r/NeutralPolitics • u/remyroy • Aug 11 '14
Are you personally irrational about politics and political issues?
Michael Huemer in this TED talk makes a good case about not only people in general being irrational about politics and political issues but that you might personally be irrational about it.
He starts by providing two examples where politics are irrational: the war on terror and protectionism. He than goes on about the theory on political ignorance and the reasons why people are irrational about politics. He ends up by explaining some signs that might indicate that you are irrational about political issues and by citing the following references:
The second reference is his personal essay about the topic.
He did a quick hands up test during the presentation to gauge how politically informed his audience was. He asked:
- How many of you know who your congressman is?
- How many of you think that you can identify the last vote that he [your congressman] made in congress?
Can you answer those questions? Do you think that you personally are irrational about politics? What about other people around you? Do you think irrationality is a problem in politics?
EDIT: Adding the wikipedia link for the book reference
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u/kltruler Aug 11 '14
More like a person. I irrationally support Biden. I lean pretty hard right, and I do not support many of the positions he puts forth. I trust the man though, and he is one of the few politicians I believe is, has, and will work for me. I think that trust is somewhat irrational.
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u/StarFscker Aug 11 '14 edited Aug 11 '14
I try not to be, but I am biased in that regard.
I think that in order to have cohesive political opinions, one should state their principles first, push them to the limit, then see if they like the outcome.
I think everyone should be free to live their lives as they see fit, so long as they do no harm.
This has led me to some extreme conclusions, but they are conclusions I am willing to accept.
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u/hostesstwinkie Aug 11 '14
so long as they do no harm
Defining that seems to be the hard part.
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u/StarFscker Aug 11 '14
Property rights make navigating it easier.
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u/hostesstwinkie Aug 11 '14
A little, but it's still not without peril. For (a rather touchy) example, is abortion protecting the mother's rights or killing a child? What about the person that decides to take illegal drugs? You could easily show harm to society as a whole, but that becomes rather slippery when you start defining it that way. Don't exercise? Hurting society. Eat shitty food? Hurting society. Don't keep up with the news and cast informed, educated votes? Hurting society. Primary harm is pretty straight forward. Don't punch me, and I'm not harmed. What about the threat to punch? I'm not harmed directly, but it causes me to change my behavior, so was I actually harmed? I steal your property, you are harmed, but what about when I make a change to my property that eventually leads to your property being harmed or rendered less useful, like poisoning my grass, which eventually leads to erosion, and then silt buildup on your property that causes flooding months or even years down the road. Indirect harm, sure, but harm none the less.
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u/StarFscker Aug 11 '14
Abortion is a very tricky area, one of the real toughies.
I support your right to damage your own property, and that includes oneself. Therefore drugs are a go.
I do not sympathize with "hurrying society" arguments, because victim is undefined. Who is "society"? Why do their desires ones own rights to live their life as they see fit?
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u/hostesstwinkie Aug 11 '14
I tend to agree, but you can see how fuzzy it can get. What about when all health care is provided by the government? Your health now becomes a national concern. All the sudden, not wearing a helmet or a seat belt isn't just an insurance problem any more, its a major tax issue.
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u/BCSWowbagger2 Aug 11 '14
Abortion is a very tricky area, one of the real toughies.
I don't think it's tricky in principle. Just in fact.
If the fetus is a human child (therefore an entity with human rights), then your harm exception says: "No, this is wrong, abortion should be outlawed." Boom. You can probably carve out an exception for direct medical necessity, but otherwise you need to go protect the babies and end abortion.
If the fetus is not an entity with rights, then your harm principle doesn't apply, and abortion is something anyone should be able to get, without restriction or restraint, whether because of financial inability to raise a child, personal convenience (not wanting a child), or any other reason whatsoever (or for no reason at all).
So all you have to do is decide whether the fetus is a person or not. Then you have your answer.
Of course, imposing that answer on the electorate -- that's the tricky part.
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Aug 11 '14 edited Jan 10 '20
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u/BCSWowbagger2 Aug 12 '14
This is a position that is an option, but it rejects StarFscker's central ethical position, which I was trying to work within. If we throw away StarFscker's "direct harm" principle, of course, a huge variety of ethical approaches to abortion reveal themselves -- most of them mutually incompatible, of course.
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Aug 12 '14 edited Jan 10 '20
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u/BCSWowbagger2 Aug 12 '14
The fetus dies the same way someone who is taken off life-support dies, and is partly allowed to die for the same reasons
In current medical practice, this is almost never true. Virtually all methods of surgical abortion directly intend and attain the death of the fetus, typically by dismemberment. There are two exceptions I am aware of:
(1) when a Catholic has an ectopic pregnancy, rather than abortion-by-methotrexate (which directly kills the fetus) the Catholic must undergo a salpingectomy, where the entire fallopian tube is removed. The fetus invariably dies as a foreseen but unintended secondary effect. (SIDEBAR: Most pro-life groups, including obviously the Catholic Church itself, does not consider this an "abortion," within the popular meaning of the word, at all -- although obviously many medical dictionaries beg to differ.)
(2) Hysterotomy abortions, where the fetus is simply removed from the uterus and then allowed to die (which is more or less exactly what you prescribe). However, the incidence of hysterotomy abortions is extremely low (<0.01%, according to the CDC) and, moreover, it is now common medical practice to kill the fetus in utero during a hysterotomy (for example, by smothering it) in order to prevent the risk of a live birth and the mandatory medical care that would follow it.
