Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: dating site science

AA asks about a new study purporting to demonstrate that religion only benefits people where it is a free rider:

What do you think about the newly released study that claims that religious beliefs only make people happier due to cultural factors? According to the new study of almost 200,000 people in 11 European countries, people who are religious have higher self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than the non-religious only in countries where belief in religion is common . In more secular societies, the religious and the non-religious are equally well-off.

“The results suggest that religiosity, albeit a potent force, confers benefits by riding on cultural values,” study researcher Jochen Gebauer of Humboldt University in Berlin and colleagues wrote online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

Do you think this study indicates the truth or is there any other valid reasons why religion creates better lifestyles for people in need of purpose?

My initial assumption is that this study is the usual propagandistic garbage put out by pseudoscientists who are dishonestly attempting to bolster their preconceived opinion with a false sheen of science. No doubt it is the sort of quasi-scientific study that purports to “prove” that all conservatives are racist, low IQ child molesters and therefore all decent human beings have no choice but to vote for Nancy Pelosi.

[Stops to read the referenced article about the study.]

Bingo. Here is the money quote:

“Gebauer and colleagues wanted to know if larger cultural forces contribute to the well-being of spiritual sorts. They turned to eDarling, the European version of dating websites like eHarmony or Match.com. Users of eDarling answer a question in their profiles about how important religion is to them; while setting up their profiles, they also complete psychological surveys asking them how “calm,” “cheerful” and “content” they feel, among other measures of happiness, life satisfaction and self-esteem.”

No doubt in their next study, Gebauer and his colleagues will report the astonishing news that contra all the media reports, there is no epidemic of obesity in America as only two percent of the women on eHarmony report themselves to be “overweight”. Not only is the ridicuous study entirely based on a notoriously unreliable form of self-reporting – it’s a DATING SITE, for crying out loud – but it contradicts many studies based upon more concrete metrics for measuring psychological health, such as alcoholism, suicide rates, and prescriptions for drugs used to treat depression.

Here, for example, is a study that uses the objective measure of hypertension as a metric and directly contradicts the conclusions of the eDarling-based study.

“With the help of a large Norwegian longitudinal health study called HUNT, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) were able to find a clear relationship between time spent in church and lower blood pressure in both women and men.

“We found that the more often HUNT participants went to church, the lower their blood pressure, even when we controlled for a number of other possible explanatory factors,” says Torgeir Sørensen, a PhD candidate from the School of Theology and Religious Psychology Centre at Sykehuset Innlandet (Inland Hospital). “This is the first study of its kind in Scandinavia. Previous research from the United States has shown that there is a possible link between people who attend church and blood pressure.”

In fact, if we are to take dating site science seriously, we can conclude that there are other, more important factors in making people happy. For example, OKCupid relies on the same sort of self-reporting “science” and concludes that women’s self-confidence increases with weight and age.

“Curvy women pass skinny ones in self-confidence at age 29 and never look back. They also consistently have the highest sex drive among the groups.”

So there is the scientific utopia of which so many secularists dream. Obese and godless old women rutting confidently, and often, with each other. Oh sweet Sappho! Do you understand the significance of this? Do you realize what this means? There is now a scientific basis for Lesbian Dorito Night!

Mailvox: hit me with your best shot

Agnosticon hasn’t delved deeply enough into the archives to understand why things work the way they do:

If a blog is purposed for argument and not just banal discussion, then opposing views are essential for its content. Of course, this would also depend on quality of opposition, and most regulars here will immediately begin insulting self-proclaimed atheists, so it can be concluded that this blog doesn’t really value argument. I think many here are here to socialize with like-minded others. It’s possible that true argument might not be possible due to asymmetry of opinion, although that isn’t necessarily a disqualifier. Conventionally, a “troll” is not just someone who shows up only for argument, rather a person who shows up to derail argument. It would appear that Vox means to argue, since his posts are so often provocative, yet when engaged he often seems too ready just to score a couple points, declare victory, and get out. There are other people here who seem genuinely interested in argument.

