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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:What point does this make other than 'lol people suck and knowledge isn't real'? It doesn't make either of those points. Maybe try reading it again but this time try not to do it with a mindset of looking for the shortest path to dismiss it.
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Jul 8, 2022 14:57
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is pepsi ok posted:It doesn't make either of those points. Maybe try reading it again but this time try not to do it with a mindset of looking for the shortest path to dismiss it. I read it, and it made no useful point relevant to the topic of discussion. also, it completely invalidates itself as social research because quote:Unlike science, social research never discovers anything.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:02
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:It's actually the opposite. If we follow the historical example of GDP relationship to unemployment and inflation-price spirals, then people should be hurting more or the economy should be growing.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:03
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when asked to explain it.
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I read it, and it made no useful point relevant to the topic of discussion. also, it completely invalidates itself as social research because I think it's pretty clear in saying that in Technopoly/The US it's very easy to dismiss the suffering of the unhoused or the severely indebted working poor that surround us in everyday life as a ~*~statistical anomaly not borne out by the data~*~ and that we can, on a societal level, simply "unsee" what our eyes tell us because The Data from The Machines tells us differently.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:05
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:I read it, and it made no useful point relevant to the topic of discussion. also, it completely invalidates itself as social research because what does the next paragraph say.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:06
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:What point does this make other than 'lol people suck and knowledge isn't real'? I'd argue it's a modern reflection on how humans have moved from a world where they saw themselves as a part of nature and a part of the world into a modern enlightened man way of thinking where we are apart and above the world due to the technology and knowledge we have. It's not a very new idea, lots of people have proposed it and reflected on it. It's a good book and worth a read though. A big part of the book, and why I think Lib quoted, is the argument that we live in a modern world that's focused on progress for no other reason than progress itself. We've replaced morals and beliefs with data and sometimes that's great because it gives us a more accurate view of the world but it also can give us an insane view of the world, like being comforted when suffering if a really small percentage point so it's not really that bad. It's definitely a bit pop as far as books go and I think Postman can be conservative in his arguments but it has some good points too on our progress as humans culturally and how our modern world compares to our past.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:10
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Lib and let die posted:I think it's pretty clear in saying that in Technopoly/The US it's very easy to dismiss the suffering of the unhoused or the severely indebted working poor that surround us in everyday life as a ~*~statistical anomaly not borne out by the data~*~ and that we can, on a societal level, simply "unsee" what our eyes tell us because The Data from The Machines tells us differently. But the statistics and data bear out the suffering pretty clearly. It seems that society still ignores that information despite its clarity. There's a difference between choosing ignorance and not having the information in the first place. The data from the machine is very clearly telling us what is happening, we just don't care enough to adjust the dials. the premise seems incorrect from the start.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:11
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Honestly I think Amusing Ourselves to Death is the better book and he makes better arguments there about the commodification of society and what used to just be social interaction. Edit: all of his ideas definitely suffer from romanticizing the past though. Gumball Gumption fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 15:15
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FlamingLiberal posted:Yes the Supreme Court is just moving things back in time to the Articles of Confederation period, where the federal government essentially wasn’t allowed to do much and states were all like mini-countries I disagree. There will still be a federal government, but it will exist to use the federal supremacy clause to force anti-rights on people - federal bans on LGBT rights, birth control, abortion, federal education standards that emphasize Jesus, mandates on how many voting booths are allowed per district, no matter the size or population of said district. Federal bans on mail in voting and the right of the federal government to disregard who the people vote for and certify the elections for whoever they wish. These people saw the Handmaid's tale and thought Gilead was too liberal.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:17
