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The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Despite myself, I'm going to take one last crack at this, but I'll take it from the top, as opposed to going link by link, in the hope that this will help communicate as to why trying to apply statistical models to this sort of thing is intrinisically flawed. I'll make it more of a explanatory post as opposed to an adversarial/debating one though, so as to not bore everyone else, and perhaps, make it somewhat interesting. It's also slightly OT, so I hope everyone here will forgive me this minor transgression.
The first thing any student of 'history' has to ask is 'What is history?' 'What is the past?' A famous philosopher by the name of Leopold Von Ranke from the nineteenth century said it was simply 'saying what happened' (or a variation thereof, translation is a wonderful thing). That's a simple layman's view of talking about the past, you simply describe the events that occurred, to the best of your knowledge, and in turn communicate that knowledge to another person (be it a reader, listener, etc). And if you read history books from say, a century ago, they're absolutely wonderful reads, and adhere firmly to that principle of composition. But they're heavily, heavily flawed for a large number of reasons that we acknowledge today.
The first of these is an awareness that has developed regarding the mutability of human morality and attitudes in and of themselves. People change. Whilst a tub-thumpingly patriotic Royal Navy historian of over a century past might well include items of historical interest in his book, they're inevitably framed in the attitudes of the time, and wound up in the opinions of the author. Enemies are dastardly, the actions of a stateman can be angelic or villainous, and so on. What the author thinks of things and the world around him is almost indistinguishable from his 'history' of events.
In modern historiography, the goal is to cultivate an air of complete detachment. Your opinions and morals are irrelevant. You are trying to set down the facts of what occurred, and establish a causative chain of chronology for the most part, with the minimum amount of personal judgement. To relate that back to my earlier discussion with Whirlwind, you are aware that trying to claim that there is a most 'efficient' or optimal outcome from any given historical event is impossible. This is because what you think would be that most 'efficient' outcome may not be what someone of the era thought was the most 'efficient' outcome of a scenario, or indeed, what someone in a hundred years will. There is no most 'efficient' outcome, because the very nature of what comprises that efficiency is in and of itself, a value judgement. Life is not a mathematical equation, and morality is not an objective item, with 'desirable outcome' marked at one end and 'undesirable' at the other.
In the grand scheme of things, the historian tries to remove value judgements from their assessment of history, and to qualify what judgements are made. We're all doomed to failure, but we try. Instead of stating that the actions of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies were bad (simple), or even bad for miners in North England (slightly better), one would state instead that from a perspective of a specific mining community and their way of life, a specific aspect of an economic policy would be viewed by them as negative, because it impacted upon their lives in X number of ways (with appropriate footnotes sourced to evidence that).
Another thing to be aware of is how humans intrinsically pick and choose historical fact to suit their purpose, no matter how rigorous they are. When you go angling in the past, you are inherently biased because of what you're looking at. Because ultimately, you select the specific point in the vast ocean of time and past events to angle in, and fish up your facts.
For example, say that I write a history of the third Reich. You'll note that despite the Third Reich encompassing many many events and land and matter, there's no mention of a pig called Klaus from Stettin in there. Despite the fact he lived his whole life in the Third Reich. There might be documentary evidence of his existence (sales bills, piglets, etc), he will have had an impact (he interacted with many other pigs, vegetables, his owners, etc), yet somehow, Klaus is absent from my grandiosely named 'History of the Third Reich'. Ultimately, my history is just a history of what I thought was important to write about. It's certainly nowhere near to being an actual history of everything that happened in that geographical location over that period of time. What's more, even if I were to attempt such a history, it would also have encompass all the intangible things and their causative effect on each other. I would need to describe how Klaus being killed helped to sustain a soldier of the Third Reich, Klaus' feelings on being slaughtered, his environmental impact, the effect on the mental wellbeing of his owner, and so on.
To write the complete history of even this one little pig is impossible. He interacted with too many things, in too many ways. With something even greater? It only reinforces the impossibility of stating definitively or mathematically how one thing can impact on everything else. To return to Whirlwind's more recent example of the weather, we can plug into a computer what we have observed of a weather pattern from 30 years ago, and try and use it to predict what will occur tomorrow. But there's a problem with that, and it isn't the statement made about tomorrow. It's a fundamental flaw; the fact is, you cannot gather the full dataset required for that weather pattern to input into your calculations. It's impossible. As with Klaus the pig, there is absolutely no way of evaluating the impact of every moving air molecule and its impact upon another. You will never be able to collate and input sufficient data to know, 100%, what will occur.
It's the same in history. I might say that the reason Gordon Brown hated Blair was because of a time he slapped him down at a conference, but the real reason might be because Brown was in the toilet cubicle next to Blair and Blair made a sarky comment about his defecation at some point. I might speculate that a boss fired an employee because of his performance, when really? He had a stomach ache and a fight with his wife that day. I will never have the full dataset to make my prediction on why one event led to another in the past. Saying that one mentality from the past will be of no use today or in the future is impossible before you even begin to consider the unknowable quantity of the future, because my 'dataset' of both what that mentality actually encompasses, and how it previously impacted on things in the past, is fundamentally incomplete.
