Hayek posted:

There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained [that security against severe physical privation, the certainty of a given minimum of sustenance for all; or more briefly, the security of a minimum income] should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. There are difficult questions about the precise standard which should thus be assured... but there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody. Indeed, for a considerable part of the population of England this sort of security has long been achieved.

Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist... individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.... [And] there is no incompatibility in principle between the state's providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom. Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken.

Cingulate posted:

Doesn't Spencer call himself a Nazi? I know next to nothing about Spencer. I don't know.

Sax Solo posted:

Jazerus posted:

hayek's not that bad. he was in with an intellectually bankrupt crowd but there is considerable intellectual depth to his writing, and an acknowledgment of reality that most libertarian-adjacent thought doesn't have

on the other hand he was part of the enthusiastic libertarian delegation to pinochet

so a bit of a wash

Reason posted:

"Hayek's work on price theory is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project," Wales wrote on the blog of the Internet law guru Lawrence Lessig. "One can't understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek."

paragon1 posted:

So I guess I'll be the one to point out that IQ is a bullshit method of measuring "intelligence" in the first place?

JUICY HAMBUGAR posted:

Probably one of the best explorations of the Bell Curve I've seen (it's over an hour long, the first few minutes are skippable):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgZFGgJlAsk

An accompanying article that examines some of Murray's claims in light of lead poisoning data: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36569/1/MPRA_paper_36569.pdf

JUICY HAMBUGAR posted:

Probably one of the best explorations of the Bell Curve I've seen (it's over an hour long, the first few minutes are skippable):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgZFGgJlAsk

An accompanying article that examines some of Murray's claims in light of lead poisoning data: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36569/1/MPRA_paper_36569.pdf

Uroboros posted:

You’re way more post heavy on this forum than I so I’ll take your word for it. He seemed sincere, and you guys dog piled him for what seemed like a minor crime of mentioning Murray (and Hayek?) as two examples of people who’s work wasn’t immediately worthy of a trash can. I never got the impression that he actually agreed with their conclusions. Again I’m not as hawkishly catching every single post, does Cingulate even identify as libertarian? This doesn’t strike me as Jrod level posting.

Avenging_Mikon posted:

Cingulate always seems to be posting sincerely. He’s exactly like that goon in the chess quote, and you’re the guy walking in when the ref is calling him a retard at the end of hours of arguing from idiocy. gently caress, he might actually been the goon from the chess quote, I can’t remember.

quote:

A better analogy would be if someone walks into a championship tournament, says "GEE I THINK I MAY HAVE TRANSCENDED THE UNDERSTANDING OF SOME OF YOU GRANDMASTERS HERE, WANT TO JOIN MY NEW SCHOOL OF CHESS STRATEGY?", then loses by scholar's mate twice in the first round.

This person then refuses to leave his seat, claiming that he needs additional proof that the queen in f7 actually ontologically exists before he will admit defeat, and that the rules of the CHESS ESTABLISHMENT were unfairly biased against him by disallowing the possibility of his king being able to leapfrog pieces.

Then he pulls out an ancient shopping list from 1905 and claims that "1. Eggs" means 'The King', "2. Butter" means 'can', and "3. Milk" means 'leapfrog'. This is admissible evidence for his case because he has lived according to the dictates of this list since he was a teenager, and it has drastically improved his quality of life. When the referees tell him that this makes no loving sense, he drags them into a three hour debate over the precise meaning of the words 'makes', 'no', 'loving', and 'sense'.

When people point out that there is more than enough evidence to suggest his list is just a scrap of paper from some long-dead housewife's purse, he rather proudly points out how close-minded they are in dismissing outright the possibility that the list was in fact a secret coded message on the best way to live life, originally formulated by Atlanteans and passed down through the ages disguised as everyday documents. After all, if one starts with the presupposition that such a document exists, then it would be very fair to argue that it is indeed in the form of his shopping list.

Never mind that his previous interpretations of the list led to three convictions and time served for robbery, hate crimes, and murder. These were just unfortunate misinterpretations on his part of the list's true intentions, he says. The list itself is blameless. In fact, the Atlanteans deliberately obfuscated the true meaning of the list in this way, so that it would require multiple failed misinterpretations before one would happen across its TRUE meaning, and in doing so appreciate it all the more.

In fact, he does have some evidence to back up his claims. Why, just last week during his daily meditation on the list, he felt it telling him that something good was about to happen in his future. And yesterday, wouldn't you know it, he found a twenty dollar note on the sidewalk! Evidence of the list's prophetic powers if I ever saw one. And believe him, he has many more stories where that came from.

By now, the debate has splintered off into innumerable tangents, with the one man against literally every other player and referee present at the tournament. Finally, he graciously accepts the possibility of defeat in some of the myriad topics now being covered. OK, maybe the tallest player doesn't always get to go first. Fine, I will concede that there isn't much evidence to support my third-invisible-knight hypothesis. But that's all irrelevant. What he wants to concentrate on, and what nobody has yet been able to disprove, he adds, is the ability of the king to leapfrog over other pieces.