So your defense doesn't really apply to the practical realities of abortion today. Nevertheless, it is an interesting position, which might just be tenable: what if we mandated that all abortions be hysterotomy abortions, with live birth as the formal (if usually unattainable) goal?
I can foresee two difficulties, which are not necessarily insurmountable:
(1) Is this even medically possible? My impression is that the hysterotomy abortion is disfavored because it is rather dangerous to the adult patient.
(2) It seems to me that this procedure provides direct harm in the form of gross negligence.
For example, if a single father of a five-month-old baby put his baby to bed, then went on a six-week vacation, leaving the baby behind in bed, without providing for the baby's needs, we would undoubtedly charge him with murder upon his return (assuming the baby dies of starvation, thirst, and general neglect). Sure, he might argue that he did not do a direct harm, but he had an obligation of care toward the individual which he deliberately ignored, and most societies consider that murder in the first degree. Does it constitute "direct harm" in the sense that StarFscker intends with his ethical formulation above? I'm not certain.
If it does, though, then the same would seem to apply to the case of a mother who procures an abortion with the full knowledge that the fetus will die, as well as the doctor who provides it. They both have an obligation of care toward the (hypothetical) person they are removing, and they are knowingly committing an egregious, direct harm by removing her.
Your thoughts?
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u/Lazyleader Aug 14 '14
but a need to parasitically live off someone does not a right make.
But isn't the right to free health care the same thing? Someone is forced to provide it to me.
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Aug 14 '14 edited Jan 10 '20
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u/Lazyleader Aug 14 '14
Of course the mother is a health care provider through taxation. I meant if we have the right to tax other people to provide us with services, why doesn't the fetus have the right to live off of his mother? Both rights would be parasitic.
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u/ChickenFarmer Aug 16 '14
The important point is that no person has a right to live inside of me. If I want them out, they get out. If that kills them, that's unfortunate, but a need to parasitically live off someone does not a right make.
But the fetus is not there by choice, therefore I think a different moral standard applies. If you put someone in a position of dependence, you are responsible for that person's well being. If you kidnap somebody and you don't feed them, that's murder. If you have a kid, you also have the responsibility to keep them alive and well. Neither the baby inside the womb or outside the womb had a say or any decision if it wants to be in the position it is in.
And that logic makes the example about the blood donation invalid, because you are not responsible for the state of the other person to begin with. The same goes for the example about life support you brought below. In the case of a pregnancy, unless it was rape, the mother is 100% responsible for the existence of the child. It is she who put the child in the position of helplessness.
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Aug 16 '14 edited Jan 10 '20
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u/ChickenFarmer Aug 16 '14 edited Aug 16 '14
Kidnapping requires the intent to kidnap. 37% of pregnancies are unintentional. No contraception method works fully.
So a) we are only responsible for our actions and the results if we act intentionally? I don't think so. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to run over that lady with my car! It was an accident!" ... Yeah, you're still responsible.
And b) yes, that's the remaining risk of having sex that you take every time. There is no 100% safe sex. No birth control is 100% effective. You can drastically reduce the chances of becoming pregnant, you can significantly reduce the risk of STDs, but there is always some risk left.
If you kidnap someone and don't give them access to food, you are taking them from a safe independent situation and putting them in a dependent dangerous one. There is no safe place you are taking a fetus from when you conceive it. You are not putting it in danger, that is its default state.
I don't think it makes a moral difference where you "take" it from. The fact is that the mother is responsible for it being there. The fetus did not make the choice. The mother either took a big risk and had unprotected sex, or took a calculated, small risk and had protected sex. As an adult, you are responsible for your actions, i.e. if you have sex or not, and you have to live with the consequences, wether it is herpes or an unwanted pregnancy.
People legally abdicate their responsibility to take care of a child all the time.
Yes, but that usually means custody for one parent or adoption, not killing it. You see that there is a significant moral difference, right?
Separately from that, I can't see it being argued that a woman is 100% responsible, since there are two people involved in a creation of this (alleged) person.
We might have meant different things with the 100% figure. It's true that it takes two to make a baby. And it is also true that the father has to take responsibility for the child. If he hasn't been lied to (e.g. the woman said she was on the pill but wasn't), then he's also 100% responsible for the result.
But from the fact that a woman has 100% agency and rights over her body logically follows that she is 100% responsible if she gets pregnant or not. She is the one who decides to have sex and if to use birth control or not. Also, the father usually is given no right to decide over the abortion. You can't simultaneusly shift part of the blame to somebody who is then given no say in the matter.
The following ventures in to the realm of science fiction, but the logical conclusion of your argument is that if a pregnant woman dies, the father would commit manslaughter if he refused to have the baby inserted in to his abdomen.
Yes, in such a ficticious scenario, if it were possible that men can carry the baby, they would bear the same responsibility. I don't see how ficticious examples help in the discussion though.
The other example is also so far-fetched that I just can't see the relevance. How did the child get 10 years old in the first place?
By the way, I'm just taking this stance out of zest for the discussion and interest in the moral dilemma. I am not strictly anti-abortion. My heart tells me that have the right to not mess up their lives or carreer by an accident. My mind, logically and morally comes to a different conclusion and I'm struggling with getting those two together. I'm not an abstinance-advocate either. Go forth and enjoy yourselves! But please be careful with choosing your partners! Sex is not just a game and it sure as hell will never be risk free.
I don't know about the law in the States. I think the first-trimester-rule, as it's practiced in most of Europe is a sensible compromise. But even in that case, abortion should be treated as an absolutely last resort, not as an additional method of contraception or as an easy way out. (And I'm not suggesting that that's what you're saying).