Agnosticon first fails to distinguish between legitimate and substantive arguments versus those that are obviously stupid and fallacious in considering whether the Dread Ilk are interested in arguments in general. He seems to be unaware that I have written a book in which dozens of popular atheist arguments are conclusively demolished and have addressed many more on this blog over the past four years, so when yet another clueless college kid shows up and starts spouting off half-understood atheist pablum that everyone has seen before, it is hardly a mystery that he meets with nothing but ridicule, especially when he presents his outdated arguments in an obnoxious and confrontational manner. And why would they be ever be interested in taking such interlocutors seriously, especially when over the last eight years, we have seen this sort of individual lie, move the goalposts, refuse to admit when they are conclusively proved wrong, and otherwise behave in an intellectually unserious manner?

In the very thread in which Agnosticon commented, we have the example of Dan, who cannot understand that utilitarian philosophy is not “a rational basis in fact”. Does he honestly recommend that such an individual be taken seriously? And if so, how?

The second thing that Agnosticon fails to recognize is that there is substantial proof right here on this blog that I am genuinely interested in argument of a sufficiently high quality. I have zero interest in arguing for the sake of arguing, much less wasting my time on people who are insufficiently intelligent to say anything new or interesting. It’s not a case of scoring a couple of points, declaring victory, and getting out, it is simply about qualifying potential opponents. If a person is incapable of avoiding very basic logical and factual errors, or if it is apparent that they rely upon the usual chicanery such as redefining basic terms and so forth, then there is absolutely no chance they are going to present an argument that I can’t shred with ease. But rather than refusing to give everyone a shot, I prefer to permit anyone one or two opportunities to say something interesting or effective. If they want to waste that opportunity on a trivial drive-by comment or two, that’s their choice.

If they can’t deliver a substantive argument, or if I can identify their glaring mistakes – or worse, intellectual dishonesty – at first glance, then they’re done as far as I’m concerned. I already know how the prosecution will proceed and it’s all over but for the formalities even before it has begun. And really, considering the number of comments and emails I receive, that’s the only way it is possible to allow pretty much everyone who wants one a shot.

So don’t waste it on nonsensical blather if you wish me, or anyone else, to take you seriously. I’m quite willing to give Agnosticon the opportunity to present a case for his Singulatarianism, or what I described in The Irrational Atheist as apocalyptic techno-heresy, even though he has one strike against him for having demonstrated an inability to distinguish between logical and philosophical integrity and logical and philosophical necessity. But if he can’t present one, that’s hardly reflective of my unwillingness to engage in substantive argument.

It’s pretty simple. Right now I owe Dominic my next entry in our ongoing debate on the existence of God. Once that concludes, whenever that may be, I’m sure I’ll engage someone else in a substantive and detailed debate. Debt deflation might be a good one. But I’m simply not going to focus any time or attention on commenters who publicly demonstrate that they have neither the intelligence nor the intellectual integrity to present a challenge that is both substantive and interesting. Of course, the primary purpose of this blog is for me to amuse myself. Everything else is secondary; I’m pleased that some of you find it worth reading on a regular basis, but that’s not its raison d’etre.

Mailvox: the question of Palestine

The Deuce queries:

A question though, Vox: what’s your position on the Israel/Palestine debacle, and what our position should be regarding it, and do you think Ron Paul’s position is correct?

My position on the Israel/Palestine issue is the same as it is concerning every land dispute around the world. It’s neither my business nor my concern, I don’t care one little bit about it, and the two sides are welcome to fight it out as long as they care to do so. I think the US position should be to stay completely out of it since we have neither allies nor interests there, and moreover, those who are citizens of either side should be barred from any involvement in American electoral politics in order to prevent any attempts to draw the United States into it.

I don’t know the specifics of Ron Paul’s position, but based on his general principle of non-interventionism, I suspect it is in line with my own.

