Political Theory

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Malachi — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 16:22:01 GMT

A decibillionaire? He's only made $100,000,000 of this hoax, not $100,000,000,000. At least not yet.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Anenome — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 02:27:46 GMT

Global warming is just a wondrous example of the alliance between intellectuals and government to engineer consent.

We've watch them build consent on anthropogenic global warming in the last 20 years, to the point now where the masses are convinced and they successfully tar the opposition as "global warming deniers."

One of the mechanisms behind this is indeed a political agenda among the owners of journals, for AGW can be used to justify further government intervention into many spheres of life, just as terrorism was used in the same way.

The other mechanism is via government grants. Those who live on gov grants live at the pleasure of the government and the government only gives grants, generally, for people towing the line on AGW. Those who play along, knowingly or unknowingly, can receive professorships, further grant money, and mainstream news coverage.

Just take a look at the trajectory of Al Gore. They gave the guy all sorts of lecture fees, a professorship, made him board member all over, and finally a nobel prize for delivering a slide show full of innacuracies and half-truths. He became a billionaire for promoting AGW.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Kakugo — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 10:45:41 GMT

I won't delve deep into the science behind so called man-made Global Warming. Suffice to say what my statistics professor once said "Given a small enough data sample you can prove anything". Statistics from the so called Climategate Scandal (not to mention observations from NOAA weather balloons and IR data from satellites) is what finally pinned the bad science behind man-made Global Warming, but I digress.

The backstage politics are what I was referring to. For over a decade the editors of the major scientific publications have willingly censored any criticism of the "officially approved" model. Accademic credentials didn't matter: widely respected statistics professors and climatologists had their works turned down for not embracing the dogma or even not embracing it with enough enthusiasm. It never happened before, or at least not a scale as seen in the last decade. This heavy handed censorship is what made many (myself included) very suspicious: wrong theories and models are regularly printed and confuted. That's what peer review is there for. The scientific community tossed ungodly amount of money and untold manpowers hours to investigate the Pons/Fleischmann claims of "cold fusion" in a Pd(Pt)/H2 system and nobody objected. Science is all about trial and error and debate. However the editors had one very, very big problem: the Internet. In recent times you don't need to publish a paper on Nature or another paper journal for it to be "official": you can put it on the Internet and make it freely available. There's now even a formal system to quote Internet articles which is accepted (albeit grudigingly) academically. That's how people became aware their doubts and second thoughts were shared by many of their peers. The small problem became a huge problem in the wake of the Climategate Scandal: contrary to popular opinions the real "smoking gun" were not the emails but the statistic models, heavily based on data "cherry picking". These models had never been made wholly available before, a huge no-no in peer review on which editors willingly turned a blind eye. As an Australian statistics professor tasked with examining the data said "Forget the smoking gun; this is a whole WMD arsenal with fingerprints all over it". How did the aforementioned editors reacted? They ignored the whole scandal, though their reputation suffered and Internet publishing is now threatening their previously unassailable position. Here one thing must be said: scientific publishing is not a free market, or at least it wasn't until very recently: it's owned lock, stock and barrel by a small number of hugely influential companies among which Elsevier is the most (in)famous. Famous because they own pretty much 80% of the market and infamous for the outrageous prices they charge. When you have such a concetrantion of power... well you know the drill.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Neodoxy — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 06:49:04 GMT

I agree. This encapsulates the pretentious liberal worldview that if only their people, the "smart" people, controlled society then everything would be okay and we'd all be skipping around holding hands. The thing that makes me cringe the most is when people talk about how the thing to be most afraid of is that "X percent of the population doesn't believe in evolution", when the fact is that science has practically nothing to do with politics beyond the global warming issue and oftentimes the people who are making this sort of statement are utterly ignorant of even mainstream economics which has to do with EVERYTHING political.

@Kakugo

Could you go further into depth with any insight you have into the science or politics behind global warming?

@Xahrx

Very well said.