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Gumball Gumption posted:Honestly I think Amusing Ourselves to Death is the better book and he makes better arguments there about the commodification of society and what used to just be social interaction. I would agree with this. Postman is definitely a touch conservative and suffers from an idea of romanticizing outdated ideas. I generally try to avoid citing from Amusing Ourselves just because it's been done on the internet for loving...poo poo, as long as I can remember. I'd be surprised if there were anyone in this thread that isn't familiar with the 2012 adaptation of the book's foreword here: https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/amusing-ourselves-to-death/ And to uh, certain posters of uh, certain schools of media literacy, something being popular material is reason enough to write it off without so much as a second glance. eta: on romanticizing the past, Postman is definitely showing his MacLuhanite influence here as MacLuhan was a big, big, "broadcast killed the printed word" guy (and lays out a pretty convincing case, IMO) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 8, 2022 15:20
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FlamingLiberal posted:Yeah I don’t believe that they will stop with the current ruling, but I’m looking at the trend as a whole with how SCOTUS is removing powers from the federal government lately. It's going to be interesting what happens when Scotus starts prohibiting state governments from doing stuff. Federal Democrats of course do nothing, but it seems like state level Democrats still have some fire in the belly. If Scotus rules against state-owned power companies existing, or in favor of some kind of fugitive pregnant woman act, will blue state governors tell them to take a hike? I don't know, no one can predict anything these days, but it feels like we're heading to some kind of governmental crisis.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:21
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Gripweed posted:It's going to be interesting what happens when Scotus starts prohibiting state governments from doing stuff. Federal Democrats of course do nothing, but it seems like state level Democrats still have some fire in the belly. If Scotus rules against state-owned power companies existing, or in favor of some kind of fugitive pregnant woman act, will blue state governors tell them to take a hike? A number of states (New York, Connecticut, probably California) have already passed anti-fugitive-fetus laws, so the governors are already required to tell them to take a hike. We are definitely headed towards some kind of interstate conflict
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Jul 8, 2022 15:28
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:But the statistics and data bear out the suffering pretty clearly. It seems that society still ignores that information despite its clarity. There's a difference between choosing ignorance and not having the information in the first place. The data from the machine is very clearly telling us what is happening, we just don't care enough to adjust the dials. the premise seems incorrect from the start. the career of Stephen Pinker begs to differ, unfortunately the suffering occurs, and then is metabolized by the various processes of the machine into 'nah, it's a weird outlier. Everything is better than it was before. Anyone complaining can be safely disregarded.' there will always be a job for Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, who looks at the world and tells the powerful 'all is the best that it could possibly be.' yes, life expectancy has dropped, but did you know 99.7% of households have a refrigerator? and -that- is what is being referred to in the segment that set you off. it is not a breakthrough in social science to say 99.7% of households have a refrigerator, that hamburger buns are 3 cents cheaper than last year, or that David Shor thinks that if we chuck trans rights under the bus we'll finally get republicans to vote for us. these are not exciting new developments. they are the gaseous byproducts of our system metabolizing reality into something the ruling class finds more palatable.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:30
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silence_kit posted:Fred Terman was the dean of engineering at Stanford a long time ago and might have invented the idea of getting the DoD to fund University applied science research. A lot of his graduate students started technology companies which were based on their research. That sounds backwards to me, the same thing happened in LA and Terman had nothing to do with it. Maybe you're trying to say California is nice because of DoD money and fresh vegetables, but I don't see it.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:31
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haveblue posted:A number of states (New York, Connecticut, probably California) have already passed anti-fugitive-fetus laws, so the governors are already required to tell them to take a hike. We are definitely headed towards some kind of interstate conflict Combine that with water rights issues, things could get pretty interesting.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:32
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bird food bathtub posted:Is a possible explanation for it "real, actual people have been hammered by real, actual reality and all the numbers fuckery is fake anyway?" That's my gut reaction but I'm frequently wrong about that stuff. No? There isn't really any basis at all for jumping straight to assuming that the numbers are all made up. That doesn't make any sense, and in the first place, this data isn't so confusing that people need to start casting about for alternative explanations. It's just that "the state of the entire US economy" is too complex a matter to fit into a single tweet. "Unemployment is dropping and nominal wages are rising" and "people are getting absolutely loving wrecked by skyrocketing rents and gas prices" are not at all contradictory. It's historically unusual, but I don't understand why you're acting like it's so baffling that it simply can't be true.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:36