And that in turn means that ultimately, the past is not necessarily a good prediction of future events. You will never have an exactly identical set of circumstance occur. There is no mathematical certainty, no equation. You cannot trace 'if I input X, Y will occur', because you never thought of or considered or took into account 3,000 other unknown letters involved in the equation. And you never can.
End lecture. I could have gone into more points, but that felt long enough! Hope I didn't put too many people to sleep.
Thanks for explaining your end of things Ketara.
I do have some counterpoints on some of the statements on scientific statistical analysis that I think are misunderstood (and hopefully goes on to explain why Ketara any myself keep on taking up half pages of debate on the issue)
But there's a problem with that, and it isn't the statement made about tomorrow. It's a fundamental flaw; the fact is, you cannot gather the full dataset required for that weather pattern to input into your calculations. It's impossible. As with Klaus the pig, there is absolutely no way of evaluating the impact of every moving air molecule and its impact upon another. You will never be able to collate and input sufficient data to know, 100%, what will occur.
I think this is a misunderstanding of science as a whole works. Many laws, theories and so on work on a probabilistic basis rather an actual measured properties. I mentioned the 'ideal gas box' scenario previously. There is a mathematical equation that relates pressure (P), volume (V), temperature (T) and number of molecules (n) and a constant (R); PV =nRT. Depending on what I know this allows me to determine certain facts about the system. If I know the temperature, pressure and volume of a box then I can determine the number of molecules. It doesn't actually matter what the individual particles are doing in the box, some might be faster, slower have more collisions. it is in fact almost certainly impossible to know what each particle does because it would rely on me knowing what happened from the beginning of the universe to now to know (and not effect that by measuring it which is impossible). This is also one reason some people think we could just be inside one huge computer simulation because the only way to study what can happen from the big bang to now is to 'run' it. This is why we know for example what the air pressure is. It's not a measurement of an individual molecule it's a statistical measurement of billions of them. This is why you can have weather forecasts, they may not be always correct by our understanding it is just symptomatic of having too few data points to ensure that the model works well enough.
The same goes for say radioactive decay. I can take a single atom of uranium 238 but would not be able to tell you when it would radioactively decay. However if I take a lump of Uranium 238 I can tell you how long it would take for half of it to decay (it's half life or 4.468 billion years) because I know that this is the time that it takes for there to be a 50% chance that it will decay. I can't tell you what individual atoms will do, but I can predict what the system as whole will do. This is a statistical prediction. The same goes for electricity and which electrons are moving to power your phone, computer etc or how the photons reach you and are 'read' by your eye and so on. It is not necessary to know what individual elements are doing, you don't need the full data set, but you can predict the system as whole using current theory (and then test and update and so on).
And population statistics are the same. If I take a 100 dogs and put them in an enclosed field the way they act individually is impossible to predict, but as a group I can because there are previous data points to use. There may be flaws (requiring a changed in the theory and prediction) but you can make an overall prediction from historical evidence using current thinking. I could then change external factors, so food, water, space and so on and the group of dogs will adapt to the new circumstances. And these same principles can be applied to the human population as well. I don't actually care about Klaus the Pig and his daily life, what I care about is the population of pigs as whole, whether 50% are turned into sausages, 45% into bacon and 5% for reproduction in the last 10 years. I can't tell you what happens to Klaus but I can make a prediction about what happens to them as a population next year. If every 50 years there is a pig plague that kills 50% of them the data from such previous years can then be used to predict on a current theory what the probabilities as to what might happen then (lets say in previous plagues, sausages were no longer made); I can then predict the probability that this same effect will occur next time. That doesn't mean it will, for example a ban on bacon at the time might mean only sausages were made; but that means I refine theory and predict what happens next time. Over time you build up a larger sample of situations and that allows you to refine your theory and predict with more accuracy. It simply becomes a numbers game, the more data you have the less likely you are susceptible to outlier situations and other selection effects the better the theory the more likely the prediction will match an outcome.
This is because what you think would be that most 'efficient' outcome may not be what someone of the era thought was the most 'efficient' outcome of a scenario, or indeed, what someone in a hundred years will.
Yet you don't need to *know* what the most efficient outcome is. Physical laws tell us systems evolve to the most efficient state they can over time, because it is the state of lowest energy. A simple explanation would be a perfect sphere on a perfectly spherical hill and valley (looks like a wave). There are two stable scenarios one where the ball is on the top of the hill and one where it is in the valley. There is only one situation where you can locate the ball and be stable on the top of the hill, every other situation will result in the ball sliding down the hill into the valley and settling there - this is the lowest energy state. The former is possible but extremely unlikely compared to the latter. Therefore it is much more likely a system will evolve to the low energy, more efficient system. A more direct example would be traffic. Suppose you have 1000 employees living in City X and company Y sets up shop and employs these people in location Z. Now there are three routes between X and Z. A fast motorway (which can accommodate 800 employees before jamming up), a slow hill route (which can accommodate 50 employees) and a medium route (150 employees). On day one of everyone's job *assuming they are only interested in getting to the job (and nothing else)* then they will all use the motorway. This causes a traffic jam and slows everyone down and is slower than using either of the other routes, so the next day maybe 180 people use the medium route. The fast and medium route are now both jammed. And so on. Eventually the system evolves to a steady state of being the most efficient usage of the available roads. The system makes no assumption as to what the most efficient route is, the system just evolves to that point because it is the point of lowest energy. Now suppose we add a new road and change one of the others but we don't know the specifics. The system will evolve again and so on, but using the historical data we can make a prediction though (and in a basic sense this how logistics works).
