Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#191

Post by larrydag » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 2:08 PM UTC

dhume wrote: post #179

larrydag wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most failed "experiments" of science and politics was Robert McNamara as U.S. Secretary of Defense under JFK. He used a lot of scientific methods to evaluate his political decisions with war and intervention. All of his evaluations pointed out that the U.S. should intervene in Vietnam and look how that turned out. In politics there are too many variables at play. Perhaps politics is good for the "intellect…

How many tests did he run? What confidence interval did he establish? What factors did he control for and how?

Good questions of which I do not know the specifics. McNamara's background was with helping turn Ford around by using his statistical and analytical expertise. Later he got involved using those same techniques with the Defense Dept.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#192

Post by dalke » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 8:29 PM UTC

cdavid wrote: post #190

dalke wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't think his essay says that. Before the US independence, the colonies were part of the British Empire, with local legislatures in each colony. How did the British Empire manage the 13 colonies without any sort of bureaucracy? Instead, the essay you pointed to suggests that the bureaucracy existed, but the new Americans were distrustful of it.

How do you interpret the quote "The origins of this, as Martin Shefter pointed out many years ago, is due to the fact that democracy preceded bureaucratic consolidation in contrast to European democracies that arose out of aristocratic regimes." ? It is possible that I misunderstood it (and would be glad to be corrected if I did).

The word "consolidation" makes a difference. Each of the colonies had its own government and bureaucracy, consolidated under British rule. We of course didn't like the policies of the British Parliament, both temporal and ecclesiastical. When we formed our own national government we first tried to minimize consolidation, via the Articles of Confederation, and then when that proved unwieldy we formed the current national government, which started the consolidation.

I know less about the European democracies. Did the French revolution, and return of democracy after Napolean, keep the existing bureaucracies in place? What about after the German Revolution of 1918–1919? I'm pretty sure that they did not devolve power but instead transferred control from the aristocratic regime to the democratic one.

(Post WW2 separation and latter reunification of Germany might be a counter-example. Iceland had local control, then control by the Norway and by Denmark, so might be another counter-example. Perhaps Belgium as well.)

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#193

Post by lispm » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 11:47 PM UTC

Erunno wrote: post #184

lispm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merkel's decision are not so 'inane'. If you look at the German situation (and that's her main job), it is looking pretty good right now. She is also not only 'somewhat knowledgeable' about nuclear power, she was the responsible minister for several years. Extending the life span was a political decision - especially moved ahead by her coalition partner - the FDP. Before Fukushima there was a majority of conservative…

"If you look at the German situation (and that's her main job), it is looking pretty good right now." I am a German and the outside perspective is unfortunately somewhat misrepresenting our situation here. As far as I can tell most foreign news sources tell about our unemployment rate and our GDP growth but both come with strings attached. First of all our unemployment rate does not reflect the true unemployment in a…

There is an international standard definition to count unemployed people.

There is no 'true unemployment'. There are several different definitions. By all definitions the unemployment in Germany is at a very low level compared to recent years.