Unfortunately, history suggests that the only long-term solution to the conflict will involve ethnic cleansing of one sort or another. I suspect the Arabs will win in the end, despite Israel’s many current advantages, due to demographics and because far too many Jews haven’t followed through on the basic idea of Zionism, which is that Jews would actually move to Israel. Far too many of them prefer to live in the West where they can reap the benefits of European culture; they say “next year in Jerusalem” even though there is no longer anything preventing them from moving there.

The long term problem is that what historically was a powerful moral justification for a Jewish homeland has vanished now that it is obvious that many, if not most Jews, don’t want to live there.

Mailvox: a request

Beau is scheduled for surgery:

Please mention this as a mailvox for the regulars: I’m heading in for another heart procedure in a few hours. Having just celebrated the happiest Christmas in several years, being blessed in marriage, family, ministry and good friends, the peace experienced right now is so palpable as to be near indescribable. I am in good hands.

Being easily tired, lurking has its benefits – except of course expression. If I had one final thought to give to the Ilk, it would be a word of encouragement writ bold at the top of my lungs, “Jesus!”

Beau is the best of the Ilk; he puts into daily practice what far too many of us only believe to be right and he does so without rancor. He feeds the hungry, devotes his time to the poor and outcast, and he shares the Gospel with everyone, especially those who need it most. I encourage you to pray that he recover fully and stick around to continue doing the Lord’s work for years to come.

UPDATE: Beau writes post-surgery: “All is well. Instead of another iteration of open heart, the exploratory work revealed the recent October re-plumb is in fact functioning fine. Thank God and thank you all for the words of prayer.”

Mailvox: science and free will

CG asks about the implications of time delay in decision-making:

I have read a number of scientific papers asserting that free will doesn’t exist. The Libet experiment, where a person pushes a button, but the brain registers the signal 7 seconds before the time the person made the choice, is one of the more well-known studies. What do you make of these scientific assertions that free will doesn’t exist? You didn’t really address it in The Irrational Atheist or on your own blog.

No, I didn’t bother, because the sort of experiments cited are not evidence that free will doesn’t exist. In fact, any scientific assertion that free will does not exist on the basis of these experiments does nothing more than demonstrate that scientists receive insufficient training in basic logic.

To make this argument, they are assuming that free will relies solely upon “the person” and not “the brain”. Or to put it more precisely, that “the person” is the conscious aspect of the mind and “the brain” is the unconscious. But the unconscious part of the mind is a part of the same mind as the conscious one! Relying on this false distinction is akin to insisting that because I reacted reflexively to movement out of the corner of my eye before I realized it, I did not move.

But clearly I did move. And I decided to move. I merely did not consciously decide to move. The observable fact of the matter is that we make unconscious decisions every single day, and they are an important aspect of our free will. To demonstrate that free will does not exist, it would be necessary to demonstrate that all humans exhibit the same unconscious reactions to the same stimuli; any variance in the reactions would indicate that humans are agents possessing the ability to make choices even if they are not consciously aware of the choices they are making.

The core mistake they are making here is to assume that everything unconscious is therefore determinate. That is an observably false equivalence.

There is nothing even remotely remarkable about this experiment. Having been a 100m sprinter, I’ve always been perfectly aware that the body moves before the conscious mind realizes it. I was usually in the middle of my second stride out of the blocks before I realized I was already running. In most of my races, I never even consciously heard the gun.

And every martial artist knows that if you’re thinking about your next strike or block, you will be too slow. By the time you consciously see the window and decide “it’s open, therefore I should attack it”, it’s already too late. The fundamental goal of martial arts training is to train your body and free your mind so that you enter a state where you are making the correct decisions without thinking about them. This is the state that most athletes recognize as being “in the zone”.

Mailvox: true or false

Puacon has four questions:

1) True/False: Ron Paul is a political Leninist, i.e. an admirer of Lenin’s “salami tactics” via Rockwell/Rothbard (see Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty for more…)

2) True/False: You (Vox) support this political Leninism, based on your support of Dr. Paul

3) True/False: Leninism is based on deception and dishonesty…lying about being a racist to infiltrate and control racist groups, etc. This is considered pragmatic, benefits outweighing costs (more liberty vs. associating with racists).

