An open letter from a dinosaur

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Dear Progressives,

Turn-about being fair play, I figured that I'd write a mirrior of Bean's post But where to start?


A couple months back Johnathan Korman wrote an excellent post on the poles of american politics. In it was the following line ...the correct social order is natural but not effortless — without devotion to the correct social order, conservatives believe we devolve into barbarism.

Do you genuinely believe that if you'd been transported back to fifteenth-century London as a baby, you'd realize all on your own that witch-burning was wrong, slavery was wrong, that every sentient being ought to be in your circle of concern? If so I'd like to know why,because as far as I can tell Homo Sapiens today are no more mentally capable than the Homo Sapiens of 500 years ago. I assert that our current high quality of life has more to do with culture and technology than it does with any inherent superiority to those who came before us. The fact of the matter is that we live in a civil society where, for the most part, people raise their kids to obey the law, pay their taxes, and generally not kill each-other without a damn good reason. It is this state of civility that conservatives seek to conserve.

The majority of these conservation efforts focus on individual and family responsibilities/virtue. They operate on the theory that if you want innovation you need to reward innovation. If you want virtue reward virtue. If you want stable kids reward stable families, because barbarity is never more than a generation or two away. If you want good social order we must reward virtue and punish vice.

It is in this space that intent runs head-long into perceived intent, and I start to turn into my grandad...

Using anfalicious' recent example, I am simply flabbergasted that a "post-gendered society" is even a topic of discussion outside of science fiction. Feminism has moved from arguing that women should be treated equal and have the same rights as men, etc... To that that men and women should be interchangeable. I am expected ignore the fact that the burden of reproduction is carried disproportionately by the female of the species. I am expected to ignore the differences in biology. To ignore the different strengths and weaknesses of both and how they compliment each other. I am expected to be genderless. I am not therefore I am a misogynist.

Global warming is based on computer models that keep failing. Catastrophic predictions are constantly proven wrong and (surprise, surprise) the only solution ever proposed is higher taxes and greater regulatory powers. I suspect that a dog is being wagged therefore I am a "denier".

I don't want to live in a world of "Honor Killings" and medieval torture and I refuse to coddle or kow-tow to those that do therefore I am a Islamiphobe.

I oppose gun control therefore I want children to die.

I support voter ID laws therefore I am a Racist.

Fascist.

Terrorist.

Killer.

I could go on...

These are labels that have been applied to me by my so-called intellectual and moral "betters" in an effort to shut me up.

I am a dinosaur. Hear me roar.

Comments

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Aw, I was hoping for more platitudes and adages, but I guess now you're essentially down to "NO! YOU!"

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I would too.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I keep hearing general accusations on our government without anything to back it up. Things like building wind turbines and promoting cleaner emission vehicles and industries isn't just over greenhouse effect it's an effort to curb our over reliance on fossil fuels, particularly oil.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

What portion of what population? Please be more specific.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm just glad someone found something useful out of my contributions ;)

So you're very welcome.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

This message has been brought to you by:

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that conservatives did not so much support the reward of traditional families as they do the brutalization of non-traditional families. One of the problems with the Roman definition of "barbarian" is that it applies to everyone who does not fit a rigid paradigm of what is considered to be positive. Also, conservatives tend to oppose innovation when it leads to the advancement of people other than themselves.

I do not think that people call you a fascist in order to shut you up. It probably simply reflects a value system that rejects fascism.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Good point. Whachamacallits cannot be considered prisoners because they do not qualify for homo sapiens status.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

They expect to be thrown to the lions any day now.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of an incident that occurred when women naval recruits had to go through the same degrading hazing rituals as the men. Men would never complain about that kind of thing because divulging the details of the hazing would be an additional degradation.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

For you, I'll write a follow up.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

You display an understandable misunderstanding of what peer review means, and what it actually does.


Do what the other hard sciences do. Release your raw data along with your findings to allow review not just by your peers but by every one.

Peer review is at best pointless and at worst counter productive in an environment where your peers are all predisposed to agree with your conclusions.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Do what the other hard sciences do.

The "other hard sciences" also use peer review. That's the point. Peer review is the first level of sifting, a basic level of checking. The "raw data" is also available so that it can be looked at and hopefully replicated by independent experimentation, leading to support for the conclusion being made, or the original experimenters having to revise their conclusion.



Release your raw data along with your findings to allow review not just by your peers but by every one.

The papers are available to anyone who wants them. They include information about methodology and should allow others to replicate the experiment and gather their own data. In most cases they also include much of the "raw data", and when space does not allow that, the data is usually obtainable by request or is often published elsewhere, usually on the website of the university or other body sponsoring the research.

That said, once you have the raw data... now what? Do you have the training and expertise to properly analyze it? We have certainly seen no shortage of biased actors presenting raw data and claiming that it says something that it does not. (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1679123.html) Raw data is meaningless without the expertise with which to say "this data lends support to X conclusion."

Without the relevent expertise (or worse, with an ideological axe to grind,) we end up with a situation like the so-called Lenski Affair (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lenski_affair), where Andrew Schlafley threw a temper tantrum over experimental evidence that flew in the face of his young-earth creationist beliefs, demanding the "raw data" (in reality demanding access to highly dangerous bacteria that he lacked any sort of training or clearance to handle) in an attempt to downplay the findings he disagreed with.

But like I said, that data IS out there. Have at it. But after having the data, one must come to a conclusion based on that data. If one's conclusion ends up flying in the face of the established scientific consensus, that more than likely means that one lacks the training to understand the data, rather than that almost every scientist in the world is wrong and one just happened, magically, to outthink ALL of them.



an environment where your peers are all predisposed to agree with your conclusions

You don't know many scientists, do you. ;)

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming that you tossed all those predictions of snowfall being a thing of the past from back in 2000 down the memory hole.