We are all biological machines (albeit advanced ones), there's nothing that distinguishes us from dogs, rats and so on from in terms of physical or chemical laws. We all run on this basis and hence how we 'operate' can be determined from statistical analysis of these systems. That means we are intrinsically predictable if we have enough data and the right model. We don't need all of the missing 3000 letters as long as the data we already have is statistically robust. Yes they might help differentiate between two competing theories and different outcomes (so new data, debunks one idea, doesn't debunk another, but always new data - test - new data etc). Your ability to use the data, formulate a theory and predict is though dependent on how coarse your data is. For example I can't predict there will be another WW or when (there are only two data points), but there have been plenty of wars and many (not all) of these are fought over resources (water, food, gold, slaves, oil, whatever the specifics are not important). We also know that with climate change and an increasing population resources are going to become more scarce. Yes I might not know of all wars, but given what I do know I can theorise that without access to more resources then wars may become more prevalent at some time in the future. However it is not 100% that is what will happen, we may suddenly open up space and get access to more resources and space than we know what to do with. That becomes a different external pressure and then the data changes, the theory will need re-evaluating and predictions will need to change. The actual work on predicting the future would hence then be considered part of the physical/chemical processes that dominate our evolution to get to another low energy efficient state given current outside external factors.
To summarise another ramble What I think is fundamentally flawed about the historical, non-statistical method is that it provides no predictive power. It is studying the past for the sake of it. From this perspective as a population overall we could 'tomorrow' drop to four limbs, run around outside and spend the day sniffing each others butts because there is no reason why we couldn't take this approach to the world (I know it's an extreme example). The reason we know this is highly unlikely is because of our current analysis of past data makes this prediction to be statistically highly unlikely. From a personal perspective I'm wondering whether this debate all revolves round whether we think that humans are in some way special and hence have a way to direct our future as a population or whether we are a population of statistical machines bound by all the same rules as everything else in the universe (but that is best left for another thread)!
Childcare as part of business infrastructure is an interesting concept. IMO childcare should be free for parents in work.
The issue with the childcare system at the moment is that it drives higher prices. The more you 'subsidise' it the more the parents can pay for the other time and so on.
I've thought that they really need to change the system completely. One thought I've previously had is that:-
Mothers/Fathers between them get 12 months (consecutive) parental leave with a much higher minimum annual salary during this period (lets say £11K pa for arguments sake)
If an employers business has pre-tax profit (and no funny moving of money about either) of more than a certain amount (say £100K for arguments sake) then the company has to pay the parental leave wage (until a point where it may affect profits to be below a value, lets at £50k amount)
If an employers business has a pre-tax profit below this arbitrary amount then the government pays the minimum annual salary (or if they are state employed, otherwise you are just moving money around for no gain)
After 12 months *all* children get mandatory free education through a state funded system (basically 'schooling' starts at 1)
All child benefit payments/tax breaks etc. are scrapped (though there may need to be an adjustment to other allowances for the really poor to ensure that this doesn't negatively affect them).
The principle being that very profitable businesses support their staff (as the staff are effectively working to have this happen). That SMEs aren't unfairly penalised and end up with a cost that's not viable. That parents can guarantee that their children will be able to go somewhere after they go back to work and can be less worried about juggling work/life commitments. Obviously it's only a hazy idea and all ramifications would need to be considered. Basically though it's to start getting the big businesses to cough up more and support their staff rather than expect the government to fund it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/13 14:26:57
"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. " - V
I've just supported the Permanent European Union Citizenship initiative. Please do the same and spread the word!
"It's not a problem if you don't look up." - Dakka's approach to politics
Apologies if I'm changing the subject here. There's been some good posts from Whirlwind and Ketara
But I've just seen the picture of Nigel Farage at the Trump Tower in NY.
Holy horsegak! How the hell did thousands of years of Western Civilization come to this?
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Magna Carta, Declaration of Arbroath, 1689 bill of rtghts, American Revolutin, French Revolution, Da Vinci, Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Hume,
Industrial revolution etc etc etc etc
And now we're in the hands of Trump and Farage...
I for one welcome or mutated Giant Ant overlords!
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Apologies if I'm changing the subject here. There's been some good posts from Whirlwind and Ketara
But I've just seen the picture of Nigel Farage at the Trump Tower in NY.
Holy horsegak! How the hell did thousands of years of Western Civilization come to this?
It's fine, it's all still relevant. I saw this too, I agree the idea of Trump/Farage is rather depressing.
