> Simon wrote:

> Clearly, Zarf doesn't believe in second chances.

He believes in infinite chances.

I won't deny this.  Admittedly, it's difficult for me to draw the line on when to actually initiate protests such as the above.  At the very least, I like exercising a judicial approach: Ensure I have enough evidence to make the case that someone is violating a code of conduct, then present the case with the understanding that I represent only one side of the story, and thus the other side should at least have a chance to respond.  From there, I have to recognize that even with my case laid out, it's possible that I could misinterpret a situation, perhaps due to bias on my own part.  Yes, in the process, I probably give someone much more leniency than should be given, but the short answer is that I'd rather screw myself over and be absolutely sure I'm justified than jump the gun and be attacked for misrepresenting somebody.

I'm going to add myself to the increasing list of people that are ignoring xeno.  No, I'm not ignoring xeno because I disagree with his ideas (if I was, I probably shouldn't even be in the Politics forum as there's relatively few who always agree with me).  Rather, I am ignoring xeno for reasons of his methods of argumentation (or lack thereof) in the Politics forum, which combined have a net result that replying to his posts is an exercise in futility.

I would have posted this earlier, but I wanted to give xeno another chance at redeeming himself.  After over a week of watching two of my most recent posts directed at him ignored, while consequently watching one of the threads receive discussion on other matters, it becomes clear that I'm unlikely to see actual debate here (although I do expect xeno to probably feign replies, as has empirically happened... I'm not bothering at this point, because it's a repetitive cycle).

First, xeno has very clearly been disregarding arguments made by people of alternative points of view here.  Wornsturm has pointed it out.  Flint has pointed it out.  I have pointed it out very substantively.  In fact, the last time I pointed it out, the result was a new thread created (answering about 1/3 of the issues I claimed he disregarded), which was then left to die once I actually finished answering xeno's issues and began to present my own side of the debate.

But even within existing debates (when xeno is actually going through my posts and actively choosing to answer those arguments), I have been able to cite instances of him cherrypicking which arguments he will and which he won't answer.  This is important for two reasons.  First, it is just as bad in its impact on truth finding as the act of ignoring an entire post outright.  Second, because an individual who cherrypicks arguments to answer is actively choosing to engage in the debate by the act of choosing which arguments to answer and which to not answer, it means that person at least has engaged in the decisionmaking process of deciding whether the time invested in writing a post is better than the time invested in not writing a post (i.e., do I have enough time to make a reply), and he has chosen that making a post was worth the time invested, thus refuting any alternative explanations for why a complete post was not given.

Specifically, I have seen instances of xeno actually actively choosing to ignore arguments under the presumption of their distractionary tactic when the argument is, in fact, simply focusing on issues within a thread.  Whether it be the SOPA or Greece threads we dealt with earlier, I was subject to two separate instances of xeno writing posts with a certain claim and warrant, then calling replies to the warrant distractionary.

The best example would probably be in the Greece thread, with xeno's argument essentially being that ancient Greece has a smaller income gap than the modern world, and thus asking how we could close the income gap.  When I raised questions regarding the importance of the income gap, my post was actively ignored by xeno, under the justification that it was "distractionary."

My response to this is very simple.  Communication theory frames an idea as a combination of a claim and a warrant.  The claim is the argument one is trying to make, with the warrant being the justification for that argument.

Example: I believe we should not bomb Iran because if we do, space aliens will retaliate against the US.

Claim: We should not bomb Iran.
Warrant: If we bomb Iran, space aliens will blow up the US.

Without a warrant, a claim has no justification.  Without a claim, a warrant has no direction.  Therefore, both are necessary for a coherent statement of policy to exist.  As such, because an argument requires both a claim and a warrant, the truth value of both are equally important.

Take the statement above, for example.  If we only focused on addressing claims, we don't actually fully understand what will happen, because we begin to take things for granted.  For example, under this scenario, we would take for granted that space aliens exist, and both could and would blow up the US if we bombed Iran.  However, if we want to actually find the scenario that best reflects the actual results of an Iran invasion, one of the first responsible questions that would be levied against the above statement would be an indictment of the warrant (do aliens exist, would they actually care about an Iran war).  Thus, unless both warrants and claims are considered fair game in a debate, the debate has no value in actually attempting to find the truth.