Who said that?
Falsifiability is the idea that a statement, hypothesis, or theory is false if some empirical observation can be shown to be true. It is one of the most basic concepts in scientific inquiry. Hypotheses must be tested for truth/falsifiability and that test must be reproducible.

Umm no science doesn't function on falsifiability. Feyerabend, Kuhn, and Lakatos would be helpful reading.
"As a result of this discussion, Galileo was able to demonstrate that the very same "fact" used by the Tower Argument itself - the stone falling at the base - also supported the idea that the Earth was rotating, since any evidence that the geostaticist could appeal to would likewise support the alternative (this is actually an example of underdetermination by data and the theory-ladenness of observational terms). The naive empiricist has no means of deciding between these two rival theories and hence any choice made by Galileo would violate this form of empiricism. If our methodology insists that only those decisions made on the basis of evidence can be called rational then Galileo and the Aristotelians alike were irrational to prefer geokineticism or geostaticism respectively. We are thus forced either to give up on calling Galileo's behaviour rational or else admit that naive empiricism is inadequate."

As mikeyx, already pointed out the IPCC's consistent failure to predict actual conditions falsifies their models. And rather than admit this fact and risk loosing their funding they've taken to manipulating their primary data to conform to their conclusions.

Where did he point that out? What evidence do you have of the manipulation of data?
The logical fallacy is obvious, but I wouldn't expect a leftist to notice because for most failure of reality to conform to expectations indicates a problem with reality rather than the expectations.

Oh the irony of someone committing an ad hominem while harping simultaneously on logical fallacies.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that you will.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming that you tossed all those predictions of snowfall being a thing of the past from back in 2000 down the memory hole.

This was the consensus of the scientific community or are you just picking out an isolated extreme example?

As mikeyx, already pointed out the IPCC's consistent failure to predict actual conditions falsifies their models. And rather than admit this fact and risk loosing their funding they've taken to manipulating their primary data to conform to their conclusions.

There have been problems with the IPCC, but nothing to suggest a wide-spread conspiracy.

The logical fallacy is obvious, but I wouldn't expect a leftist to notice because for most failure of reality to conform to expectations indicates a problem with reality rather than the expectations.

You made a big deal of how conservatives receive blanket judgment from liberals and then you go and do the exact same thing.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I read every one of Orwell's novels and loved them. "Slog." Sheesh.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

That warming may have slowed or stopped over the last 12 or so years doesn't necessarily disprove global warming.

True dat. There's plenty of ice core data that suggests many changes didn't happen with gradual warming over many decades, but rather flipped suddenly. One ice age ended (went from heavy snows associated with ice ages to rather slight snows associated with periods of glacial retreat) in three years.

The researcher who found that core kinda flipped out. Then again, if I had made that discovery, I might have flipped a bit, too. Not heartening at all.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I know right?

and don't even get me started on his poetry and non-fiction.

A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;

But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.

And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.

All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.

But girl’s bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.

It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.

I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;

And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn’t born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

"No catastrophe?" What about the heat wave of '03 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave), the hottest summer since 1540? Almost 15,000 people died of "heat-related" causes.

David King notes that heat and cold are treated differently in the records. Rain and snow are measured in accumulated inches over an entire season, but heat and cold are daily records. If instead of showing the high for the day and moving on, one noted the length of time the temperature never fell below X, that heat wave was one of the most destructive climatic events in recorded history.

. . . but don't let that distract us from the very important work centralizing all political power into an unaccountable technocracy.

I've never understood this reasoning. Climate scientists are anything but "unaccountable." They have to defend their conclusions against the harshest critics of all, their peers. Seriously, science is anything but a laid-back paycheck. It is as cutthroat as any corporate board room, and sometimes even nastier. There's a reason for the phrase, "Science advances one funeral at a time."

This constant review has made the IPCC conclusions weak at best; since no one can agree on the conclusions, they have low-balled the estimates on how bad things could get.

As for the technocracy, well, I really don't know how to comment. I personally favor low-tech, distributed, decentralized solutions (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1711249.html), but even these are going to need some funding, or at least biasing. Because of the nature of my preferred solutions, though, that funding can go to individuals—not scientists, not corporations—in ways that better everyone, the end user and the atmosphere.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

My fave was a toss-up between Coming Up For Air and Keep the Aspidestra Flying!. I would throw in A Clergyman's Daughter, but the homeless scene of keeping warm on a park bench seemed overly long to my high school eyes. Orwell never had a protagonist find a happy ending.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Kind of sort of.

The core premise that the current state of civility is fragile and thus protected is what makes them conservative. The distinction comes from disagreement about just what this "protection" should actually entail.

This of course exists in diametric opposition to the liberal assumption that all change is good change and that civility and morality, being absolutes, will persist in a world without consequence or responsibility.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I will get grief for this, but I think that the concept of a social conservative is actually contradictory. There is nothing in the definition of a conservative that allows for such nuance.


I disagree. I would argue that the core principal that makes conservatives "conservative" and liberals not is the idea that our current state of peace and prosperity is fragile.

Disagreement over just how fragile and in what way is where the distinctions between social conservatives, economic conservatives, and utilitarians, come from.

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

This of course exists in diametric opposition to the liberal assumption that all change is good change and that civility and morality, being absolutes, will persist in a world without consequence or responsibility.

That isn't a liberal assumption. Nice strawman.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

To convince someone of something they have already decided is not part of their worldview, therefore *wrong*, is not my failing. Because it's not my job.

This times a thousand ^