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What a crock of shit. Plus, who cares? Personally I'm getting a little tired of the excess of political stories here that seek to explain why something is in an

What a crock of shit. Plus, who cares? Personally I'm getting a little tired of the excess of political stories here that seek to explain why something is in an unscientific, biased, and heavily left-leaning way. Plus its off-topic and irrelevant, in my opinion, to the topic of startups, technology, and new business. Has all the BS from the valley hippies finally started to ruin this place too?

brent 18y ago
Did you make it through the entire video?
dissenter 18y ago
It's bad scholarship. A political ideal is an extremely complex object. All he's done is cherry-picked five filters through which to view it. He's taken a very big n-dimensional object and inspected a handful of the shadows it casts. Does he think he's pinned it down with these five criteria? This is why people make fun of the humanities. Sloppy, runny thinking. You could select just about any value and the two political ideologies would fall somewhere on either side of it. Those on which they aren't opposed aren't worthy of mention, and so aren't. You could play the same game all day. In fact, you might even argue that it is a defining property of a two-party system.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Sloppy science makes people feel good when it plays into their preconceived ideas. I fully await the day that the left starts defining other ptolitical views as forms of mental illness. Who knows, maybe Pfizer could find some meds for it. Kuhn and Popper should really be taught in schools more. There's this incredible propaganda people are taught in regards to science which has very little to do with how actual science is done. People get this warm and fuzzy around the general idea of "science" without the hard knuckle reality that skepticism, falsifiability, the inductive problem, and the difference between correlation and causation, just to name a few problems. So it's easy for a soft scientist to do all sorts of amazing and miraculous things in the name of science. And heck, it sounds dead right too! Let's just not poke around behind the curtain too much, okay? It's the ultimate in laziness. Instead of learning political theory, philosophy, economics, and history, we've got internet video! From TED! Can't get cooler than that.
  - timr 18y ago
    Ya know, I get really frustrated whenever I see a bunch of armchair scientists work themselves into a lather criticizing the "sloppiness" of published research, based on nothing but a short blurb on a website. Contrary to the belief of most indignant internet geeks, there's a lot more to scientific analysis than parroting "correlation vs. cause!" whenever data are presented. The fact of the matter is that, while correlation doesn't imply cause (that's the actual expression; it is rampantly mis-stated), a strong correlation is usually evidence that an underlying cause exists, whether direct or indirect in nature. Furthermore, there's not an accepted result in the history of science that doesn't depend on the analysis of correlations in observed data. Even falsifiability (that sexy buzzword of Popper-idolaters) depends on the collection of observations, and correlation of those observations with previous data. Thus, in a very real way, science is the study of correlations, and you can take the amateur correlation/cause pot-shot at any scientific result. So, when a scientist points out that correlation does not imply cause, what she means is not that the observed relationship doesn't exist, but that the correlation could be caused by latent, indirect factors. This is a very different thing than suggesting that the result is invalid -- which is what most armchair, Popper-loving internet-scientist types are trying to do (including the parent posts).
    - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
      Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. My lather was starting to dry and I needed a good rinse. One thing and I'll let you go. "a strong correlation is usually evidence that an underlying cause exists, whether direct or indirect in nature" Oh really now? Well that explains my theory as to how carrots are deadly poisonous. You see, I've found a 100% correlation between the consumption of carrots and death, usually within 80 years. I'm also working on a theory that sunlight is a cause of all cancer, seeing as how there is another 100% relationship between all people with cancer and exposure to sunlight. Science is the creation and study of models, abduction, based on the use of deduction and induction. Correlation is simply a tool used to create the model. When we forget we're comparing models, then it's easy to simply fall back on simple correlation-based arguments. That's like forgetting geometry and simply observing the circumference of a circle is usually about 3 times the diameter. It's true, but it's not creating an abstract calculus that can then be extended. I find your continued use of "armchair scientist" to be an ad hominem, as if by using that name my argument would carry less weight. Last I checked we weren't providing credentials to express opinions. I'm done playing. timr -- you can follow me around to another comment on the board and continue your picking. I have to go get my armchair adjusted for physics.
- jsmcgd 18y ago
  > Those on which they aren't opposed aren't worthy of mention, and so aren't. They were. Harm and fairness were identified as issues that both ideologies regard as being most important.
mattmaroon 18y ago
What's unscientific about it? He's collected data to test hypotheses pyschologists have had for years.
- wustl07 18y ago
  Drawing a bunch of lines and opining on them for 20 minutes does not qualify as science.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    That comment is absolutely ridiculous. Those lines are graphic representations of surveys. They're collected data points. That's certainly part of science.