4) True/False: Dr. Paul isn’t a racist. He just lied about being a racist in order to get money, support, etc. as per point 3.

These are not trick questions. I’m not judging you either way, just trying to get a handle on your positions on above.

1. False. A Leninist is not someone who admires, embraces, or uses any tactic that Vladimir Lenin happened to historically utilize. Also, the addition of the adjective “political” is redundant, as Leninism is an intrinsically political ideology. Since a Leninist is someone who subscribes to “the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism”, it is patently obvious that Ron Paul is not a Leninist of any kind.

2. False. I do not support the establishment of socialism. Nor does Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, or Murray Rothbard.

3. False. Puacon is confusing a tactic which was historically used by Leninists and other groups with Leninism itself. You might as reasonably claim that Ron Paul is a “political Muslim”, as the tactic you are describing is known in Islamic theology as taqiyya. Moreover, Puacon is committing a second error in assuming that because Rothbard believe the tactic was useful, Ron Paul is therefore utilizing it.

4. I can’t answer this question due to the erroneous assumptions implicit in it. I believe that all human beings who are science-literate or conscious of race could be considered racist, myself included, and there is no shortage of empirical evidence and scientific studies demonstrating that this is the case. If Ron Paul, like most people, has said that he is not racist, he is mistaken in that sense. But that does not mean he is lying about it.

I note with some amusement that Puacon’s mischaracterization and misidentification of his target on the political spectrum could, by his own erroneous metric, be accurately described as “Stalinist”.

Mailvox: catastrophe is clarifying

In which Ashley Miller and I exchange email on the matter. She responded to my email thusly:

Thank you for your very polite e-mail.

The point of my article was to say for that people like me — people for whom secular values, gay rights, and abortion are important issues – Ron Paul is a bad choice.

For people like you, who believe the country is going to implode economically and therefore, relatively reasonably, don’t care so much about the other issues, Ron Paul may well be an excellent choice. And I agree that it isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing, I have no respect for either party.

It’s just that I don’t think that the country is going to implode. And I don’t think a man who thinks it’s OK for states to take away my rights so long as the federal government doesn’t is libertarian or worth supporting.

Thank you,
Ashley

In response to which, I wrote the following:

Dear Miss Miller,

I completely agree with you. If you don’t think the country is in any significant economic peril, and most people admittedly don’t, then there is no reason you should support Ron Paul if you disagree strongly with his social positions. I would simply encourage you to keep an open mind about him if your perception of the economic situation changes.

Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter if you favor government support for the poor or for foreign invasions, if the government has no money, it can’t do anything at all.

Best regards,
Vox

Now, contrast with this the barrage of pointless venting she received in response to her original piece. While I don’t agree with her posting the contact information and IP addresses of those who attacked her, I don’t agree with the over-the-top vituperation either.* It’s neither necessary nor productive; if one recalls that the woman isn’t even aware that the US and global economies are in a frighteningly parlous state, then what are the chances that she has correctly analyzed other socio-political issues, or is even capable of doing so?

I treat the likes of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and PZ Myers harshly because they claim to be intellectually and academically superior, when it is readily apparent and easily demonstrable that they are not. I treat the various anklebiters harshly because their aggressive behavior and incivility demand it. But someone who is a graduate student, who is doing no more than expressing her opinion, however ignorant, fallacious, and stupid it might be, on her own blog is not simply not acting in an offensive manner.

I know I’m not going to convince someone like Miss Miller that a libertarian like Ron Paul merits support from those who disagree with him on social grounds because she is not going to be able to recognize that her concerns about Paul enforcing his own social perspective in an authoritarian manner stems from her own psychological projection. Nor do I have any interest in repeating myself and attempting to convince her of the current economic state, not when I have already published a book on the subject. But it is quite possible to convince her that IF her perception of the economy is incorrect, THEN Paul merits not only another look, but outright support since in that case Paul would be correct and her position would clearly have been shown to be false. Catastrophe is clarifying, and some will never see clearly until forced to do so by events.