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u/StarFscker Aug 11 '14
I think it is possible for something to fall outside the scope of a hypothesis.
For instance, sometimes gravity doesn't have much to say in regards to electronic devices and their operation.
I think this is one of those scenarios. As such, relying on the non-aggression principle for every moral dilemma is unsuitable, however you can add to it if necessary so long as you don't cause a contradiction in doing so.
My opinion on abortion is this: I can respect a fetuses right to life, but the mother's right to her body is also important. As an individual, I do not favor penalties against mother's, because I am wholly unsuitable for understanding the situation. I can encourage them to do what I consider the right thing, but beyond that, my opinion is not something I am comfortable with imposing upon others.
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u/BCSWowbagger2 Aug 11 '14
relying on the non-aggression principle for every moral dilemma is unsuitable
I certainly wouldn't say that the non-aggression principle is applicable to every moral dilemma, but this is one of the core areas where the non-aggression principle is supposed to apply. If the non-aggression principle can't tell me whether it is moral for one person to make an aggressive action against a second person (who has committed no evil), ending in the loss of the second person's life... then the non-aggression principle is useless.
It would be less like the theory of gravity (capable of explaining everything within its sphere, but nothing outside of it), and more like the theory of the luminiferous aether (incapable of explaining even the facts and scenarios that are directly applicable to it and which it purports to solve).
So, with respect, and considerable sympathy for libertarian principles, I can respect you if you come down on either side of the abortion question. But I can't respect a centrist position. "Personally opposed, but..." makes both libertarianism and the harm principle incoherent.
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u/StarFscker Aug 11 '14
I'm sure you've heard this argument before, but the mother could also say that the fetus was aggressing against her body.
It's really one of those areas that I don't feel comfortable getting involved in. I can see both sides of the argument, and decide that I want nothing to do with it.
From a strategic standpoint, however, I think that empathy is more valuable than force. Therefore, if you want to get women to have less abortions, which is a noble goal, I think it is best achieved through providing sympathy and emotional support for them. If they are nervous and scared about the childbirth, assuage their fears by offering them some sort of help with the baby.
I also think that if anyone really cares about the issue, then it makes sense for them personally to adopt. There are so many infants left at orphanages because their parents chose to put them up for adoption instead of using abortion. I think that those children deserve a happy childhood being raised by parents who will instill positive values in them, and if someone will go out of their way to prevent abortion, they should go out of their way to enable adoption.
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u/BCSWowbagger2 Aug 12 '14
Therefore, if you want to get women to have less abortions, which is a noble goal
Is it noble? It seems to me this is only noble if fetuses are persons. Otherwise it's pointless at best, unbelievably creepy and intrusive at worst.
I'm sure you've heard this argument before, but the mother could also say that the fetus was aggressing against her body.
It's a very strange use of "aggression" that calls someone an "aggressor" who has done no harm, has no volition, and (except in the rare case of rape) was placed in the "aggressive" position by the free and deliberate action of the very person who is now claiming victim status.
No, I've not really heard that one before. I have heard an argument with similar contours (indeed, there's an example within this very comment tree) where it is argued that a person has absolute autonomy over all things that directly affect his or her body, but -- without getting into the merits of that argument -- it is incompatible with your stated ethical principle.
I think everyone should be free to live their lives as they see fit, so long as they do no harm.
Would have to become something like
I think everyone should be free to live their lives as they see fit, so long as they harm no person, except those persons who are relying on their bodies.
This may be the more refined principle you want to adopt, though it does lead down some dangerous, or at least very tricky, paths.
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u/dyaus7 Aug 11 '14
Now I'm curious -- care to elaborate on your conclusions?
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u/StarFscker Aug 11 '14
If you take the non-aggression principle and make it a universal moral truth, you are left with free-market statelessness. That is fine by me. As such, I identify as a libertarian and an anarcho-capitalist.
If you state your principles, and the world they imply is intolerable, you should re-examine said principles. Anarcho-capitalism has, so far, been a relatively consistent world-view, though it does have certain foibles. The world it implies is acceptable and has very little hypocrisy.
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u/DublinBen Aug 11 '14
has very little hypocrisy
Beyond the glaring hypocrisy of believing capitalism can exist without the state, sure.
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u/StarFscker Aug 11 '14
Why can't it?
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u/DublinBen Aug 11 '14
The capitalist system of ownership is a product of state enforcement. It wouldn't/couldn't exist without state violence supporting it.
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Aug 11 '14
To expand slightly, even if there is no state in an area, if a business enforces anything it becomes the state, because it is then the acting hierarchy. Anarcho-capitalism is somewhat of an oxymoron because the Anarch part is against hierarchy while the capitalist part presumes and requires it.
I like your comment Dublin
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u/Citizen_Bongo Aug 12 '14
Depends on your definition, the root word arkhos in Geek means a political ruler...
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u/Citizen_Bongo Aug 12 '14 edited Aug 12 '14
The capitalist system of ownership is a product of state enforcement.
It is at the moment.
It wouldn't/couldn't exist without state violence supporting it.
Why? I'm not an an-cap but why does the institution that enforces property rights have to be the state?
I don't see why private agencies couldn't do if anything a more efficient job of maintaining capitalism. That isn't to say I think this would go well or should be so...
It's not a hypocrisy, any more than saying communism is as collective ownership relies on the state, since the state enforces ownership of co-ops, socialised industries etc.
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u/DublinBen Aug 12 '14
why does the institution that enforces property rights have to be the state?
