I actually think that Ryan’s point is correct, and that instead of removing the “suicide pact,” it throws it in where it wasn’t in the first place. The point is that no one thinks that it’s a suicide pact, so by pointing that out, you’re implying that the interpretation you disagree with implies that it is. If the people who hold that interpretation actually thought that it was a suicide pact, they wouldn’t care, but since they don’t, the statement carries rhetorical force. It’s a pretty commonly used trope in virtually every type of discussion: you know that your interlocutor doesn’t believe X, so you imply (and often it’s little more than a tacit implication) that her preferred position actually results in or requires X.
To me, on the side of calling Obama a social democrat, we have some minor environmental policies, pro-welfare, the bailouts (which would probably have happened under either party, in one form or another), and a nod or two to gay rights. Against calling him one, we have no real attempt at single-payer health care (he ended up supporting a watered down version of a 1990s Republican proposal!), no real focus on labor, or even much in the way of pro-labor legislation, a smaller-than-needed stimulus, nothing in the way of progressive tax reform, and little in the way of regulation.
By the way, I find it interesting that social democrats, who would be considered center-left in most of the civilized world, are considered too far left to be elected in this country. It just goes to show that in the U.S., our two-party system is comprised of a right wing party and a center to center-right party.
Bob, given that what happened in Georgia, and elsewhere (Mississippi comes to mind) at the hands of Union soldiers was not a new way of war, but a return to the old way of waging war, it seems odd to blame it on progressivism.
Tom, just saying you're not blinded by your biases doesn't make it so. What makes is to is refusing to accept empirical evidence because you're convinced the researchers are biased, unless they come to the same conclusion you do, in which case they're obviously not biased. I can't believe you can't see the irrationality of that line of reasoning, but you clearly can't, so I won't beat you over the head with it any more.
Also, I'm not saying abortion never leads to mental illness. I'm saying what the research says, namely that it doesn't lead to any more, or any worse, or any different mental illness than pregnancy, or perhaps even than simply not getting pregnant in the first place.
Finally, can you point to your post-2008 studies? I'd be happy to see them.
Tom, the question is not whether abortion causes mental illness – it does, in some cases. The question is, does it cause more (or worse, or different) mental illness than women would otherwise experience without pregnancy, and does it cause more (or worse, or different) mental illness illness than carrying a pregnancy to term. The answer to both those questions, according to the full body of research, is no. But you’ve chosen one study, and decided that since it fits with your prejudices, it must be right, and anyone who disagrees with you is acting purely on faith in academics. There’s nothing at all rational about your position, and the more you defend it, the more irrational it sounds. And that’s not bias: if I were to say that one study in a body of research, and not even the most recent one, trumps the results of a full review of the literature, because that study fits with my prejudices, then I’d be acting irrationally too, regardless of the issue in question.
What I love about this, Tom, is that you dismiss any other possible conclusion out of hand as biased, but are convinced that your one study, regardless of its merits, is right!
By the way, Tom, that APA article isn't the only lit review, and the lit reviews do, in fact, consider Fergusson's study (contrary to your implication, if not assertion). Anyway, I enjoy when you make your biases so apparent precisely in your claim that everyone else is biased. It never ceases to amuse, particularly since you never cease to do it.
The best thing about every post on the Civil War is watching Bob's inevitable attempts at Confederate apologia. He says slavery was bad, but one gets the sense that he thinks infringing on the right to own them was worse.
It's not as though everyone in 1800, or 1700, or 1600, or 60, though slavery was moral. One of the problems with those who cry, "You have to understand them as they understood themselves," (and there will be people in this thread who will do it) is that in order to get the proper view that way, you have to pick who, in particular, you want to understand as they understood themselves (forget, of course, that the people who say this are rarely the relativists this implies they are).
Anyone from south of Tennessee, or one of its western or eastern neighbors, who thinks, had they been white males born and raised in the same place in the 1840s and 50s, they would not have fought for the confederacy, is fooling themselves, of course. And it is precisely because, conscription or not, they wouldn’t really have had a choice. They would probably have been gung ho at first, but that’s more a matter of human psychology than ideology. Which, of course, says nothing about whether they would have been pro-slavery (they almost certainly would have been), or whether the war was about slavery (it was).