Considering comments on BBC always seem to around BBC being pro-EU they give a depressing amount of air time to the jumped up demagogue. If all the press didn't cover Farage's antics then his ability to influence things might disappear. We see more of Farage these days in the press than a lot of other politicians. I suppose he is inflammatory (in a marmite type of way) that means it becomes 'newsworthy' but I don't think it helps anyone.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/13 15:04:13
"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. " - V
I've just supported the Permanent European Union Citizenship initiative. Please do the same and spread the word!
"It's not a problem if you don't look up." - Dakka's approach to politics
But there's a problem with that, and it isn't the statement made about tomorrow. It's a fundamental flaw; the fact is, you cannot gather the full dataset required for that weather pattern to input into your calculations. It's impossible. As with Klaus the pig, there is absolutely no way of evaluating the impact of every moving air molecule and its impact upon another. You will never be able to collate and input sufficient data to know, 100%, what will occur.
I think this is a misunderstanding of science as a whole works. Many laws, theories and so on work on a probabilistic basis rather an actual measured properties......(cut short for brevity)
That, sadly, is the flaw of trying to apply science to scenarios such as political systems and culture. I accept that science is made up of theories, that it works by assessing the probability of any given scenario again, that any equation can be adjusted in line with new facts to try and make future results more accurate. It's not too dissimilar from the way assessing what is to be considered 'historical fact' works.
The problem with attempting to predict what will happen in the future with a scientific approach however, is that you have to consider precisely where your dataset is coming from. And the answer is sadly: us historians. All that data which you are attempting to build into your models to try and gauge what will occur comes from us. We write it. We announce what did or did not work. We're the ones who collate the raw data into the identifiable trends. We, in essence, invent the separate parts E, =, M, c, and squared. You (or the political analysts/economists/various professions) take the letters we have invented to feed into your computer to devise your equations and probabilities. There's always some crossover, economists look at some raw data, some historians move beyond the magnifying glass approach to make sweeping generalisations, and so forth.
But ultimately, the building blocks of the past which you input into your statistical model are shaped, baked, and delivered by the historians. Which in turn means that your dataset is limited to whatever it is we historians chose to look at and bake our bricks from, we historians who are so very fallible that our theories change every fifty years. It's why a book on economic theory or political systems from the 1930's looks so different to one today. The bricks the historians of the time baked are considerably different to the ones we make now. And since we historians ultimately will always be selectively choosing precisely where it is in the ocean of time we fish for our facts, it means that any model you build is inherently vastly, vastly flawed, due to our flaws.
Sorry about that. We do the best we can.
This is because what you think would be that most 'efficient' outcome may not be what someone of the era thought was the most 'efficient' outcome of a scenario, or indeed, what someone in a hundred years will.
Yet you don't need to *know* what the most efficient outcome is...... Eventually the system evolves to a steady state of being the most efficient usage of the available roads. The system makes no assumption as to what the most efficient route is, the system just evolves to that point because it is the point of lowest energy. Now suppose we add a new road and change one of the others but we don't know the specifics. The system will evolve again and so on, but using the historical data we can make a prediction though (and in a basic sense this how logistics works).
I don't think I'm quite getting my previous point in relation to your original example across, so I'll try and reword using your example above.
You are correct that your 'system' above is ultimately constantly changing towards it's theoretical final or perfect form. But! Only for the form of the efficient flow of traffic. If I'm a terrorist out to slow traffic down, what you view as the most 'efficient' system is intrinsically opposed to what I think is. Because my ideal system is one where nothing is moving at all. If there are five other people with different goals that interfere with or redirect traffic somehow, than the system isn't a system where the most 'efficient' form it takes is the smooth flow of traffic, because it's actually many different systems intertwined with each other all working at crosspurposes. There is no pure system for there to be a most 'efficient' form of.
It's the same with looking at political systems of the past. You may believe that the most efficient form of government is X. And so you may try and trace the elements which you believe contribute to that most efficient and perfect form of government. But ultimately, that's just your view of what is the most efficient and perfect form. Politics is about ideologies. You could try and argue that it's irrelevant what one's own beliefs are, that the perfect form will be reached regardless, but if that is the case, how do you know which attributes are part of that most efficient form?
The answer is that you're relying on two things. The first is your own value judgement. You might consider the most efficient working society/political system to be one which is economically strong, for example. But that's purely your own point of view, somebody else could believe that totalitarianism is far more important. The second sadly, is us historians again. You'll be relying upon whatever you've learnt about past systems, and how they relate to those attributes which you have prioritised. And that knowledge of yours derives from the economists, political analysts, and so on, who in turn derive their knowledge from the flawed historians.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2016/11/13 17:32:12
But ultimately, the building blocks of the past which you input into your statistical model are shaped, baked, and delivered by the historians. Which in turn means that your dataset is limited to whatever it is we historians chose to look at and bake our bricks from, we historians who are so very fallible that our theories change every fifty years. It's why a book on economic theory or political systems from the 1930's looks so different to one today. The bricks the historians of the time baked are considerably different to the ones we make now. And since we historians ultimately will always be selectively choosing precisely where it is in the ocean of time we fish for our facts, it means that any model you build is inherently vastly, vastly flawed, due to our flaws.
Sorry about that. We do the best we can.