The argument drags on for weeks. Finally, one afternoon, the beet-faced referee exhausts his last reserves of decency and throws his arms up in frustration and despair. "YOU loving RETARD, HOW CAN YOU LAY CLAIM TO KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT CHESS STRATEGY WHEN YOU DON'T EVEN GRASP THE MOST BASIC RULES!?" He shouts, just as a new entrant walks through the door. "I'm sorry," replies the man calmly, "I simply cannot discuss the rules of chess with such an 'official' if you insist on using such strong and uncouth language. Please retract your insults or I will be forced to plug my ears whenever you say anything from now on."

Seeing only this last exchange, the new entrant pipes up. "He's right, you know. If he did something wrong, then you as the referee have every right to tell him he is so, but it should be done with a patient and thorough explanation of the details of his error. Hurling ridicule at him solves nothing and won't change anyone's mind."

The lazy eye of the retarded List-following, King-leapfrogging man twitches almost unnoticeably, as he cranes his head towards the source of this new voice. A welcoming smile cracks, inch by beaming inch, across his face. He licks his lips. He clears his throat.

"So glad to know decent people like you still value a polite discussion. Care for a game?"

WampaLord posted:

If that's literally all he's arguing, he's picking the dumbest possible way to do it.

Like, I don't actually care about Libertarians and their love/hate of Snowden, but I do hate dumbass arguing and doubling down. Plus, like I said, it shows a lack of intellectual rigor that leads one into supporting things like The Bell Curve.

Cingulate posted:

I don't know how I can make it any clearer than "disapproval of Snowden is a probabilistic cue towards not being a libertarian". Is that sentence somehow badly phrased? Am I using any of the words in a nonstandard way? I'm literally saying everything four times already.


As I said: I'm curious. I said like 4 times the existence of such people was no danger to the argument.

WampaLord posted:

I knew what you were talking about, but I had to go and dig for it and found it and read it again and it's perfect:

Weatherman posted:

It is indeed a masterpiece. Did Cefte write that?

Captain_Maclaine posted:

No, though I get why you'd think that. It was written by hurrrr², about former forums creationism champion Victor.

CommieGIR posted:

Oh god, I remember Preacher Vic.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

"Well I don't know why a merciful God would create parasites that can only exist in the eyeballs of third-world children, but have you considered that I could have been sad about a rainy day once but wasn't? What more proof of benevolent divine creation do you need. Also, not enough time is spent reflecting on the sins that Holocaust victims must have committed for God to abandon them to the Nazis, don't you think? Yes, specifically the Jews."

OwlFancier posted:

I'm astonished someone like that could last long enough to acquire a posting career on this forum.

CommieGIR posted:

He used to post like a thread or two every week in D&D that tried to shape a current geopolitical event as some sort of proof for Christianity/Lack of faith in the world.

Goon Danton posted:

No, he actually strenuously denies being a Nazi. He thinks there's a conspiracy of Jews controlling the media to weaken the White Race, and that we need a "white homeland" where we can live safely away from nonwhites, but he says he isn't a Nazi. People assign the term to him, and they are correct. Similarly:


Charles Murray feels that it is the government's job to subsidize the Right People having children to improve the nation's genetic stock, and to deny aid to the Wrong People for the same reason. This is literally what eugenics is. Sure, he goes out of his way to rephrase it as a "voluntary" eugenics, just like Richard Spencer will insist he only favors "peaceful" ethnic cleansing. But we know where the path leads, and he knows we know it.

Cingulate posted:

Give me a single claim of Murray's that he has actually made, i.e., a single line from the Bell Curve, and I will see if I can find peer-reviewed backup for it. If not, and if it's actually a major issue, I'll stop defending Murray as a scientist.
There, I've made a falsifiable claim. I claim for (almost!) any empirical claim in the Bell Curve, I will find a peer-reviewed source. If I can't, I'm proved wrong, and Murray is proved unscientific.

JUICY HAMBUGAR posted:

Probably one of the best explorations of the Bell Curve I've seen (it's over an hour long, the first few minutes are skippable):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgZFGgJlAsk

An accompanying article that examines some of Murray's claims in light of lead poisoning data: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36569/1/MPRA_paper_36569.pdf

CommieGIR posted:

gently caress, enjoy your toxx probation.

"Ensuring the RIGHT women should breed"

Man, nothing casually racist there.

Tom Clancy is Dead posted:

Finding a peer reviewed paper claiming something doesn't make it scientific to treat those claims as if they are true. Science is a process, it involves context and conversation over time.