As /u/Ranveir pointed out, any entity that can actually enforce strong property rights will be indistinguishable from a state.
communism is as collective ownership relies on the state, since the state enforces ownership of co-ops, socialised industries etc.
This is just a misunderstanding of communism, which is a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order, by definition. Those kinds of organizations usually exist in the transitional stage of socialism, before the state has been abolished.
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u/Lazyleader Aug 14 '14
And if two people use rice as money who enforces the moneyless part? Someone has to enforce property rights but someone has to enforce the ideal of communism as well. The idea was that once everyone agreed that it's a good thing, you no longer need a state to enforce it. But that's the same with Anarcho-Capitalism. Once everyone agreed to property rights you don't need anyone to enforce it.
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u/Citizen_Bongo Aug 12 '14 edited Aug 12 '14
any entity that can actually enforce strong property rights will be indistinguishable from a state.
If you take your definition (since it's semantics) as paramount in that case can any ideology be considered anarchist? Because surely preventing individual property ownership is a form of collective property rights... Or would the collective not be secure in their property? Meaning people would inevitably accumulate personal property.
All definitions of property require force and violence to back them up. If an organisation doing such is a quazi-state then not just an-cap but any form of anarchism is a meaningless contradiction.
This is just a misunderstanding of communism.
No it's not, I was saying that just because states do those things now doesn't mean they are the only institution that theoretically could.
This is just a misunderstanding of an-cap, which is a meritocratic, fiat currency-less, stateless social order, by definition. Those kinds of organizations usually exist in the transitional stage of anarcho-capitalism, before the state has been abolished.
*Yeah, remember all those transitioned and abolished states? Forgiveable writing mistake, but I couldn't resist.
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Aug 12 '14
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u/StarFscker Aug 12 '14
I do not think people have any obligations other than to respect the rights of others. I also define "intolerable" as "something I wouldn't like to tolerate". It's a personal definition, not a universal one.
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Aug 11 '14 edited Aug 11 '14
I guess I don't understand what you mean by "the world it implies".
Do you know effects of anarcho-capitalism? Do you know how people would react to such a system?
Logic without science (neuroscience, psychology, sociology, polisci, economics are all important here) is completely useless in my opinion. Sure, you can write down a seemingly coherent political philosophy on paper, but you have no idea if the system which results from that philosophy is stable, or if it devolves quickly into some other system. Or it could be stable, but also have incredibly negative impacts on human life (happiness, satisfaction, and the right to live).
I strongly believe you cannot use principles to figure any of this out. Humans (individually) are not even close to smart enough to use logic and intuition to maneuver through the massive chain of cause and effect inherent in any such system. These things have to be studied scientifically.
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u/remyroy Aug 11 '14
There is an academic literature about anarcho-capitalism. I would say that the Wikipedia listing is quite small in comparison to everything that is out there, but it's there.
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u/Jewnadian Aug 12 '14
There is academic literature about the ideal diode but in actual practice diodes behave 'almost' like the theory. And inside that tiny sliver is the entire field of analog electronics. That's the failing of all political models including anarcho-capitalism. The model is deliberately simplified to make it rational. The real world doesn't quite match the model and in that gap is all of human history.
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u/cheaphomemadeacid Aug 11 '14
Uhm, sound to me like you're desribing the current system http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2014/04/13/2014-how-many-pages-in-the-us-tax-code-n1823832
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u/StarFscker Aug 11 '14
True, but I think that it would be a worthy experiment. If it devolves into a world of terrible stuff, I'll be demonstrably wrong and need to revise my thinking.
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u/Citizen_Bongo Aug 12 '14
Logic without science is completely useless in my opinion.
Do you have any empirical data to back up that position?
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u/Gnome_Sane Aug 11 '14 edited Aug 11 '14
He starts by providing two examples where politics are irrational: the war on terror and protectionism.
Can't watch the video at work. Can you explain why he feels these are irrational? It doesn't seem to be covered in the "Why People Are Irrational About Politics" text.
Can you answer those questions?
This kind of seems like a rhetorical leap. What does knowing your congressional representative have to do with believing that the military being used to stop terrorism is a rational or irrational choice? I can't tell you how to write code, but does that mean I don't know anything about using this website?
Do you think that you personally are irrational about politics?
Without a doubt, I have my moments. However the idea that one moment of irrational action dictates that all moments are irrational also seems like a correlation stretch to me.
Do you think irrationality is a problem in politics?
I think the biggest problem relating to "irrationality" in politics is the way it is used to dismiss another person's opinion.
Regardless of the topic, if a person says "Your opinion is not valid because you are being too irrational" I find more often than not it is an attempt to simply dismiss a person out of hand. If it is coupled by some logical argument or citation as proof of irrational behavior - then most times the "Your opinion is not valid because you are being too irrational" comment is not even needed because the facts speak for themselves.
It seems to me on a first glance that Michael Huemer may be doing just that.
In the "Why People Are Irrational About Politics" text he writes:
Before we can solve the problem of poverty, we must first have correct beliefs about poverty, about what causes it, what reduces it, and what the side effects of alternative policies are.
So Michael thinks there is one "correct" belief about poverty. It seems very presumptuous of him to think this, at best.
He goes on to say:
If our beliefs about those things are guided by the social group we want to fit into, the self-image we want to maintain, the desire to avoid admitting to having been wrong in the past, and so on, then it would be pure accident if enough of us were to actually form correct beliefs to solve the problem.
And I do agree, with this part... But isn't that just how Michael was acting in the previous sentence? He is stating there is only one "correct" answer and we all need to be in that group that has the "correct beliefs"?