Yeah that's fine, I accept all this. It's the same in all fields of science too. Though it's more to do with biases that can be introduced from how you measure, the equipment you are using an so on. There is a statistical method that deals with this though. It's called Bayesian Statistics which is definitely something I'm not an expert in but 'simply' it allows you to use 'prior' information and puts a probability on this information. It can be useful in the examples you provide to solve the conundrum you are describing.
You are correct that your 'system' above is ultimately constantly changing towards it's theoretical final or perfect form. But! Only for the form of the efficient flow of traffic. If I'm a terrorist out to slow traffic down, what you view as the most 'efficient' system is intrinsically opposed to what I think is. Because my ideal system is one where nothing is moving at all. If there are five other people with different goals that interfere with or redirect traffic somehow, than the system isn't a system where the most 'efficient' form it takes is the smooth flow of traffic, because it's actually many different systems intertwined with each other all working at crosspurposes. There is no pure system for there to be a most 'efficient' form of.
It's the same with looking at political systems of the past. You may believe that the most efficient form of government is X. And so you may try and trace the elements which you believe contribute to that most efficient and perfect form of government. But ultimately, that's just your view of what is the most efficient and perfect form. Politics is about ideologies. You could try and argue that it's irrelevant what one's own beliefs are, that the perfect form will be reached regardless, but if that is the case, how do you know which attributes are part of that most efficient form?
The answer is that you're relying on two things. The first is your own value judgement. You might consider the most efficient working society/political system to be one which is economically strong, for example. But that's purely your own point of view, somebody else could believe that totalitarianism is far more important. The second sadly, is us historians again. You'll be relying upon whatever you've learnt about past systems, and how they relate to those attributes which you have prioritised. And that knowledge of yours derives from the economists, political analysts, and so on, who in turn derive their knowledge from the flawed historians.
Yes, but what I think is the most efficient system isn't relevant (and I'm desperately trying to find the words to emphasise this, but giving abstract examples is both a typing chore and difficult to follow! ). There's no intent on my part to 'define' what the efficient system is (the car example is more for ease of understanding). It is more that any system naturally moves towards the zone of lowest energy use when you have a large enough sample/particles. Adding in an additional factor (the terrorist, or those five other people) does change the system but the system then readjusts and heads back towards whatever is now the *new* point of efficiency. The terrorist/five people effectively move the ball up the hill to some extent and it will then relax to whatever the new lowest energy (most efficient system is). You can't predict what the most efficient system might be from the non-terrorist affected road system, but by using prior data from similar events then you can start to build up data on this modified system and predict from a model what this new system will be. In some ways this is why you have variable speed systems on some roads, it forces a new paradigm on the system.
So I'm not saying *what* is the most efficient system or *what* a perfect form of government is (that is not my job ) and so on. What I am saying is that any system will head towards an equilibrium where all the different pressures are balanced resulting in the lowest energy/efficient state being obtained (regardless of what that is) such as the ball at the bottom of the valley. When the pressures change (whatever they are) then the system is then moved away from this lowest energy/efficient state (whatever that was) and there is a new lowest energy/efficient state (whatever this is). The system will then naturally respond and relax to this new state (whatever it is). Hence I'm not trying to say what these states are but rather that the populace (i.e. system) will naturally head towards it when conditions and pressures change (and given enough data and adequate testable model you can attempt to predict, test, refine, test and so on).
Does that make any more sense?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/13 20:09:12
"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. " - V
I've just supported the Permanent European Union Citizenship initiative. Please do the same and spread the word!
"It's not a problem if you don't look up." - Dakka's approach to politics
The place where I disagree with both of you is the region of human decision making based on stories. It is clear that humans have a lot of ideas which are stories, basically fiction, that work because people believe in them.
One example is the Placebo Effect. It works even if you tell the patient that they may benefit but only from the Placebo Effect. There is a measurable benefit.
I have seen a similar effect in my work as a seller of wine and spirits. If I tell the buyer a story about the bottle they are buying, it gives them confidence they will enjoy it, and consequently they are more likely to do so. It's much easier for me to tell this story if I have already involved myself in it and believe in it myself, for example by tasting the wine.
Objectively there is no difference between Wine A and Wine B or Gin X and Gin Y that could be measured except with a spectrometer, which obviously the user doesn't have. Subjectively, though, the buyer is more likely to enjoy the drink if he has explained what he wants from the drink and has been given reasons to think these needs will be satisfied.
From one angle I disagree with you, Ketara, in your example of Karl the piggie and his life and death in the Third Reich. We don't know what happened to Karl, but his calorific value as food certainly was utilised by chemical processes and had an effect that would be measurable if we could get close enough to be able to check it. The fact we can't measure it doesn't mean it did not take palce.
OTOH from this hypothesis of stories, Karl the piggie was part of a narrative of the Third Reich at war that gave or did not give the population the will to continue the conflict. The population were told various information, which they believed to some extent based partly on their personal experiences. The human ability to believe stories means that behaviour is not based purely on the most efficient processes that emerge through trial and error.
So what all three of you ketara, whrilwind & killcrazy are saying is its all best guess work influenced by your own bias dependant on your source.
Ah you gotta love comaritive science in a politics thread.
