Burned Bridges
Over at my other site. Poem might be over-selling it. Was just thinking about what I wanted for my life and what I made of it and that's what came out.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Monday, October 07, 2013
Breaking down the Equation
Your pet theory =(your perspective)/(ER) - Bullshit * emotional bias
where your perspective is small, ER is the scope of the empirical reality in question and where
your perspective = intuition * no. of relevant experiences + personal evidence * analytical rigor + ∑ (3rd party anecdotes * veracity)
and
Bullshit * emotional bias = ∑(anecdotes * blindspots^2) + (what you want to be true)/(what you know to be true) + ∑(logical fallacy * (1-critical thinking))
Where anecdotes are constants and critical thinking and veracity are normalized.
In order for the equation to be positive, we need to keep the first term as large as possible and the second term as small as possible. To do this, minimize the scope of the theory, increase perspective, and minimize bullshit and unhelpful emotional bias. Please note emotional bias can contribute positively to perspective if the number of relevant experiences is high (in other words if intuition is well-trained by experience), as well as expand the bullshit term if emotions inflate what you want to be true and the magnitude of blindspots.
where your perspective is small, ER is the scope of the empirical reality in question and where
your perspective = intuition * no. of relevant experiences + personal evidence * analytical rigor + ∑ (3rd party anecdotes * veracity)
and
Bullshit * emotional bias = ∑(anecdotes * blindspots^2) + (what you want to be true)/(what you know to be true) + ∑(logical fallacy * (1-critical thinking))
Where anecdotes are constants and critical thinking and veracity are normalized.
In order for the equation to be positive, we need to keep the first term as large as possible and the second term as small as possible. To do this, minimize the scope of the theory, increase perspective, and minimize bullshit and unhelpful emotional bias. Please note emotional bias can contribute positively to perspective if the number of relevant experiences is high (in other words if intuition is well-trained by experience), as well as expand the bullshit term if emotions inflate what you want to be true and the magnitude of blindspots.
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Shutdown Blues
At this point, I think the over-grown children who rule us are just waiting for us to wear out our stream of scathing indictments about their small-minded corruption and incompetence until we collapse in exhaustion. It's like what parents do with toddlers, except you're the one freaking out because you just realized your toddler controls the US congress and there's basically nothing to do about it and he's just waiting for you to calm down so we can go about the business of stopping everything until he gets his way. There really is only so many ways to say that Republicans are currently out of their goddamn minds, after all, and even the stoutest citizen will run out of steam. Out of their minds not so much because they've shut down the government, although it's extraordinarily dumb for them to do that for the reasons they're doing it, but because they're unwilling to process that they've lost elections and failed to stop laws from passing. And, as a response to that, they've decided just to stop government from working at all, until they're the ones in charge again.
And I'd be willing to hear the argument about how terrible ACA will be for the country, if they hadn't been making arguments so lacking in evidence, reason or good faith more or less since the thing passed. These are the people who, when introduced to the idea that it might be a good idea to form a panel (which by law would not be allowed to be dominated by the healthcare industry) that would make broad policy recommendations on ways to stop the runaway cost of medicare, but are explicitly precluded from rationing care on an individual basis, ran breathlessly onto the TV and said Obama wants to set up panels to decide which seniors are worthy of medical care and ration it on an individual basis, which was an incredible distortion repeated in order to incite panic and opposition. And now they are shocked and saddened that I don't take their hysterical, apocalyptic fear-mongering about every other aspect of the bill as a good faith argument. Not to mention, the complete logical disconnect of a meltdown over healthcare legislation that was dreamed up the conservative Heritage Foundation, put into practice by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, and was generally considered a great success.
To recap, republicans are freaking the fuck out over a conservative approach to health care that their own party designed, and implemented successfully at the state level, because President Obama wants to bring that success to the nation at large. This is incoherent. It's childish. It's dangerous and destructive. And that's just healthcare.
The second hostage, besides a functioning government that the GOP has flat out stated it is willing to take, is the full faith and credit of the United States. We've already been downgraded once by a ratings agency because the house was making noises that it wasn't going to agree to pay for the things it had already agreed to pay for by not renewing the debt ceiling limit. This is insane. If they think we're spending too much on things, they should have worked that out before they agreed to pay for it. But that's not even their problem, they don't even care, they're just cynically holding the debt ceiling vote hostage as another threat to stop the implementation of the ACA. The debt ceiling didn't do anything wrong, it was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I'm normally willing to declare both parties suck on any given day, and I concede that there's a larger problem where the powers that be pit the poors against each other in a culture war, while quietly continuing to fuck us over financially (has anyone noticed how little of a shit the powers that be give that unemployment is high?). And all things being equal, I'd be willing to say this is just more of the same. But all things are not equal. This isn't a good faith negotiation that both sides are being stubborn on. The congress passed a law, the president who championed it was re-elected, the courts upheld it and the polls are not in favor of shutting down the government, despite the uneasiness generated by the 24-hour panic machine in the conservative press. The democrats are trying to implement the law that was passed and upheld, and the republicans are saying they'll blow us all up if they do, with a government shutdown, or by refusing to fund the government, any way they can. There's no universe in which these two positions are equally unreasonable. The democrats are simply refusing to make a deal with tiny toddler terrorists, until they can stop the tantrums and the threats, and do what they promised to do.