Finally, and most important, xeno has very clearly expressed that he isn't interested in actually considering alternative perspectives.  At the same time, though, he disregards those who he suspects are not considering his own perspective.  As a good example, consider the progressive tax thread:

Page 2, directed at Kemp.

"True intellectuals are capable of changing paradigms as easily as changing sunglasses.

Try my sunglasses.  Take a different look at history through them and see for yourself if the perspective is more accurate than your own.  Change them back to yours if not.  It's that simple.  If you don't try them on, though, there is no way for you see whether your own perspective is not as (or more) accurate."

Same thread, page 4, directed at Simon.

"We seem to have a very fundamental difference in understanding what a debate is..."

I am not looking for debate, but, rather, collaboration with truth-seekers."

As a second piece of evidence, I present the following from the Ancient Greece thread:

"Zarf, if it is going to be a constructive discussion, great.  If not, then I'm not interested.  In order to move on to have constructive dialogue, we have to agree that,

1. having a more egalitarian distribution of wealth in society is a GOOD thing for EVERYBODY.

2. the current distribution of wealth in our societies is ANTITHETICAL to the values purported to be held dear to liberal democracies.

Do you or do you not agree?  If you do, we may move on to more pressing matters."

My response is twofold.

1: Obviously, a contradiction exists here.  Why should it be up to kemp, Wornstrum, Flint, myself, or anyone else to try adopting xeno's worldview when xeno himself does not want to consider the worldview of the alternative hypotheses?

For that matter, who's to say said individuals have not considered said worldview?  If I am exposed to an alternate worldview and decide that said view of the world has fundamental flaws, and can articulate those flaws in refutation of that worldview's adoption, why is that not qualified as considering a worldview?

2: More important, the common perspective collaboration is frankly useless unless it is combined with the alternate hypothesis clash.  Let me provide an example.  If I were to post a thread asking people how I could most effectively censor all possible alternative viewpoints in the politics forum, I'm pretty sure most active participants in this forum would reply with "Don't you dare!"  If I was morally required to engage in a clash of alternative worldviews, I would be required to justify why I would want to censor all other points of view in the politics forum.  Yes, I would fail miserably in that debate. 

However, if I was not required to consider alternative perspectives, without the intervention of alternative hypotheses, there is nothing to challenge the truth value of my stance... so as far as I am concerned, my stance would be truth, even if alternative theories exist, only because I am not exposed and forced to justify myself against those alternative theories.  Thus, the likely result is that I will act in a way which is shaped by an isolated worldview.

Isolation of ideas has been the cause of so many tragedies throughout history.  Whether you consider the totalitarian states in which the government could isolate alternative worldviews, or any number of politically driven organizations ranging from the Klu Klux Klan to the Nazis (Godwin's Law), the result is the same: When you allow a viewpoint to exist unchallenged in a state, the viewpoint becomes capital T truth within that community, regardless of its actual truth value.  This does not actually help create good ideas.  It only allows bad ideas to fester, poliferate, and inevitably silence alternative ideas.

I know many people have issues with which they personally identify in politics, whether it be abortion, income distribution, or whatever.  This is mine.  I have attempted for months to explain the logical flaws in xeno's process of communication and argumentation in this thread because I believe unless open discourse between people of conflicting ideologies actually happens, truth seeking is impossible.

I've attempted to correct the issues as I go along, only to be ignored.  So... I figure it's about time I reciprocate.  I actually did like our arguments, xeno, but when they degrade into a mix of obvious ignoring of arguments, redefinitions of my posts, and ad hominem attacks, it's useless for me to continue the argumentation.  Long story short, I'm done.

A turnip?

It's a person!

Member of the Swiss Guard (A Swiss military/mercenary unit tasked with protecting the Pope)

I thought Clinton was "It's the economy, stupid!"

He's stuck with the classic hamster wheel power generator, though!

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> 2: Steps 3 and 4, in actuality, were in reverse order of how your story would require the recession to take place in order for it  to be true.  The wave of foreclosures began to happen at least 6 months before the casinos began their layoffs.