Discendo Vox posted:

You're missing the point, Cingulate. You're not arguing in a setting where "providing a peer-reviewed source" is adequate, if you don't read the source and evaluate it. Even these dead gay comedy forums routinely operate on a sufficient level where we can independently critically engage with peer-reviewed publications.

Discendo Vox posted:

I would agree with you if Cingulate hasn't repeatedly defended Murray, despite much gentler corrections, in a variety of threads, relevant or not, for years. All while refusing to read his work.

Uroboros posted:

Cingulate clearly read your Current Affairs article about Murray, and seems to basically agree with it as far as I can tell

Nathan J Robinson posted:

It is crucial to distinguish between the things Charles Murray actually does argue, and the things he is said to have argued. Murray often gets the better of his opponents because they stretch the case against him beyond its limits, allowing him to correctly point out that they are misrepresenting him. Let us be clear, then: Charles Murray does not conclude that the black-white gap in IQ test scores must entirely be the product of genetic inferiority, nor that black social outcomes are entirely genetic in origin. The Bell Curve is not, strictly speaking, “about” race and IQ. And Murray does not argue in favor of a program of eugenics (though the error is easy to make, as Murray speaks positively of the work of previous eugenists and seeming to lament that the Nazi “perversion of eugenics… effectively wiped the idea from public discourse in the West”). Nor should Murray necessarily be called, as so many label him, a “pseudoscientist.” His writings are above-average in their statistical scrupulousness, and he uses no less logical rigor than many highly qualified social scientists do. The problem is far less in his use of the scientific method than in his normative values and conceptions of the good, which affect the uses to which he puts his science.

Uroboros posted:

Look I’m not here to defend Murray. It’s more that what started this whole thing was Cingulate simply used him as someone who can’t be trivially dismissed

Uroboros posted:

does Cingulate even identify as libertarian?

Cingulate posted:

I wouldn't be a social democrat if I thought [libertarians] were correct

Cingulate posted:

I think social democracy/liberalism is probably good

Goon Danton posted:

No, he actually strenuously denies being a Nazi. He thinks there's a conspiracy of Jews controlling the media to weaken the White Race, and that we need a "white homeland" where we can live safely away from nonwhites

Goon Danton posted:

Charles Murray feels that it is the government's job to subsidize the Right People having children to improve the nation's genetic stock

Cingulate posted:

I'm actually a bit sad how incredibly bad the arguments people are attempting to attack very simple, basic thoughts with here are.

Cingulate posted:

You will have to highlight the line explicitly advocating the state actively preventing non-white people from "breeding", I don't see what you mean.

fishmech posted:

And this is wrong. Why don't you get this? That someone doesn't like Snowden and how he did leaks has no meaningful connection

fishmech posted:

So yeah, the existence of the tons of libertarians who don't like him

fishmech posted:

is a very big danger to your argument of "this guy can't be libertarian because among other things he doesn't like snowden"

OwlFancier posted:

Cingulate posted:

Are you really claiming a reduction of incentives for X equals actively preventing X?

Cingulate posted:

Are you really claiming a reduction of incentives for X equals actively preventing X?

OwlFancier posted:

The reason child support exists for low income people is because low income makes it harder to support children, society as it is structured inherently discourages reproduction among the poor because they may not have the funds or the time to raise children, hence why funding and childcare is provided. What the book is advocating is clearly to allow that prevention to take place and stop trying to mitigate it.

So, loving yes. The removal of subsidy from the impoverished amounts to preventing them from being able to do the thing the subsidy is intended to permit them to do and this is blindingly obvious to anybody with two brain cells to bang together, you massive disingenuous loving oval office.

Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:

A decrease in incentives amounts to an increase in disincentives.

If you say that we're promoting a dysgenic agenda, and we should stop doing that by changing government policy, that's eugenicism.

I strongly suspect that, in your heart of hearts, you're a eugenicist. You're just a coward who won't admit it.

In conclusion, you're an idiot.

Cingulate posted:

Raising taxes on smoking is clearly not the same as making smoking illegal.

Cingulate posted:

You are, from what I can tell, making the following argument:

If X has consequence A and Y has consequence A, then X is an instance of Y. Thus, as a reduction in incentives results in a reduction in births, and an active prevention (e.g. sterilisation, what actual eugenicists did) results in fewer births, reducing incentives is an instance of active prevention.

This is clearly wrong. Actions are not exclusively characterised by partially overlapping outcomes (and intentions). Raising taxes on smoking is clearly not the same as making smoking illegal. Reducing subsidies is very different from making something illegal. I said, "actively preventing a population from 'breeding', not "do something that would in effect result in somewhat fewer births". (I wonder how Murray would deal with the fact that social safety nets correlate with much fewer births internationally; e.g., Norway and Germany have disastrously low birth rates. On the other hand, I think you guys are tacitly accepting Murray's premise that these strata of the population are having babies because of government incentives, which seems rather dubious to me.)