5 ms·

Often it seems that facts, evidence, and observation are derided as "left". I find John's commentaries to be suitably supported by substance, with constructive

by bmh_ca 10y ago

Often it seems that facts, evidence, and observation are derided as "left". I find John's commentaries to be suitably supported by substance, with constructive conclusions. I worry that characterization as "left" is a defence against cognitive acknowledgements that just happen to be dissonant with neurostatic precepts.

ThomPete 10y ago
Thats the thing though. This is not a question of substance. He can be right in the specifics, but still not provide the only perspective. My problem with him is his facts, but his interpretation of them.
- pas 10y ago
  Could you give an example of said facts and an alternative interpretation of them?
  - Agustus 10y ago
    His interpretation of the Venezuelan crisis. He pointed to the price of oil driving the issue. Nowhere did he mention the crazy socialist/populist programs that Chavez and his successor Maduro. The main problem in Venezuela is the erosion of property rights. Nowhere in the report was this mentioned.
    - anentropic 10y ago
      I thought the main problems were less abstract, like not being able to buy toilet paper etc
      - Agustus 10y ago
        This is the short term approach that John Oliver puts forward. This is not a year's development, this has been the result of 16 years of Chavez / Maduro policies.
    - marxidad 10y ago
      What makes it a fact that the erosion of property rights is more so a driving issue that the price of oil?
      - Agustus 10y ago
        I John Oliver'ed my response to avoid delving into this more, but here is the cause and effects of the Venezuela issue. 1. Chavez was elected in 1999 and utilized the OPEC cartel to decrease production and drive up the price. Utilizing the high prices, he gave away every socialist program that his increased oil prices could deliver. 2. When the socialist programs had to have more cash, Chavez muscled in on the oil producers and told them to find more revenue or else they would nationalize the oil rigs. Companies said there was no money unless operation and maintenance costs were foregone, and they would not undersign that so Chavez nationalized them (property right strike across the bow). This was done through the enabling law which ultimately what started the erosion of the rights. 3. As companies saw that profits could not be returned, they started to get the heck out of Dodge. Tariffs and other crazy price increasing measures were instituted until prices became very high. The government did the next property right erosion by controlling prices on goods. Black market took over to provide goods at real rates because the governments rates could not be met. 4. Any industry that was making a profit was derided in public speeches. 5. Foreign investors avoided investing in the housing market as they saw newly built properties nationalized. The government did not even pay the investors a compensatory fee! The oil is price is an aside contributor, but when you do not respect property rights, say goodbye to anyone wanting to invest in you.
    - pas 10y ago
      I don't think his interpretation was total, complete or absolute. He basically refrained from commenting on it, and made very direct jokes on basic aspects of the situation, while introducing it via a proximate cause (oil price crashing led to instability - it's the lack of diversified economy that made them vulnerable, and it's usually caused by shortsighted natural resource expolitation, blablabla, but that's just correlated with the erosion of property rights, and not necessarily causally). I'm trying to decide if his omission is okay or not. Conservative (and I intend that as a swearword) hit-media present his lack of condemnation of "socialism" as a wrongdoing. Which certainly can be argued, that since he got airtime, he has some responsibility to educate, especially if he choose to talk about the topic. However, I don't think he is a politology scholar, so not using a word so misued as socialism is probably a smart thing on his part, and sticking to the criticism of the consequences of the policies themselves is also an okay-ish solution. I think shows what a dictatorship leads to is more important than condemning whatever ideology you think lead to it. After all, autorism always mutates the ideology it uses to justify itself, usually subverting all of the original ideas related to it in about 5 minutes after gaining power.
      - Agustus 10y ago
        The socialistic / communistic populist rhetoric used by Chavez is what allowed him into office. The socialist / communist people who elected him created the monster that he became, so those who wanted the platform elected and in his mind instilled his beliefs as "the will of the people" that we hear so much from those who are marginally elected. No one ever wants to elect a dictator, however, the requirements of a socialist / communist leader lends itself much more to developing one when one utters: "It is the will of the people" to supersede the property rights of others.