My relatives who fought in the war fought on both sides: those in Georgia fought for the Confederacy. Those from Kentucky and Ohio (that I’ve been able to find) split, four fighting for the Union, two fighting for the Confederacy. I grew up in Middle Tennessee, which was mostly pro-secession, but had a substantial unionist minority (not as big as East Tennessee). I suspect I’d have fought for the Confederacy, but I like to think maybe I’d have sided with the just.
To say more, it's not surprising that atheism has regressed to the mean when its most prominent spokespeople tell you, in essence, that you don't have to think about these tough questions, you can just read Discover Magazine articles about evolution and voilà, you know everything you need to know about religion.
The New Atheists do less well when it comes to playing with others.
And when it comes to being "a thorn in the side of Christianity." If anything, "New Atheism" has made a bunch of evangelicals money on the books they've sold as a result of the backlash. In fact, by and large, I think that's been the only real lasting effect of New Atheism: making the New Atheists and some Christian writers more money.
New atheism isn’t really new – I started hanging out with atheists in the early-to-mid 90s, and there were atheists as strident and anti-intellectual (in the sense of a deep lack of curiosity about religion from a non-scientific perspective, and a hostility to religious reasoning without any attempt to understand it) as Dawkins and Myers back then. The only real difference is that Dawkins is a very good writer and polemicist, and so he’s achieved some level of popularity. But there’s a big difference between New Atheism and other types of atheism. Not every atheist is a vulgar positivist approaching scientism, for one (to be fair, neither is Dennett). Atheism has always been a big tent concept, ranging from new agey types on one end and Ayer-type positivists on the other. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that New Atheists have become the only public spokespeople for atheism in general.
<i?It’s very ancient, the cerebellum, it appears in the earliest fishes but not before, we think.
I don't mean to be pedantic, but all vertebrates have a cerebellum, or at least a cerebellum-like structure. That structure in amphibians and reptiles isn't any less cerebellum-like than the one in fish.
If you’ve paid attention to atheists for a while, New Atheists are the international version of the old American Atheists (or what the American Atheists used to call “Strong Atheists”). The four major proponents are Harris, Richard Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennett (who’s a bit less strident than the other three). PZ Myers is the king of New Atheist bloggers.
They don’t really have a single central tenet. The vulgar positivism of Harris and Dawkins is less apparent in Hitchens and Dennett, and while Dawkins may not be a fan of Islam (same for Myers), Harris and Hitchens are the rabid Islamaphobes. Even in tone, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Myers are very different from Harris (except when it comes to those scary Muslims, or people who disagree with his stuff on morality) and Dennett. Mostly, they’re just atheists who’ve become popular recently with a fair amount of anti-religious polemics (though Dennett’s are subtle) and a pro-science approach to pretty much everything (except maybe Hitchens, who is more interested in telling us how bad religion is for society than he is in science).
Depens on whether you're talking about "atheism" or "New Atheism." I think the positivism bit is the critique of New Atheism, but it doesn't have to say anything about atheism generally to make that critique.
Argh, I can't believe I wasted 20+ minutes on that Nation article, which might as well have been written in 2006 (since nothing in it has been new since then). How is it that the mainstream media response to New Atheism remains so weak? It's such an easy target, too.
I feel compelled to point out that Smith's version is significantly better, and this just sounds like a sort of half-assed cover. It doesn't really reinterpret it, it just slows it down (likely because playing it as fast as Smith does is pretty difficult).
Also that every time I hear Smith, I get sad at the thought of how he went out.
"it sometimes feels like there is an undercurrent of “the point of the education system is to provide jobs and job security to teachers and their associated assistants."
It's true, teachers unions do lobby for smaller class sizes, but again, this is largely limited by the factors I mentioned before. Prison populations are, effectively, unlimited in size.
By the way, if lobbying for smaller class sizes is the comparison, then I'm not going to complain. That results in teachers looking pretty good.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Our Poisoned Language”
I actually think that Ryan’s point is correct, and that instead of removing the “suicide pact,” it throws it in where it wasn’t in the first place. The point is that no one thinks that it’s a suicide pact, so by pointing that out, you’re implying that the interpretation you disagree with implies that it is. If the people who hold that interpretation actually thought that it was a suicide pact, they wouldn’t care, but since they don’t, the statement carries rhetorical force. It’s a pretty commonly used trope in virtually every type of discussion: you know that your interlocutor doesn’t believe X, so you imply (and often it’s little more than a tacit implication) that her preferred position actually results in or requires X.