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Main Paineframe posted:That doesn't make any sense, and in the first place, this data isn't so confusing that people need to start casting about for alternative explanations. It's just that "the state of the entire US economy" is too complex a matter to fit into a single tweet. It's definitely a thing in (neo)liberal circles to treat ~*hard data*~ as objective truth, and a big part of that, I think, is that it makes it easier to come up with answers they want to hear.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:54
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Here's a brief summary from Jason Furman about why what is happening is unique and possible explanations. The tl;dr explanations list of potential explanations: 1) GDP didn't actually contract last quarter and when the full data gets in, it will confirm that. 2) A unique thing is happening where consumers are getting hit fairly hard and GDP did contact, but everyone assumes it is temporary and since there is a labor shortage and incredibly low unemployment, that many employers are just keeping staff to avoid disruptions out of fear that they won't be able to re-staff up later or lose institutional knowledge. 3) Productivity and investment have fallen, which has shrunk GDP, but it's because so many people/employers are in a transition phase with their work plans and investments that everybody is waiting it out or unsure if this is their "new normal" operating procedure. But, it could theoretically reverse quickly and shed a lot of jobs if GDP really is falling and stays falling. https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1545406165508427776 https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1545406172039041024 https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1545406176585605121 https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1545401466902302721 https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1545401474934403072 https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1545401480462536704
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Jul 8, 2022 15:58
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cat botherer posted:They aren't made up (I don't think bird food bathtub was being completely literal), but they are inherently very, very subjective. Collecting, cleaning, processing, presenting these data are subject to political considerations, unconcious biases, etc. This all means that thinking the numbers are meaningful reflections of real conditions is a very big assumption. a good example of the phenomenon at play is its twin manifestations on the Romney and Clinton campaigns Both had a data team, and a well paid one too, tasked with informing the campaigns strategy from the bottom up. and both were utterly, utterly certain they were going to win their elections. how could this happen! these are the most expert experts to expert, in an environment where everyone is checking them to the limits of possibility. and they completely whiffed it, because the limits of possibility stopped well before 'building a model that tells the boss something they don't want to hear.'
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Jul 8, 2022 15:59
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Here's a brief summary from Jason Furman about why what is happening is unique and possible explanations.
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Jul 8, 2022 16:01
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cat botherer posted:They aren't made up (I don't think bird food bathtub was being completely literal), but they are inherently very, very subjective. Collecting, cleaning, processing, presenting these data are subject to political considerations, unconcious biases, etc. This all means that thinking the numbers are meaningful reflections of real conditions is a very big assumption. Isn't this claim you're making something so broad you can apply it to anything/everything? Any political group/side of the spectrum, any type of claim/conclusion, even scientific papers? Everyone wants to be correct, everyone has biases, everyone makes assumptions, everyone has their own political beliefs, etc. Kalit fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 16:07
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Is there any consideration given to the possibility that the pandemic has basically killed off the reserve labor force?
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Jul 8, 2022 16:17
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Boot and Rally posted:That sounds backwards to me, the same thing happened in LA and Terman had nothing to do with it. Maybe you're trying to say California is nice because of DoD money and fresh vegetables, but I don't see it. A large reason why LA is so rich is because of the oil boom and the defense industry (DoD money), both things I mentioned in my post.
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Jul 8, 2022 16:21
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cat botherer posted:They aren't made up (I don't think bird food bathtub was being completely literal), but they are inherently very, very subjective. Collecting, cleaning, processing, presenting these data are subject to political considerations, unconcious biases, etc. This all means that thinking the numbers are meaningful reflections of real conditions is a very big assumption. I think you're making some big unspoken leaps here that go well beyond what we're actually talking about right now. When Jason Furman says that that the unemployment rate is surprisingly low, he doesn't mean that the economy is great and people are doing wonderfully. He means that usually companies freeze hiring and institute mass layoffs when GDP growth gets this negative, but this time that doesn't happen yet. It absolutely does reflect real conditions. But it doesn't, but itself, totally explain real conditions. It just illuminates one aspect of real conditions: the way in which business is interacting with the labor market, at a macro scale.