        pas 10y ago
        This is true of every ideology usurped so far by dictators. Kings usually just invoked divine rights, or the good old "my father was king and his father was king before him, so I shall be king after him too" as is tradition. Caesar was also a tribune of the people, yet he was ineligible, but he also used the "will of the people" as justification. The problem is, when someone has so much power to do this, ideologies don't matter anymore, and there's no argument that can best the "will of the people", because if the will of the people is wrong, then the people are wrong too, and since they are the majority, you're screwed with your logic (and rationality). I'm saying these, because it's important to note that communism as an abstract idea is not worse or better than any other form of government, such as feudalism, or fascism. Ideally all could work. Given an ample supply of good kings, incorruptible premier secretaries and supreme leaders, and so on. Naturally, the problems are foreseeable, so individual power should be limited. What better way to do that than to remove even the power of wealth generation? Bam! Instant communism, again. And this works with property rights too. Someone offers you a very good deal on a crate of gold, you buy it. It turns out it was stolen from a national bank. But reversing that transaction would violate your property rights. (How far you would have to go to make sure you're not buying contraband/bootlegged stuff? Anyone can make up an example where you have done enough yet a lot of people will suffer as a result of your gains.)
- bayesian_horse 10y ago
  How can you interpret things like "the Trump University fraud case" as anything but a problem for a Trump administration? Even the parts where Olliver makes fun of Trump, for example the epic sagas about his hands or how he impersonated his own press secretary, are very clear signs whom I don't want to see in possession of nuclear launch codes. Or drones for that matter.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Trump in possession of launch codes is not more dangerous than Obama in possession of launch codes. Thats not how the US system works. And I am not saying that everything he says is always like that. It's just too much for my taste.
    - bayesian_horse 10y ago
      Well, let's hope Trump wouldn't nuke anybody for saying his hands are small. But his incredible thin skin and demonstrated vulnerable ego is hardly an asset in diplomatic or military matters...
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        Again. The US system is not that fragile. It's made to be able to deal with presidents smart or dumb. I see no evidence that Trump should be any more dangerous than Bush or Clinton. He might say more outrageous things than even Bush to the international community but his rhetorics isn's his politics and he can't just send nuclear bombs at whomever he wants.
        bayesian_horse 10y ago
        I'm not aware of any such checks or balances which would prevent a president from launching a military attack when there is at least the faint notion of a threat. He certainly doesn't need any parliamentary approval for the first strike and he is commander in chief of the armed forces. The only hope is that the military would refuse stupid orders. I also don't see why anyone would want a thin-skinned man child in charge of the only superpower in the world. Being in the center of at least one pretty strong fraud case doesn't help either. The argument "he just says stupid things all the time, but he will be presidential and wise when he is president" doesn't even begin to make sense to me.
mediocrejoker 10y ago
Can you explain neurostatic precepts? I'm unfamiliar with the term and a bit of googling didn't turn up much.
- pc86 10y ago
  After some googling it seems very likely he just made the term up. The entire comment seems to be quite a bit of "I am very smart."
  - jklinger410 10y ago
    Welcome to HN...
jerf 10y ago
Ah, yes, the "reality has a distinct $IDEOLOGY bias" line. No. I've been on the opposite side of some of his rants. You do not get the best counter-arguments. It's just another media spin show where you get the weakest arguments, pre-digested and cued up with the best media management possible for you to laugh at them. He can do a decent job of substantiating his points, but you are not getting anything like the whole story, and if you think you are, you're hardcore in a small filter bubble. (And if you're about to start trying to explain to me that yes he does give the best counterarguments, you're pathologically in a small filter bubble. At the very least, I know better counterarguments than the one he prompts you to laugh at. And come on, pre-biasing you to laugh at the opposition may be fun but it's hardly the path to intellectual enlightenment.) That said, I must give props to putting money where his mouth is in this case.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  Where have you been on the other side? I stopped watching after several episodes in a row felt exceptionally biased and unfair. Alas I did not write down the topics so I've always had trouble describing to people why I don't like John Oliver.
