Disqus - Latest Comments for strangedoctrines

Re: 3quarksdaily: The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley – the rightwing libertarian gets it wrong

Michael Drake — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 12:44:03 -0000

This is like saying the Darwinian account of evolution doesn't square with its actual history because dinosaurs didn't die out in an incremental process of evolutionary decline but were stamped out by a massive asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous.

Re: Paul Krugman Doesn’t Understand Metes and Bounds or Statutory Interpretation With King

Michael Drake — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:40:17 -0000

"The text is so, so plain. The 'specific language authorizing those subsidies' can be read in one way, and one way only."

That's far from true. The United States is a "State" under a common, even preferred definition in many dictionaries. See, e.g., this entry (defining state in the relevant sense thus: "A nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government: Germany, Italy, and other European states."). I'm not saying this point is dispositive (as if anything could ever be dispositive in this dispute). But the suggestion that there's only one way to read this sentence in isolation is obviously not on.

As for Krugman, it's also clear that he's got the details wrong. (As one might suspect, given that it reads like a recollection from his childhood.) But it's far from clear that the nugget of his recollection is false. It's quite possible that the parties went through all the formalities of amending the deed—and that they were able to do so because the grantor opted not to insist that the deed said "Moops."

Re: 3quarksdaily: Theism is a Moral Failure

Michael Drake — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 16:28:22 -0000

The argument from evil is an argument on the theist's terms, not ours: Theists claim to know, at a minimum, that God is "good." The term "good" as conventionally understood by such theists does not encompass the sort of abuse that I. Karamazov describes. But since such abuse obtains, one concludes that the theist's ontology doesn't hold together.* And drawing that conclusion requires no commitment at all about what ontology does in fact hold together (if any does).

*Of course the following apologetic is always available: Aggregate value theory + eternal heavenly bliss = redemption of all suffering on earth.

Re: 3quarksdaily: On Meat-eating

Michael Drake — Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:15:34 -0000

I'm an omnivore, but this argument is ridiculous. For every serving of grain I eat, a cow eats, I dunno, probably fifty. That's fifty times the deprivation of rivalrous grains that competing species could otherwise (in theory) eat. Then, on top of that, we kill the cow! There's no comparison: veganism causes fewer animal deaths.

Re: And Now, the Overreach Begins

Michael Drake — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:37:13 -0000

Fixed.

Re: And Now, the Overreach Begins

Michael Drake — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:25:29 -0000

Well, the argument is submitted.

Re: And Now, the Overreach Begins

Michael Drake — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 23:27:16 -0000

What's "funny" is how you didn't even try to confront the clear statements from Krugman I did quote . Nothing you've quoted supports your statement that Krugman thinks causing damage to the economy is "fine," or that he "advocate[s] a recession."

To say that Krugman is "willing to risk damage to the economy" is obviously just to change the subject. All parties involved are willing to take that risk. That's why there's a negotation about the fiscal cliff. But being willing to risk damage to the economy is, quite obviously, not the same thing as "advocating" for damage to the economy, and not the same thing as saying "no one" wants to "see that [damage] happen." These are not subtle points, Pejman.

Last word's yours if you want it.

Re: And Now, the Overreach Begins

Michael Drake — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 22:31:16 -0000

I honestly find it difficult to find a single material aspect of Krugman's analysis that your exegesis gets right. But let me start with what I see as the two most conspicuous misstatements (since if we can't come to agreement on those, there's probably little point on moving on to subtler errors):

1. Your Krugman: “If the economy tanks, that’s fine as long as Republicans get blamed for it and as long as it hurts their constituencies.”

Actual Krugman: “[T]he looming combination of tax increases and spending cuts looks easily large enough to push America back into recession. [¶] Nobody wants to see that happen.” (My emphasis.)

2. Relatedly, you go on to state that Krugman "advocate[s] a recession." But Krugman does something close to the opposite—he argues that a recession is unlikely: “It’s worth pointing out that the fiscal cliff isn’t really a cliff. It’s not like the debt-ceiling confrontation, where terrible things might well have happened right away if the deadline had been missed. This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn’t reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 2013. So there’s time to bargain.”

Re: What Are the Damages for a Fourth Amendment Search?

Michael Drake — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:21:57 -0000

I'm not sure. But whenever I have a math question like this, my go-to gal is Chelsea Chambers.

Re: Skull Study

Michael Drake — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 23:24:37 -0000

Said Jeff Spiccoli: "That was my skull!"

Re: The Beginning of Something Weird

Michael Drake — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 11:00:33 -0000

Good grief - *another* comic that explores the boundaries of rigid designation?