Yes ive simplyfied it enomously and theres lots of nounce in each view but it is best guess as history is not that acurate, statistics have margins of error dependant on datapoints and stories vary in different locations.
This is not to bash any of you, but i'm a blunt person and enlightening as these are they do tend to bore after a while. Sorry.
Skullhammer wrote: So what all three of you ketara, whrilwind & killcrazy are saying is its all best guess work influenced by your own bias dependant on your source.
Ah you gotta love comaritive science in a politics thread.
Yes ive simplyfied it enomously and theres lots of nounce in each view but it is best guess as history is not that acurate, statistics have margins of error dependant on datapoints and stories vary in different locations.
This is not to bash any of you, but i'm a blunt person and enlightening as these are they do tend to bore after a while. Sorry.
Best guess? I wish, best guess is easy. I think you've been watching The Core too many times (which to point out is one of the most scientifically unsound films made)! Anyway my trawling through gigabytes of data, Ketara's study of history, Kilkrazys drinking is not about best guess - it allows us to have these debates. We debate the issue because that is how consensus's are reached on any particular theory or idea. It's the subtleties that are the important aspects. This is what the Brexit debate should have been, not sound bites. I can only thank Kilkrazy and Ketara in responding thoughtfully on the issues. I may not agree with Ketara over Brexit but I'd do appreciate and respect that they both are willing to spend the time to respond in the way they do, because they don't have to. It also hopefully allows others reading the discussion to come to their own views and see the different sides of the arguments and that we can all challenge our own preconceptions we have.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/13 23:06:49
"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. " - V
I've just supported the Permanent European Union Citizenship initiative. Please do the same and spread the word!
"It's not a problem if you don't look up." - Dakka's approach to politics
Alright maybe not best guess, educated deduction based on advailable infomation. There that sound better.
You did notice my last sentance that these disscusions are enlightening. But as i said they have strayed into which is best and wandered of into the long grass. (From my point of view). Of course i might not be smart enough to understand after all i voted leave so i'm thick. (Jk). Actually im into philosophy/psycology which dosent really have a dog in this fight except as an observer, as i leave that alone when on fora/social media.
Sorry for any offence given to you three dakkanaughts.
Your graceful apology is accepted in the spirit it is offered.
Personally I don't claim my "stories" are predictive, but I do believe that people believe in and are influenced by narratives which can be fictional and even counter-factual. Depending on personal circumstances people may be more or less likely to believe in the story promoted by one side or the other.
In the EU referendum, for instance, the Leave campaigns created the story that the EU costs Britain £50 million a day. This is a nice round figure, and sounds big enough to create outrage among people whose opinions might be swayed. If you were sceptical enough to examine the evidence, it turned out not to be true, but a lot of people wanted to believe it and didn't bother to read the Reality Check sites. Trump pulled off a massive number of lies in creating his election narrative, and tapped into a receptive audience.
That said, it is turning out that Clinton won the popular vote so the US election result actually depended on their system of Electoral College selection which gives disproportionate power to low population density, i.e. rural states like Montana.
No problem killcrazy and i agree people do belive the stories or at least lean that way depending on there view.(as you only put one comment on the prediction of future it was unfair of me to include you).
As to brexit even fact check sites differed that 50mill a day was on some sites lower as it didnt take rebates etc on others it was higher as thats before adjustments, either way both camps were bad in the runup and now we have to deal with it.
As for ketara and whrilwind both approches are needed but to work in tandem, as one wont work without the other and both are just as valid.
I'm uncomfortable with all this technical and academic talk. It sounds too much like 'experts,' and experts are not welcome in BREXIT Britain
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
The Mail -- you're shocked now , I know -- also ran withe the "story" for a while.
Disgraceful behaviour by the papers here.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Skullhammer wrote: Alright maybe not best guess, educated deduction based on advailable infomation. There that sound better.
You did notice my last sentance that these disscusions are enlightening. But as i said they have strayed into which is best and wandered of into the long grass. (From my point of view). Of course i might not be smart enough to understand after all i voted leave so i'm thick. (Jk). Actually im into philosophy/psycology which dosent really have a dog in this fight except as an observer, as i leave that alone when on fora/social media.
Sorry for any offence given to you three dakkanaughts.
No offence taken. Apology accepted. No one is 'thick', you least of all (and definitely not on the basis of how you chose to vote). My brain works in the same ways as yours does, you have just as much potential as I do in what you want to achieve. Our education levels may not be the same but that is different, that is a flaw in the system not in 'you'. I also think a lot of people take offence at being called less educated because it is read as 'thick' when they are two separate issues.
What we really need from our education system (children and mature) is to give people the ability to challenge what is said, question whether it is BS (universities are finding that most students expect to be 'spoon-fed' when they arrive). Of course governments don't really like to be challenged because it exposes outrageous claims/unverifiable statements for what they are (whether that is the start of WW3 or £50m a day claims). It is also why I suspect that some officials come out with things like "we've had enough of experts' because it denigrates what such people can bring to the conversation (and tries to stifle the debate)
The Mail -- you're shocked now , I know -- also ran withe the "story" for a while.