  - jerf 10y ago
    Honestly, the whole "pre-biasing you to laugh at the scarecrow of the opposition we're about to show you" is enough on its own to turn me off. I've become more sensitive to this over the years. A lot of political clickbait comes out like that too; you get three paragraphs explaining how stupid the thing the opposition just said is, then a quoted snippet of the worst three sentences in the piece (probably ripped out of context), then another three paragraphs encouraging you to show your tribal affiliation by laughing at how stupid that one snippet was. Bonus points for not giving an easy, clear link back to the original, where you might actually see something that changes your mind. And before you say "Well, yeah, the other side does that, but thank goodness my side doesn't do that", I would challenge you that as you read your next couple of political articles, click, pull them up, maybe zoom your browser until the entire article fits on the screen, then just sort of defocus your eyes for a moment and just look at the pattern of text and quotes on the screen. Do you already have a pretty good idea what the paragraphs are? Do they fit the description I just gave you? I won't claim to read a completely balanced media diet, I have opinions too, but I do at least sample a lot of things, and this pattern is universally used. It's a cognitively-hazardous way to consume arguments even before we discuss its addictiveness. Putting it in video form is probably even worse.
lujim 10y ago
Not sure what your last sentence means. I get the gist but neurostatic precepts is new to me. Just because data supports global warming doesn't mean everyone agrees how to solve it or likes being berated and shamed because don't drive an electric car or ride a bike to work. Not everyone agrees we should shut off the US economy to slow down global warming. This is where partisan politics gets messy and people start merging their facts and their opinions.
- 0xfeba 10y ago
  > Just because data supports global warming doesn't mean everyone agrees how to solve it But that's just it--large swaths of people think it's some higher order conspiracy. That it is all just made up. > or likes being berated and shamed because don't drive an electric car or ride a bike to work. Not everyone agrees we should shut off the US economy to slow down global warming. This is where partisan politics gets messy and people start merging their facts and their opinions. No serious group is doing that. But people are trying to ring the alarm bells that we will either have serious economic problems now, or severe ones later. There is no "keep doing nothing" and we'll be fine option.
  - lujim 10y ago
    You zero sum straw manned me. "Large swaths of people believe A" , but "no serious group does B". Not saying anything you said is wrong, just find that humorous.
pc86 10y ago
Can you please explain what you are trying to say with "neurostatic precepts?" This thread takes the first two spots on Google for that phrase...
- bmh_ca 10y ago
  I understand neurostatic means the opposite of neuroplasticity. Google is indeed unhelpful; I had never Googled "neurostatic", and it's possible I have the term wrong. That said, I seem to recall reading it somewhere. Interestingly, the lead-in for Neuroplasticity on Wikipedia[1] states: > [Neuroplastic] contrasts with the previous scientific consensus that the brain develops during a critical period in early childhood, then remains relatively unchangeable (or "static") afterward. So I feel cautiously confident that I did read it, quite possibly in old medical textbooks that are not online. I used "precepts" just because it felt like it conveyed the right concept in context. I hope that helps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
  - pc86 10y ago
    TLDR: You made it up.
zeveb 10y ago
> Often it seems that facts, evidence, and observation are derided as "left". Well, those on the left would think so. Oddly enough, those on the right think that facts, evidence & observation are derided as 'right.' Weird how that happens, isn't it? It's almost as though we all sincerely believe that we are correct and that those who disagree with us are incorrect.
- deaddodo 10y ago
  Though I agree with you fundamentally; this is not always grey. A simple example: When 99/100 scientists agree that climate change is a thing and random politicians, business leaders and religious leaders are the dissenters; fact is very clearly on one side and bias the other.

