Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[pbrower2a]

(08-23-2016, 03:44 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-23-2016, 02:20 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-23-2016, 01:27 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Are you not a partisan? At what point did you stop being viewed as a partisan and stop associating with the same group of partisans? I've seen you try it and then I've seen you resort back to partisanship. What is partisan doing educating me and trying to advise on the negatives/dangers and general foolishness and unproductive results associated with partisanship?

I see my values as being primarily scientific (with a strong dash of Newton), secondarily political (with a strong dash of Jefferson), with religion third (with a strong dash of Jesus).  While ideally someone claiming strong scientific values might strive to answer all questions with scientific methods and certitude, in practice some problems aren't suitable for the scientific method.  Thus, I'll reluctantly fall back on more subjective and emotionally laden systems of thought.

Most importantly, my personal value systems suggest that political systems of thought don't appear out of nowhere.  They have an historical base.  They came into existence for a reason, to solve certain problems.  If one takes the effort to use the methods of the soft sciences, one can to some degree come to understand how conflicting partisan world views came to exist and why those with conflicting world views continue cling to them.

But even if one is honestly striving to understand how two conflicting world views came into being and how different folks will intensely cling to different systems, one still ends up forming opinions on which of the systems would produce better results in this particular time and place.  Yes, most often I end up leaning blue.  This particular moment in the cycles seems to call for leaning blue.  Now is not always.  Even as I call to lean blue on some issues, I'll warn of a need to swing back red at another time.  Note that even now I'm not classically blue in all respects.  See the gun policy thread.

But I'll still get as frustrated by Eric's inability to comprehend and lack of interest in comprehending any point of view other than his own as I get with your similar talents.  To say that two competing systems of thought had valid reasons for coming into existence, and that many of these reasons can still seem valid today, is not the same as saying "My system is absolutely right, any system that conflicts with it is absolutely wrong, and any individual who believes in a system that conflicts with mine is stupid, evil, insane, bribed by the Koch brothers, and / or otherwise not a member in good standing in the Community of Man.  So mote it be, now and forever, in Saint Reagan's Name, amen." 

I will not say, as you recently suggested, that it is pointless to listen to the other guys because you have an idea in your head of what they really think.  What you think they think is more important to you than what they think?  And from what you do say about what you think they think, your twisted ideas of the other guys are selected with malice and ill intent.

We do look at things differently.  I'm not sure you can understand or are interested in understanding the difference.  This isn't the first time I've tried to explain it.  As you say, it is not your way to listen.

In the meanwhile, if you state political opinion on a political form, if you want to wear big boy pants, you've got to deal with what comes back.  

From my perspective, if someone has announced an unwillingness to listen, the situation would seem to call for a larger megaphone.  To some degree I may give in to the temptation.  I'd prefer clarity, however, to volume.

How am I supposed to have a conversation with a man who represents scientific values? Do human values jive with scientific values? Are scientific values human in nature and similar to human values or are they more robotic in nature and machine oriented as far as values go? I need some clarity. Also, why do you think this a time when we should be leaning blue economically?

Science does not have values. It has rules of procedure. Those rules reduce the frequency and severity of errors. Science implies lucid hypotheses, clear criteria for establishing experimental evidence, double-blind testing, and peer review. Few activities can quite follow those rules... but science can and must. One violates those rules and has something outside science. Such gives science its credibility.

Simply attaching the word science to an intellectual effort (as in "Christian Science", "creation science", or "scientific socialism") does not make something science. The use of impressive gadgetry (as with the infamous auditing devices of $cientology)  does not create science.

Because science has no values it can be done credibly anywhere in which science have few political or religious strictures. Of course I would have little trust of 'science' that proves ISIS or the North Korean government right. There is some likely bias. A scientist in Montreal can have a peer testing his results in Moscow or Montevideo; science will be the same whatever the culture.

So here is the distinction between science and morals. Science can tell us how to create a nuclear device that will turn Paris into rubble. It takes some basic humanity to decide that turning Paris into rubble is a horrific crime. When the late great Andrei Sakharov  turned against the Frankenstein monster of the Soviet H-Bomb he acted as a responsible citizen. It's telling that governments in opposing blocs started getting their scientists to meet in cities most likely to be targeted by nukes -- places like New York, London, Paris, Prague, Leningrad (as it was then known), and Moscow... and as the scientists of the US and the USSR were being wined and dined and given trips through art galleries and getting to hear concerts and see operas or ballets, those scientists might get cold feet about the idea of Amsterdam being turned into a fine mist of what had been paintings in the Rijksmuseum, the Rijksmuseum itself, the people visiting it, and lots of other stuff.

We need science. We also need morals. The most reliable morals depend upon empathy -- and not upon some revelations of some people barely out of the hunter-gatherer stage of economic and social development. We need return to education that inculcates some ethical values in the people most likely to become powerful -- our political, economic, administrative, military, cultural, and educational leadership. We need people who will contemplate the harm that despotic choices in the name of economic gain for an elite can do.