If that had been the last debate, it might've worked out that way -- I knew several Reagan fans who saw that and had some major hesitation about sending him back to the White House. But then he had a strong showing at the next debate and they could just write the episode off to fatigue or whatever.
Another problem with judging the Iraq War decision by its outcome is that there's no obvious moment where we can say all the results are in -- it looked like the "right" decision after the invasion went smoothly, it looks like the "wrong" decision now, but if Iraq becomes a stable democracy in a few years, it could look like the "right" decision again. Though of course the farther out we get from the original decision, the harder it is to guess how the alternative would've played out.
Is that quite right though? If an election is decided by 1 vote , then everyone who voted for the winner cast a critical vote (i.e. if any one of them stayed home, the result would have been different). If the election is a tie, then everyone that voted cast a critical vote, for the same reason. So it seems like the right answer is to calculate the odds that an election will have a margin of 0 or 1. Is that the same thing as 1/[number of voters]?
How do you go about determining that a given standard that you personally wish to enforce is actually a "community standard"? If most of the FP'ers are declining to enforce it, isn't that prima facie evidence that it's not really the whole community's standard?
Just a quick, belated comment to say that Will Truman speaks for me in his several comments here. This has become a place for liberals to argue with liberaltarians while everyone agrees that the Republicans suck. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but I personally don't find the discussions here quite as interesting as I did a year ago or so. Take it for what it's worth.
surely someone else had already shot the fish in the barrel
Conor Friedersdorf had this article up at The Atlantic a few days ago hitting many of the same points, although he doesn't so much criticize Lewis as lament the situation in general:
And it is telling that Michael Lewis, one of America's finest journalists, didn't even ask Obama about failing to put the decision about Libya before Congress. He didn't ask despite the plain language of the Constitution, Obama's prior statements indicating he fully understood his legal obligations, and the fact that various members of Congress complained about his unilateral action. The imperial presidency is so well entrenched that a journalist like Lewis needn't really question those things to feel as though he's including all the crucial parts of the story about going to war.
There may be some truth to this, but I don't think it's the whole story. We have pretty much the same dynamic with animation -- violence is fine up to a certain point, but sex is always transgressive.
Saying that he has a "clearly stated belief in AGW" is putting it a bit too strongly -- he doesn't subscribe to simplistic binaries:
"How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. "
"It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed. "
A mature opinion on AGW has to account for the inherent lack of certainty, whether it involves GW itself, the degree to which it's human-caused, the predictions of its likely effects, and the assessments about the effectiveness of various mitigation strategies. All the finger-pointing and self-righteousness among the certaintists on either side just drags the debate down.
local governments can be no better and often much worse
I'm curious about what exactly you mean by "better" and "worse" in this statement -- are you saying there's a set of "correct" answers for how the ideal local government should govern that's not relative to the particular locality? If you think it's rationally justifiable for you to pronounce the actions of a given democratic local government better or worse in some absolute sense, why aren't you then entitled to enforce your judgments on a broader scale?
Put another way, is your concession of non-perfect judgment limited to means and not ends?
The Constitution is basically the ruleset of the game -- the government has to follow those rules, at least to the satisfaction of the referees in black robes. The laws are instances of the game being played, and nothing in the ruleset prevents the government from passing legislation to alter or undo prior legislation. So I don't think your analogy really holds.
I've been saying something like your first argument to anyone who'll listen (i.e my wife, occasionally, if she's trapped in a car with me and doesn't have a book to read). Especially in the internet age, there's no excuse for voters to make their decisions based just on those expensive commercials. If they're going to put that little effort into it, then cutting out the money would just mean that their votes will be driven by other trivial or bogus reasons.
FWIW, I think this is true the way most such things are true -- technically accurate but stripped of most context for maximum effect, and then exaggerated and/or stripped of even more context in the retelling. Whichever way you go on this one is what you should expect for every other entry in the series.
I thought this bit from his reply to a commenter was interesting too:
I used to be a paperboy in a pretty bad neighborhood. I used to marvel in the fact that no one would ever steal the neighbors newspaper. It happened maybe 2 times in the 4 years I was a paperboy.