by bmh_ca 10y ago

ThomPete 10y ago

Thats the thing though. This is not a question of substance. He can be right in the specifics, but still not provide the only perspective. My problem with him is his facts, but his interpretation of them.

pas 10y ago
Could you give an example of said facts and an alternative interpretation of them?
- Agustus 10y ago
  His interpretation of the Venezuelan crisis. He pointed to the price of oil driving the issue. Nowhere did he mention the crazy socialist/populist programs that Chavez and his successor Maduro. The main problem in Venezuela is the erosion of property rights. Nowhere in the report was this mentioned.
  - anentropic 10y ago
    I thought the main problems were less abstract, like not being able to buy toilet paper etc
    - Agustus 10y ago
      This is the short term approach that John Oliver puts forward. This is not a year's development, this has been the result of 16 years of Chavez / Maduro policies.
  - marxidad 10y ago
    What makes it a fact that the erosion of property rights is more so a driving issue that the price of oil?
    - Agustus 10y ago
      I John Oliver'ed my response to avoid delving into this more, but here is the cause and effects of the Venezuela issue. 1. Chavez was elected in 1999 and utilized the OPEC cartel to decrease production and drive up the price. Utilizing the high prices, he gave away every socialist program that his increased oil prices could deliver. 2. When the socialist programs had to have more cash, Chavez muscled in on the oil producers and told them to find more revenue or else they would nationalize the oil rigs. Companies said there was no money unless operation and maintenance costs were foregone, and they would not undersign that so Chavez nationalized them (property right strike across the bow). This was done through the enabling law which ultimately what started the erosion of the rights. 3. As companies saw that profits could not be returned, they started to get the heck out of Dodge. Tariffs and other crazy price increasing measures were instituted until prices became very high. The government did the next property right erosion by controlling prices on goods. Black market took over to provide goods at real rates because the governments rates could not be met. 4. Any industry that was making a profit was derided in public speeches. 5. Foreign investors avoided investing in the housing market as they saw newly built properties nationalized. The government did not even pay the investors a compensatory fee! The oil is price is an aside contributor, but when you do not respect property rights, say goodbye to anyone wanting to invest in you.
  - pas 10y ago
    I don't think his interpretation was total, complete or absolute. He basically refrained from commenting on it, and made very direct jokes on basic aspects of the situation, while introducing it via a proximate cause (oil price crashing led to instability - it's the lack of diversified economy that made them vulnerable, and it's usually caused by shortsighted natural resource expolitation, blablabla, but that's just correlated with the erosion of property rights, and not necessarily causally). I'm trying to decide if his omission is okay or not. Conservative (and I intend that as a swearword) hit-media present his lack of condemnation of "socialism" as a wrongdoing. Which certainly can be argued, that since he got airtime, he has some responsibility to educate, especially if he choose to talk about the topic. However, I don't think he is a politology scholar, so not using a word so misued as socialism is probably a smart thing on his part, and sticking to the criticism of the consequences of the policies themselves is also an okay-ish solution. I think shows what a dictatorship leads to is more important than condemning whatever ideology you think lead to it. After all, autorism always mutates the ideology it uses to justify itself, usually subverting all of the original ideas related to it in about 5 minutes after gaining power.
    - Agustus 10y ago
      The socialistic / communistic populist rhetoric used by Chavez is what allowed him into office. The socialist / communist people who elected him created the monster that he became, so those who wanted the platform elected and in his mind instilled his beliefs as "the will of the people" that we hear so much from those who are marginally elected. No one ever wants to elect a dictator, however, the requirements of a socialist / communist leader lends itself much more to developing one when one utters: "It is the will of the people" to supersede the property rights of others.
      - pas 10y ago
        This is true of every ideology usurped so far by dictators. Kings usually just invoked divine rights, or the good old "my father was king and his father was king before him, so I shall be king after him too" as is tradition. Caesar was also a tribune of the people, yet he was ineligible, but he also used the "will of the people" as justification. The problem is, when someone has so much power to do this, ideologies don't matter anymore, and there's no argument that can best the "will of the people", because if the will of the people is wrong, then the people are wrong too, and since they are the majority, you're screwed with your logic (and rationality). I'm saying these, because it's important to note that communism as an abstract idea is not worse or better than any other form of government, such as feudalism, or fascism. Ideally all could work. Given an ample supply of good kings, incorruptible premier secretaries and supreme leaders, and so on. Naturally, the problems are foreseeable, so individual power should be limited. What better way to do that than to remove even the power of wealth generation? Bam! Instant communism, again. And this works with property rights too. Someone offers you a very good deal on a crate of gold, you buy it. It turns out it was stolen from a national bank. But reversing that transaction would violate your property rights. (How far you would have to go to make sure you're not buying contraband/bootlegged stuff? Anyone can make up an example where you have done enough yet a lot of people will suffer as a result of your gains.)
bayesian_horse 10y ago
How can you interpret things like "the Trump University fraud case" as anything but a problem for a Trump administration? Even the parts where Olliver makes fun of Trump, for example the epic sagas about his hands or how he impersonated his own press secretary, are very clear signs whom I don't want to see in possession of nuclear launch codes. Or drones for that matter.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Trump in possession of launch codes is not more dangerous than Obama in possession of launch codes. Thats not how the US system works. And I am not saying that everything he says is always like that. It's just too much for my taste.
  - bayesian_horse 10y ago
    Well, let's hope Trump wouldn't nuke anybody for saying his hands are small. But his incredible thin skin and demonstrated vulnerable ego is hardly an asset in diplomatic or military matters...
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      Again. The US system is not that fragile. It's made to be able to deal with presidents smart or dumb. I see no evidence that Trump should be any more dangerous than Bush or Clinton. He might say more outrageous things than even Bush to the international community but his rhetorics isn's his politics and he can't just send nuclear bombs at whomever he wants.
      - bayesian_horse 10y ago
        I'm not aware of any such checks or balances which would prevent a president from launching a military attack when there is at least the faint notion of a threat. He certainly doesn't need any parliamentary approval for the first strike and he is commander in chief of the armed forces. The only hope is that the military would refuse stupid orders. I also don't see why anyone would want a thin-skinned man child in charge of the only superpower in the world. Being in the center of at least one pretty strong fraud case doesn't help either. The argument "he just says stupid things all the time, but he will be presidential and wise when he is president" doesn't even begin to make sense to me.

mediocrejoker 10y ago

Can you explain neurostatic precepts? I'm unfamiliar with the term and a bit of googling didn't turn up much.

pc86 10y ago
After some googling it seems very likely he just made the term up. The entire comment seems to be quite a bit of "I am very smart."
- jklinger410 10y ago
  Welcome to HN...

