The End of the Debate

I made a passing comment in my last entry, "no one needs to say 'the debate is over' when the debate is really over". A friend of mine responded by asking, "Why is that? What ends a debate?"

Well, the physicist Max Planck said the debate is over when all the people on one side are dead.

Seriously though, debates end in many ways. Sometimes debates end when action is taken – a nation launches a war or passes a law. Sometimes they end when one side is ridiculed or arrested. Sometimes they end Planck's way. In 1997, I had an opportunity to observe the end of a scientific debate up close; it was an excellent example of how debates should end – when there is overwhelming evidence on one side. That argument was about the location of gamma-ray bursts – enormous explosions in outer space. At the time, astronomers did not know whether they occurred inside our own galaxy or farther away. That debate ended when scientists discovered a burst with a slowly fading afterglow. The afterglow was in a distant galaxy.

After that, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion about the debate being over. The gamma-ray community just got on with the business of figuring out what causes the bursts.

When you do hear the phrase "the debate is over", someone is usually trying to end a debate that is very much alive. Recently we've seen this in the controversy over whether global warming is man-made. Al Gore, for instance, said in a 2006 interview "If you look at the peer reviewed scientific literature, the debate is over." The former Vice President can say that all he wants, but here we are three years later and prominent scientists continue to publish their skepticism in peer-reviewed journals (for a partial list, look up "scientists opposing global warming" in Wikipedia). I hope that this debate, like the gamma-ray burst debate, will be settled by evidence, and not by one side's premature attempt to declare it over.

The Logic Critic gives Al Gore…

1 Blade - Not even an argument.

Fallacypalooza III - Final Tea Leaf

Final installment about Paul Krugman's New York Times article ridiculing the Tax Day Tea Parties…

Towards the end of his article, Mr. Krugman finally touches on a substantive issue: "For now, the Obama administration gains a substantial advantage from the fact that it has no credible opposition, especially on economic policy, where the Republicans seem particularly clueless." The use of "clueless" is another ad hominem attack, and furthermore is contrary to fact. The economic policies promoted by the Democrats – government control of industry, massive government spending funded by printing press money, national health care – have all been tried in other times and other places with disastrous results. But don't take my word for it – 200 hundred economists, some of them very well known, took out an ad in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal saying the same thing ( http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/cato_stimulus.pdf). They pointed out "More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s 'lost decade' in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today." Which side is more credible – the one whose views are informed by past experience or the one whose views are contradicted by past experience?

Paul Krugman's "Tea Parties Forever" traverses the Fallacy Catalog in its effort to belittle the Tea Party movement. But just as no one needs to say "the debate is over" when the debate is really over, so no one needs to belittle a movement if it's really too ridiculous to be threatening. The Tea Parties had a profound impact on those who attended. Again, I quote my friend: "[W]e're just ordinary folks expressing our views…It was deeply heartwarming to be there. For a short while, I actually felt a glimmer of hope." If I read the tea leaves correctly, the Left no doubt feels threatened by this kind of talk – it's the same kind that got their guy into the White House.

For abusive ad hominems, faulty analogies, hasty generalizations, and strawmen, the Logic Critic gives Mr. Krugman…

1 Blade - Not even an argument.

Koan of the Week

"Venerable Yanyang asked Zhaozhou, 'When not a single thing is brought, then what?'
"Zhaozhou said, 'Put it down.'
"Yanyang said, 'If I don't bring a single thing, what should I put down?'
"Zhaozhou said, 'Then carry it out.'"
from the Book of Serenity, tr. Thomas Cleary

Master Li Kim's Commentary: Well he's got a point. If you don't put it down, you have to carry it out.

Seriously, though, some ancient commentators propose that "it" is emotion. Emotion obstructs enlightenment. If you do not bring emotion in with you, you do not need to put it down or carry it out in order to become enlightened. Zhaozhou is, therefore, being somewhat sarcastic in his absurd suggestions.

Master Li Kim's Haiku:

When rage fills your mind
Darkness fills your field of view.
The light hides from you.

Meditation 101

Although I've written a bit about meditation, I really know very little about it. I've learned as much as I can from reading books but I need some formal instruction to go to the next level. I am fortunate that one of the best meditation courses in the country is taught in my own back yard – the Stress Reduction Program at the UMass Medical Center in Worcester. This is the program started by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living and meditation master to the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers.

Last week I attended an information session for the course. It covered logistics mostly – when classes are held, what to wear, whether Blue Cross covers the costs. However, the instructor did lead the group through a brief guided meditation in which we were directed to close or lower our eyes and focus our awareness on the room around us, the sensations in our bodies, our breathing. We then talked about what we experienced. Most of the people there said how relaxed they felt. I mainly experienced the noise from the ventilation fan.

Anyway, I did sign up for the course and will no doubt have more to say about it in the weeks to come.