"
Wait, people are still purchasing 2 Live Crew albums?
On “Post-GOP debate open thread”
Tom, I wonder, what is a social democrat, to you?
To me, on the side of calling Obama a social democrat, we have some minor environmental policies, pro-welfare, the bailouts (which would probably have happened under either party, in one form or another), and a nod or two to gay rights. Against calling him one, we have no real attempt at single-payer health care (he ended up supporting a watered down version of a 1990s Republican proposal!), no real focus on labor, or even much in the way of pro-labor legislation, a smaller-than-needed stimulus, nothing in the way of progressive tax reform, and little in the way of regulation.
By the way, I find it interesting that social democrats, who would be considered center-left in most of the civilized world, are considered too far left to be elected in this country. It just goes to show that in the U.S., our two-party system is comprised of a right wing party and a center to center-right party.
On “Pressures from the Home Front”
Bob, given that what happened in Georgia, and elsewhere (Mississippi comes to mind) at the hands of Union soldiers was not a new way of war, but a return to the old way of waging war, it seems odd to blame it on progressivism.
Also.
On “Questions about abortion become less complicated as long as you refuse to recognize that they’re complicated”
Tom, you know I'm a psychologist, right? I actually know Haidt. And I've had plenty to say about social psychology and the quality of that field.
You know who doesn't do research on abortion and mental illness? Social psychologists.
"
Tom, just saying you're not blinded by your biases doesn't make it so. What makes is to is refusing to accept empirical evidence because you're convinced the researchers are biased, unless they come to the same conclusion you do, in which case they're obviously not biased. I can't believe you can't see the irrationality of that line of reasoning, but you clearly can't, so I won't beat you over the head with it any more.
Also, I'm not saying abortion never leads to mental illness. I'm saying what the research says, namely that it doesn't lead to any more, or any worse, or any different mental illness than pregnancy, or perhaps even than simply not getting pregnant in the first place.
Finally, can you point to your post-2008 studies? I'd be happy to see them.
"
Tom, the question is not whether abortion causes mental illness – it does, in some cases. The question is, does it cause more (or worse, or different) mental illness than women would otherwise experience without pregnancy, and does it cause more (or worse, or different) mental illness illness than carrying a pregnancy to term. The answer to both those questions, according to the full body of research, is no. But you’ve chosen one study, and decided that since it fits with your prejudices, it must be right, and anyone who disagrees with you is acting purely on faith in academics. There’s nothing at all rational about your position, and the more you defend it, the more irrational it sounds. And that’s not bias: if I were to say that one study in a body of research, and not even the most recent one, trumps the results of a full review of the literature, because that study fits with my prejudices, then I’d be acting irrationally too, regardless of the issue in question.
"
What I love about this, Tom, is that you dismiss any other possible conclusion out of hand as biased, but are convinced that your one study, regardless of its merits, is right!
By the way, Tom, that APA article isn't the only lit review, and the lit reviews do, in fact, consider Fergusson's study (contrary to your implication, if not assertion). Anyway, I enjoy when you make your biases so apparent precisely in your claim that everyone else is biased. It never ceases to amuse, particularly since you never cease to do it.
http://www.jhsph.edu/bin/o/a/Charles_2008_Contraception.pdf
On “Of the Devil’s Side (and Knowing It)”
The best thing about every post on the Civil War is watching Bob's inevitable attempts at Confederate apologia. He says slavery was bad, but one gets the sense that he thinks infringing on the right to own them was worse.
"
It's not as though everyone in 1800, or 1700, or 1600, or 60, though slavery was moral. One of the problems with those who cry, "You have to understand them as they understood themselves," (and there will be people in this thread who will do it) is that in order to get the proper view that way, you have to pick who, in particular, you want to understand as they understood themselves (forget, of course, that the people who say this are rarely the relativists this implies they are).
"
Anyone from south of Tennessee, or one of its western or eastern neighbors, who thinks, had they been white males born and raised in the same place in the 1840s and 50s, they would not have fought for the confederacy, is fooling themselves, of course. And it is precisely because, conscription or not, they wouldn’t really have had a choice. They would probably have been gung ho at first, but that’s more a matter of human psychology than ideology. Which, of course, says nothing about whether they would have been pro-slavery (they almost certainly would have been), or whether the war was about slavery (it was).