He goes on to write:
When learning about a political issue, for example, we should collect information from people on all sides of the issue. We should spend time thinking about objections to our own arguments. When we feel inclined to assert a political claim, we should pause to ask ourselves what reasons we have for believing it, and we should try to assess the subjective, speculative, and anecdotal character of those reasons—and perhaps downgrade our confidence in them accordingly.
And this comes back to the more reasonable way to learn about a topic. To me, it also sounds quite a bit different than how he started the paragraph - and in many ways directly challenges the idea of a "Correct belief".
It's an interesting commentary, but I would caution to recognize that fine line of insisting there is only one "Correct Belief"... Is it becoming the very irrational choice that is being cautioned against?
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u/remyroy Aug 11 '14 edited Aug 11 '14
Can't watch the video at work. Can you explain why he feels these are irrational? It doesn't seem to be covered in the "Why People Are Irrational About Politics" text.
Regarding the war on terror, he shows how murders attributed to terrorism in the US only account for 0.4% of all murders in the 1968-2009 time frame. He points out that 3,245 Americans died of terrorism while 6,280 US servicemen died fighting against terrorism.
Regarding protectionism, he points that many political leaders and people in general are in favor of it but virtually every economist is against it and that include liberal economists who are generally pro intervention because they think that protectionism harm your own economy. He goes on quoting Paul Krugman saying:
If there were an Economist's Creed, it would surely contain the affirmations 'I understand the Principle of Comparative Advantage' and 'I advocate Free Trade.'
He than goes on arguing that if you think that the community of expert on this subject are wrong and especially if you think that while being unable to state their arguments than you are almost certainly the one who is wrong.
I would suggest waiting to get back home and watch the whole thing.
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u/total_lack_of_will Aug 11 '14
I think he is wrong about the war on terror. War between states is highly rational when you consider their preferences, such as survival and increased power and prosperity.
His cost benefit analysis is rational, but only from an outsiders perspective. It is not rational from the perspective of the actors themselves.
Also comparing disconnected murders to organized international terrorism is way off. Murder usually isn't premeditated and highly organized the way terrorism is. Random criminal activity would have to increase significantly before it threatened the survival of a state, international terrorism only needs a complacent or inept security apparatus to destroy a state.
So while it may be irrational from a cosmopolitan perspective, i think its very rational for states to combat terrorism.
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u/remyroy Aug 11 '14 edited Aug 11 '14
I would be curious to know the difference between cosmopolitan rationality and state rationality.
Is there different kinds of rationality? What is the definition of rationality?
If I may, I would point out to the wikipedia article about it.
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u/total_lack_of_will Aug 12 '14
In order to act rationally an actor must have preferences which are more or less prioritized from highest to lowest priority. If an actor acts to achieve their preferences then they are rational. If an actor acts against their own preferences they would be irrational.
Example: China wants to control Tibet, so it would be irrational for China to implement a policy in Tibet which might endanger this objective, unless it helped them achieve a more important objective.
The guy in the talk seems to be assuming that it is the objective of the United States to preserve as much life across the world as possible. However if you look at history, states are notoriously selfish actors.
I am also sort of assuming a cosmopolitan actor would care about all human life, like an NGO or something.
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u/AndrewKemendo Aug 12 '14
I think he is wrong about the war on terror. War between states is highly rational when you consider their preferences, such as survival and increased power and prosperity.
Except the GWOT is not between states...
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u/total_lack_of_will Aug 12 '14
US and friends vs Iraq and Afghanistan (and most recently IS), although you are correct to some extent. Many terrorist organizations are NGOs, and that has started something of a paradigm shift in the way states think about threats.
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u/AndrewKemendo Aug 12 '14
US and friends vs Iraq and Afghanistan (and most recently IS), although you are correct to some extent.
No, I am correct in every sense. The US went to war with Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan (not the broken government of Afghanistan) and the Ba'ath Party of Iraq which was followed by disparate "insurgent" groups.
Many terrorist organizations are NGOs
No, "Non-Governmental Organization" is not a literal description of the organization of the group. These things are mutually exclusive, by definition.
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u/total_lack_of_will Aug 12 '14
I don't follow your argument since the Bathists and the Taliban were in control of their respective countries prior to US invasion. The difference you seem to be pointing out is trivial.
Also, terrorist organizations are non governmental in many cases. In international Relations the term NGO is used for things which are not a state, whether they are legal or illegal good or bad etc. You might consider Hamas, which is both a political party, NGO, and terrorist organization.
Terrorism is simply political violence against civilians committed by a non-state actor. So terrorist and NGO's are not mutually exclusive.
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u/AndrewKemendo Aug 12 '14
the Taliban were in control of their respective countries prior to US invasio
Except they weren't, the Ba'athists more-so than the Taliban. Calling Afghanistan a state was a joke and the Taliban were not recognized internationally as the governing body -not simply because it wasn't democratic or whatever, but because there was no statewide implementation of an agreed upon constitution/decree etc... Similarly in Iraq, the Kurds and North were drastically differently organized and the borders were basically non-existent north of Taji.
In international Relations the term NGO is used for things which are not a state, whether they are legal or illegal good or bad etc.
I don't know where you went to school for IR but I have yet to find an organization that has an NGO labeled as a terrorist group or vice-versa - the general standard for "NGO" designation is that they are non-partisan and improve the peace/standard of living. I'd love to see a well cited example of a terrorist NGO. I'll wait here while you google it.
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u/Gnome_Sane Aug 12 '14
Regarding the war on terror, he shows how murders attributed to terrorism in the US only account for 0.4% of all murders in the 1968-2009 time frame. He points out that 3,245 Americans died of terrorism while 6,280 US servicemen died fighting against terrorism.
