Shining the light on Liberal craziness.

joesixpack

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J
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So there is call from some quarters for a new thread wherein liberal craziness and irrationality should be discussed.

The only one that comes to mind for me is the general anti-GMO and anti-modern agriculture sentiment I see out there. Are there any others?
 
Most of the liberal craziness I'm aware of only really exists in the fringe minority, not mainstream liberalism. For a start:

- I think lefty-liberal types, health nuts in particular, are more likely to subscribe New Agey health and food woo.
- Environmentalists who are anti-nuclear energy.
- Ultra-fringe tin-foil hat leftys who make up the 9/11 Truth movement.
 
Alferd_Packer said:
So, a monoculture agriculture system is supposed to be good?
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Not sure what people mean when they say monoculture, and I don't think most people who use the term are that clear on it either. If you mean modern agricultural practices, yes, there's probably some room for improvement, but as it is now it feeds a hell of a lot more people than subsistence farming ever did, or organic ever will.
 
Are the liberal extremist in charge of the democratic party? The GOP is run by conservative extremists since 2008.
 
Dessi said:
Most of the liberal craziness I'm aware of only really exists in the fringe minority, not mainstream liberalism. For a start:

- I think lefty-liberal types, health nuts in particular, are more likely to subscribe New Agey health and food woo.
- Environmentalists who are anti-nuclear energy.
- Ultra-fringe tin-foil hat leftys who make up the 9/11 Truth movement.
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I have a number of rather conservative friends who subscribe to a lot of the woo-ish new-agey beliefs like shamanism and associated bs. It's a very weird lurch towards idealism by people on the right.

Also, the outrageous lefty CT crowd seem to approach conservatism from the other side in some cases.
 
Speaking as both a liberal and a physicist who has done some work in nuclear power... this:

Dessi said:
Most of the liberal craziness I'm aware of only really exists in the fringe minority, not mainstream liberalism. For a start:
...

- Environmentalists who are anti-nuclear energy.
...
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However, in my experience being anti-nuclear-energy is a mainstream liberal position.

This, in addition to the anti-GMO thing and some other stuff, points to an anti-science streak entrenched in modern liberalism which is just as strong as that cultivated by conservatives, just in different areas.
 
Vorticity said:
Speaking as both a liberal and a physicist who has done some work in nuclear power... this:



However, in my experience being anti-nuclear-energy is a mainstream liberal position.

This, in addition to the anti-GMO thing and some other stuff, points to an anti-science streak entrenched in modern liberalism which is just as strong as that cultivated by conservatives, just in different areas.
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I don't know if I would really call the nuke thing anti-science. It is not like they are trying to say that there is no consensus on how fission works :p . Usually (I think) it is more of a NIMBY thing, and even wind turbines get that.
 
I would say that the anti-vaxxers are mostly liberal, but I will admit that anti-vax is not a mainstream liberal position. I agree on the no-nukes kooks; it's mainstream liberalism and it's absolutely ridiculous to rule out nuclear power and think you can still combat AGW.
 
There is a lot of liberal craziness. So glad it's not yet resulted in re-writing science reports on behalf of the president. Re-writing text books for religious purposes. Using religion as a basis for policy to deny rights. Using the denial of science to prevent doing anything about climate change.

Yes, lots and lots of liberal craziness. Anyone have examples of the liberal craziness is driving policy? What laws have been put forward to stop vaccinations? What laws have been put forward to end GMO R&D? I'm not saying there are no such examples I'm saying that if they exist they are very rare. Liberal leaders take science seriously.

wiki said:
The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove[1]):
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."[2]
​
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Which liberal leaders dismiss science and reality?

ETA: I know this will get me a tongue lashing. Nothing that the GOP does excuse liberal craziness. I provided it for context and won't bring up what the GOP has done again. I'd like to know if the liberal leadership has done anything comparable.
 
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Brainster said:
I would say that the anti-vaxxers are mostly liberal, but I will admit that anti-vax is not a mainstream liberal position.
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Maybe, but one national level politician I can recall explicitly endorsing anti-vax woo is Michele Bachmann (linky). Then there was Dan Burton (R-Indiana) and Bill Posey (R-Florida) (linky).
 