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Jul 8, 2022 16:23
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Kalit posted:Isn't this claim something so broad you can apply it to anything/everything? Any political side of the spectrum, any type of claim/conclusion, even scientific papers? Economics, by comparison, doesn't have really any of these guardrails. It just doesn't have these kind of (subjectively) objective priors for admissible hypotheses. To pick on one example, everyone's heard of the "marginal revolution," where it was realized that many things like output depend on marginal costs, etc. But this has lead to the assumption that things like "utility functions" are meaningful, and can be approximated as *smooth* functions. Complex systems are essentially all chaotic, which breaks the usefulness of this idea. It doesn't follow that that a continuum limit approaches any function you care to define. e: There's chaotic systems in physics and everything too, obviously. However, physical laws can be tested on simple systems (technology permitting). Human society isn't a simple system, its possibly the most complex thing in the universe. It doesn't lend itself to things you can test in isolation. Social sciences are really important, and the current habit of ignoring the complexity of reality doesn't help its progress. cat botherer fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 16:24
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Gripweed posted:It's going to be interesting what happens when Scotus starts prohibiting state governments from doing stuff. Federal Democrats of course do nothing, but it seems like state level Democrats still have some fire in the belly. If Scotus rules against state-owned power companies existing, or in favor of some kind of fugitive pregnant woman act, will blue state governors tell them to take a hike? Its going to be weirder seeing/reading the spaghetti logic the SC would use to nominally hamstring blue states without any effect on red states doing their own flavors of it...
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Jul 8, 2022 16:42
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https://twitter.com/shiramstein/status/1545410452087242754 With every update about the Biden's administrations options wrt abortion rights and the choices they've made since the decision it sure feels demoralizing to watch, to say the least!
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Jul 8, 2022 16:49
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All this talk on trying to figure out how good the economy makes my head hurt - though to be fair that isn't a hard preposition when it comes to economics. =P Though it really shouldn't be this hard to tell the history of how good or bad the economy was? Unless economists are trying to use the data from the first quarter of this year to predict what will happen in the next quarter. Then you should just consult a witch and have them scry for it, because you'll get just as good as an answer. =/
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Jul 8, 2022 16:49
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Srice posted:https://twitter.com/shiramstein/status/1545410452087242754 I know states of emergency give the President pretty wide powers to do like whatever to solve the emergency but do health emergencies work the same way? Like when the trigger laws or whatever they were called went into effect and abortion became illegal in those states would the emergency have let President Biden just say "actually it is still legal"? Use National Guards to keep the clinics open? Do we know?
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Jul 8, 2022 16:53
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cat botherer posted:Sure, but its much more dangerous in the social sciences. To come up with scientific knowledge, you need a prior belief as a hypothesis. This prior model is then updated with data to form a posterior belief. Fundamental physics has it really easy here, because physical laws must be universally invariant - that is why we have conservation laws, symmetries, etc. This rigidly constrains possible theories. Geophysics, for example, has some of these niceties - in that we know matter is conserved in plate tectonics, the Earth is in approximate energy balance with space, etc. But its not quite as constrained, so its easier to go wrong. So are you saying we shouldn't study economics/social sciences because there are more variables? I'm confused on what point you're trying to make, how (neo)liberalism uniquely fits into this point, and what alternative is better. Kalit fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 16:54
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projecthalaxy posted:I know states of emergency give the President pretty wide powers to do like whatever to solve the emergency but do health emergencies work the same way? Like when the trigger laws or whatever they were called went into effect and abortion became illegal in those states would the emergency have let President Biden just say "actually it is still legal"? Use National Guards to keep the clinics open? Do we know? The full article about it gives a few details about what abortion activists say can be done legally: quote:Had the federal government declared a public health emergency, Becerra’s department would have gained new powers for an indefinite period. For example, abortion rights advocates say Becerra could have ordered that medication abortion can be prescribed across state lines, or even moved to shield doctors from legal liability for performing abortions in states that outlaw the procedure. Of course with SCOTUS the way it is, it likely wouldn't be permanent, but it would still help a lot of people in the meantime!