And the press, bless their empty heads, doesn't understand the difference between a negotiating the details of a bill before it's made law, and negotiating whether the country gets to function at all, even though the Republicans aren't running it.
And yes, I know that Tip O'neill and the southern democrats shut down the government during Reagan. Again, this is todder logic. Just because the southern democrats were willing to dock the pay of federal employees to make a point, while conspicuously not putting their own money where their mouth was, doesn't make it okay for the Republicans to do the same reckless thing years later. Nor do I think you could make the case that the situations are a neat reversal of positions that are parallel in every way.
I would love to address the systemic problems caused by the corruption and foolishness of both parties. But you'll forgive me if I'm a little distracted by the destructive mega tantrum being thrown by the GOP for reasons that are so detached from empirical reality that the only conclusion I can draw is that they're out of their goddamn minds. We need to talk about the guy with the dynamite vest and the crazy eyes currently ranting in the lobby before we talk about Bob's tendency to steal pens for his friends, don't you think?
And I'd be willing to hear the argument about how terrible ACA will be for the country, if they hadn't been making arguments so lacking in evidence, reason or good faith more or less since the thing passed. These are the people who, when introduced to the idea that it might be a good idea to form a panel (which by law would not be allowed to be dominated by the healthcare industry) that would make broad policy recommendations on ways to stop the runaway cost of medicare, but are explicitly precluded from rationing care on an individual basis, ran breathlessly onto the TV and said Obama wants to set up panels to decide which seniors are worthy of medical care and ration it on an individual basis, which was an incredible distortion repeated in order to incite panic and opposition. And now they are shocked and saddened that I don't take their hysterical, apocalyptic fear-mongering about every other aspect of the bill as a good faith argument. Not to mention, the complete logical disconnect of a meltdown over healthcare legislation that was dreamed up the conservative Heritage Foundation, put into practice by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, and was generally considered a great success.
To recap, republicans are freaking the fuck out over a conservative approach to health care that their own party designed, and implemented successfully at the state level, because President Obama wants to bring that success to the nation at large. This is incoherent. It's childish. It's dangerous and destructive. And that's just healthcare.
The second hostage, besides a functioning government that the GOP has flat out stated it is willing to take, is the full faith and credit of the United States. We've already been downgraded once by a ratings agency because the house was making noises that it wasn't going to agree to pay for the things it had already agreed to pay for by not renewing the debt ceiling limit. This is insane. If they think we're spending too much on things, they should have worked that out before they agreed to pay for it. But that's not even their problem, they don't even care, they're just cynically holding the debt ceiling vote hostage as another threat to stop the implementation of the ACA. The debt ceiling didn't do anything wrong, it was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I'm normally willing to declare both parties suck on any given day, and I concede that there's a larger problem where the powers that be pit the poors against each other in a culture war, while quietly continuing to fuck us over financially (has anyone noticed how little of a shit the powers that be give that unemployment is high?). And all things being equal, I'd be willing to say this is just more of the same. But all things are not equal. This isn't a good faith negotiation that both sides are being stubborn on. The congress passed a law, the president who championed it was re-elected, the courts upheld it and the polls are not in favor of shutting down the government, despite the uneasiness generated by the 24-hour panic machine in the conservative press. The democrats are trying to implement the law that was passed and upheld, and the republicans are saying they'll blow us all up if they do, with a government shutdown, or by refusing to fund the government, any way they can. There's no universe in which these two positions are equally unreasonable. The democrats are simply refusing to make a deal with tiny toddler terrorists, until they can stop the tantrums and the threats, and do what they promised to do.
And the press, bless their empty heads, doesn't understand the difference between a negotiating the details of a bill before it's made law, and negotiating whether the country gets to function at all, even though the Republicans aren't running it.
And yes, I know that Tip O'neill and the southern democrats shut down the government during Reagan. Again, this is todder logic. Just because the southern democrats were willing to dock the pay of federal employees to make a point, while conspicuously not putting their own money where their mouth was, doesn't make it okay for the Republicans to do the same reckless thing years later. Nor do I think you could make the case that the situations are a neat reversal of positions that are parallel in every way.
I would love to address the systemic problems caused by the corruption and foolishness of both parties. But you'll forgive me if I'm a little distracted by the destructive mega tantrum being thrown by the GOP for reasons that are so detached from empirical reality that the only conclusion I can draw is that they're out of their goddamn minds. We need to talk about the guy with the dynamite vest and the crazy eyes currently ranting in the lobby before we talk about Bob's tendency to steal pens for his friends, don't you think?
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