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The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

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Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#41

Post by existencebox »

pjlegato wrote: post #33
existencebox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because who is saying something colors the merit it brings. And as a healthy skeptic, knowing the direction to look for potential bias _does_ help orient my skepticism and find potential ulterior motives within the infinite space of "all ulterior motives". I certainly was asking myself "I wonder who was backing this" while reading it. (Don't take me the wrong way, I absolutely agree with you with respect to not filte…

> Because who is saying something colors the merit it brings Not at all; this is the "ad hominem" logical fallacy. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ) The claims being made are objectively true or false entirely independently of any personal attributes of the person making them. In other words, who is saying something is entirely irrelevant to the merit of what they are saying.

That's a rather pedantic interpretation. To give one counterexample. Claims can have merit in terms of how the long term events that follow. I have certain ideas of what will follow from e.g. a given proposal; but that's often given many assumptions that went unstated in the original source. By knowing the direction of bias I can postulate what might come from the author's assumptions for those unknowns as well, and perhaps see an angle I hadn't or adjust my "internal bayesian function" of outcomes; which absolutely leads to a subjective judgement of merit. (but despite subjectivity is still to my eyes a best-we-can-do-in-absence-of-more-data question of merit; necessary due to the messiness of "real life")

To bring this very hand wavy generalization back to the topic, look at many arguments posed in the anti-marijuana camp (as discussed in this very writeup) being based on extremely pessimistic to the point of unrealistic assumptions in order to derive the conclusions they prescribed; conclusions in isolation that could be seen as terrifying but if you consider author bias can be accounted for more reasonably.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#42

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

tw04 wrote: post #27
hackuser wrote: post #6

Know your source: Cato is an advocate for libertarianism, at least as envisioned by its funders, founded in part by Charles Koch, and still heavily funded and controlled by him (and I think by his brother). I don't mean that in a partisan way; you might love them, hate them, or not care one way or the other, but it's always useful to know who is talking.

Libertarianism, as envisioned by the Koch brothers, is AMAZING when you're rich. You simply remove all government functions that protect the poor from the wealthy, and re-create feudal Europe. What's not to love???

Feudal Europe was feudal Europe because it was a Malthusian state. Economic growth was quickly eaten by population growth. Libertarianism doesn't seem any more likely to increase the rate of reproduction relative to the rate of economic growth.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#43

Post by rybosome »

pjlegato wrote: post #33
existencebox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because who is saying something colors the merit it brings. And as a healthy skeptic, knowing the direction to look for potential bias _does_ help orient my skepticism and find potential ulterior motives within the infinite space of "all ulterior motives". I certainly was asking myself "I wonder who was backing this" while reading it. (Don't take me the wrong way, I absolutely agree with you with respect to not filte…

> Because who is saying something colors the merit it brings Not at all; this is the "ad hominem" logical fallacy. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ) The claims being made are objectively true or false entirely independently of any personal attributes of the person making them. In other words, who is saying something is entirely irrelevant to the merit of what they are saying.

> In other words, who is saying something is entirely irrelevant to the merit of what they are saying.

Entirely true. The value in pointing out potential biases by bringing up the background of the speaker, however, is in inviting others to consider aspects of the argument (or the argument as a whole) in a critical manner.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#44

Post by [deleted] »

hackuser wrote: post #6

Know your source: Cato is an advocate for libertarianism, at least as envisioned by its funders, founded in part by Charles Koch, and still heavily funded and controlled by him (and I think by his brother). I don't mean that in a partisan way; you might love them, hate them, or not care one way or the other, but it's always useful to know who is talking.

[deleted]

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#45

Post by eldude »

hackuser wrote: post #6

Know your source: Cato is an advocate for libertarianism, at least as envisioned by its funders, founded in part by Charles Koch, and still heavily funded and controlled by him (and I think by his brother). I don't mean that in a partisan way; you might love them, hate them, or not care one way or the other, but it's always useful to know who is talking.

Ad-hominem.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#46

Post by FuckOffNeemo »

runesoerensen wrote: post #5

> The absence of significant adverse consequences is especially striking given the sometimes dire predictions made by legalization opponents. No kidding - let me just quote Kofi Annan's excellent essay on the subject (published a couple of months before the UN failed to course correct at UNGASS 2016): "Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, w…

Your quote nails my sentiment on the matter of drug legalisation.

