6 ms·

The more time goes by, the more I am wary of the false dilemma. Almost anytime I see someone argue "you might think it's because of X, but it's really because

The more time goes by, the more I am wary of the false dilemma. Almost anytime I see someone argue "you might think it's because of X, but it's really because of Y," the person speaking is selling a particular ideology. That ideology magnifies Y and minimizes X. It would be perfectly fine to say "you might be aware of X, but you should also be aware of Y." But pieces like this don't do that. They seek to tell you you are wrong if you think X. It doesn't sit will with people who have personally experienced X.

5thaccount 9y ago
These articles also sell it without a solution. "It isn't X, it is Y. I have no idea how to fix Y, or a single policy idea to suggest, but, yeh, definitely Y." We are all obsessed with what policy makes us feel, rather than its impact. Example: Seattle minimum wage laws https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.meer/posts/10103186886066573 https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.meer/posts/101031868860665... let me quote here: > This is the official study that was commissioned several years ago by the city of Seattle to study the impacts of raising the minimum wage, in a move that I applauded at the time as an honest and transparent attempt towards self-examination of a bold policy. > The losses were so dramatic that this increase "reduced income paid to low-wage employees of single-location Seattle businesses by roughly $120 million on an annual basis." On average, low-wage workers lost $125 per month. So the official government study found this to be an horrific law for the poor. So we'll accept this, roll it back and move on yeh? Of course not! > This paper not only makes numerous valuable contributions to the economics literature, but should give serious pause to minimum wage advocates. Of course, that's not what's happening, to the extent that the mayor of Seattle commissioned another study, by an advocacy group at Berkeley whose previous work on the minimum wage is so consistently one-sided that you can set your watch by it, that unsurprisingly finds no effect. They deliberately timed its release for several days before this paper came out, and I find that whole affair abhorrent. Seattle politicians are so unwilling to accept reality that they'll undermine their own researchers and waste taxpayer dollars on what is barely a cut above propoganda (sic). Now, here's a policy aimed directly at the poor, that we are researching well, and the findings are being thrown out because, well why if not because "my feelings". Maybe it is because the political climate won;t accept the decision, but how is that better than climate deniers on the right? It seems to me both sides of politics are deniers of inconvenient truths. So I am done with articles that aim to explain, raise awareness, shine a light on etc. I want tangible, actionable policy with a measurement framework in place that we as a society both believe and accept. If society tries a UBI, and it proves bad for society for what ever pre-decided reason, we should ditch it. Policy -> measurement -> keep or drop -> repeat. That's what I want. Sadly, that is a bridge way too far these days.
- vkou 9y ago
  That study had serious flaws in the data they were looking at, and their analysis.
  - 5thaccount 9y ago
    Which "study"?
sidlls 9y ago
Sometimes, perhaps often, "people who have personally experienced X" don't realize their experience is an exception to the rule.
- Inconel 9y ago
  I agree. Although to be fair, I think there is somewhat of a difference between saying "your experience is valid, though it may be an outlier" vs discounting the experience altogether.
- haberman 9y ago
  I think this overestimates our ability to establish a solid "rule" when it comes to a complex social phenomenon. It's so reductionist to think that complex systems can be boiled down to simple, all-encompassing explanations. This has failed over and over, from nutrition to economics. And yet people of all political persuasions still want to argue that "the REAL problem is Y" and claim smug superiority over anyone who disagrees.
- hueving 9y ago
  Well it can't be often if it's exceptional.
droopyEyelids 9y ago
I don't know... there are such things as facts. In 2014, "Vulnerable Populations" made up 80% of the poor in the USA. That essentially means children and the elderly. On top of that, it's like another 7% of people that are in poverty that are fully employed! http://www.demos.org/blog/10/23/15/2014-vulnerable-populations-made-80-poor http://www.demos.org/blog/10/23/15/2014-vulnerable-populatio...
- haberman 9y ago
  Nov 7, 2016 "fact": Hillary Clinton has a 98.2% chance of winning the presidency: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/polls-hillary-clinton-win_us_5821074ce4b0e80b02cc2a94 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/polls-hillary-clinton-wi... There are facts, but it does them no service to overstate what the evidence actually says.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