This isn’t about being patient, it is about being civil and understanding that even the strongest, most thoughtless brick wall has cracks that the reality of nature can eventually exploit and utilize to bring down.

As for those who think a few nasty emails prove anything at all about Ron Paul or his supporters, I have more than one hundred times that many that would suffice to “prove” the same thing about Obama supporters, Bush supporters, atheists, Muslims, scientists, feminists, and so forth.

*I would encourage Miss Miller to remove the contact information. I’ve received hundreds of threats like those and worse for more than 10 years of writing op/ed and have never seen any benefit to me or anyone else in publicizing the personal information of those attacking me. Once you start writing on controversial topics in public, you can expect to be targeted by those who disagree with you and there is nothing to be gained from exacerbating the situation.

Mailvox: context is king

Druidhouse perceives a nonexistent contradiction:

in the interview you say that WWII didn’t get us out of the depression, but rather that the fact that the u.s. was the only manufacturing facility left standing and that europe and the rest of the world were in rubble, thereby giving us a monopoly for a while on manufactured goods. but it was precisely WWII that left Europe’s infrastructure in ruins and america’s unscathed which gave us that monopoly. you are expressing a contradiction. and there’s nothing wrong with my reading comprehension.

I am not expressing a contradiction here. While there is nothing wrong with Druidhouse’s reading comprehension, or more to the point, his listening comprehension, his confusion stems from his ignorance of what “WWII got us out of the depression” means in the economic context.

In that context, which of course is the context in which the Alt Investors interview took place, “WWII got the USA out of the Great Depression” is a Keynesian and Neo-Keynesian argument in which it is asserted that the huge increase in government expenditure involved in the production of war material led to the post-war economic growth. It absolutely does NOT mean that “winning the war and surviving with the only intact industrial infrastructure” led to economic growth.

This should be obvious, since the economists who make the “WWII solution to depression” argument are not advocating World War III and the destruction of the European and Chinese industrial infrastructures, but rather increased government expenditure. It is a particularly stupid argument, of course, since Germany, Japan, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union also vastly increased their defense spending without realizing any post-war economic growth as a result… and it was not even necessary for the USA to enter the war to ensure the destruction of the German, Russian, French, Italian, and British infrastructures.

Mailvox: this is not the multiplier you’re looking for

Albatross gets caught attempting to pull the old switcheroo:

There are two senses in which the multiplier is used. In one sense, the multiplier is used as a statistic about government spending (i.e. suppose the government spends one dollar more, if GDP increases by 1 dollar, you have a multiplier of one). In this case, you wouldn’t understand my point. In another case, the multiplier refers to a theoretically posited increase in private sector activity because the government enables an “injection” into the economy (this is the sense in which the money multiplier exists). I meant the second sense and most Keynesians mean the second sense. You can’t understand Keynes’s thought experiment vis a vis burying money (since no gov’t money need be spent) unless you understand the injection multiplier as opposed to the statistical multiplier. I can go into further details if you’d like but I this is enough for you to understand why we came to different extensions from your conclusion.

Albatross failed to recognize which multiplier was the subject at hand. The entire 2008-2009 debate over the multiplier, and the context of the ECB study to which the linked article was referring, solely concerned the “fiscal multiplier”, which does not render Albatross’s point difficult to understand so much as entirely irrelevant. For example, here is The Economist’s article on it, to which Paul Krugman subsequently responded in his post entitled “Multiplying Multipliers”.

The debate hinges on the scale of the “fiscal multiplier”. This measure, first formalised in 1931 by Richard Kahn, a student of John Maynard Keynes, captures how effectively tax cuts or increases in government spending stimulate output. A multiplier of one means that a $1 billion increase in government spending will increase a country’s GDP by $1 billion.

The size of the multiplier is bound to vary according to economic conditions. For an economy operating at full capacity, the fiscal multiplier should be zero. Since there are no spare resources, any increase in government demand would just replace spending elsewhere. But in a recession, when workers and factories lie idle, a fiscal boost can increase overall demand. And if the initial stimulus triggers a cascade of expenditure among consumers and businesses, the multiplier can be well above one.

