boxes of political philosophy, and over time what voters have chosen changes what pundits think is radical versus mainstream. Radicals might have a model of revolutionary change in their radical heads. From a more distant perspective change is evolutionary.

     One idea is that change is good in itself, routine change and the big "nothing ever" changes, too, like SS and Medicare. An economy has to rebuild itself on the fly while running somewhere close to full capacity.

     

[greg]

I don't know where you're getting this stuff from. Is it Fox?

I don't watch TV.

The only fox news clip I've seen about climate change (on youtube) was when they had on Bill Nye, and they didn't doubt that climate change was real. Instead, he was asked if it was man-made, and all he did was look at him with contempt and didn't answer the question.

Already many on the liberal side that reject science with the whole gender issue. And also reject race-related statistics. They even reject words in the dictionary, because it was probably written by a white man who is part of the "patriarchy."

Seriously, people should stop being so attached to one side, it completely blinds them to its flaws. Each side has many, many people that will reject what is true in favor of their rigid ideology. Tribalism is just retarded.

[71 dB]

Normalcy doesn't mean things can't be better. In North Korea brutal dictatorship is normalcy. Doesn't mean democracy wouldn't be better. In the US oligarchy/crony capitalism is normalcy. Doesn't mean social democratic ideas/well regulated capitalism wouldn't be better.

[drogulus]

Seriously, people should stop being so attached to one side, it completely blinds them to its flaws. Each side has many, many people that will reject what is true in favor of their rigid ideology. Tribalism is just retarded.

     How do you know what side you're on if you don't try to find out what is true from an independent standpoint? Are you just born into a side?

     It's just as important how people defeat tribalism about what's true as how they are defeated by tribal identification. Since people do it all the time in their everydays lives, it can be done on purpose, as an essential goal.

[71 dB]

     I don't think voters are going to choose a candidate the way you think they should. Voters want things to happen, and they want someone who can succeed at getting the things they want.

Like Obama? Not good enough. People are done with that centrist BS. There are different kind of voters, some better informed that others and so on. It's a matter of what kind of voters go out and actually vote.

What voters want in terms of health care, the economy and the environment doesn't neatly fit the boxes of political philosophy, and over time what voters have chosen changes what pundits think is radical versus mainstream. Radicals might have a model of revolutionary change in their radical heads. From a more distant perspective change is evolutionary.

English please. That's such mumbo jumbo I don't have a clue what you are trying to say. Medicare for all is not radical. All other developped countries have one or another type of single payer system. The healthcare system in the US is the radical system, radical in leaving millions of people without access to healthcare and driving people to bankruptcy over medical bills. That is RADICAL! For decades the corporate media was able to smear medicare for all effectively, but that's over now. People get information elsewhere and learn about the benefits of a single payer healthcare. Millenials are not as scared of "socialistic" ideas as older generations and can feel how crony capitalism screws them.

One idea is that change is good in itself, routine change and the big "nothing ever" changes, too, like SS and Medicare. An economy has to rebuild itself on the fly while running somewhere close to full capacity.

Of course change is not always good. It depends what the change is about.

 

[drogulus]

Medicare for all is not radical.

     It's not radical any more. How did that happen?

All other developped countries have one or another type of single payer system.

     Only some countries have single payer universal systems. As far as I'm concerned much of the ferocious argument about howyougonna is not what people think it's about. People think it's about the one true path under which we can afford health care versus other paths where we can't. I think this is nonsensical, countries can get there in a variety of ways and be rich and get good outcomes. The choice for good outcomes is the important choice, the howyougonna is how it can be done consistent with the political environment, a factor which is subject to change itself. What looks like a "nothing ever" change now may look very different in 5 years.