jerf 10y ago

Ah, yes, the "reality has a distinct $IDEOLOGY bias" line. No. I've been on the opposite side of some of his rants. You do not get the best counter-arguments. It's just another media spin show where you get the weakest arguments, pre-digested and cued up with the best media management possible for you to laugh at them. He can do a decent job of substantiating his points, but you are not getting anything like the whole story, and if you think you are, you're hardcore in a small filter bubble. (And if you're about to start trying to explain to me that yes he does give the best counterarguments, you're pathologically in a small filter bubble. At the very least, I know better counterarguments than the one he prompts you to laugh at. And come on, pre-biasing you to laugh at the opposition may be fun but it's hardly the path to intellectual enlightenment.) That said, I must give props to putting money where his mouth is in this case.

forrestthewoods 10y ago
Where have you been on the other side? I stopped watching after several episodes in a row felt exceptionally biased and unfair. Alas I did not write down the topics so I've always had trouble describing to people why I don't like John Oliver.
- jerf 10y ago
  Honestly, the whole "pre-biasing you to laugh at the scarecrow of the opposition we're about to show you" is enough on its own to turn me off. I've become more sensitive to this over the years. A lot of political clickbait comes out like that too; you get three paragraphs explaining how stupid the thing the opposition just said is, then a quoted snippet of the worst three sentences in the piece (probably ripped out of context), then another three paragraphs encouraging you to show your tribal affiliation by laughing at how stupid that one snippet was. Bonus points for not giving an easy, clear link back to the original, where you might actually see something that changes your mind. And before you say "Well, yeah, the other side does that, but thank goodness my side doesn't do that", I would challenge you that as you read your next couple of political articles, click, pull them up, maybe zoom your browser until the entire article fits on the screen, then just sort of defocus your eyes for a moment and just look at the pattern of text and quotes on the screen. Do you already have a pretty good idea what the paragraphs are? Do they fit the description I just gave you? I won't claim to read a completely balanced media diet, I have opinions too, but I do at least sample a lot of things, and this pattern is universally used. It's a cognitively-hazardous way to consume arguments even before we discuss its addictiveness. Putting it in video form is probably even worse.

lujim 10y ago

Not sure what your last sentence means. I get the gist but neurostatic precepts is new to me. Just because data supports global warming doesn't mean everyone agrees how to solve it or likes being berated and shamed because don't drive an electric car or ride a bike to work. Not everyone agrees we should shut off the US economy to slow down global warming. This is where partisan politics gets messy and people start merging their facts and their opinions.

0xfeba 10y ago
> Just because data supports global warming doesn't mean everyone agrees how to solve it But that's just it--large swaths of people think it's some higher order conspiracy. That it is all just made up. > or likes being berated and shamed because don't drive an electric car or ride a bike to work. Not everyone agrees we should shut off the US economy to slow down global warming. This is where partisan politics gets messy and people start merging their facts and their opinions. No serious group is doing that. But people are trying to ring the alarm bells that we will either have serious economic problems now, or severe ones later. There is no "keep doing nothing" and we'll be fine option.
- lujim 10y ago
  You zero sum straw manned me. "Large swaths of people believe A" , but "no serious group does B". Not saying anything you said is wrong, just find that humorous.

pc86 10y ago

Can you please explain what you are trying to say with "neurostatic precepts?" This thread takes the first two spots on Google for that phrase...

bmh_ca 10y ago
I understand neurostatic means the opposite of neuroplasticity. Google is indeed unhelpful; I had never Googled "neurostatic", and it's possible I have the term wrong. That said, I seem to recall reading it somewhere. Interestingly, the lead-in for Neuroplasticity on Wikipedia[1] states: > [Neuroplastic] contrasts with the previous scientific consensus that the brain develops during a critical period in early childhood, then remains relatively unchangeable (or "static") afterward. So I feel cautiously confident that I did read it, quite possibly in old medical textbooks that are not online. I used "precepts" just because it felt like it conveyed the right concept in context. I hope that helps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
- pc86 10y ago
  TLDR: You made it up.

zeveb 10y ago

> Often it seems that facts, evidence, and observation are derided as "left". Well, those on the left would think so. Oddly enough, those on the right think that facts, evidence & observation are derided as 'right.' Weird how that happens, isn't it? It's almost as though we all sincerely believe that we are correct and that those who disagree with us are incorrect.

deaddodo 10y ago
Though I agree with you fundamentally; this is not always grey. A simple example: When 99/100 scientists agree that climate change is a thing and random politicians, business leaders and religious leaders are the dissenters; fact is very clearly on one side and bias the other.