Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Politicians and pundits; A poor source for political policies

IVN published a Dissident Politics article describing recent social science findings about how incompetent experts are when it comes to predicting the future. That is an important consideration because political policies are often significantly based on predictions of future outcomes.

When experts make predictions, they are only slightly better than guessing future events than random guessing. Since many politicians, pundits and commentators are not expert in most or all of the things they opine upon, there is good reason to believe that the political class is not as good as typical experts. In other words, the basis for policies that the left and right advocate are usually flawed. Confident partisan predictions about what policy and law would be the best is overwhelmingly nonsense.

Garbage in, garbage out, accurately describes the situation. Unfortunately, that is to be expected from a two-party system that relies on fact- and logic-distorting subjective ideology and crass self-interest to formulate policy choices. Until politics is made to be a less subjective-intuitive self-interested endeavor and more fact- logic- and public interest-driven, the situation will not change. Americans will continue to receive, at best, second-rate policies with second-rate outcomes.

The article is here.

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