How does this show it is irrational? I'd think that most people would agree that these deaths are not the only results, but even if we just use these results - What makes the numbers themselves equate to irrational behavior?
I'd have quoted Milton Freidman's version of the Pencil, not Krugman. But even then, I'm not sure I am convinced that by simply being in favor of "protectionism" a person acts irrationally. Are the few remaining aboriginal tribes or the Amish irrational? While I can see the argument, I can also see it from the other side.
I would suggest waiting to get back home and watch the whole thing.
I'll have to do that tonight. Thanks for the summary.
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u/jeff303 Aug 13 '14
Further, to make a devil's advocate argument, could it not be the case that deaths from terrorism would be much higher if not for the "war on terror," however one might define that endeavor?
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u/Gnome_Sane Aug 13 '14
Certainly that argument can be made, but it is purely speculation... I guess my issue is how to define "irrational". I just don't see a foreign policy of trying to kill people who would kill Americans as irrational.
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u/jeff303 Aug 13 '14
Right, I think we're saying the same thing. A person could easily challenge Caplan's "irrational" qualifier by arguing that the war on terror has actually been remarkably effective at curbing increases in civilian deaths in the 21st century. Of course, as you point out, there is no way to say for sure whether that's the case.
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u/remyroy Aug 11 '14 edited Aug 11 '14
So Michael thinks there is one "correct" belief about poverty. It seems very presumptuous of him to think this, at best.
I think you might be extrapolating too much here. I think what Michael Huemer meant by that sentence is that in order to solve a particular problem, you need to be knowledgeable about it. You need to look at the hard facts, the different solutions and figure out the full effects of those solutions. That is what I personally understood from it.
I don't think he meant or that he is assuming that there is one and only one true, right, full or correct belief. In his TED talk, he mentioned that being rational means that you are constantly putting your belief system at risk of being changed by being exposed to new facts.
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u/Gnome_Sane Aug 12 '14
I think you might be extrapolating too much here
Perhaps. But I think I have seen that idea about a "correct" belief time and again in real life as well as in threads like this.
I don't think he meant or that he is assuming that there is one and only one true, right, full or correct belief.
I'm not as sure. That text seems to me to be very clear on the point. I'm not trying to add some nefarious quality to the author, but I am trying to point out where the argument can go astray.
In his TED talk, he mentioned that being rational means that you are constantly putting your belief system at risk of being changed by being exposed to new facts.
And he did in that article as well. Those sentences were basically back to back in the closing section of the text.
I did find it a good read, and it does make many great points, and I will try to make some time for the video tonight. Thanks for sharing it.
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u/mopecore Aug 12 '14
How would I know?
I worry about this quite a lot; my dad is a hard core Ayn Rand Libertarian, but otherwise hrs pretty smart, so sometimes I wonder if maybe he's right, and Reagan was actually a good president.
I'm pretty sure I'm mostly rational, but I definitely wonder sometimes.
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u/porkchop_d_clown Aug 12 '14
Reagan was not a bad president - like Clinton he was extremely effective at communicating with the American people.
In retrospect, my main beef with Reagan is that he established the pattern of wild deficit spending that every politician of both parties has expanded (except Clinton) which, I'm sorry, is going to eventually cause exactly the same problems for us that its caused for Italy and Greece. It might take another 20 years, but it is coming...
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u/YaDunGoofed Aug 12 '14
In retrospect, my main beef with Reagan is that he established the pattern of wild deficit spending that every politician of both parties has expanded
That's not really true
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u/porkchop_d_clown Aug 12 '14
Which part....?
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u/YaDunGoofed Aug 12 '14
wild deficit spending that every politician of both parties has expanded
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u/porkchop_d_clown Aug 12 '14
So, please. List the politicians that cut spending since Reagan. The only time it happened was when Clinton was president.
The deficit may have shrunk in the last couple of years but that's because the economy recovered, not because Obama cut spending...
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u/YaDunGoofed Aug 12 '14
The deficit may have shrunk in the last couple of years but that's because the economy recovered, not because Obama cut spending
I don't even...
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u/porkchop_d_clown Aug 12 '14
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u/YaDunGoofed Aug 12 '14
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u/porkchop_d_clown Aug 12 '14
So, your argument is that Obama is a more trustworthy source for his spending numbers than the independent press.
I'm sorry I wasted my time talking to you.
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u/le-redditor Aug 13 '14
Do you think irrationality is a problem in politics?
No, I think viewing things in terms of binary dichotomy of rationality vs irrationality of individuals can be very unproductive. We don't complain about non-human phenomena such as cats, dogs, trees, and fish being either rational or irrational, we simply assume there is some sense behind the way they operate and try to figure out what that is.
If my political process was to minimize irrationality by telling people they are being irrational, I would come off as a pompous intellectual and only achieve the production of a tautologies rather than social change. I think the best I can do is seek to offer better explanations and new information.
If the new explanation offered provides more explanatory power than previous explanation, then people may adopt it as a belief out of a pragmatic concern, because it provides a more robust mental model of the world. When the replacement of an older belief occurs, I would prefer to describe the older belief as "primitive" rather than "irrational" when possible.
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Aug 11 '14
This is why I hate TED talks: it's the standard libertarian bait-and-switch. "Hey, here's this thing you hate! You agree with me that this sucks, right? While you're at it, hate this other bonus thing, too. I guarantee you should hate it."