@Supermario

As Xahrx stated, the more intelligent the person is, and the more the are surrounded by smart people, in a social position where they know and are consistently reminded of the fact that they are indeed smart, the more highly they think of themselves, the less likely they are to be receptive to criticism, and the more likely they are to try to just stroke their own egos and try to prove they are right above all else. Hard science is no different from the social sciences in which we find injustice and idiocy around here every day.

There's a saying which I find to be exceedingly true to many things in life:

"Science moves forward one funeral at a time"

As the old guard with set views move on, the new orthodoxy, the neodoxy which better represents the truth and evidence can move in, and so science, knowledge, and society moves forward.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Al_Gore the Idiot — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:48:56 GMT

at least scientists are honest and objective and yes... they would spend the people's money on something worthwhile that would make the human living conditions much better...

hmmm ... I'm not so sure. Just go ask the WTC scientists who worked for NIST.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Bogart — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:08:49 GMT

If people believe that Keynes was a scientist then scientists are not all that objective. But on to the point that someone can spend other peoples money extracted by coercion in a worthwhile matter. Worthwhile relative term and in a world of scarcity where almost all people and things have alternative uses, worthwhile is determined by the interractions of entrepreneurs and consumers and any other means will eventually lead to misallocations of resources and impoverishment of people.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Autolykos — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:56:55 GMT

supermario:
at least scientists are honest and objective

Always and necessary? Scientists never "play politics" when it comes to getting funding etc.?

supermario:
and yes... they would spend the people's money on something worthwhile that would make the human living conditions much better...

How do you know? Or is this implicitly a statement of belief as opposed to a factual claim?

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

supermario — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:00:31 GMT

at least scientists are honest and objective and yes... they would spend the people's money on something worthwhile that would make the human living conditions much better...

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

NonAntiAnarchist — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 19:32:27 GMT

If a bunch of scientists when into politics, then they wouldn't be scientists anymore - they'd be politicians with a trianing in science. I don't see this as progress.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Anenome — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:55:22 GMT

Sebastian:
Anenome:
The problem is an ill-system, not who is running it.

But the system was developed by those who run it.

Then why should we expect anything other than that it will reinforce the values of those who built it on those who try to work within it? We've seen example after example of people enter the system to try to change it and either fail to do so by sticking to their principles (Ron Paul) or end up gaining power at the cost of compromising their principles (say, Paul Ryan, etc.).

Republicans are forced to compromise with the system and would be unelectible if they became doctrinaire libertarians. That should tell you right there what's wrong with the system. It's predicated on anti-libertarian ideals and has literally trained the populace to only accept a particular set of policies from politicians.

Sebastian:
The ones who run it can change it for the better simply by reducing governmental intervention bit by bit will allow for more and more economic growth.

You'd think so, but this isn't what ends up happening because of the constraints and incentives on politicians. To get elected requires a lot of money and alliances with certain groups. That almost immediately turns each politician into an influence peddlar, and those who don't play the influence game simply weed themselves out by not thereby getting elected.

The ones who would enter office to cut its power back are immediately marginalized by all the other politicians willingly playing the games, since the system is designed to limit the influence of any one person. Even presidents have been forced to play the game, with all the power they wield.

Sebastian:
Hong Kong became the 'freest' country in the world due to a Scottish bureaucrat John Cowperthwaite who helped lead the country (in 1961) to free markets, very limited government and low taxes. He had the ability and freedom to exercise his classic liberal philosophy because he had very little existing governmental resistance to deal with. So he built the system based on the ideals of prosperity. If it were anyone else Hong Kong may not be what it is today.

Cowperthwaite kept things simple and that is the way it should be. But instead, the US for example has built up a complex and overwhelming amount of regulations which starves the markets from freedom.

Even Cowperthwaite sang the swan's song:

However his starting of a large public housing programme which made the Hong Kong Government the world’s biggest landlord and the setting up of the Hong Kong Jockey Club as the region's monopoly in gambling business are rarely mentioned.

There is inherent contradiction in giving someone power via elected office and asking them to use that power to limit and reduce their own power.

Cowperthwaite is just the exception that proves the rule.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

xahrx — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 15:00:31 GMT

"But the system was developed by those who run it. The ones who run it can change it for the better simply by reducing governmental intervention bit by bit will allow for more and more economic growth. Hong Kong became the 'freest' country in the world due to a Scottish bureaucrat John Cowperthwaite who helped lead the country (in 1961) to free markets, very limited government and low taxes. He had the ability and freedom to exercise his classic liberal philosophy because he had very little existing governmental resistance to deal with. So he built the system based on the ideals of prosperity. If it were anyone else Hong Kong may not be what it is today.

Cowperthwaite kept things simple and that is the way it should be. But instead, the US for example has built up a complex and overwhelming amount of regulations which starves the markets from freedom."

That's not the issue though. A 'scientist' is just as likely as anyone else to be a backstabbing leach. Many 'scientists' are actually just glorified lab functionaries. The high IQ Mensa types you see on TV and who author books that are clearly written and convey clarity of thought are a small minority. And being smart doesn't actually mean you're less likely to believe stupid shit. In fact it can actually be a hinderance in that area, because after a lifetime of high IQ alcolades 'smart' people tend to be less critical of themselves and their beliefs. After all, they're so smart, so how can they be wrong?

And the findamental issue is still information and the system. Put the smartest most libertarian person in the world in charge of a government and in ten years you're almost guaranteed to have the same cluster fuck situation as anywhere else because of the perverse incentive structures they deal with, and their almost complete divorce from the normal market signals the rest of the world uses to manage their own lives. Being successful in such a position would mean ignoring most of the people you work with, because few if any people are coming to you and asking you to do less. Most of them are asking for you to do more. Do something! Help my business! Help my daughter! Hinder y competition! Do something! When in reality they shouldn't be doing anything. But that's not the singal you get in government. Someone comes to you, asks you for something, you do it, and they're happy. And they donate more to you next time around. Their world is better. Your world is better. The world as a whole is worse off, but that's not connected to the 'help' you gave by most people. They just want some 'help' too.

Hence, our current government.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Sebastian — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 09:11:43 GMT

Anenome:
The problem is an ill-system, not who is running it.

But the system was developed by those who run it. The ones who run it can change it for the better simply by reducing governmental intervention bit by bit will allow for more and more economic growth. Hong Kong became the 'freest' country in the world due to a Scottish bureaucrat John Cowperthwaite who helped lead the country (in 1961) to free markets, very limited government and low taxes. He had the ability and freedom to exercise his classic liberal philosophy because he had very little existing governmental resistance to deal with. So he built the system based on the ideals of prosperity. If it were anyone else Hong Kong may not be what it is today.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Anenome — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:53:30 GMT

This has been an ideal on the left for ages now; all the way back to Plato and his ideal of the philosopher-king.

Some leftist intellectuals were unwilling to condemn ancient chinese despotism because, as they said, it was a regime that made artists and intellectuals into rulers.

But that hardly helped the crushed masses, did it.

The educated ruler still faces the same constraints and limitations as the less educated ruler, only the educative one may be more imaginative in coming up with ways of controlling others and thus more damaging ultimately.

I've seen an excellent case made for the idea that England only managed the industrial revolution, and America to escape from Britain, because of a succession of particularly weak and incompetent British kings. Historically, the more selfish and foolish the king the better society has prospered. It's the bastards like King George who decided to be a really efficient ruler who ended up causing the most problems for everyone.

No, making rulers of scientists and the like implies that the main problem with the world and countries generally is that our rulers do not have enough education. And that is not the problem at all. The problem is an ill-system, not who is running it.

Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

Nielsio — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:51:30 GMT

Calculation and Socialism | by Joseph T. Salerno

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Re: "If only our political leaders were intelligent scientists!"

gotlucky — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:20:17 GMT

+1 Kakugo

Well said.