I think it has a lot to do with how people visualize “who” they are stealing from. In my paperboy experience people don’t steal cause they see it as taking from their neighbor.
when I was older I ended up working at the same paper as the assistant circulation manager. I would sometimes have to fill the newspaper racks with papers. I would often watch people put in a quarter and remove 5 or 6 papers and distribute them to people standing around in front of the liquor store or supermarket. In this case they were stealing from a Company. it made a difference to people.
If you listen to the original speech, you'll hear that he was telling a story specifically about an optometrist who needed to submit the forms to get "reimbursed by the federal government," so presumably a Medicare provider. As I understand it, to change Medicare provider info, you actually have to fill out form 855B, which is the same form the that's used to enroll as a new Medicare provider. Since it's a multi-purpose form, it's pretty lengthy -- the PDF in that link is 49 pages.
I vigorously disagree with this -- depending on how one defines art, it could be very relevant.
For example, I assume that even Sam would agree that it's justifiable to say that Kobe Bryant is a better basketball player than George Bush. We can say this even though many people in the world have no knowledge of the rules of basketball and couldn't identify any difference in the play of these two, or even if some basketball fans out there have a strange preference (fetish?) for the way that old white guys play basketball and thus would rather see George play than Kobe. The domain ignorance of the first group and the preference for domain-irrelevant characteristics among the second group don't disqualify our statement, because we're not saying that Kobe is more enjoyable to watch, just that when it comes to performing the function of playing basketball, he measures higher on every scale.
So, if one has a careful definition of "art" qua art and separates out the pure aesthetic function from all the accompanying characteristics, one can speak of the extent to which one work of art better performs that function than does another. The fact that some don't have an adequate grasp of the artistic language of the given work and others derive enjoyment from features beyond the pure aesthetic function is as irrelevant in this case as it is with the question of basketball players.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “On why tomorrow night’s debate won’t affect the election”
If that had been the last debate, it might've worked out that way -- I knew several Reagan fans who saw that and had some major hesitation about sending him back to the White House. But then he had a strong showing at the next debate and they could just write the episode off to fatigue or whatever.
On “Actually, Re-Writing History Is a Bit More Complicated”
Another problem with judging the Iraq War decision by its outcome is that there's no obvious moment where we can say all the results are in -- it looked like the "right" decision after the invasion went smoothly, it looks like the "wrong" decision now, but if Iraq becomes a stable democracy in a few years, it could look like the "right" decision again. Though of course the farther out we get from the original decision, the harder it is to guess how the alternative would've played out.
On “Voting Part II: Vote Like No One’s Watching”
Oh wait, nevermind, Shazbot2 wasn't talking about just close elections. Pardon my reading comprehension fail.
"
Is that quite right though? If an election is decided by 1 vote , then everyone who voted for the winner cast a critical vote (i.e. if any one of them stayed home, the result would have been different). If the election is a tie, then everyone that voted cast a critical vote, for the same reason. So it seems like the right answer is to calculate the odds that an election will have a margin of 0 or 1. Is that the same thing as 1/[number of voters]?
On “There will be bad blood”
Etymology is no defense.
"
How do you go about determining that a given standard that you personally wish to enforce is actually a "community standard"? If most of the FP'ers are declining to enforce it, isn't that prima facie evidence that it's not really the whole community's standard?
On “On Signaling Behavior (UPDATED!)”
Just a quick, belated comment to say that Will Truman speaks for me in his several comments here. This has become a place for liberals to argue with liberaltarians while everyone agrees that the Republicans suck. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but I personally don't find the discussions here quite as interesting as I did a year ago or so. Take it for what it's worth.
On “Charity and Stigma”
Coincidentally, that's how my colleagues describe me.
On “Mansplain to Me”
At least until you start mathsplaining.
On “With Great Access Comes Great Responsibility”
Conor Friedersdorf had this article up at The Atlantic a few days ago hitting many of the same points, although he doesn't so much criticize Lewis as lament the situation in general:
On “How do we learn?”
There may be some truth to this, but I don't think it's the whole story. We have pretty much the same dynamic with animation -- violence is fine up to a certain point, but sex is always transgressive.
On “Whatever Just Happened There”
I guess the solution was too large to fit in the margin?
On “Looking Backwards The Sequel: Backwardser”
Illustrated version of your point (grabbed the reference from a commenter in that Holbo thread).