    You know that events with probability less than 1.8% are happening all the time, right? The probability of dying in a car crash is way less than 1% and still some people are unlucky enough to die in this way every day. It's a matter of sample size. In the same way, the vast majority of the time a candidate with a very slim chance won't make it to presidency, but it happened that Trump did.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    It was factually true that their method of weighting and averaging polling data produced that result.
  - mark_edward 9y ago
    This is an excellent non sequitur. What does that have to do with most of the poor being elderly or children? Are you saying they aren't?
    - haberman 9y ago
      Grandparent's statement "there are such things as facts" seems to support the idea that the evidence provides unambiguous support for the author's thesis. I think people discussing complex phenomena (like poverty) tend to overstate the power of their evidence; they overstate its ability to support the conclusions they want to draw from it. This was illustrated in dramatic fashion when many/most of the most educated, "enlightened" people in the US had a reality check that their model was off last November. If there hadn't been an actual vote, people would probably still be insisting that Hillary Clinton would have won, had there been an actual vote on Nov 8. And that was the simple question of "how many people will show up to a polling station and mark a box for HC vs DT"! And the evidence consisted of pollsters who were asking hundreds or thousands of people that precise question every day! That should have been much easier to model and predict than poverty! It didn't even get into the causes of why people think or vote in certain ways. And yet still we have people looking at complex systems and problems like poverty and saying "it's not because of X, it's because of Y" with a feeling of certainty. And thinking that they are justified in their certainty because they claim this is what the "facts" say. I think, first of all, that grandparent hasn't even accurately summarized their own link, which says "Children and eldery make up slightly more than half of the market poor." Their statement that "essentially" 80% of the poor are children and elderly has already caused a significant amount of the underlying data to be "lost in translation". I think, second of all, that bucketing elderly, children, the disabled, etc into "vulnerable populations" and saying they comprise 80% of the poor doesn't really support the author's thesis at all. No one blames a child for being poor. It is not a child's responsibility to support themselves. So saying children are poor doesn't really speak to whether poverty is a personal choice. Children are the responsibility of their parents, so it is the parents choices that would be relevant here. Elderly people, on the other hand, generally spend their lives realizing they will be old someday, and therefore poverty of an elderly person does not necessarily say anything about whether poverty is a personal choice. It could be a lack of effort put into saving during their working years. I want to be clear that I'm not against safety nets, or in favor of doling out blame and judgement towards poor people. What I am against is the (to me) crazy amount of overconfidence many people (on the left especially) have in the ability of their data to "prove" their political positions and arguments. And I'm not even against people's right to hold convictions that the evidence doesn't fully justify. What I am especially against is when people use those convictions to pass blame and judgment on others. The clear subtext of this article is that we are all guilty, as a society, for making poor people poor.
hueving 9y ago
This is the sad state of politics today (particularly in the US). Choose your god, individualism or collectivism, and all of the answers will be presented to you in black and white in a way that supports your god.
- ue_ 9y ago
  There are many people who find the collectivisim/individualism distinction facile and inadequate, though. I feel you're making a point about ideology in general, however I can't see what's wrong with subscribing to a particular ideology, so long as you agree with it. The point is not to follow it dogmatically.
  - hueving 9y ago
    The point I was trying to make was that the discourse is so dogmatic it's as if people live in alternate universes. People can't even mention certain topics because the word you use to describe the topic reveals which "side" you are on (e.g. the "Muslim ban").
    - brightsize 9y ago
      >(e.g. the "Muslim ban"). And "sanctuary cities".
- humanrebar 9y ago
  The federal system was supposed to help with this by allowing various approaches in various parts of the country. I think the state of politics today is due to the nationalization of every issue. If California and Texas (for example) each decided it was more important to govern themselves than each other, it would be lower stakes and more productive to talk about issues like this.
  - hueving 9y ago
    Unfortunately people are really bad at reigning in their own power. So whichever side holds the federal office will naturally impose their view on the rest of the country.

