Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#141

Post by brownbat » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #136

brownbat wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation rose under Reagan every year. It also dropped every year. Just so happens it dropped by more. So if you just ask "Did inflation rise under Reagan?" A very literal answer would be "yes, repeatedly, just not overall." So you'd balk, "That's not the spirit of the question!" But let's switch to the spirit of the question. Suppose you know that Volcker's anti-inflation efforts are almost certainly the most decis…

> Inflation rose under Reagan every year. > It also dropped every year. What does this mean? Are you just making a pedantic point that some months had higher inflation rates than others or am I missing something?

That is indeed the pedantic point.

I'd argue the comment gets better as you go along, maybe skip to the postscript. But I'm biased, YMMV.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#142

Post by kisil_reboot » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:04 AM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #54

"For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan." These are both really tricky questions, because the questions described are derivatives of derivatives! The deficit is the time derivative of the debt; so it's possible that someone is hearing "did the debt rise during clinton" (wh…

[With the acknowledgement that this is a tangent from the article]: I don't have hard data on hand, but in my experience, the kind of innumeracy you point to is shockingly widespread. Many people I've talked to do not know the difference between the debt and the deficit. Some people were shocked at the election results because they conflated 85% chance of winning with 85% of the votes.

Of all the math classes I've taken, Dimensional Analysis remains the one I'd most like to see forced on every highschooler. Units matter. Unlike quantities cannot be trivially compared.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#143

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:15 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #118

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge part of the problem is that people think one system is better than the other when it's really a spectrum where both extremes are absurd. Suppose you want to have some roads, how do you do it? a) Pure Communism. The state builds the roads. The state needs road workers and workers need food so the state grows food. The workers need steamrollers so the state manufactures steamrollers. The workers need asphalt so…

C can be a problem. It's how the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about is structured. "C" is what leads to things like corporate bail outs. Parenti talked about this with Conrail in the 80s. It was a train system that was put in public trust because it couldn't make money in the 70s. Then after the public made it profitable, under Reagan, it was reprivatized - not because it didn't work, but bec…

Suppose we have the government build the roads. Are they also going to manufacture their own steamrollers and mine their own gravel all the way down the stack? If so you're at Pure Communism. If not then you still have exactly the same problems to deal with when the government goes to buy those things from private industry.

The thing you're really criticizing is government corruption. A corrupt government will screw you no matter its ideology.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#144

Post by xname2 » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:15 AM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #96

xname2 wrote: post #87

OK. So Trump is the coming president, and GW is real and Trump will not handle it properly. So it is very likely GW bad predictions are going to happen. My question is: why there is no massive sell of beach houses? a) Most beach house owners are GW deniers. b) Most beach house owners have strong confidence of the future government. c) Most beach house owners are extremely rich so they don't care. How about those who…

Individuals are pretty poor at making personal decisions on the basis of risks that are well-proven numerically but not tangible from personal experience. Why do millions of Americans still smoke cigarettes? Do most smokers have awesome health plans and optimism about medical research so they assume that cancer treatment will be pleasant and affordable in the future? I think it's a pretty good test of how many people…

There are people keep smoking, but there are also people quit smoking because of knowing it's unhealthy.

My question is why don't we see massive sell of beach houses. My question is NOT why there are still people not selling their beach houses.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#145

Post by btilly » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:18 AM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #132

btilly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may seem to be really tricky questions, but they have really clear answers. Reagan was elected during an extreme inflationary period and it had dropped dramatically by the time he left office. Clinton started office with giant deficits and left office running a surplus.

Inflation rose under Reagan every year. It also dropped every year. Just so happens it dropped by more. So if you just ask "Did inflation rise under Reagan?" A very literal answer would be "yes, repeatedly, just not overall." So you'd balk, "That's not the spirit of the question!" But let's switch to the spirit of the question. Suppose you know that Volcker's anti-inflation efforts are almost certainly the most decis…

When we say "rose under Foo" we typically mean from start to finish. I doubt that anyone who said it rose under Reagan said so because of uncertainty about what was asked.

As for the facts, this shows up with clear cut and simple examples. Does economic theory say that raising minimum wages increases unemployment? Was Obama born in the USA? Do Democrats by and large care more about black deaths than white ones? Were weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq?

Large fractions of people will answer these along partisan lines. The actual answers are yes, yes, yes, and no. (The most controversial being the third. See the description of the "kill whitey" experiments at https://www.wired.com/2010/09/kill-whitey-its-the-right-thin... for verification.)

People really filter information through their biases and come up with beliefs that are more based on ideology than reality.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#146

Post by notquite774 » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:20 AM UTC

DougN7 wrote: post #72

smallnamespace wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd offer that one issue with representative democracy is that the direct external payoff for voting well (by 'well', I mean taking the time to do honest research and keeping an open mind) is pretty much zero. That leads to a contradiction -- we expect our elected politicians to do whatever the public wants, but we also want our politicians to be wise, forward thinking, selfless, and moral leaders. Those two desires…

Nailed it on the head! Everyone wants someone else to pay for services. Nobody is saying "Raise my taxes - I appreciate these services". We're all complicit.

