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Luckily for humanity, we have people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries,

Luckily for humanity, we have people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, and an adventurous can-do sensibility drives us all onward.

tptacek 11y ago
Unfortunately for humanity, we have other people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised because they are, in fact, ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, but has the virtue of mitigating disaster. And an adventurous can-do sensibility drives people onwards in all directions, including off cliffs. Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Absolutely true, so long as humanity is made of billions of individuals all pulling in their own direction, there will be risk, disaster, death, destruction, and amazing advancement. I find the last worth all the preceding. edit: missed some words
- zeveb 11y ago
  > Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq. Or, possibly, the reason we didn't nuke Afghanistan. Remember, prior to the actual invasion Clinton sent more missiles into Iraq than the Bushes put together; JFK started and LBJ escalated the Vietnam Wars: who knows what Gore would have done, presented with the attacks on 11 September 2001?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    There are a total of zero serious observers who believe Al Gore would have "nuked Afghanistan", but there's a nonzero number who believe 9/11 might not have happened had he been elected. Al Gore is not a particularly great human being, but in addition to the banal malevolence George Bush shares with Al Gore and every other politician, and the additional evil he shares with the Neoconservative political movement he belonged to, Bush was also, as it turns out, alarmingly incompetent.
    - pen2l 11y ago
      I think when in the hot seat most actors gravitate toward a status quo equilibrium. The left presidents will lean a little more right, the right will lean a little more left. Obama took us to Syria, would you have guessed he would do that when he was campaigning? I think Gore would have been walked into Iraq warring and more by his advisers.
      - jfb 11y ago
        I'm no fan of Gore's, but I don't see a Gore administration using the opportunity that 9/11 presented to work out both a commitment to a new way of warfighting and a hyper-muscular American foreign policy by attacking what was well understood at the time to be an unrelated sovereign power.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        This perspective totally ignores the history of the Iraq war, and the distinctive influence of Bush's idiosyncratic cabinet and vice president, all of whom had outsized influence due to Bush's own weakness. The idea that Gore would have invaded Iraq in response to an attack from Afghanistan is not well supported by evidence, and not common among historians. Just making this argument is a kind of "tell" that the arguer refuses to entertain the idea that third-party candidacies can harm the country by splitting the vote. I guess there are intellectually consistent ways to make that argument, but "Gore would have invaded Iraq" is not one of them.
        aetherson 11y ago
        Yeah, Gore clearly wouldn't have invaded Iraq. Now, is there a colorable argument that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan and embroiled the US in costly military adventurism abroad? Sure. But somehow making 9/11 be about Iraq, which it patently was not, is a pathology unique to Bush.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  The point of michael_nielsens comment has to be seen in the context it was posted. To tell the majority if the comments that it's easy to just critique but har to do things. In that context it was actually a pretty relevant quote. Someone putting themselves out no matter whether it turns good or bad always requires something most people don't have. It's rarely elegant or clean. Mostly just brute force and that of course have good and bad outcomes. Normandy was bruteforce and in many ways ill-advised and a lot of men was lost in that battle, but luckily the germans kind of got caught of guard without their best general in the area. Most are just here for the ride.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Of course it's easy to "just be a critique". But critiques of Lessig aren't "just critiques". Lessig's critics understand something Lessig himself seems not to: his campaign is quixotic, his goal of being a "single-issue President" is incoherent given the structure of the US government, and, in a close election year, his prospects of somehow acting as a spoiler for the party he purports to support are far greater than his prospects of actually being an agent for change. You're welcome to disagree with any or all of that, but I don't think you can say that they don't constitute a colorable argument, and you can't dismiss them as insubstantial points. Which is, of course, the implication of the actual words quoted upthread! It's not enough just to "put yourself out there". Anyone who does anything dramatic, good or bad, is "putting themselves out there". Boldness makes for good copy, but can't reasonably be taken as a shield from commentary.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      Thats an opinion you are entitled to have but which I do not share. Politics is the art the possible and sometimes it takes several years for something to gain momentum, something that often starts in futile attempts and yes often ends with not succeeding. But once in a blue moon it does and that is the important part. You keep arguing as if there is a right way to think about these things. If that is your claim then I do not share that belief. Doing is the only way of discovering. That there are plenty of people that do obvious stupid things which end bad in hindsight does not cancel out that there are plenty of people who do obvious stupid things and in hindsight succeed. We have plenty of critical thinkers in this world, it's the constructive thinkers we lack.