On “How To Give A Damn About Climate Change”
Saying that he has a "clearly stated belief in AGW" is putting it a bit too strongly -- he doesn't subscribe to simplistic binaries:
"How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. "
"It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed. "
A mature opinion on AGW has to account for the inherent lack of certainty, whether it involves GW itself, the degree to which it's human-caused, the predictions of its likely effects, and the assessments about the effectiveness of various mitigation strategies. All the finger-pointing and self-righteousness among the certaintists on either side just drags the debate down.
On “Justice as Map”
I'm curious about what exactly you mean by "better" and "worse" in this statement -- are you saying there's a set of "correct" answers for how the ideal local government should govern that's not relative to the particular locality? If you think it's rationally justifiable for you to pronounce the actions of a given democratic local government better or worse in some absolute sense, why aren't you then entitled to enforce your judgments on a broader scale?
Put another way, is your concession of non-perfect judgment limited to means and not ends?
On “Somebody else made that happen—and he’s here to collect”
The Constitution is basically the ruleset of the game -- the government has to follow those rules, at least to the satisfaction of the referees in black robes. The laws are instances of the game being played, and nothing in the ruleset prevents the government from passing legislation to alter or undo prior legislation. So I don't think your analogy really holds.
On “I Want The World To Know Nothing Ever Worries Me”
Has anyone here listened to the original speech? It's quite possible that his intonation on the word "that" would disambiguate the reference.
On “Managing the influence of money on politics? a.k.a the problem with democracy (or at least one of them)”
I've been saying something like your first argument to anyone who'll listen (i.e my wife, occasionally, if she's trapped in a car with me and doesn't have a book to read). Especially in the internet age, there's no excuse for voters to make their decisions based just on those expensive commercials. If they're going to put that little effort into it, then cutting out the money would just mean that their votes will be driven by other trivial or bogus reasons.
On “Win a Bottle of Delicious Whiskey with the “I Call Bulls**t” Challenge!”
Actually I'm not a whiskey drinker, so I'll happily concede the prize to Plinko -- no need for a coin flip.
"
FWIW, I think this is true the way most such things are true -- technically accurate but stripped of most context for maximum effect, and then exaggerated and/or stripped of even more context in the retelling. Whichever way you go on this one is what you should expect for every other entry in the series.
"
And I'll defer to Pinko (Plinko?), who apparently got there before me (judging by Tod's earlier reply).
"
Just occurred to me as I was lying in bed not sleeping that a 28-page 855I plus the 5-pager for the NPI change makes 33.
On “Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man.”
I thought this bit from his reply to a commenter was interesting too:
On “Win a Bottle of Delicious Whiskey with the “I Call Bulls**t” Challenge!”
If you listen to the original speech, you'll hear that he was telling a story specifically about an optometrist who needed to submit the forms to get "reimbursed by the federal government," so presumably a Medicare provider. As I understand it, to change Medicare provider info, you actually have to fill out form 855B, which is the same form the that's used to enroll as a new Medicare provider. Since it's a multi-purpose form, it's pretty lengthy -- the PDF in that link is 49 pages.
http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/CMS-Forms/CMS-Forms/downloads/cms855b.pdf
On “Hi-Dee Hi-Dee Hi-Dee Ho! – or, continued musings on relativism in art”
I vigorously disagree with this -- depending on how one defines art, it could be very relevant.
For example, I assume that even Sam would agree that it's justifiable to say that Kobe Bryant is a better basketball player than George Bush. We can say this even though many people in the world have no knowledge of the rules of basketball and couldn't identify any difference in the play of these two, or even if some basketball fans out there have a strange preference (fetish?) for the way that old white guys play basketball and thus would rather see George play than Kobe. The domain ignorance of the first group and the preference for domain-irrelevant characteristics among the second group don't disqualify our statement, because we're not saying that Kobe is more enjoyable to watch, just that when it comes to performing the function of playing basketball, he measures higher on every scale.
So, if one has a careful definition of "art" qua art and separates out the pure aesthetic function from all the accompanying characteristics, one can speak of the extent to which one work of art better performs that function than does another. The fact that some don't have an adequate grasp of the artistic language of the given work and others derive enjoyment from features beyond the pure aesthetic function is as irrelevant in this case as it is with the question of basketball players.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.