Re: Vernon Smith on What to Do

Michael Drake — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:22:41 -0000

I think you identify the critical issue not only in economics but in evidence-based policy generally. I don't understand your final statement though - why not just wish experimentalists simpliciter, rather than experimentalists of a particular school (or should I say ideology?)?

Re: Ignorance and Ideology

Michael Drake — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:42:01 -0000

Sure, maybe that's how it works with your ideologues. But my ideologues...

Re: Meta4Panel3.jpg (600×798)

Michael Drake — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:52:28 -0000

Hmmmm. Is there a discount for Patriot Card holders?

Re: Realistic Utopias

Michael Drake — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:17:09 -0000

Great post, Will.

Re: Broken Windows

Michael Drake — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:30:16 -0000

Edit's not working on my ancient browser. The third sentence should have been: "But that is obviously not to say that no benefit can be wrested from tragedy."

Re: Broken Windows

Michael Drake — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:26:23 -0000

The broken windows fallacy is a fallacy about net outcomes. As I see it, Rousset is up to something different. Tragedy is a net negative. But that is obviously not to say some benefit can be wrested from tragedy. (A shadowy reflection of "creative destruction"?) In Rousset's case, the benefit was a certain kind of self-knowledge, self-knowledge that otherwise might not have been possible. Recognizing that fact is not to commend tragedy as a good-making process; rather, it's simply to refuse to let all its costs be sunk.

An analogous point applies to the Krugman quotation. Keynesian spending (per Krugman) works. Many are ideologically resistant to the idea. But 9/11 might have elicited policy reactions that would have Keynesian effects. Those effects would help minimize the loss, as well as help overcome ideological resistance to the idea. Those are "some good" that come out of a tragic loss, and to ignore those benefits at our margin would be irrational. (So the argument would go.) Whether or not Krugman's argument (as I've limned it) stands up, it's pretty hard to read it as an instance of the broken windows fallacy.

Re: Broken Windows

Michael Drake — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:59:07 -0000

Four months after he was released from Buchenwald, David Rousset wrote of his experiences. Cue spooky music and video images of emaciated bodies piled atop of one another, as Rousset's words (carefully selected for effect) ominously fade into view across the screen: "It is still far too soon to draw up the positive sheet of concentration camp experience, but even now, it promises to be a rich one."

Having clicked on the link and read all the words, would you be inclined to read Rousset as committing the broken windows fallacy?

Re: For the “Last Dogma”

Michael Drake — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:09:36 -0000

(Sorry about the duplication. I thought the reply by email hadn't posted.)

Re: For the “Last Dogma”

Michael Drake — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:18:33 -0000

Well, but it is a point against Plantinga's argument. Our cognitive
faculties are either so reliable that they must be the product of the divine
or they aren't. If our kludge-ridden psychology is theologically explicable
only by a fall-back appeal to our fallen nature, it is at least as
explicable by appeal to evolutionary jury rigging. So Plantinga's argument
clearly fails.

Re: Crossed Signaling

Michael Drake — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:18:25 -0000

Brian, I meant ceteris paribus (to the extent possible). I don't think DB's
belief set is a "douche" belief set; what I think is that DB implemented his
belief set in a reactionary, douche-like manner. (Side note: having acted
like a douche many times myself, I am not inclined to draw from this one
instance any conclusions about DB's character generally.)

Re: For the “Last Dogma”

Michael Drake — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:33:54 -0000

Seconded as to "well said." Intrigued as to Haack's foundherentism, which I will now go add to the pile...

Re: For the “Last Dogma”

Michael Drake — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:27:21 -0000

Well, but it is a point against Plantinga's argument, which requires that our cognitive faculties are so reliable that they must be the product of the divine. That argument is lost once it is conceded that our kludge-ridden mentality requires a retreat to epistemically significant defects in our nature.

Re: Crossed Signaling

Michael Drake — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:22:49 -0000

Brian, I meant ceteris paribus (to the extent possible). I don't think DB's belief set is a "douche" belief set; what I think is that DB implemented his belief set in a reactionary, douche-like manner. (Side note: having acted like a douche many times myself, I am not inclined to draw from this one instance any conclusions about DB's character generally.)

Re: For the “Last Dogma”

Michael Drake — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 20:40:24 -0000

Right, I initially thought that he meant to make a point similar to Plaintinga's - that only the existence of a god on the standard Christian model can ensure that we've been endowed with faculties of reasoning that are reliable. Of course "God" on this argument is only a placeholder for "something that we can be confident gives rise to reliable faculties of reasoning" (which, it must be admitted, if it did exist, would give rise to reliable faculties of reasoning).

In any case, one think we have known at least since Tversky's and Kahneman's work is that the faculties of reasoning we do have are very imperfect and systematically unreliable in certain contexts. To wit, our faculties of reasoning are not likely the sort of thing the most perfect being imaginable would come up with.