Not true! I'm happy to pay higher taxes. They passed a yearly art fund tax here.

People bitched, I said "quiet you +$100k yr coworkers who moved here recently after hearing how rad it is! It's rad because of these things!"

I'm happy to piss an the parade of anyone who complains about paying taxes. Especially those that benefit disproportionately, like tech workers (high tech being subsidized by the government since the industrial revolution came along).

I don't want someone else to pay for it but I want them to contribute.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#147

Post by notquite774 » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:29 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110

kristopolous wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pro-private, anti-democratic push by chicago school, objectivists, and other groups, to essentially slander civic institutions as terrible and "privatize" them with capital extracting robber barons. "Government" is a 4 letter word and some people are insufferable in their hatred for it - thinking that some private selfish interest of people would magically make the world ... look, it's all preposterous ... it'…

A huge part of the problem is that people think one system is better than the other when it's really a spectrum where both extremes are absurd. Suppose you want to have some roads, how do you do it? a) Pure Communism. The state builds the roads. The state needs road workers and workers need food so the state grows food. The workers need steamrollers so the state manufactures steamrollers. The workers need asphalt so…

a) it's ridiculous to summarize the collapse of the USSR as being due to centralized planning. There were grocery stores sitting empty and corruption saw wealth going towards fewer and fewer hands. Plus they were more of a totalitarian dictatorship than communism

b) dramatized perhaps but ok

c) layers on ridiculous rule after rules, hands out contracts then only to those than can afford to abide all the rules (conveniently they're also related or friends with those people), which is started layering on after its propaganda engine convinced the public it was to prevent government doing a bad job of spending their taxes. Then fast fwd to 2016 and wealth inequality has gotten so bad the whole thing looks rather untenable without a serious rethink

Which one is workable again?

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#148

Post by smallnamespace » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:39 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #139

smallnamespace wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congestion tolls are great -- they encourage better utilization of a scarce resource (the road at a certain point in time).

> Congestion tolls are great -- they encourage better utilization of a scarce resource (the road at a certain point in time). Congestion tolls are the rich man's way of getting the government to build enough infrastructure for them without having to pay for enough infrastructure for everybody. If there is congestion it's either because you don't have enough roads or because you don't have good enough mass transit whi…

For any given amount of infrastructure, proper pricing makes its use more efficient (of course, minus the inefficiency of actually implementing tolls), by shifting demand towards less busy times or encouraging use of mass transit and pooling. In a lot of jurisdictions it's essentially impossible to build enough road so there is zero traffic, because buildings can grow upwards but roads cannot.

Your point about the rich getting infrastructure seems like a non sequitur here. It's voters' job to get their representatives to build enough infrastructure, not just the rich.

I agree that congestion tolls are somewhat regressive, but the solution is to have a progressive tax system, not to avoid efficiency taxes.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#149

Post by brownbat » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:40 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #145

brownbat wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation rose under Reagan every year. It also dropped every year. Just so happens it dropped by more. So if you just ask "Did inflation rise under Reagan?" A very literal answer would be "yes, repeatedly, just not overall." So you'd balk, "That's not the spirit of the question!" But let's switch to the spirit of the question. Suppose you know that Volcker's anti-inflation efforts are almost certainly the most decis…

When we say "rose under Foo" we typically mean from start to finish. I doubt that anyone who said it rose under Reagan said so because of uncertainty about what was asked. As for the facts, this shows up with clear cut and simple examples. Does economic theory say that raising minimum wages increases unemployment? Was Obama born in the USA? Do Democrats by and large care more about black deaths than white ones? Were…

> When we say "rose under Foo" we typically mean from start to finish.

Huh, I don't. If I ask you if you got out of bed yesterday, I don't care whether you are currently in bed or not. I'm asking if you rose at all. On economics, if I ask you if there was mass unemployment during the 30s, I don't mean "only in 1939."

On WMDs, well, here we go again. Sarin tipped missiles were found in Iraq according to intelligence declassified in 2015:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have-...

Before that, in a hearing at the HASC in 2006, regarding weapons found in Iraq during the war in various states of functioning, Army Col. John Chu reported, "These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes ... they do constitute weapons of mass destruction."

http://archive.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15918

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#150

Post by dnautics » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 2:43 AM UTC

notquite774 wrote: post #147

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge part of the problem is that people think one system is better than the other when it's really a spectrum where both extremes are absurd. Suppose you want to have some roads, how do you do it? a) Pure Communism. The state builds the roads. The state needs road workers and workers need food so the state grows food. The workers need steamrollers so the state manufactures steamrollers. The workers need asphalt so…

a) it's ridiculous to summarize the collapse of the USSR as being due to centralized planning. There were grocery stores sitting empty and corruption saw wealth going towards fewer and fewer hands. Plus they were more of a totalitarian dictatorship than communism b) dramatized perhaps but ok c) layers on ridiculous rule after rules, hands out contracts then only to those than can afford to abide all the rules (conven…

> it's ridiculous to summarize the collapse of the USSR as being due to centralized planning

Is it? These things were predicted long as a consequence of state socialism long before the USSR existed, and we still don't learn our lessons (venezuela)

http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm