My Political Foundation Stone

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 6:06 pm

Listen, people are NOT rational, they are tribal.

My tribe yes, your tribe boo. That's what everybody wants to hear. Anything else is cosmetics.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 6:09 pm

The mundane wikipedia article 'Tea' received 6 edits on 8/27/11. Does this mean the article on tea is a quarter as untrustworthy as the article on economics?

So, yeah, I guess a dozen or two seems like a big number out of context.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 6:49 pm

Or in context, for that matter.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 10:03 pm

Doom wrote:Or in context, for that matter.

Frank's quote from Wikipedia has remained static, minus some grammatical & stylistic changes, for at least a year. If your criterion for validity is how often something gets edited on Wikipedia, the quote must be true.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 11:23 pm

Yes, except for changes, it hasn't changed. I agree. I made no assertion one way or the other on the validity of the quote, that's missing the point.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 11:26 pm

Doom wrote:Yes, except for changes, it hasn't changed. I agree.

You do realize there is a difference between a cosmetic change and a substantive change, right?

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 11:28 pm

Oh yes, absolutely, but I don't feel like going back and checking every detail, because this is really missing the point. Hugely. It's just funny that wiki, which time and again is shown to have, well, serious issues, is still taken as absolute unalterable truth, even when objectively that's not the case, is all.

And, I reiterate: at no point am I disputing this particular quote in this particular case is valid.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 12:28 am

Hey, Doom, I did you a favor!

Here is the citation on the part of the article that Frank quoted.

Ludwig von Mises, Nationalökonomie (Geneva: Union, 1940), p. 3; Human Action (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, [1949] 1998), p. 3.

Here's another one that's cited to the sentence immediately following Frank's quote, which is in the same vein.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, [1995] 2007), p. 63.

That citation system sure is convenient.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 1:35 am

Yep it sure is. Thanks, I guess.

And I point out, again, that at no point did I question the validity of the particular quote you did me the favor of getting citation for.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 1:41 am

I think it's pretty funny to quote a wiki page that often gets double-digit edits a day (two dozen on the 8/27/11) as an absolute unarguable unalterable truth.

Okay, so yes, you never explicitly said you disagreed with the quote in question, but what else could your point possibly be?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 4:21 am

His point was that it's funny, can't you read? It's just his sense of humor. He thinks accepting the validity of well-cited and well-sourced information is a funny thing.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:32 am

His point is to cast aspersions because he knows hes wrong and is too chicken shit to admit it.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:41 am

Draco_Argentum wrote:His point is to cast aspersions because he knows hes wrong and is too chicken shit to admit it.

Fine, I'm wrong. Wiki is absolutely perfect in every way, I really didn't mean to make everyone's eyeballs explode in white hot rage to even remotely suggest otherwise. Mea culpa.

Post by **fbmf** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 11:24 am

I have no dog in this fight, but I am now just morbidly curious...

Doom,
I'm not following your objection to Frank quoting wikipedia and then your coming out and saying that the quote was valid. I'm not suggesting that wikipedia is "absolutely perfect in every way" and I wouldn't quote them in a grad school paper, but...you came back and admitted that the quote is valid and accurate.

So, my question: If Frank had just made that assertion and not cited wikipedia, would it have been more valid to you?

Game On,
fbmf

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 2:18 pm

Answered via PM's.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 4:08 pm

Doom is a supporter of a philosophical system that explicitly rejects "being wrong" as a reason to stop believing things. I linked to the quote on wikipedia because it's the absolutely easiest place to find that particular (and particularly damning) information about his pet cause. The quote (and equivalent quotes) is pretty much everywhere, because it is a foundational assumption of Austrian Economics, which Doom has repeatedly endorsed.

So of course when someone brings up that fact, Doom is going to start attempting to reframe this as a discussion about whether Wikipedia has errors or whether Stalin killed Ukrainians or some shit. That's what Austrians do. Simply "being factually wrong" is not considered a compelling reason for them to change their views, why should they substantively interact with simple facts that merely imply that they are full of shit?

Doom has a non-empirical epistemology. The things he believes are based on prejudices and pure reasoning from those prejudices, and in all cases he will reject facts that call that reasoning into question. When he predicts things and they do not come true, he does not question his assumptions, he simply claims that they have not come true yet. Remember how he kept predicting runaway inflation or that he refuses to believe that the US isn't being forced into bankruptcy by being forced to offer ever higher interest rates? That is because Austrian Economics tells him those events are going to happen, and also tells him to ignore the actual reality that they are not happening.