Fallacypalooza II - The Wrath of Limbaugh

Continuing my analysis of Paul Krugman's effort in the New York Times to portray Tea Partiers as nut jobs…

Mr. Krugman writes "Then there are the claims made at some recent tea-party events that Mr. Obama wasn’t born in America, which follow on earlier claims that he is a secret Muslim" and "denunciations of evolution…have emerged at some of the parties.” This is the fallacy of Hasty Generalization. Any group of 189,000 people is going to include some who advocate ideas far outside the mainstream. No doubt there were speakers at some of the Parties who doubted that the president was born in America. No doubt there were speakers at some of the Parties who doubted that apes and humans were born from common ancestors. However, these views were not typical, and cannot be ascribed to the protestors as a group. I emailed a friend of mine who attended the Virginia Beach event and asked him whether any of the speakers there expressed these views. "Not at all," he replied. "Along with the usual generalities (liberty, responsibility, gov't by the people,etc.), speakers were fairly well focused on the out-of-control spending, the moral hazard created by bailouts, the questionable legality of the Fed's paper mill actions, etc."

Of course, no condemnation of the Right would be complete without a swipe at Rush Limbaugh. "Speaking of Mr. Limbaugh: the most impressive thing about his role right now is the fealty he is able to demand from the rest of the right. The abject apologies he has extracted from Republican politicians who briefly dared to criticize him have been right out of Stalinist show trials." This is another Hasty Generalization as well as a Faulty Analogy. The Hasty Generalization is the portrayal of hordes of Republican politicians prostrating themselves in front of the Attila the Hun Chair to beg Mr. Limbaugh’s pardon. Mr. Krugman arrived at this picture by extrapolating from the isolated case of Michael Steele (as far as I know). The Faulty Analogy is the comparison to Stalinist show trials. Those trials may be similar to the Michael Steele incident in that someone pledged fealty in the end. But they differ in the rather important respect that Mr. Limbaugh did not obtain this pledge by arresting Mr. Steele in the middle of the night and beating him in an underground cell at Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square (as far as I know).

(An aside: as a matter of practical politics, I am completely mystified by the efforts of Mr. Krugman, along with Congressman Barney Frank and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, to portray Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party. The G.O.P. is paralyzed by an internal debate whether to stick to the conservative principles that served it so well in the past, or adapt to changing times by moving to a more centrist platform. Why are the Democrats in a hurry to settle this debate and end the paralysis? And why would they want it settled in favor of the side that actually stands for something? Obama's minions are usually better tacticians than that.)

More next week…

Fallacypalooza

Last week I disparaged the Main Stream Media for its thin coverage of the Tea Party tax protests around the nation. Which is not to say that there was no coverage at all. For instance, my cousin sent me this article from the New York Times by Paul Krugman: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13krugman.html?_r=1 .

To someone whose hobby is searching arguments for fallacies this is a gift. It's fallacypalooza.

The gist of the article is that Republicans in general and Tea Party protestors in particular are wackos. Mr. Krugman begins his piece by apologizing on the grounds that "it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people." This is the fallacy of the abusive ad hominem attack. (In an equally ad hominem, but much funnier attack of her own, Ann Coulter retorted "It's OK, Paul, you're allowed to do that for the same reason Jews can make fun of Jews.").

The article continues: "Thus, President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre." This is the fallacy of the Strawman Argument. The Right does not call the chief executive a socialist because he wants to make a fairly small change to the top marginal tax rate. The right calls the chief executive a socialist because he wants to construct an economic system in which government owns the means of production (which is the definition of socialism), starting with the automobile, financial, and health care industries, and then, through the cap and trade tax, every other industry that burns fuel. Not bizarre at all.

More tomorrow…

Koan of the Week

The sign on the gym door said "Showing up is half the battle." As he scanned his ID, Master Li Kim Grebnesi remarked to the woman at the counter, "Too bad the other half is so hard."
"If it's hard," she replied, "break it into quarters."
Master Li Kim conceded "You are the master now."

Master Li Kim's Commentary: First Gate of Mindfulness Practice: "Be in the Present". Dividing the timeline into ever-smaller pieces is a useful technique for achieving this.

Master Li Kim's Haiku:

At the gym Friday
Dale Hawkins strummed his guitar
Over the PA.

Tea Party

I wanted to go to a Tea Party yesterday. Those of you who get your news from the MSM may require some explanation. The Tea Parties were a nationwide protest against the expansion of government during the Obama administration in general, and against Obama's proposed tax increases in particular. These parties were, of course, scheduled to coincide with tax day, and named to invoke the granddaddy of all tax protests, the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Rush Limbaugh reported on his radio show today that there were 800 Tea Parties "across the fruited plain" attended by around 189,000 people (A biased source, I know, but the only one I could find).

Alas, my day job prevented me from attending (responsibility, what's that?). So I did the next best thing, which was to look up some of the coverage and speeches on the Internet. I thought the speech made here in Boston by Carla Howell of the Center for Small Government had a particularly good point. It started:

"I did NOT come here to Protest. I did NOT come here to try to change the minds of Democratic or Republican officeholders in Washington - or on Beacon Hill. I came here to change politics in America — just like the American Patriots who gave us the first Boston Tea Party. The Original Boston Tea Party was NOT a Protest. Let me say that again: the Original Boston Tea Party was NOT a Protest. The Patriots did NOT just hold up signs, give speeches, and complain. The Patriots stopped British ships from unloading Monopoly British Tea — their version of AIG. The American Patriots blocked the collection of taxes. That is why the Boston Tea Party mattered — and why we remember it today. Because it was direct political action, not just protest. And it was action that made government smaller."

