tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post440922175714843536..comments2023-10-30T11:46:43.284+00:00Comments on Musings of the Cosmic Calamari: We Have To Have Some Standards...SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-89178861564476652992011-02-13T23:43:45.151+00:002011-02-13T23:43:45.151+00:00Swearing is awesome and makes me a big man. As to...Swearing is awesome and makes me a big man. As to semantics/lack of context, that's a big negatory. To repeat myself; there are yawning holes in both her argument and your defense of the aforementioned, and no flensing of context is remotely necessary to see that.SpaceSquidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-72819971978996524912011-02-13T21:57:34.574+00:002011-02-13T21:57:34.574+00:00Maybe she should swear more and pick sentences apa...Maybe she should swear more and pick sentences apart semantically out of context to be more convincing. ;-)Gooderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09521737303339945072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-66489804342217383082011-02-11T10:14:12.163+00:002011-02-11T10:14:12.163+00:00Ah, the standard "editorials don't need t...Ah, the standard "editorials don't need to contain facts" argument. You really should just try to work that into a sig file somehow to save you the effort of typing it ;)<br /><br />In all seriousness, I've never found this a strong argument, and it's particularly weak here, where I'm not asking for exact figure breakdowns so much as that data is not transparently misinterpreted. To defend that, you wouldn't be arguing these pieces can get by without gribbly detail, you'd be arguing they can get by without professional standards.<br /><br />I agree that there are some good parts to the piece. I can’t argue with her over Krugman’s use of the phrase “People can choose their beliefs”. She’s also right about the curious inversion of arguments, but only in the most general sense. It's that kind of "some on the left say X about Y, and then some on the left say the exact opposite of X about Z" that sounds impressive until you realise she hasn't actually attributed X to anyone in particular. Quite aside from anything else, it seems unfair to implicitly compare Paul Krugman's arguments (though in truth his piece wasn't great either) to random unnamed progressives (this brings us to another point - McArdle is happy to reference when she thinks it proves a point. It's not a case of not including evidence, it's a case of magically forgetting to do so when such evidence would be hard to find).<br /><br />You're quite simply wrong about the voting issue. The self-indenfication test is bad enough - and the idea that because something can't be done properly justifies doing it badly is profoundly unconvincing even if I bought into the idea that it <i>can't</i> be done right - but McArdle swaps from self-identifying Conservatives to self-indentifying Republicans as if they're the same thing. That isn't using a convenient label; that's <i>swapping labels</i>.<br /><br />Krugman might be accused of doing the same thing, but then he is using the formulation "Republican => Conservative". McArdle is using "Conservative => Republican". These are not equally plausible inferrals.<br /><br />As to the <i>Economist</i>, I confess I've only read her in the <i>Atlantic</i>. Maybe she was kept on a tighter leash at the former (though my own low opinion of pretty much anything the <i>Economist</i> puts out about politics makes me wonder - they may also subscribe to the Gooder/<i>Washington Post</i> "Editorials Can Make Shit Up" theory).<br /><br />At the <i>Atlantic</i>, though, she's an embarrassment. I've seen her schooled for misintepretations of economics principles that I've taught in my introductory course to financial mathematics. The only alternative to assuming she's too incompetent to be an academic is to assume she's too dishonest to be one. Hardly much of an improvement.SpaceSquidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-15351964104567631792011-02-10T19:15:25.582+00:002011-02-10T19:15:25.582+00:00I thought it was quite an interesting little piece...I thought it was quite an interesting little piece. It's also an editorial/ blog style piece so I don't think having a go at it for not being painstakingly cross referenced with exact figure breakdowns is really apt.<br /><br />It does raise some interesting points and does talk about people who identify themselves as voting/agreeing with a particular party - so I don't really go with you argument about her not knowing the differences between voting and stance(I don't you think you'd ever get anywhere trying to work out the exact political thinking of everyone academia, you have to use some lables) it's how these people have labelled themselves when asked the question.<br /><br />(I'd say that fact she writes for The Economist, a world respected magazine in it's field, implies she has editors that pay attention)Gooderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09521737303339945072noreply@blogger.com