Category Archives: Reason

The Pseudoscientific Method Of ‘Climate Change’

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Pseudoscience, Reason, Science

“Evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate Chicken Littles enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns—warm or cold—is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it.” That was “Reincarnation of the Reds,” my 2006 article which first articulated the “scientific” principle that undergirds “climate change.” Back in 2006, when I wrote the piece, the movement was still called global warming.

The media continue to blow hot air about global warming, as much of the country’s South and Northeast looks as though it is heralding an Ice Age. If you want to master the watermelons’ scientific methods, here’s more from “Reincarnation of the Reds”:

“These mutant Marxists have had to create a theory that can’t be falsified—the kind of ‘theory’ Karl Popper referred to as irrefutable. As Popper reminded us, ‘A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is,’ of course, ‘non-scientific.”

Here’s how you use the Socratic method to question a climate kook with the hope that reason will prevail. It never does.

“Libertarians On The Shrink’s Couch”

Intellectualism, Intelligence, libertarianism, Morality, Objectivism, Reason

“A team of social psychologists,” reports Gene Healy, “including the University of Virginia’s Jonathan Haidt, provides some of the most detailed answers yet, putting libertarians on the couch in a new study, ‘Understanding Libertarian Morality.'”

“For several years now, at YourMorals.org, they’ve let self-described liberals, conservatives, and libertarians speak for themselves, by voluntarily taking a battery of psychological tests measuring personality characteristics, cognitive style, and moral values. Along the way, they’ve compiled the ‘largest dataset of psychological measures ever compiled on libertarians’ — with more than 10,000 respondents.”

“Libertarians tend to be dispassionate and cerebral, less likely to moralize based on gut reactions like disgust (one source, the authors suggest, of our disagreement with conservatives on social issues).

“‘We found strong support,’ they write, for the proposition that libertarians ‘will rely upon reason more — and emotion less — than will either liberals or conservatives.’ Blubbery Clintonian empathy isn’t our bag, baby; we don’t ‘feel your pain.’ Where ‘liberals have the most ‘feminine’ cognitive style … libertarians have the most ‘masculine.’ And where others often ‘rely on peripheral cues, such as how attractive or credible a speaker is,’ when formulating opinions, libertarians are more likely to pay ‘close attention to relevant arguments.'”

[SNIP]

I prefer to put it a little differently, as I did in an interview with Everyman: A Men’s Journal:

“When people are rational, they observe reality as it is, and are more likely to be concerned with justice and avoid misplacing compassion. So the starting point is, unavoidably, a return to reason. … I certainly understand your concern and agree with you that the arguments we’ve made in favor of justice for men are less intuitive and less visceral than the arguments feminists make. But since we know our more complex arguments are the right ones, we have the answer: to make people fairer, kinder, and more compassionate, one has to first make them able to think and reason. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, economist Milton Friedman underscores this point: ‘The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”

“Sure, making people just isn’t easy. But it certainly won’t work if you aim for the gut instead of the gray matter. As usual, Oscar Wilde said it best in one of his plays: ‘She thought that because he was stupid he would be kindly, when of course, kindliness requires imagination and intellect.'”

"Libertarians On The Shrink's Couch"

Intellectualism, Intelligence, libertarianism, Morality, Objectivism, Reason

“A team of social psychologists,” reports Gene Healy, “including the University of Virginia’s Jonathan Haidt, provides some of the most detailed answers yet, putting libertarians on the couch in a new study, ‘Understanding Libertarian Morality.'”

“For several years now, at YourMorals.org, they’ve let self-described liberals, conservatives, and libertarians speak for themselves, by voluntarily taking a battery of psychological tests measuring personality characteristics, cognitive style, and moral values. Along the way, they’ve compiled the ‘largest dataset of psychological measures ever compiled on libertarians’ — with more than 10,000 respondents.”

“Libertarians tend to be dispassionate and cerebral, less likely to moralize based on gut reactions like disgust (one source, the authors suggest, of our disagreement with conservatives on social issues).

“‘We found strong support,’ they write, for the proposition that libertarians ‘will rely upon reason more — and emotion less — than will either liberals or conservatives.’ Blubbery Clintonian empathy isn’t our bag, baby; we don’t ‘feel your pain.’ Where ‘liberals have the most ‘feminine’ cognitive style … libertarians have the most ‘masculine.’ And where others often ‘rely on peripheral cues, such as how attractive or credible a speaker is,’ when formulating opinions, libertarians are more likely to pay ‘close attention to relevant arguments.'”