- cjbenedikt 11y ago
  Ralph Nader reason for Iraq invasion? http://www.globalresearch.ca/ralph-nader-letter-to-george-w-bush-iraq-the-country-that-you-destroyed/5363737 http://www.globalresearch.ca/ralph-nader-letter-to-george-w-...
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Of the three major candidates in 2000, there's no question Nader was the least likely to support military intervention anywhere. His policy intentions, many of which I support unreservedly, aren't the issue. The issue is that he had no chance of winning the 2000 election, and by staying in, he probably cost Gore the Presidency. There's a "dispute" over whether Nader was a spoiler, but that dispute relies on the notion that a very significant fraction of Nader's voters would have broken for George W. Bush, and --- remember the margin in Florida was razor thin --- ignores the indirect impact of Nader's campaign on Gore's support and turnout. What gives the Nader spoiler charge so much electricity is the fact that his campaign was obviously and hopelessly doomed far in advance of election day, and yet he stuck with it in order to make a point. Well, he sure made his point alright.
    - ChrisAntaki 11y ago
      Nader even concentrated on states where Bush and Gore were neck-and-neck. > A first, eloquent protest came 10 days ago from a group of a dozen former 'Nader's Raiders,' who asserted that their former mentor had broken a promise not to campaign in states where he could hurt Gore and begged him to reconsider doing so. Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-in...
    - Pyxl101 11y ago
      It's an interesting point. How does one determine when one is past the point of being a spoiler and into being a serious candidate? It seems that there is a self-fulfilling prophesy here, wherein if one is concerned about being a spoiler, then one will begin drawing votes away from other viable candidates as soon as they enter politics, and thus spoil; but yet, in order to ever become a viable candidate in the first place, one must do that. Perhaps the counter-argument is that you could enter politics away from an election, to "test the waters" without drawing support away from other candidates. But that's not a serious way to enter politics. Or you could enter politics at a different level, a lower level. I don't know if that's a viable way for Lessig to accomplish his aim. The same type of problems he's talking about might exist in other political spheres, but they aren't the ones that seem to concern him primarily. I can buy those arguments, but they leave me uneasy for a reason I can't characterize. It reminds me somewhat of the process of becoming the mayor of the city of London [1], where you're only allowed to run once several groups of people approve of you. It seems like Lessig is being held to a different standard, almost, because he is entering politics with a specific policy objective in mind, rather than because he himself wants to become a leader. Most politicians enter politics simply to win and become leader, and so they can be judged by whether they win. Lessig is entering to accomplish an aim, and so it is possible to criticize his candidacy on the basis of whether he'll accomplish the aim, to a degree greater than other candidates. "By entering politics to accomplish that policy, you are being disruptive rather than helpful" is the charge, and I agree that it is a reasonable charge. A President needs to be an overall effective leader, and not ignore everything but their single pet issue. From that perspective I agree with the criticism. Yet I still feel that the charge of being a spoiler is a circular argument in some way. He's only a spoiler because he's a spoiler, and once you stop defining him as a spoiler, he becomes a serious candidate. Now of course, we have reason to believe that he is not in fact a serious candidate, which is a valid criticism, but it seems like that should be the criticism ("you are going to be a bad leader because you're only focused on one issue"), rather than "you are a spoiler". The underlying problem seems to be with how winner-takes-all voting works. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c
- jacobolus 11y ago
  I also think Lessig’s campaign was an absurdity. But blaming Ralph Nader for the invasion of Iraq is far far below your usual standard Thomas. Even singling out Nader as an explanation for Bush’s election is pretty weak sauce. You might first blame everyone in the Bush Administration who didn’t resign, everyone in Congress who voted to authorize Bush’s actions, foreign heads of state who went along and everyone at the UN who took the Americans WMD claims at face value, the entirety of the mainstream US media including especially the New York Times, the previous several Republican presidents who set the stage in the Middle East, US and international oil companies, the Saudis, etc. Or if we’re just talking about the Bush/Gore election, how about blaming the Supreme Court who decided the election 5:4, Gore who gave up instead of fighting more about it, all the local officials around the country who supported efforts to disenfranchise voters, whoever designed that “butterfly ballot”, all the people in aggregate who voted for Bush or any of the above members of Congress, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in congress who were such opportunistic spineless SOBs that folks on the left spent years thoroughly fed up with them, whoever was running Gore’s ineffective grassroots campaign/GOTV efforts and did a terrible job of convincing anyone that he’d be at all different than Clinton, etc.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I agree with you. Saying Nader "turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq" was a really dumb way to have put it. I think my reaction to the "pox on both parties" notion is more allergic than rational. I think there's some culpability with Nader, the magnitude of what went wrong with Bush is very high, so even a small multiplier is a big deal. But Nader is surely not the most important factor in the Iraq war.