The multiplier is also likely to vary according to the type of fiscal action. Government spending on building a bridge may have a bigger multiplier than a tax cut if consumers save a portion of their tax windfall. A tax cut targeted at poorer people may have a bigger impact on spending than one for the affluent, since poorer folk tend to spend a higher share of their income.

Crucially, the overall size of the fiscal multiplier also depends on how people react to higher government borrowing. If the government’s actions bolster confidence and revive animal spirits, the multiplier could rise as demand goes up and private investment is “crowded in”. But if interest rates climb in response to government borrowing then some private investment that would otherwise have occurred could get “crowded out”. And if consumers expect higher future taxes in order to finance new government borrowing, they could spend less today. All that would reduce the fiscal multiplier, potentially to below zero.

However, it must be noted that the notion of potentially reducing the fiscal multiplier below zero is practically – I should not have said theoretically – unthinkable, for the obvious reason that there has never been a time since the original publication of The General Theory that any of the developed economies has come anywhere close to reaching full employment, except for revised definitions of “full employment” that all fell well short of an economy operating at full capacity. No Keynesian or Neo-Keynesian spends any time whatsoever considering theoretical sub-zero stimuli, for the obvious reason that they tend to render the entire Keynesian perspective either unnecessary or counterproductive. The usual Keynesian claim is that fiscal multipliers reliably range from 1.5 to 3x… which has been shown empirically to be untrue.

Furthermore, Albatross not only erroneously attempted to apply the “injection multiplier” to a discussion that explicitly concerned the “fiscal multiplier”, but also defined the injection multiplier incorrectly. The injection multiplier is not “a theoretically posited increase in private sector activity because the government enables an “injection” into the economy” but rather “any injection into the economy via investment capital, government spending or the like [that] will result in a proportional increase in overall income at a national level.” It includes, but is not limited to, the definition he provided.

Returning to the orginal point, it’s not at all surprising that the fiscal multiplier has been determined to reliably be less than one. As I noted in RGD, Robert Barro’s study of federal spending in WWII demonstrated that even in the most commonly cited Keynesian success story, “the estimated multiplier for defense spending is 0.6-0.7”.

Mailvox: A new GOP foreign policy

A VP reader who writes at Policymic recommends the GOP adopt Ron Paul’s foreign policy:

Republicans love to wax poetic about America’s founding documents. Read anything by popular conservative pundits to get up to speed on how our precious Constitution has been shredded by liberals and why America desperately needs to return to the principles contained therein.

The major Republican presidential contenders all share that view as well. Newt Gingrich’s website, for example, tells readers that religious liberty and life are unalienable rights “contained in the Declaration of Independence.” Mitt Romney has similarly ripped on “advocates of “secularism” for taking the idea of separation of church and state “…well beyond its original meaning.”

The problem, however, is that Republicans don’t endorse their own back to basics argument when it comes to foreign policy. Conservatives, historically speaking, don’t a endorse the idea that America is the world’s police force, and for the sake of consistency and the good of the country, today’s Republicans need to abandoned this interventionist mindset.

This may sound like a strange argument if you don’t know your history, so let’s briefly put it context. The idea that America should cross the globe solving every nation’s problems is a progressive one. And it makes sense when you think about it. The left generally accepts that the government ought to have a very active role in society, alleviating poverty, ensuring a level playing field or the little guy, and so on. So why wouldn’t the same be true of foreign policy as well?

It’s all quite true. Unfortunately, it’s all quite irrelevant. The observable fact of the matter is that most Republicans, including many who call themselves conservatives, are now progressives on the foreign policy front. There is literally nothing conservative about the Republican Party’s mainstream anymore, and they are at their most left-wing and pro-government intervention with regards to foreign policy.

What they should do and what they can reasonably be expected to do are two completely different things. Which is why they are so often called, quite correctly, the Stupid Party.