Ms. Howell went on to explain that the action needed today, the equivalent of dumping tea in the harbor, is dumping collectivist politicians from office – by means of elections. She told the crowd:

"We must vote out every Big Government officeholder in our federal, state, and local governments. Every one. Democrat AND Republican…We must vote FOR candidates who campaign for, promise, and vote to reduce and remove today's Big Government social and economic programs — and give back every dollar saved to the taxpayers."

The argument is impeccable. That change requires action is a fundamental principle of metaphysics. And in a democracy, the appropriate place for action is the voting booth. After all, it is unreasonable to expect a different course when the percentage of incumbents returned to Congress remains in the high nineties. The Logic Critic gives Carla Howell…

4 Blades - Flawless.

He Really Was Irrational

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal printed a letter from Tim Walz of Woodbury, Minn. Mr. Walz took exception to an earlier letter that suggested religious faith is irrational. "Many people today" Mr. Walz wrote, "are quick to dismiss all religious thought as irrational. Of course there have been a number of irrational claims made by the so-called academic community, such as overpopulation and global cooling leading to world-wide starvation, the grave threat of heterosexual AIDS, and now man-made global warming leading to catastrophe."

This is an excellent example of the tu quoque or "I know you are but what am I?" fallacy. The fallacy consists of defending against an accusation by claiming an opponent is guilty of the same accusation. An opponent's guilt, however, does not make you innocent. Even though some scientists were wrong about imminent global cooling they predicted in the 1970s, it does not follow that the theists are right about God. The Logic Critic gives Mr. Tim Walz…

1 Blade - Not even an argument.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson!

Today is the 266th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson in1743. To mark the occasion, a quote from the 3rd President. This one is especially appropriate in an era of campus speech codes, campaign finance laws, rumblings about restoring the "Fairness Doctrine", and other threats to freedom of speech:

"Here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."

It Depends on the Definition of Running

In his column yesterday, "Government vs. the Axles of Evil" ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/03/AR2009040303025.html ), George F. Will had this to say about the President,

"Barack Obama displayed reality-denying virtuosity last week when, announcing the cashiering of General Motors' CEO, and naming his replacement, and as the government was prompting selection of a new majority of GM's board of directors, and as the government announced the next deadline for GM to submit a more satisfactory viability plan than it submitted at the last faux deadline, and as the government kept the billions flowing to tide GM over until, well, whenever, the president said: 'The United States government has no interest in running GM.'"

The argument that President Obama is living in a fantasy world is a simple one, depending only on the definition of "running". The Logic Critic gives George F. Will…

4 Blades - Flawless.

Koan of the Week

A monk asked Zhaozhou, "I have just entered the monastery: please give me some guidance."
Zhaozhou said, "Have you had breakfast yet?"
The monk said, "Yes, I've eaten."
Zhaozhou said, "Then go wash your bowl."
- from the Book of Serenity, Thomas Cleary, tr.

Master Li Kim's Commentary: The ancient commentators debated whether there was any wisdom in Zhaozhou's answer. I vote yes. Wisdom doesn't have to be fancy. It can just be getting on with life. That in itself is wisdom. Candide traveled all over the world and had many adventures. What did he learn from that? "We must cultivate our garden."

Master Li Kim's Haiku:

Hot running water
Splashes in cereal bowls,
Mixing with soapsuds.

A Rolling Stone Gathers Two Blades

My Cousin sent me this article about the financial crisis by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/ (Parental Guidance Suggested due to Strong Language). She says "he tells the half of the story that makes the average citizen's eyes glaze over", i.e., the half of the story that involves the complex financial instruments that brought so many Wall Street giants to the brink of ruin. (For another good account of that half of the story, see The Subprime Primer at http://www.businesspundit.com/sub-prime/. It uses stick figures. Parental Guidance Suggested due to Strong Language. For the other half of the story, the half about how government created the glut of subprime mortgages on which these financial instruments were based, see some of my recent blog entries (Rated G): 2009/03/in-case-theres-any-doubt.html,2009/02/four-ideas-to-blame-for-financial.html, http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=159934779&blogId=435179173)

Mr. Taibbi does indeed tell the complex part of the story with minimal eye glaze. However, the gist of his article is that the government bailout funds have been hijacked by large companies run by friends of former Treasury Secretary Paulson (FOPs?), at the expense of deserving but smaller and less connected firms. This is always a danger when Big Government unites with Big Business (Ayn Rand called this "The Aristocracy of Pull") and Mr. Taibbi is right to point it out. However, ultimately he fails to show that it is true in the case of TARP. The evidence he provides is entirely anecdotal – he drops the names of a few of Paulson's buddies from his Goldman Sachs days, but he never provides any statistics as to how much of the $645B in TARP funds committed to date actually went to these FOPs (technically that's the Fallacy of the Hasty Generalization). A closer look is definitely warranted. But in the meantime, the Logic Critic gives Matt Taibbi…

2 Blades - Wrong.