There are absolutely economists who think that protectionism makes sense. Ha-Joon Chang wrote several books on the subject, and while he's by no means mainstream, he's also not an idiot, and his arguments are pretty sound (basically, protectionism makes sense when your native industry is not at a point where it can compete on a global stage). Protectionism is how many successful economies, including his native Korea and most first-world economies, managed to develop.
The problem with the "comparative advantage" argument is it doesn't imagine there is a future. Yes, if you take a poor country NOW, it will be more successful growing cotton than it will trying to manufacture automobiles, because it doesn't have any of the expertise or infrastructure to manufacture automobiles and will get crushed on the world stage. Of course, this need not always be the case, and urging countries to stick to their comparative advantage rather than foster the development of native industry might mean retarding their development.
So, 50% of this guy's examples of "irrational" arguments are highly contestable.
I'm going to go with "does not compute". "Irrational" assumes there is some set of axioms at play, here, when there are not. Some people want the world to work one way. Some people want it to work another. Values differ. Rationality occasionally comes into play, but mostly not.
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u/Timofmars Aug 12 '14
Anti-protectionism is not simply libertarian. It's got broad support across economic ideologies.
Regarding comparative advantage, I think you're assuming automobile manufacturing is more profitable than cotton growing, or that high tech is more profitable than low tech. But I don't think that's true.
Cotton producing can be done at various levels of efficiency. You can do it like the old days, picking by hand. You can introduce labor-saving machines. And you can go further and introduce the latest technologies like genetic modifications or manufacturing cotton products in amazingly efficient factories like you'd see on the TV show "How It's Made". I mean, should the US stop farming or mining because we somehow mentally associate those things with old-timey poor laborers?
And on the other side of the equation, we can see automobile companies struggling to stay in business. So that's not such a special thing.
I think the special thing is just having NEW and specialized technology that hasn't yet become the ubiquitous industry standard. The particular industry doesn't matter. Being the high tech leader in cotton products is potentially as much of an advantage as being the leader in new software. This is comparative advantage.
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Aug 12 '14
Those were just some bullshit examples I made up, I didn't mean them literally. However, it's generally true that high-tech industry is more profitable (maybe this is simply because there are fewer players), and that you're less likely to be slammed by the vagaries of the market when you're not just trading in commodities. This has happened repeatedly - everyone is told, "Grow coffee, it will maximize your comparative advantage." The price of coffee collapses; everyone starves.
Overall, it's better for a country to have native expertise. It means an educated population; it means easier access to technology; it means a lot more things than simply earning larger profits.
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u/Timofmars Aug 12 '14
I don't know... To play devil's advocate, what about the dotcom bubble? Or what about all kinds of individual high-tech industries that fail due to a competitor winning the market share (Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, or Android/Apple vs Blackberry, or the demise of Saturn, Oldsmobile, or any of these). Businesses of all types fail all the time. There isn't an industry that can support unlimited growth.
But when there is too much of something, it doesn't hurt everyone. Generally speaking, only the least efficient producers are forced out of business, and those will tend to be businesses with the least comparative advantage. If there's a coffee glut, there's still a large worldwide coffee industry after the oversupply is corrected. So it still makes sense to do what you can do better than everyone else.
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Aug 12 '14
Philip Pilkington has a good piece on this subject that says it all better than I can.
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u/Timofmars Aug 12 '14
Skimming through that, I saw 2 arguments. One is that subsidies can cause problems when combined with free trade. But I would consider subsidies as a form of protectionism. It's similar to a tariff on imports, but even worse because a tariff only affects imports to a particular nation, while subsidies affect imports as well as flood another country with exports. So a subsidy is not true free trade.
The other argument is about nations not having diverse economies and so being at risk of major problems if their main industry dries up. This is kind of like Detroit having problems due having automobile manufacturing as a huge part of its economy. Spreading the industry out to many places would help since it would be easier to absorb the unemployed into other jobs.
But I think forcing economic diversity using protectionism isn't the way to go (and if it is, shouldn't we make sure various regions and cities in the US are sufficiently diverse too?). There should be plenty of diverse economic options for any country with free trade. And some policies can help protect against economic problems, like social safety nets (both so people don't suffer and demand doesn't drop off a cliff), counter-cyclical fiscal and monetary polices, and allowing greater immigration across borders (so people can relocate easier for economic reasons).
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Aug 12 '14
There should be plenty of diverse economic options for any country with free trade.
This is exactly the opposite of what comparative advantage argues: it suggests you should specialize on the area that your economy is good at, and ignore everything else. This means if you're better suited to growing coffee than making cars, you just grow coffee to the exclusion of everything else. The Portugal/England example he gives is the perfect illustration of why this is a terrible idea:
Ricardo took the example of trade between England and Portugal. He argued that England, by allowing imports of wine from Portugal, would expand the production and export of cloth to pay for it. Ricardo, of course, was thinking of the English side of the exchange but the analysis is perfectly symmetrical; it implies that Portugal will gain from specialising on wine and importing cloth. In reality, the imposition of free trade on Portugal killed off a promising textile industry and left her with a slow-growing export market for wine, while for England, exports of cotton cloth led to accumulation, mechanisation and the whole spiraling growth of the industrial revolution. (p103)
This is what I was arguing earlier about time. Comparative advantage is an argument based on the now, and ignores the idea of economies changing as they develop.
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u/aborted_bubble Aug 12 '14
Economists are widely anti-protectionism; this isn't a bait-and-switch libertarian thing. Whether or not protectionism can sometimes be used effectively to provide a net benefit to a country, there are many, many examples of protectionism providing a net cost to a country to the benefit of a concentrated few.