Disgraceful behaviour by the papers here.
The unfortunate thing is that they won't have to repeal the story accept in some never read corner of a page. So there will be plenty of people that will be 'fooled' and never realise this was just appalling journalism and a fabrication.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/14 11:09:55
"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. " - V
I've just supported the Permanent European Union Citizenship initiative. Please do the same and spread the word!
"It's not a problem if you don't look up." - Dakka's approach to politics
The Mail -- you're shocked now , I know -- also ran withe the "story" for a while.
Disgraceful behaviour by the papers here.
And Nigel Farage claims, backed by his chums at the Daily Mail, that Sweden has the most biased media in the EU. Every time I think the piece of filth can't get worse he manages to.
For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back.
You'd think Farage joining the Labour Party would've been bigger news.
.. what the hell happened in that lift ?!
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Thanks reds8n now i have an image in my head tgat will keep me up for weeks......
Now this could (tankers of salt) be a ploy to lay the ground work for a trade deal with the US as farage has no power in the uk so is not bound by no negotiations before art 50 imposed by the eu then when art 50 is done theres just dotting the I and crossing the T's for a trade deal.
Of course i think its just an ego trip for both of them but the idea give something to disscus.
Number 10: "don't remember there being a third person in that relationship" between Reagan and Thatcher, when asked about Farage and Trump
wee bit of a slapdown there.
..... one would suggest it might be a wee bit premature to compare Trump to Reagan or oneself to Thatcher ...?
"Number 10 resisting any notion of using @Nigel_Farage as a go-between, intermediary, middle man between Downing St & new White House
"
Perhaps the most worrying thing to consider is that as/when we do send someone that should be the Foreign Sec....
.... Boris Johnson..
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Skullhammer wrote: Thanks reds8n now i have an image in my head tgat will keep me up for weeks......
Now this could (tankers of salt) be a ploy to lay the ground work for a trade deal with the US as farage has no power in the uk so is not bound by no negotiations before art 50 imposed by the eu then when art 50 is done theres just dotting the I and crossing the T's for a trade deal.
Of course i think its just an ego trip for both of them but the idea give something to disscus.
You do know the "No negotiations before article 50" thing is just between the UK and EU, right? There is nothing stopping other countries from having preliminary talks with our government about future trade deals before we enact article 50, except for the fact that until we have enacted it and began negotiations with the EU no country has any idea what kind of deal we're going to get or even aiming for with the EU. That kind of makes any possibility of non-EU countries getting trade deals ready to sign as soon as we leave pie in the sky thinking as they will want to know where we stand with the EU and how they can use that to their advantage in order to get access to the single market for their goods, before they think about what terms from us will be acceptable.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
reds8n wrote: Some of you mat recall that wwaayy back during the election I posted a link to a UKIP themed "song" made by a supporter/candidate of theirs.
the general consensus both here and across the world was that it was god awful.
It would seem however that there's a new challenger in town
Hmmm, well it did use to be tradition, before X-factor, that we had crazy Xmas numbers so maybe we are just going back to this old British tradition (Mr Blobby anyone?). Maybe this is the reason that JC is really a secret supporter of Brexit?
Or maybe it should be Mr Blobby for PM (might be more popular than JC )
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/14 14:13:40
"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. " - V
I've just supported the Permanent European Union Citizenship initiative. Please do the same and spread the word!
"It's not a problem if you don't look up." - Dakka's approach to politics
Whilst everybody is focused on Trump and Brexit, the real stuff, the bread and butter issues, are getting neglected.
I was watching Going Underground on RT, and the focus was on Prison services and probation services in England and Wales. Unsurprisingly, it is a complete shambles.
Prisons are war zones, staff morale is rock bottom, and the Tories are clueless as ever.
They want to recruit more staff, but £23,000 for the London area as a starting salary is a joke, and understandably, many are deserting the prison service for safer and better paying jobs.
Probation is no better. 50% of all criminals are re-offending after their first year out, in England and Wales, which is the worst in Western Europe.
The other area for concern is library closures and street cleaning. British streets are some of the untidiest in Western Europe, and with cash strapped councils cutting back on this and libraries, God knows what we're going to have left in 10 years.
People, let's not take our eye off the ball - the bread and butter stuff is equally as important, and everybody seems distracted by Trump and Brexit.
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Whilst everybody is focused on Trump and Brexit, the real stuff, the bread and butter issues, are getting neglected.
I was watching Going Underground on RT, and the focus was on Prison services and probation services in England and Wales. Unsurprisingly, it is a complete shambles.
Prisons are war zones, staff morale is rock bottom, and the Tories are clueless as ever.
They want to recruit more staff, but £23,000 for the London area as a starting salary is a joke, and understandably, many are deserting the prison service for safer and better paying jobs.
Probation is no better. 50% of all criminals are re-offending after their first year out, in England and Wales, which is the worst in Western Europe.
The other area for concern is library closures and street cleaning. British streets are some of the untidiest in Western Europe, and with cash strapped councils cutting back on this and libraries, God knows what we're going to have left in 10 years.
People, let's not take our eye off the ball - the bread and butter stuff is equally as important, and everybody seems distracted by Trump and Brexit.