[SNIP]

I prefer to put it a little differently, as I did in an interview with Everyman: A Men’s Journal:

“When people are rational, they observe reality as it is, and are more likely to be concerned with justice and avoid misplacing compassion. So the starting point is, unavoidably, a return to reason. … I certainly understand your concern and agree with you that the arguments we’ve made in favor of justice for men are less intuitive and less visceral than the arguments feminists make. But since we know our more complex arguments are the right ones, we have the answer: to make people fairer, kinder, and more compassionate, one has to first make them able to think and reason. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, economist Milton Friedman underscores this point: ‘The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”

“Sure, making people just isn’t easy. But it certainly won’t work if you aim for the gut instead of the gray matter. As usual, Oscar Wilde said it best in one of his plays: ‘She thought that because he was stupid he would be kindly, when of course, kindliness requires imagination and intellect.'”

UPDATE IV: Forclosure Fracas (Still About Deadbeats)

Business, Debt, Federal Reserve Bank, Law, libertarianism, Private Property, Reason

Vox Day, friend and fellow (libertarian) rebel on WND.COM, has objected to my comments about his bank foreclosure comments in the BAB post titled “Financial Paperwork Crisis (No Conspiracy Thinking, Please).” Vox and I have been exchanging emails on the topic. Vox traces the arguments back-and-forth in his post “A dialogue with Ilana (UPDATED).”

Consider: You’re a homeowners. You have a mortgage with the bank. The title deed is yours; you have a legal right or title to the property. However, this obtains just as long as you honor your mortgage payments. The bank has a lien on the property until you pay-up the mortgage. If you pay your monthly mortgage installments, and the bank has cashed these payments, your bank account will reflect that. If you’ve met these conditions, and the bank, nevertheless, proceeds to foreclose on you—this is an error, and a legal and statistical anomaly; an outlier case.

It is my understanding that Vox refutes the above; says the latter scenario may be the norm, or could easily become the norm due to endemic fraud.

Distilled, I contend that it is almost always true that a necessary condition for a foreclosure is for the homeowner to have failed to make his mortgage payments. It is my understanding that Vox disputes this.

I told Vox that the one article he referred me to “began with a one-case study as its proof. This is statistically worse than insignificant. The article graduated to assertion. Then added another one-case study.” Vox may well be right, “but the data in the column he provided do not prove his case.

I have since Googled some of the terms Vox deploys in his post. One search led me to the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. When Ezra does get something right it is only by accident. In any event, the Klein article does not support the Day case (as I understood it), namely that the foreclosed upon are being treated unjustly, even routinely robbed of their property.

Understand: I have no dog in the fracas other than the truth; am quite ready to find for Vox. So far, the hard evidence is missing.

Our debate might be delayed for a while, but it will continue. Stay tuned.

UPDATED I (Oct. 18): Difster’s comment hereunder is mostly waffle unless he is able to address what I wrote in the post: has the homeowner being foreclosed upon been paying his debt or not. He can’t. I really can’t abide argument that doesn’t cleave to reality and evidence. Bring me evidence of all the cases of paid-up homeowners who’ve been foreclosed upon. Present that here, please.

UPDATE II: Judging from this tale of woe, the lawyers for the defaulting borrower are themselves using what they consider irregularities of procedure to try and get their delinquent client’s debt forgiven. I am not saying that “MERS, the electronic mortgage tracking system,” and the banks that use it, are following the letter of the law, but what people seem to be skirting here, much to my horror, is that these borrowers owe money they borrowed. You don’t forgive someone’s debt because the debt-holder’s bureaucracy is bad, or even dubious. And you don’t accuse bankers as a group of robbing home owners of title to their homes, because of problems of paper trail. (As I pointed out here, to argue against the bankers, in this case, on the ground that they are, moreover, embroiled in the fractional reserve system is to make an error of logic, maybe even a categorical error. Along the lines of releasing murderers because justice system is corrupt, etc.)

Note too that nowhere do the delinquent borrowers deny that they have not paid their debts, only that they are struggling “to figure out who owns their loans, who can negotiate loan modifications with them, or even how to get a call returned.”

Also: Borrowers are deploying the very argument the bankers are using: it’s the bureaucracy.

What do you know, it seems that, as outlined in this BAB post, “the latest foreclosure crisis is indeed bureaucratic in nature.”

UPDATE III: The thing to take away from Vox’s WND column today is this line: “the law is very clear on the matter: ‘If the chain of title is broken, then the borrower’s loan is no longer secured by the property.'”

This is the positive law. The fact of the borrower’s debt is unchanged. A took from B in order to buy C. That’s another “chain” to keep in mind.

UPDATE IV (Oct. 19): STILL ABOUT DEADBEATS. From all the reports so far, FBN’s Gerri Willis’ being the latest, it is as I said. The defaulters owe boatloads of money. The bankers bungled the paper work in a manner that verges on the criminal. The reality, in as much as property rights go, comports with my distillation on this post and the one linked to it, “Financial Paperwork Crisis (No Conspiracy Thinking, Please).”