I'll echo the observation that anti-nuclear woo is pretty mainstream among liberals. I'd say that lots of health and environmental woo is as well, and tends to be based on either not understanding or on denying science. While NIMBY does play it's part, it's often NIMBY based on false science.

Health woo is common to all people though, so I wouldn't call it a 'left' thing.
 
The single most commonly held liberal belief is that the government can intervene in the economy without unintended consequences. It is a requisite belief of modern liberalism as it is usually defined.

The standard notion is that if the cost of labor is too low by their standards the government can raise it without any unintended consequences. What this translates to is support for various government actions that seem to have only positive consequences. For instance it is routinely believed by modern liberals that the government can pass special interest union legislation that allows one group to raise the wages of its members by excluding competition from non-members without any consequences other than the union members will receive greater benefits. This is of course not true as miscellaneous economic disasters make clear. Anybody want to buy a house in Detroit?

Undoubtedly there will be standard liberal apologetic responses to this post. Liberal beliefs about the benefits of government intervention in the economy are as deeply entrenched as any religious beliefs and I would not expect anything I might say to change that in the least, even with respect to the skeptics that participate in this forum.
 
Liberal Loonie: Hate science because it denies crystal magic and things like mediums

Conservative Loonie: Hates science because it denies YES and proves evolution.

That's what they have in common, they both hate reality.
 
davefoc said:
The single most commonly held liberal belief is that the government can intervene in the economy without unintended consequences.
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False: The only reasoning I've seen is that the unintended consequences have to be better than the consequences of not acting.

NOTHING has no consequences, intended or otherwise.

Human beings are adaptive. Given a system to exploit, they will exploit it. Doesn't matter what system, what "intervention", or what else. It's the nature of the species. (and many other species, too, we're just a lot better at it)
 
jj said:
Liberal Loonie: Hate science because it denies crystal magic and things like mediums

Conservative Loonie: Hates science because it denies YES and proves evolution.

That's what they have in common, they both hate reality.
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Lol wut
 
davefoc said:
The single most commonly held liberal belief is that the government can intervene in the economy without unintended consequences. It is a requisite belief of modern liberalism as it is usually defined.
Click to expand...

jj said:
False: The only reasoning I've seen is that the unintended consequences have to be better than the consequences of not acting.

NOTHING has no consequences, intended or otherwise.
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Absolutely, the idea that liberals believe that there will be no unintended consequences of government intervention is a strawman. It is as JJ says.

Daredelvis
 
joesixpack said:
So there is call from some quarters for a new thread wherein liberal craziness and irrationality should be discussed.

The only one that comes to mind for me is the general anti-GMO and anti-modern agriculture sentiment I see out there. Are there any others?
Click to expand...

So which elected officials share these views?
 
I think liberals give Obama a free pass on quite a lot that they would never give George Bush a free pass on. I don't know if it's to the level of "crazy", but it's something....
 
Brainster said:
I would say that the anti-vaxxers are mostly liberal, but I will admit that anti-vax is not a mainstream liberal position.
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Really? That seems to me like a position that has kooks of all stripes. Why do you think that they're "mostly liberal"?
 
daredelvis said:
Absolutely, the idea that liberals believe that there will be no unintended consequences of government intervention is a strawman. It is as JJ says.

Daredelvis
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Both comments seem fair. Perhaps better though might be that some liberals understand that there will be unintended negative consequences with government interference in the economy.

But no matter what, it is problematic to attempt to characterize the beliefs of an entire group as I did. Nonetheless I stand by the basic notion that I intended that liberals generally do not acknowledge the severe negative consequences of many of the ideas that form the core economic beliefs of modern liberalism. I think what lies at the heart of this is a failure to believe in the law of supply and demand, especially as it applies to labor. The liberal notion (speaking generally) is that worker wages can be raised above market levels without negative consequences beyond the reduced profits of the employer (and of course reduced profits by employers is viewed as a good by some liberals).

That liberals can ignore the reality of the law of supply and demand when it comes to labor is analogous to the ability of some conservatives to ignore the law of evolution when it suits their purposes. Both liberal and conservative groups form their opinions in the way all humans do. They apply self serving biases, confirmation biases, group biases, other biases and a touch of reason to some data and form an opinion.
 