My relatives who fought in the war fought on both sides: those in Georgia fought for the Confederacy. Those from Kentucky and Ohio (that I’ve been able to find) split, four fighting for the Union, two fighting for the Confederacy. I grew up in Middle Tennessee, which was mostly pro-secession, but had a substantial unionist minority (not as big as East Tennessee). I suspect I’d have fought for the Confederacy, but I like to think maybe I’d have sided with the just.
On “A New Political Dialectic”
To say more, it's not surprising that atheism has regressed to the mean when its most prominent spokespeople tell you, in essence, that you don't have to think about these tough questions, you can just read Discover Magazine articles about evolution and voilà, you know everything you need to know about religion.
"
That's a perfect way of putting it.
"
The New Atheists do less well when it comes to playing with others.
And when it comes to being "a thorn in the side of Christianity." If anything, "New Atheism" has made a bunch of evangelicals money on the books they've sold as a result of the backlash. In fact, by and large, I think that's been the only real lasting effect of New Atheism: making the New Atheists and some Christian writers more money.
"
New atheism isn’t really new – I started hanging out with atheists in the early-to-mid 90s, and there were atheists as strident and anti-intellectual (in the sense of a deep lack of curiosity about religion from a non-scientific perspective, and a hostility to religious reasoning without any attempt to understand it) as Dawkins and Myers back then. The only real difference is that Dawkins is a very good writer and polemicist, and so he’s achieved some level of popularity. But there’s a big difference between New Atheism and other types of atheism. Not every atheist is a vulgar positivist approaching scientism, for one (to be fair, neither is Dennett). Atheism has always been a big tent concept, ranging from new agey types on one end and Ayer-type positivists on the other. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that New Atheists have become the only public spokespeople for atheism in general.
"
Crap, html... I tried to be cute and cross out the n't in "don't." Of course I was being pedantic.
"
<i?It’s very ancient, the cerebellum, it appears in the earliest fishes but not before, we think.
I don't mean to be pedantic, but all vertebrates have a cerebellum, or at least a cerebellum-like structure. That structure in amphibians and reptiles isn't any less cerebellum-like than the one in fish.
"
If you’ve paid attention to atheists for a while, New Atheists are the international version of the old American Atheists (or what the American Atheists used to call “Strong Atheists”). The four major proponents are Harris, Richard Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennett (who’s a bit less strident than the other three). PZ Myers is the king of New Atheist bloggers.
They don’t really have a single central tenet. The vulgar positivism of Harris and Dawkins is less apparent in Hitchens and Dennett, and while Dawkins may not be a fan of Islam (same for Myers), Harris and Hitchens are the rabid Islamaphobes. Even in tone, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Myers are very different from Harris (except when it comes to those scary Muslims, or people who disagree with his stuff on morality) and Dennett. Mostly, they’re just atheists who’ve become popular recently with a fair amount of anti-religious polemics (though Dennett’s are subtle) and a pro-science approach to pretty much everything (except maybe Hitchens, who is more interested in telling us how bad religion is for society than he is in science).
"
Well, it's a good thing the piece singles out New Atheists. Otherwise, how would we know the author was making a distinction at all, right?
"
Depens on whether you're talking about "atheism" or "New Atheism." I think the positivism bit is the critique of New Atheism, but it doesn't have to say anything about atheism generally to make that critique.
"
Argh, I can't believe I wasted 20+ minutes on that Nation article, which might as well have been written in 2006 (since nothing in it has been new since then). How is it that the mainstream media response to New Atheism remains so weak? It's such an easy target, too.
On “What the hell is going on?”
I feel compelled to point out that Smith's version is significantly better, and this just sounds like a sort of half-assed cover. It doesn't really reinterpret it, it just slows it down (likely because playing it as fast as Smith does is pretty difficult).
Also that every time I hear Smith, I get sad at the thought of how he went out.
Also too, in addition.
"
Wait, UB40's getting back to gether? Oh my god... oh my god!
On “The Role of the Prison Guards Union in California’s Troubled Prison System”
"it sometimes feels like there is an undercurrent of “the point of the education system is to provide jobs and job security to teachers and their associated assistants."
That's an odd feeling to have.
"
It's true, teachers unions do lobby for smaller class sizes, but again, this is largely limited by the factors I mentioned before. Prison populations are, effectively, unlimited in size.
By the way, if lobbying for smaller class sizes is the comparison, then I'm not going to complain. That results in teachers looking pretty good.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.