More privatisation is the answer!!!!!
Prisons and offender management are a fething gakshow. You can wonder why prisons are called warehouses and hate factories by their inmates. Prison should be a place for rehabilitation from the minute an offender sets foot in the door, yet they are worse places than when some of them were established (rehabilitation was the grand aim way back then). Now they are just places to hold people until their release date comes up.
More staff are needed, but who trains them? The good staff are leaving, considerate staff who have respect from their inmates because they give respect back. Whats left are the old style. 'screws' in every sense of the word, many viewing their charges as nothing more than vermin.
Probation is a grand joke, of course they have great staff but the service as a whole exists to count time down until their clients sentence ends. Once that time expires probation and NOMS have no further use for their client, job done, the book is closed. Its like the job centre and many many other branches of the civil service, if you say the right things at the right time they will have done their job.
The prison service needs to change for the better, but I doubt it will... 'Criminals' in prison and their access to TV and a pool table is still a wonderful opportunity for political point scoring.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Whilst everybody is focused on Trump and Brexit, the real stuff, the bread and butter issues, are getting neglected.
I was watching Going Underground on RT, and the focus was on Prison services and probation services in England and Wales. Unsurprisingly, it is a complete shambles.
Prisons are war zones, staff morale is rock bottom, and the Tories are clueless as ever.
They want to recruit more staff, but £23,000 for the London area as a starting salary is a joke, and understandably, many are deserting the prison service for safer and better paying jobs.
Probation is no better. 50% of all criminals are re-offending after their first year out, in England and Wales, which is the worst in Western Europe.
The other area for concern is library closures and street cleaning. British streets are some of the untidiest in Western Europe, and with cash strapped councils cutting back on this and libraries, God knows what we're going to have left in 10 years.
People, let's not take our eye off the ball - the bread and butter stuff is equally as important, and everybody seems distracted by Trump and Brexit.
I'm afraid this is what comes from having a Tory government. Their ideal is low tax, no state. Yet it's the people on the lowest income are the ones hardest hit. As far as I can tell the Tories are trying to force state organisations to fail by cutting as much money as possible from their budgets and when they inevitably they do they get put into the hand of private companies to 'rescue' them
My Dad knows someone that use to work in the Prisons Service and the government has effectively cut their budget to the barest of minimum. And this isn't the only area
As pointed Libraries and other local government services are being cut back as their income is squeezed (whilst the government at the same time limits any ability to increase taxes to compensate)
Old Persons care is on it's last legs as social service staff are overworked with little time but to do the barest minimum.
The education system is faltering as more and more teachers abandon the profession
Junior doctors are looking elsewhere for jobs (for example Australia have now had to limit the number of doctors entering the company because so many are applying to enter, which IIRC was a visa free work area)
You have businesses employed to recover 'over paid' benefits money and exploiting these vulnerable and generally less educated people and so are making life as difficult as possible and using ridiculous excuses not to pay out.
All this whilst you have
The government making oil recovery from the North Sea tax free
Reducing business tax to the lowest levels ever which benefits the larger companies much more than the smaller ones
They are charging multi-billion £ profit companies minimal tax through behind doors negotiations
You have winter heating subsidies being paid to all over 65's regardless of what their income is
They are still paying £7K state pension to those earning £20k plus on private pensions (compared that to if you were employed!)
Paying over the odds for a future nuclear power station with a guaranteed price that the public will have to pay for their energy supplies whilst at the same time allowing these same companies to make billions of £'s of profit that goes to shareholders rather than renewing the required infrastructure.
One of my biggest fear with Brexit is that to encourage businesses to stay the Tories will give them more tax breaks, more benefits whilst paying for this by ruining your public services (on the basis it's good for UKplc). You probably won't see it in the pay packet, but rather those services that become useful at only specific stages in your life (but are otherwise not visible). These are easy to cut because most people at any one time aren't using them.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/14 19:10:10
"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. " - V
I've just supported the Permanent European Union Citizenship initiative. Please do the same and spread the word!
"It's not a problem if you don't look up." - Dakka's approach to politics
Prisons and offender management are a fething gakshow. You can wonder why prisons are called warehouses and hate factories by their inmates. Prison should be a place for rehabilitation from the minute an offender sets foot in the door, yet they are worse places than when some of them were established (rehabilitation was the grand aim way back then). Now they are just places to hold people until their release date comes up.
More staff are needed, but who trains them? The good staff are leaving, considerate staff who have respect from their inmates because they give respect back. Whats left are the old style. 'screws' in every sense of the word, many viewing their charges as nothing more than vermin.
Probation is a grand joke, of course they have great staff but the service as a whole exists to count time down until their clients sentence ends. Once that time expires probation and NOMS have no further use for their client, job done, the book is closed. Its like the job centre and many many other branches of the civil service, if you say the right things at the right time they will have done their job.
The prison service needs to change for the better, but I doubt it will... 'Criminals' in prison and their access to TV and a pool table is still a wonderful opportunity for political point scoring.
I have extensive experience with Prison Architect. I could do it. All I'd ask is the low salary of 2mil a year.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/14 19:13:11