When we say that "facts have a liberal bias", that isn't just smug self congratulation over having a majority of scientists on our side. It's that it is literally true that liberals believe in facts and attempt to derive their opinions from facts - and conservatives literally don't. Doom is tangents, aspersions, and emotional pleas all the way down. And when people find real facts based in the real world that contradict his conclusions, he does not question his assumptions at all.

Yes, the entire spectrum of right wing economic theories from Laffer to Paul has been demonstrated to be incorrect in real world tests of their systems. And they don't care. And their supporters don't care. Because they do not have these opinions because they are true or have reason to believe that they are true.

-Username17

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 4:51 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: (snipping most of the crap and outright lies to get to just a few)...
Remember how he kept predicting runaway inflation

Say, can you show me a quote where I made such predictions? That's news to me.

or that he refuses to believe that the US isn't being forced into bankruptcy by being forced to offer ever higher interest rates?

I'm sorry, your double negatives are a little confusing here. I believe the US IS going to go bankrupt at some point (never did pick a time, since I honestly don't know...all empires fall at some point, though), pretty sure I've never discussed the interest rate issue. Are you saying that I don't believe this? That's news to me, too. Can you show me a quote anywhere where I said I don't believe "the US isn't being forced into bankruptcy by...higher interest rates"?

In short, back up these claims or apologize for being wrong, again. Or just pretend you weren't called out. Again.

After all, I seem to remember you ranting about how gold (back when it was at $1400 an ounce) was a ridiculously terrible investment (actually, you insisted it wasn't something to invest in). You sure you're still right about that?

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 4:55 pm

Yes yes he is. Okay so it's anywhere from 1800 to 2000 an ounce right now.
You know what, right until the housing bubble exploded, Houses were going up in price like a rocket. If in 2005 you said, "600k for a starting single family home is crazy", and then someone said in 2006, "That house is now worth 750K, you idiot, you should have bought it" When the house in 2008 went down to being worth 300k, the guy from 2005 would have been right, even if he was temporarily wrong in 2006.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:02 pm

It doesn't bother you that for the last 30 years, gold was bellow $500 an ounce, and spent a huge amount of time at ~$300 an ounce, and in the last 5 years its' skyrocketed from 500 to almost 2000?
That doesn't sound like a hyperinflated bubble to you?

http://www.jparsons.net/housingbubble/
compare this chart to the current gold chart... they look identical, up until the point where the housing bubble exploded.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:16 pm

You're correct, it's possible to be wrong; it's worth noting, only the Austrian said there was a housing bubble. The Austrians as a school, at least, although likely there are individual economists attached to no school that made such predictions as well. I guess that's your point? Even though they were correct in their prediction (much like also being the only ones to predict the fall of the USSR), this means nothing relative to future predictions. It's important to think things through.

No, I'm not so worried about investment conditions of 30 years ago, investing in the real world is about looking at what things are doing *now*, and will be doing in the future.

With no other information, absolutely a rise from $500 to $2000 would be VERY worrisome. But it turns out the factors for the rise in the last few years haven't changed, and, most unfortunately, don't look like they'll change any time soon. While a drop in the price of gold is quite possible (and, actually, should happen), it's not a certain thing, especially now that, for the first time in decades, central banks are net buyers of gold.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:22 pm

Doom wrote:only the Austrians said there was a housing bubble.

Dean Baker, Nouriel Roubini, Robert Shiller, which took all of a few seconds of googling. Do the bullshit conservative blogs you go to for information really keep you this ill-informed of the basic facts?

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:25 pm

Doom, are you a teacher?

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:25 pm

I said it was a housing bubble in 2002

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:29 pm

I heard an interesting comment on Bloomberg Radio the other day.

In order to do a Fibonacci retracement you need an established low and an established high point. You can't do a Fibonacci retracement on gold because we really don't have an established high point.

There's a constant add on the satelite radio, "Did you buy or think it was too high?"

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:34 pm

What, besides panic and advertisement has made Gold miraculously worth 4x more than it was in 2004?

Has there been a shortage of gold?
Did someone invent something that uses gold as a resource?
Or is it all arbitary price rise based on panic?