  - chillwaves 11y ago
    When a team wins in football, don't you only count the final field goal that decided the game? Or do the other 60 minutes count too? Gore lost his home state but Nader cost him the election. Gore wanted a partial recount in Florida (when a full recount would have been in his favor) but Nader cost him the election. Curse those Green party voters for not falling in line!
    - 11y ago
- mc32 11y ago
  Don't lay the blame at his feet. Just as Bushies can't blame Perot for Clinton. No, everyone deserves the votes they get (earned). He deserved those votes as much as Gore or Bush deserved the votes they got. Lest we forget, the congress with lots of Dems voted for the war. So, no, no politician can claim another "stole" "their" vote. They only get the votes they deserve by which I mean the ones they win fair and square. Nader won his votes fair and square.
exclusiv 11y ago
This is almost exclusively an American ideal. Our founding was based on being ill-advised. I love that. Sometimes you have to be rogue.

tptacek 11y ago

Unfortunately for humanity, we have other people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised because they are, in fact, ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, but has the virtue of mitigating disaster. And an adventurous can-do sensibility drives people onwards in all directions, including off cliffs. Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq.

oldmanjay 11y ago
Absolutely true, so long as humanity is made of billions of individuals all pulling in their own direction, there will be risk, disaster, death, destruction, and amazing advancement. I find the last worth all the preceding. edit: missed some words
zeveb 11y ago
> Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq. Or, possibly, the reason we didn't nuke Afghanistan. Remember, prior to the actual invasion Clinton sent more missiles into Iraq than the Bushes put together; JFK started and LBJ escalated the Vietnam Wars: who knows what Gore would have done, presented with the attacks on 11 September 2001?
- tptacek 11y ago
  There are a total of zero serious observers who believe Al Gore would have "nuked Afghanistan", but there's a nonzero number who believe 9/11 might not have happened had he been elected. Al Gore is not a particularly great human being, but in addition to the banal malevolence George Bush shares with Al Gore and every other politician, and the additional evil he shares with the Neoconservative political movement he belonged to, Bush was also, as it turns out, alarmingly incompetent.
  - pen2l 11y ago
    I think when in the hot seat most actors gravitate toward a status quo equilibrium. The left presidents will lean a little more right, the right will lean a little more left. Obama took us to Syria, would you have guessed he would do that when he was campaigning? I think Gore would have been walked into Iraq warring and more by his advisers.
    - jfb 11y ago
      I'm no fan of Gore's, but I don't see a Gore administration using the opportunity that 9/11 presented to work out both a commitment to a new way of warfighting and a hyper-muscular American foreign policy by attacking what was well understood at the time to be an unrelated sovereign power.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      This perspective totally ignores the history of the Iraq war, and the distinctive influence of Bush's idiosyncratic cabinet and vice president, all of whom had outsized influence due to Bush's own weakness. The idea that Gore would have invaded Iraq in response to an attack from Afghanistan is not well supported by evidence, and not common among historians. Just making this argument is a kind of "tell" that the arguer refuses to entertain the idea that third-party candidacies can harm the country by splitting the vote. I guess there are intellectually consistent ways to make that argument, but "Gore would have invaded Iraq" is not one of them.