Axiom_Blade said:
Really? That seems to me like a position that has kooks of all stripes. Why do you think that they're "mostly liberal"?
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Hmm, I accepted Brainster's view that it was mostly liberal until you challenged him. I probably based most of my view about that on the fact that Robert Kennedy is a nut job on this issue and he seems to be something of a liberal and HuffingtonPost publishes his claptrap on this and HuffingtonPost is certainly a Democratic partisan site. But the comments run strongly against Kennedy on this issue on HuffingtonPost so it is at least clear that this is not a mainstream liberal view. Now that I've thought about this issue a bit I realize that I had insufficient information to form any opinion about it, but I think you might be right that this particular wacko belief is bipartisan.
 
davefoc said:
Hmm, I accepted Brainster's view that it was mostly liberal until you challenged him. I probably based most of my view about that on the fact that Robert Kennedy is a nut job on this issue and he seems to be something of a liberal and HuffingtonPost publishes his claptrap on this and HuffingtonPost is certainly a Democratic partisan site. But the comments run strongly against Kennedy on this issue on HuffingtonPost so it is at least clear that this is not a mainstream liberal view. Now that I've thought about this issue a bit I realize that I had insufficient information to form any opinion about it, but I think you might be right that this particular wacko belief is bipartisan.
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Errr, wait. I pointed out in my post that anti-vax opinion is not mainstream liberal. And in your response you point out that there is some opposition to anti-vaxxers at a liberal site. So what is missing?

The proof that there are a lot of anti-vaxxers who are conservative.
 
Brainster said:
Errr, wait. I pointed out in my post that anti-vax opinion is not mainstream liberal. And in your response you point out that there is some opposition to anti-vaxxers at a liberal site. So what is missing?

The proof that there are a lot of anti-vaxxers who are conservative.
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I believe you made two claims:
1. I would say that the anti-vaxxers are mostly liberal,
2. That anti-vax is not a mainstream liberal position.

I accepted both premises without question possibly because you are a great poster and I think you are usually right and possibly because your ideas about this fit my preconceptions.

However, when Axiom_Blade challenged claim1 I realized that I didn't know enough to form the opinion that I had formed and that maybe you and I were wrong. I never doubted claim 2 and supplied some evidence to support it.

My general sense of it right now is that the mainstream anti-vaxxer nut job crowd is mostly apolitical. However I might change my mind about this if confronted with actual data.
 
Went to the rational wiki page on vaccine denialism and had to laugh. Somehow Robert F. Kennedy Jr is not listed among notable anti-vaccine proponents?

Okay, so that site is tainted. Damn.
 
Brainster said:
Went to the rational wiki page on vaccine denialism and had to laugh. Somehow Robert F. Kennedy Jr is not listed among notable anti-vaccine proponents?

Okay, so that site is tainted. Damn.
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Maybe they included him with miscellaneous anti-vaxxers that post to HuffingtonPost category. I noticed that Bill Maher was on the celebrity anti-vaxxer list. I doubted that he was an anti-vaxxer and I looked up what he'd had to say about that. Apparently, somebody took a long rambling piece on vaccination that he did for the HuffingtonPost as an indication that he was an anti-vaxxer. I read as much of his ramblings on this as I felt like and I didn't notice anything that made me think he was an anti-vaxxer, so the list might not be completely accurate and even if it was I didn't notice a big liberal slant in the listed celebrities but I also hadn't heard of about 2/3's of them either.
 
davefoc said:
Both comments seem fair. Perhaps better though might be that some liberals understand that there will be unintended negative consequences with government interference in the economy.

But no matter what, it is problematic to attempt to characterize the beliefs of an entire group as I did. Nonetheless I stand by the basic notion that I intended that liberals generally do not acknowledge the severe negative consequences of many of the ideas that form the core economic beliefs of modern liberalism. I think what lies at the heart of this is a failure to believe in the law of supply and demand, especially as it applies to labor. The liberal notion (speaking generally) is that worker wages can be raised above market levels without negative consequences beyond the reduced profits of the employer (and of course reduced profits by employers is viewed as a good by some liberals).

That liberals can ignore the reality of the law of supply and demand when it comes to labor is analogous to the ability of some conservatives to ignore the law of evolution when it suits their purposes. Both liberal and conservative groups form their opinions in the way all humans do. They apply self serving biases, confirmation biases, group biases, other biases and a touch of reason to some data and form an opinion.
Click to expand...