brent 18y ago

Did you make it through the entire video?

dissenter 18y ago

It's bad scholarship. A political ideal is an extremely complex object. All he's done is cherry-picked five filters through which to view it. He's taken a very big n-dimensional object and inspected a handful of the shadows it casts. Does he think he's pinned it down with these five criteria? This is why people make fun of the humanities. Sloppy, runny thinking. You could select just about any value and the two political ideologies would fall somewhere on either side of it. Those on which they aren't opposed aren't worthy of mention, and so aren't. You could play the same game all day. In fact, you might even argue that it is a defining property of a two-party system.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Sloppy science makes people feel good when it plays into their preconceived ideas. I fully await the day that the left starts defining other ptolitical views as forms of mental illness. Who knows, maybe Pfizer could find some meds for it. Kuhn and Popper should really be taught in schools more. There's this incredible propaganda people are taught in regards to science which has very little to do with how actual science is done. People get this warm and fuzzy around the general idea of "science" without the hard knuckle reality that skepticism, falsifiability, the inductive problem, and the difference between correlation and causation, just to name a few problems. So it's easy for a soft scientist to do all sorts of amazing and miraculous things in the name of science. And heck, it sounds dead right too! Let's just not poke around behind the curtain too much, okay? It's the ultimate in laziness. Instead of learning political theory, philosophy, economics, and history, we've got internet video! From TED! Can't get cooler than that.
- timr 18y ago
  Ya know, I get really frustrated whenever I see a bunch of armchair scientists work themselves into a lather criticizing the "sloppiness" of published research, based on nothing but a short blurb on a website. Contrary to the belief of most indignant internet geeks, there's a lot more to scientific analysis than parroting "correlation vs. cause!" whenever data are presented. The fact of the matter is that, while correlation doesn't imply cause (that's the actual expression; it is rampantly mis-stated), a strong correlation is usually evidence that an underlying cause exists, whether direct or indirect in nature. Furthermore, there's not an accepted result in the history of science that doesn't depend on the analysis of correlations in observed data. Even falsifiability (that sexy buzzword of Popper-idolaters) depends on the collection of observations, and correlation of those observations with previous data. Thus, in a very real way, science is the study of correlations, and you can take the amateur correlation/cause pot-shot at any scientific result. So, when a scientist points out that correlation does not imply cause, what she means is not that the observed relationship doesn't exist, but that the correlation could be caused by latent, indirect factors. This is a very different thing than suggesting that the result is invalid -- which is what most armchair, Popper-loving internet-scientist types are trying to do (including the parent posts).
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. My lather was starting to dry and I needed a good rinse. One thing and I'll let you go. "a strong correlation is usually evidence that an underlying cause exists, whether direct or indirect in nature" Oh really now? Well that explains my theory as to how carrots are deadly poisonous. You see, I've found a 100% correlation between the consumption of carrots and death, usually within 80 years. I'm also working on a theory that sunlight is a cause of all cancer, seeing as how there is another 100% relationship between all people with cancer and exposure to sunlight. Science is the creation and study of models, abduction, based on the use of deduction and induction. Correlation is simply a tool used to create the model. When we forget we're comparing models, then it's easy to simply fall back on simple correlation-based arguments. That's like forgetting geometry and simply observing the circumference of a circle is usually about 3 times the diameter. It's true, but it's not creating an abstract calculus that can then be extended. I find your continued use of "armchair scientist" to be an ad hominem, as if by using that name my argument would carry less weight. Last I checked we weren't providing credentials to express opinions. I'm done playing. timr -- you can follow me around to another comment on the board and continue your picking. I have to go get my armchair adjusted for physics.
jsmcgd 18y ago
> Those on which they aren't opposed aren't worthy of mention, and so aren't. They were. Harm and fairness were identified as issues that both ideologies regard as being most important.

mattmaroon 18y ago

What's unscientific about it? He's collected data to test hypotheses pyschologists have had for years.

wustl07 18y ago
Drawing a bunch of lines and opining on them for 20 minutes does not qualify as science.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  That comment is absolutely ridiculous. Those lines are graphic representations of surveys. They're collected data points. That's certainly part of science.