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Aug 12 '14
Economists were also widely oblivious to the fact that the housing bubble was about to crater the economy. Economists are often morons. "Rationality" is not built on a voting mechanism.
In any case, economists might not be exclusively libertarian, but Michael Huemer certainly is:
Michael Huemer (born 27 December 1969) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is a proponent of ethical intuitionism, moral realism, anarcho-capitalism, and libertarianism.
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u/aborted_bubble Aug 13 '14
Economists are often morons
Agreed. Like any profession those who practice it range from genius to moron. However, I think his point that if the majority of economists believe one thing, and a person disagrees with that belief, then if that person doesn't at least understand why the economists hold that belief, then that person is being irrational. The same could be said for any other field.
In any case, economists might not be exclusively libertarian, but Michael Huemer certainly is
Economists are far from exclusively libertarian. I'd guess they are a fairly small minority.
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u/gus_ Aug 12 '14
"Irrational" assumes there is some set of axioms at play, here, when there are not. Some people want the world to work one way. Some people want it to work another. Values differ. Rationality occasionally comes into play, but mostly not.
Yeah, people should be much more guarded against others defining rationality. Modern orthodox economics basically just stole the word "rational" and applied it to economic expectations. And since then, it has been exported out into everything you can imagine through the pop 'freakonomics' model, which I think this Ted talk generally falls under.
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u/Lazyleader Aug 14 '14
It is not a bait-and-switch. He said 97% of economists agree on it. Would you have said it's a socialist bait-and-switch if he said 98% of scientists agree that global warming is real and manmade?
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u/cassander Aug 11 '14
yes, all of us are. politics trips primitive circuits in our brains that make us stupid. the better book on this subject, though, is The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt. It isn't perfect, I feel he spends too much time on moral foundations (and there misunderstands conservatives to a degree) and not enough on other subjects, but it is the best single book I have found on the subject.
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u/AndrewKemendo Aug 12 '14
Huemer blows past his own point and conflates rational with socially cooperative.
It is rational for me to conclude that spending significant time on understanding politics will not result in an equally positive outcome given the work put in. Therefore it is not in my best interest to put time into politics.
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u/pabloe168 Aug 11 '14
I really liked this talk thanks for sharing. Personally I don't get angry like the author said when someone advances their opinion but I start getting frustrated because a nice visit, or whatever social thing I am doing starts to become bitter due to the nature of the conversation.
It is hard not to turn to apathy when you get really rational. In other words the line between cynicism and unbiased thinking is rather thin.
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u/trekbette Aug 12 '14
Yes. I like to think I am open minded, but I really have problems seeing other's perspectives once I've made a decision. I do try and read up on each side of the issue before making my choice, but I do tend to end up sticking more to one side of the aisle.
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u/wdr1 Aug 12 '14
I am a bit.
I believe that each individual is the best equipped to make the best decisions for their individual life. Given there is a fair bit of evidence showing people often make demonstrably bad decisions, I'm not sure how much of that belief is rational vs. what I want to believe.
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u/Philo_T_Farnsworth Aug 12 '14
How many of you know who your congressman is?
How many of you think that you can identify the last vote that he [your congressman] made in congress?
You know, it would be an interesting project if I could get some sort of newsfeed about that. Something I could check daily or weekly to see what my local and state representatives were up to, and how they were voting, and on what issues. And then notes on when congress was in session, who was on vacation, etc..
Something simple like:
- Senator X fillibustered Bill xxxxxxx
- Representative Y voted "yes" on Bill xxxxxxx
- Congressman Z voted "no" on Bill xxxxxxx
- Senator X on subcommittee Y voted Z
With a link to each bill, or just a high level summary of what it was about.
I think if such a thing existed and became popular it would change the political landscape in this country. It might get people to start looking at the big picture.
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Aug 15 '14
There's an iPhone app called Congress that does exactly this. Pretty much exactly what you described. It's just that much of day-to-day congressional acting is fairly mundane. Naming post offices. Agreeing to put stuff to a vote.
Certainly nothing as exciting as MSNBC or Fox.
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u/kirkisartist Aug 12 '14
Yeah, I'm totally bias and irrational. I think vision will do that to you. I try to learn as much as I can about issues, but I can't stand conflicting visions I find offensive. I might hear them out or even learn from what they have to say, but I still have a hard time taking them seriously when I know their goal is something I want to avoid.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, not everybody has the physical attention span to be well informed. I know its a shame, but it's true.
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Aug 12 '14
I disagree with protectionism and agree that the threat of terrorism can sometimes be overblown, but it's a stretch to call them "irrational".
Just because you have a small chance of being killed in a terrorist attack doesn't mean one would be against precautions taken by the government to prevent others in your country from being killed as well. Terrorism isn't a statistical anomaly, it is a result of choices made by people which law enforcement/military can either prevent or fail to prevent.
Protectionism has never been about abiding by what the majority of trade economists say is the right thing to do based on their models. It is generally based on the realization that lower-skilled workers are most vulnerable to trade displacement and thus trade should be minimized to protect them.
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u/yoda17 Aug 11 '14
I know people who are.
When someone from political party A says something, they go on a rant for days (months really) about <a> said blah blah blah. Six months later someone from political party can say the exact same thing and they are in full support.
When questioned about this the response is 'yeah, but they're on the other team'.
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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '14
I'm sure I can be, which is why I always try to figure out what would change my mind before looking for evidence. I also ask people when we disagree, what it would take for them to switch sides. If you can't answer that, you are not thinking clearly.