The conversation shown here within HN is fascinating, from an outliers perspective.

The benefits and effects of the legalisation of Marijuana I would assume, have been well documented by now though the quantity of these reports, I would assume to be small in number. Surely it's a benefit if the number of these reports and articles were increased.

Surely the reports from Canberra (Australia, where plant ownership is legalised) and Amsterdam are quite numerous? And they would back the sentiment shown in this article?

The argument about the 'divorce between rhetoric and reality' around drug policy has enough merit to renew the conversation on drug legalisation by it's self.

Once that conversation begins, the number of reports and articles such as this will increase and potential arguments about a single report being either biased or anecdotal will be minimised as the scientific method is leveraged.

The conversation should steered towards why drug policy is inaccurate and what we need to do to have laws and systems changed, socially and politically, to cater for more evidence based studies on drug use.

Edit:

A TED talk on the topic that I found interesting.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ethan_nadelmann_why_we_need_to_end...

Disclaimer: occasionally I like to smoke weed. So by the sentiment of everyone here, I'm probably biased and my arguments should be subjected to criticism and be entirely disregarded as lacking merit.

(see what I did there? ;-D)

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#47

Post by majormajor »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #42
tw04 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarianism, as envisioned by the Koch brothers, is AMAZING when you're rich. You simply remove all government functions that protect the poor from the wealthy, and re-create feudal Europe. What's not to love???

Feudal Europe was feudal Europe because it was a Malthusian state. Economic growth was quickly eaten by population growth. Libertarianism doesn't seem any more likely to increase the rate of reproduction relative to the rate of economic growth.

The comparison comes from how, recently, economic growth has largely been captured by an increasingly small subset. The who/what of the eating of the economic growth matters less than its being eaten.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#48

Post by linkregister »

pjlegato wrote: post #33
existencebox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because who is saying something colors the merit it brings. And as a healthy skeptic, knowing the direction to look for potential bias _does_ help orient my skepticism and find potential ulterior motives within the infinite space of "all ulterior motives". I certainly was asking myself "I wonder who was backing this" while reading it. (Don't take me the wrong way, I absolutely agree with you with respect to not filte…

> Because who is saying something colors the merit it brings Not at all; this is the "ad hominem" logical fallacy. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ) The claims being made are objectively true or false entirely independently of any personal attributes of the person making them. In other words, who is saying something is entirely irrelevant to the merit of what they are saying.

The ad hominem fallacy is simply a guideline to evaluate the logical consistency of an argument.

It's not a magic spell you can use to discount a premise. Indeed, blind use of "fallacies" is just an appeal to ancient Greek authority!

For non-expert HN commenters, we have to use authority, preexisting bias, and past actions of the speaker to give us more information without fully delving into the article. Unless you're willing to spend hours or days evaluating the accuracy of every data point mentioned in the article, it's expedient to use available information. In fact, even if you completely evaluated the accuracy of the study, it would absolutely be of interest who is making the article.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#49

Post by ksherlock »

tw04 wrote: post #27
hackuser wrote: post #6

Know your source: Cato is an advocate for libertarianism, at least as envisioned by its funders, founded in part by Charles Koch, and still heavily funded and controlled by him (and I think by his brother). I don't mean that in a partisan way; you might love them, hate them, or not care one way or the other, but it's always useful to know who is talking.

Libertarianism, as envisioned by the Koch brothers, is AMAZING when you're rich. You simply remove all government functions that protect the poor from the wealthy, and re-create feudal Europe. What's not to love???

The biggest beneficiaries of decriminalized marijuana are the people who are no longer criminals for smoking a joint.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#50

Post by hueving »

existencebox wrote: post #41
pjlegato wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because who is saying something colors the merit it brings Not at all; this is the "ad hominem" logical fallacy. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem ) The claims being made are objectively true or false entirely independently of any personal attributes of the person making them. In other words, who is saying something is entirely irrelevant to the merit of what they are saying.

That's a rather pedantic interpretation. To give one counterexample. Claims can have merit in terms of how the long term events that follow. I have certain ideas of what will follow from e.g. a given proposal; but that's often given many assumptions that went unstated in the original source. By knowing the direction of bias I can postulate what might come from the author's assumptions for those unknowns as well, and…

It's not pedantic, it's the only interpretation. Who says something does not alter its logical validity.
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