5thaccount 9y ago

These articles also sell it without a solution. "It isn't X, it is Y. I have no idea how to fix Y, or a single policy idea to suggest, but, yeh, definitely Y." We are all obsessed with what policy makes us feel, rather than its impact. Example: Seattle minimum wage laws https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.meer/posts/10103186886066573 https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.meer/posts/101031868860665... let me quote here: > This is the official study that was commissioned several years ago by the city of Seattle to study the impacts of raising the minimum wage, in a move that I applauded at the time as an honest and transparent attempt towards self-examination of a bold policy. > The losses were so dramatic that this increase "reduced income paid to low-wage employees of single-location Seattle businesses by roughly $120 million on an annual basis." On average, low-wage workers lost $125 per month. So the official government study found this to be an horrific law for the poor. So we'll accept this, roll it back and move on yeh? Of course not! > This paper not only makes numerous valuable contributions to the economics literature, but should give serious pause to minimum wage advocates. Of course, that's not what's happening, to the extent that the mayor of Seattle commissioned another study, by an advocacy group at Berkeley whose previous work on the minimum wage is so consistently one-sided that you can set your watch by it, that unsurprisingly finds no effect. They deliberately timed its release for several days before this paper came out, and I find that whole affair abhorrent. Seattle politicians are so unwilling to accept reality that they'll undermine their own researchers and waste taxpayer dollars on what is barely a cut above propoganda (sic). Now, here's a policy aimed directly at the poor, that we are researching well, and the findings are being thrown out because, well why if not because "my feelings". Maybe it is because the political climate won;t accept the decision, but how is that better than climate deniers on the right? It seems to me both sides of politics are deniers of inconvenient truths. So I am done with articles that aim to explain, raise awareness, shine a light on etc. I want tangible, actionable policy with a measurement framework in place that we as a society both believe and accept. If society tries a UBI, and it proves bad for society for what ever pre-decided reason, we should ditch it. Policy -> measurement -> keep or drop -> repeat. That's what I want. Sadly, that is a bridge way too far these days.

vkou 9y ago
That study had serious flaws in the data they were looking at, and their analysis.
- 5thaccount 9y ago
  Which "study"?

sidlls 9y ago

Sometimes, perhaps often, "people who have personally experienced X" don't realize their experience is an exception to the rule.

Inconel 9y ago
I agree. Although to be fair, I think there is somewhat of a difference between saying "your experience is valid, though it may be an outlier" vs discounting the experience altogether.
haberman 9y ago
I think this overestimates our ability to establish a solid "rule" when it comes to a complex social phenomenon. It's so reductionist to think that complex systems can be boiled down to simple, all-encompassing explanations. This has failed over and over, from nutrition to economics. And yet people of all political persuasions still want to argue that "the REAL problem is Y" and claim smug superiority over anyone who disagrees.
hueving 9y ago
Well it can't be often if it's exceptional.

droopyEyelids 9y ago

I don't know... there are such things as facts. In 2014, "Vulnerable Populations" made up 80% of the poor in the USA. That essentially means children and the elderly. On top of that, it's like another 7% of people that are in poverty that are fully employed! http://www.demos.org/blog/10/23/15/2014-vulnerable-populations-made-80-poor http://www.demos.org/blog/10/23/15/2014-vulnerable-populatio...