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Jul 8, 2022 16:57
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Srice posted:The full article about it gives a few details about what abortion activists say can be done legally: It wouldn't be permanent but it would help people and be the sort of poo poo that energizes people to fight. Vote more Democrats would be easier to sell on the back of "because they will protect abortions and abortion doctors"
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Jul 8, 2022 17:01
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projecthalaxy posted:I know states of emergency give the President pretty wide powers to do like whatever to solve the emergency but do health emergencies work the same way? Like when the trigger laws or whatever they were called went into effect and abortion became illegal in those states would the emergency have let President Biden just say "actually it is still legal"? Use National Guards to keep the clinics open? Do we know? The federal government is not delegated powers over the general health and welfare of people in States (other than perhaps to levy taxes, etc). Any such law would almost certainly be immediately enjoined.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:08
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Kalit posted:So are you saying we shouldn't study economics/social sciences because there are more variables? I'm confused on what point you're trying to make, how (neo)liberalism uniquely fits into this point, and what alternative is better. The key point is invariance. Physics is invariant for all observers, and so physical laws must be as well. This is the fundamental principle from which literally all of physics arises, and greatly constrains valid theories. Once we start moving away from simple, more fundamental things like quarks and electrons, you start having to take shortcuts, and you no longer have that universality. Economics, in principle, could be derived from fundamental physics, but that isn't doable for obvious reasons. In most scientific fields, you don't have the complete constraints of fundamental physics - but you still have some guardrails, and you can at least intelligently constrain the situations in which a theory is valid. In economics, you can't even do that - a claim that an economic theory is universal over a certain class of situations is suspect at best. My criticism of mainstream economics is that they dress extremely qualitative hypotheses in fancy math. This is unsound, and its damaging because people listen to them. cat botherer fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 17:08
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cat botherer posted:No, that's not really what I was saying - that's why I added the addendum about complex systems in physics. Yeah let's not compare a system rigged to give capitalists what they want to my physics, please. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 8, 2022 17:10
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CommieGIR posted:Yeah let's not compare a system rigged to give capitalists what they want to my physics, please.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:14
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cat botherer posted:No, that's not really what I was saying - that's why I added the addendum about complex systems in physics. They aren't predicting future events in this scenario, though. They're looking at something that already happened and trying to explain it. They are saying that X was equal to Y for 886 versions of this report and now, for the first time ever, the 887th version of this report came up with X = Z. Two things that had been linked literally 100% of the time since 1948 are not linked anymore.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:14
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cat botherer posted:I'm not saying physics is better. Social sciences are of utmost importance. In fact, I think they are so important that they should be approached from a validly scientific standpoint, with proper consideration of the scope of theories and their uncertainties. Believe it or not, this (gasp) means less math, not more. Physics is better than economics.
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Jul 8, 2022 17:17
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:They aren't predicting future events in this scenario, though. They're looking at something that already happened and trying to explain it. edit: The phrase "not even wrong" really fits mainstream economics. It is based on unsound foundations, so its hypothesis can't even be meaningfully tested. This is an example: An expectation that X=Y held true for some time, which lead people to believe that it was always true. Now, it isn't true, and Jason is apparently very confused about it. Almost like the original explanations were totally invalid or something. CommieGIR posted:Physics is better than economics. 
cat botherer fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 17:17
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CommieGIR posted:Physics is better than economics. Source? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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