      - aetherson 11y ago
        Yeah, Gore clearly wouldn't have invaded Iraq. Now, is there a colorable argument that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan and embroiled the US in costly military adventurism abroad? Sure. But somehow making 9/11 be about Iraq, which it patently was not, is a pathology unique to Bush.
ThomPete 11y ago
The point of michael_nielsens comment has to be seen in the context it was posted. To tell the majority if the comments that it's easy to just critique but har to do things. In that context it was actually a pretty relevant quote. Someone putting themselves out no matter whether it turns good or bad always requires something most people don't have. It's rarely elegant or clean. Mostly just brute force and that of course have good and bad outcomes. Normandy was bruteforce and in many ways ill-advised and a lot of men was lost in that battle, but luckily the germans kind of got caught of guard without their best general in the area. Most are just here for the ride.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Of course it's easy to "just be a critique". But critiques of Lessig aren't "just critiques". Lessig's critics understand something Lessig himself seems not to: his campaign is quixotic, his goal of being a "single-issue President" is incoherent given the structure of the US government, and, in a close election year, his prospects of somehow acting as a spoiler for the party he purports to support are far greater than his prospects of actually being an agent for change. You're welcome to disagree with any or all of that, but I don't think you can say that they don't constitute a colorable argument, and you can't dismiss them as insubstantial points. Which is, of course, the implication of the actual words quoted upthread! It's not enough just to "put yourself out there". Anyone who does anything dramatic, good or bad, is "putting themselves out there". Boldness makes for good copy, but can't reasonably be taken as a shield from commentary.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Thats an opinion you are entitled to have but which I do not share. Politics is the art the possible and sometimes it takes several years for something to gain momentum, something that often starts in futile attempts and yes often ends with not succeeding. But once in a blue moon it does and that is the important part. You keep arguing as if there is a right way to think about these things. If that is your claim then I do not share that belief. Doing is the only way of discovering. That there are plenty of people that do obvious stupid things which end bad in hindsight does not cancel out that there are plenty of people who do obvious stupid things and in hindsight succeed. We have plenty of critical thinkers in this world, it's the constructive thinkers we lack.
cjbenedikt 11y ago
Ralph Nader reason for Iraq invasion? http://www.globalresearch.ca/ralph-nader-letter-to-george-w-bush-iraq-the-country-that-you-destroyed/5363737 http://www.globalresearch.ca/ralph-nader-letter-to-george-w-...
- tptacek 11y ago
  Of the three major candidates in 2000, there's no question Nader was the least likely to support military intervention anywhere. His policy intentions, many of which I support unreservedly, aren't the issue. The issue is that he had no chance of winning the 2000 election, and by staying in, he probably cost Gore the Presidency. There's a "dispute" over whether Nader was a spoiler, but that dispute relies on the notion that a very significant fraction of Nader's voters would have broken for George W. Bush, and --- remember the margin in Florida was razor thin --- ignores the indirect impact of Nader's campaign on Gore's support and turnout. What gives the Nader spoiler charge so much electricity is the fact that his campaign was obviously and hopelessly doomed far in advance of election day, and yet he stuck with it in order to make a point. Well, he sure made his point alright.
  - ChrisAntaki 11y ago
    Nader even concentrated on states where Bush and Gore were neck-and-neck. > A first, eloquent protest came 10 days ago from a group of a dozen former 'Nader's Raiders,' who asserted that their former mentor had broken a promise not to campaign in states where he could hurt Gore and begged him to reconsider doing so. Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-in...