You are assuming that your favoured neoclassical economic ideology is one in the same with economics and is thus on par with a hard science. That is wrong on multiple levels.
 
Brainster said:
Tu quoque alert!
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Sorry no. I made it quite clear that two wrights do not make a wrong and I'm happy to condemn liberal craziness. A fallacy is an error in logic. Not an epithet. Please learn what a tu quoque is before you go around screaming it. And of course you stripped out context. A dishonest thing to do.

You don't want to face the question. What liberal craziness permeates the leaders? What liberals other than Michelle Bachman have campaigned on anti-vax? What liberals have campaigned on anti-GMO's.

I have made quite clear that there is liberal craziness. So, can you do something a bit more substantive than simply knee jerk yell "tu quoque"?

Tell us about the liberal politicians who are using anti-science and religion to base policy on. Don't be that guy who only finds the cheap out.
 
davefoc said:
The single most commonly held liberal belief is that the government can intervene in the economy without unintended consequences. It is a requisite belief of modern liberalism as it is usually defined.

The standard notion is that if the cost of labor is too low by their standards the government can raise it without any unintended consequences. What this translates to is support for various government actions that seem to have only positive consequences. For instance it is routinely believed by modern liberals that the government can pass special interest union legislation that allows one group to raise the wages of its members by excluding competition from non-members without any consequences other than the union members will receive greater benefits. This is of course not true as miscellaneous economic disasters make clear. Anybody want to buy a house in Detroit?

Undoubtedly there will be standard liberal apologetic responses to this post. Liberal beliefs about the benefits of government intervention in the economy are as deeply entrenched as any religious beliefs and I would not expect anything I might say to change that in the least, even with respect to the skeptics that participate in this forum.
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Couple things up front. I'm a former staunch conservative. I also have a hobby of studying the mind, authors like Pinker, Haidt, Minsky, Blackmore, Dennett, Ramachandren and Linden to name a few. I've watched a reading of Sam Harris' The Fire Place Delusion. I've also read Johnathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind. A.) I'm firmly aware of how people make decisions based first on genetic predisposition coupled with indoctrination, inculcation, emotion and then rationalize those decisions. Formal logic, skepticism and critical thinking are difficult to say the least for the vast majority of us (also see Spock Fallacy and/or watch Julia Galef's Straw Vulcan. B.) I want to know as many true things as I can.

  1. I believe any action or inaction by government can and will have unintended consequences. There will always be trade offs. There is no a priori, objective beast means to meet the needs of both individuals and society.
  2. It should be noted that most if not all nations high in GDP, HDI and/or Economic Freedom practices to a large degree some form of Keynesian economics. The libertarian societies don't exist for a reason. They are not capable of meeting the needs of society.
  3. There are only trade offs. Every action or inaction will have both good and bad consequences. The question becomes "when does the good outweigh the bad?".
  4. I'm a Rand fan. I believe she popularized a very important aspect of human nature that was being ignored at the time. The ability to exploit human nature, the desire to improve one's lot in life along with valuing personal property rights, personal decision making, investment, personal responsibility, etc.. together these evolved traits can be used to create the greatest economic engine ever known to man and to solve problems on a massive scale (also see Julian Simon). Capitalism. I'm very much in favor of it.
  5. I'm also a fan of Karl Marx, Malcolm X and Keynes. It turns out that individualism isn't our only hallmark. As an evolved social species reciprocal altruism is crucial to our success. Compassion, empathy, morality, these exist because we are a social as opposed to a solitary species.
  6. Researchers have found that social species work best when they cooperate to some degree. This model has multiple disciplines including game theory, biology, anthropology, etc..
Take the RandFan challenge. List the top 10 nations by any index you choose. Economic Freedom, GDP (Nominal, PPP, etc) HDI, or pick one you prefer.

Now, list the top nations that meet your criteria for a great nation. Some kinda of Laissez-faire capitalism or libertarian or whatever. You choose. Let's compare nations.

I'm betting you will find that the nations that are highest in most if not all indexes tend to be some form of government with intervention crucial to the success of that nation.

Our little social experiment demonstrates that the real world data matches the research and predictions made by social scientists.
 
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