haberman 9y ago
Nov 7, 2016 "fact": Hillary Clinton has a 98.2% chance of winning the presidency: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/polls-hillary-clinton-win_us_5821074ce4b0e80b02cc2a94 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/polls-hillary-clinton-wi... There are facts, but it does them no service to overstate what the evidence actually says.
- Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
  You know that events with probability less than 1.8% are happening all the time, right? The probability of dying in a car crash is way less than 1% and still some people are unlucky enough to die in this way every day. It's a matter of sample size. In the same way, the vast majority of the time a candidate with a very slim chance won't make it to presidency, but it happened that Trump did.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  It was factually true that their method of weighting and averaging polling data produced that result.
- mark_edward 9y ago
  This is an excellent non sequitur. What does that have to do with most of the poor being elderly or children? Are you saying they aren't?
  - haberman 9y ago
    Grandparent's statement "there are such things as facts" seems to support the idea that the evidence provides unambiguous support for the author's thesis. I think people discussing complex phenomena (like poverty) tend to overstate the power of their evidence; they overstate its ability to support the conclusions they want to draw from it. This was illustrated in dramatic fashion when many/most of the most educated, "enlightened" people in the US had a reality check that their model was off last November. If there hadn't been an actual vote, people would probably still be insisting that Hillary Clinton would have won, had there been an actual vote on Nov 8. And that was the simple question of "how many people will show up to a polling station and mark a box for HC vs DT"! And the evidence consisted of pollsters who were asking hundreds or thousands of people that precise question every day! That should have been much easier to model and predict than poverty! It didn't even get into the causes of why people think or vote in certain ways. And yet still we have people looking at complex systems and problems like poverty and saying "it's not because of X, it's because of Y" with a feeling of certainty. And thinking that they are justified in their certainty because they claim this is what the "facts" say. I think, first of all, that grandparent hasn't even accurately summarized their own link, which says "Children and eldery make up slightly more than half of the market poor." Their statement that "essentially" 80% of the poor are children and elderly has already caused a significant amount of the underlying data to be "lost in translation". I think, second of all, that bucketing elderly, children, the disabled, etc into "vulnerable populations" and saying they comprise 80% of the poor doesn't really support the author's thesis at all. No one blames a child for being poor. It is not a child's responsibility to support themselves. So saying children are poor doesn't really speak to whether poverty is a personal choice. Children are the responsibility of their parents, so it is the parents choices that would be relevant here. Elderly people, on the other hand, generally spend their lives realizing they will be old someday, and therefore poverty of an elderly person does not necessarily say anything about whether poverty is a personal choice. It could be a lack of effort put into saving during their working years. I want to be clear that I'm not against safety nets, or in favor of doling out blame and judgement towards poor people. What I am against is the (to me) crazy amount of overconfidence many people (on the left especially) have in the ability of their data to "prove" their political positions and arguments. And I'm not even against people's right to hold convictions that the evidence doesn't fully justify. What I am especially against is when people use those convictions to pass blame and judgment on others. The clear subtext of this article is that we are all guilty, as a society, for making poor people poor.

hueving 9y ago

This is the sad state of politics today (particularly in the US). Choose your god, individualism or collectivism, and all of the answers will be presented to you in black and white in a way that supports your god.

ue_ 9y ago
There are many people who find the collectivisim/individualism distinction facile and inadequate, though. I feel you're making a point about ideology in general, however I can't see what's wrong with subscribing to a particular ideology, so long as you agree with it. The point is not to follow it dogmatically.
- hueving 9y ago
  The point I was trying to make was that the discourse is so dogmatic it's as if people live in alternate universes. People can't even mention certain topics because the word you use to describe the topic reveals which "side" you are on (e.g. the "Muslim ban").
  - brightsize 9y ago
    >(e.g. the "Muslim ban"). And "sanctuary cities".
humanrebar 9y ago
The federal system was supposed to help with this by allowing various approaches in various parts of the country. I think the state of politics today is due to the nationalization of every issue. If California and Texas (for example) each decided it was more important to govern themselves than each other, it would be lower stakes and more productive to talk about issues like this.
- hueving 9y ago
  Unfortunately people are really bad at reigning in their own power. So whichever side holds the federal office will naturally impose their view on the rest of the country.