  - Pyxl101 11y ago
    It's an interesting point. How does one determine when one is past the point of being a spoiler and into being a serious candidate? It seems that there is a self-fulfilling prophesy here, wherein if one is concerned about being a spoiler, then one will begin drawing votes away from other viable candidates as soon as they enter politics, and thus spoil; but yet, in order to ever become a viable candidate in the first place, one must do that. Perhaps the counter-argument is that you could enter politics away from an election, to "test the waters" without drawing support away from other candidates. But that's not a serious way to enter politics. Or you could enter politics at a different level, a lower level. I don't know if that's a viable way for Lessig to accomplish his aim. The same type of problems he's talking about might exist in other political spheres, but they aren't the ones that seem to concern him primarily. I can buy those arguments, but they leave me uneasy for a reason I can't characterize. It reminds me somewhat of the process of becoming the mayor of the city of London [1], where you're only allowed to run once several groups of people approve of you. It seems like Lessig is being held to a different standard, almost, because he is entering politics with a specific policy objective in mind, rather than because he himself wants to become a leader. Most politicians enter politics simply to win and become leader, and so they can be judged by whether they win. Lessig is entering to accomplish an aim, and so it is possible to criticize his candidacy on the basis of whether he'll accomplish the aim, to a degree greater than other candidates. "By entering politics to accomplish that policy, you are being disruptive rather than helpful" is the charge, and I agree that it is a reasonable charge. A President needs to be an overall effective leader, and not ignore everything but their single pet issue. From that perspective I agree with the criticism. Yet I still feel that the charge of being a spoiler is a circular argument in some way. He's only a spoiler because he's a spoiler, and once you stop defining him as a spoiler, he becomes a serious candidate. Now of course, we have reason to believe that he is not in fact a serious candidate, which is a valid criticism, but it seems like that should be the criticism ("you are going to be a bad leader because you're only focused on one issue"), rather than "you are a spoiler". The underlying problem seems to be with how winner-takes-all voting works. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c
jacobolus 11y ago
I also think Lessig’s campaign was an absurdity. But blaming Ralph Nader for the invasion of Iraq is far far below your usual standard Thomas. Even singling out Nader as an explanation for Bush’s election is pretty weak sauce. You might first blame everyone in the Bush Administration who didn’t resign, everyone in Congress who voted to authorize Bush’s actions, foreign heads of state who went along and everyone at the UN who took the Americans WMD claims at face value, the entirety of the mainstream US media including especially the New York Times, the previous several Republican presidents who set the stage in the Middle East, US and international oil companies, the Saudis, etc. Or if we’re just talking about the Bush/Gore election, how about blaming the Supreme Court who decided the election 5:4, Gore who gave up instead of fighting more about it, all the local officials around the country who supported efforts to disenfranchise voters, whoever designed that “butterfly ballot”, all the people in aggregate who voted for Bush or any of the above members of Congress, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in congress who were such opportunistic spineless SOBs that folks on the left spent years thoroughly fed up with them, whoever was running Gore’s ineffective grassroots campaign/GOTV efforts and did a terrible job of convincing anyone that he’d be at all different than Clinton, etc.
- tptacek 11y ago
  I agree with you. Saying Nader "turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq" was a really dumb way to have put it. I think my reaction to the "pox on both parties" notion is more allergic than rational. I think there's some culpability with Nader, the magnitude of what went wrong with Bush is very high, so even a small multiplier is a big deal. But Nader is surely not the most important factor in the Iraq war.
- chillwaves 11y ago
  When a team wins in football, don't you only count the final field goal that decided the game? Or do the other 60 minutes count too? Gore lost his home state but Nader cost him the election. Gore wanted a partial recount in Florida (when a full recount would have been in his favor) but Nader cost him the election. Curse those Green party voters for not falling in line!
  - 11y ago
mc32 11y ago
Don't lay the blame at his feet. Just as Bushies can't blame Perot for Clinton. No, everyone deserves the votes they get (earned). He deserved those votes as much as Gore or Bush deserved the votes they got. Lest we forget, the congress with lots of Dems voted for the war. So, no, no politician can claim another "stole" "their" vote. They only get the votes they deserve by which I mean the ones they win fair and square. Nader won his votes fair and square.

exclusiv 11y ago

This is almost exclusively an American ideal. Our founding was based on being ill-advised. I love that. Sometimes you have to be rogue.