Zarf,

The rich were caught unawares as well.  Here the timeline:
1.  Corporations outsource
2.  Rich reap rewards of record corporate profits.  They're gambling lots in LV, Macau, etc..
3.  Poor and middle class go into debt because they are increasingly unemployed / underemployed.
4.  A few on Wall Street catch a whiff of something coming; start selling exposure to sub-prime mortgages
5.  The selling-off of mortgages starts alarm bells ringing for investors; who retreat to safe-haven investments; in other words, NOT mortgages. THE RICH STOPPED GAMBLING AS MUCH IN THEIR INVESTMENTS ON THE MARKETS IN GENERAL - THIS is what I am referring to when I mean the "rich stopped gambling as much".
6.  This in turn causes housing bubble burst; which further hurt the poor and middle class who were counting on appreciation of their property values to subsidize their diminished income from unemployment / underemployment.
7.  This in turn caused more real estate sell-offs at losses, and even less investment in mortgages.
8.  Meanwhile, lots of rich people who had exposure to the sub-prime mortgages took a hit financially.  Started having less money to burn.
8.  HERE THE RICH STOPPED GAMBLING AS MUCH IN CASINOS TOO.
9.  Vegas started laying off employees.
10. Governments tax income diminished, causing sovereign debt ciris, which they are trying now to trying to remedy by taxing the people who have been most hurt by all of this: poor middle class who had lost their jobs to outsourcing which caused ALL of this in the first place.

I mean.  This IS what happened / is happing, isn't it?  Please correct me if I am wrong.  I wish I were wrong.

Okay... let's go  one by one.
1: If this story were correct, we should be able to find statistics correlating outsourcing to home foreclosures.  If you have some statistics on this, I'd love to read them.  Otherwise, you can't necessarily draw a correlation.
2: Sub-prime mortgage exposure was occurring for about 5 years before the actual crisis occurred.  In fact, without the foreign financing of sub-prime mortgages, there probably wouldn't have been a housing boom in the first place.
3: Outsourcing, meanwhile, had been happening for about 20 years before the financial crisis.  If outsourcing both triggered the bust in housing and triggered the boom (by encouraging people to invest in homes), we wouldn't be talking about the 2008 housing crisis.  We would be talking about the 1996 housing crisis.  If, however, outsourcing only explains the bust, you have a piece of your puzzle missing in explaining the boom.
4: This brings me to another issue: In Las Vegas, the bust is strongly correlated to the boom (i.e., the people who were most likely to let their homes go into foreclosure were also the people who invested during the approximately 5 years of inflating home prices before the bust).  So unless your theory explains the boom, it doesn't explain the bust.
5: Remember that in the Las Vegas scenario, steps 1 and 3 do not apply because there is no outsourcing in Las Vegas, and thus the unemployment/underemployment you describe does not happen.  In fact, because the rich are playing in Las Vegas at this time, you should have an exact opposite effect.
6: What is this?

"5.  The selling-off of mortgages starts alarm bells ringing for investors; who retreat to safe-haven investments; in other words, NOT mortgages. THE RICH STOPPED GAMBLING AS MUCH IN THEIR INVESTMENTS ON THE MARKETS IN GENERAL - THIS is what I am referring to when I mean the "rich stopped gambling as much".
6.  This in turn causes housing bubble burst; which further hurt the poor and middle class who were counting on appreciation of their property values to subsidize their diminished income from unemployment / underemployment."

So... because investors refuse to take on new loans... existing loans go into default?  Explain that.

7: We can definitely hash up that free trade debate if you want, but even if your argument here is true, I want to make a note that this is not a referendum on free trade in general.  At most, it only indicates economic crises of transitioning an economy (you know, exactly like how you frame a progressive tax's possible problems as simple transitionary problems).
8: Finally, I smack you for using the term "gambling" to refer to stock investment when I was very clearly framing the debate in the context of an economy where "gambling" is also the most important industry in the city, and thus screwing up my ability to understand your argument. 

Now, my argument is not to say that outsourcing was not the cause of any financial troubles, xeno.  Rather, I am only indicting your analysis that outsourcing is a general representation of the crisis.  I will concede that there are definitely some communities (Detroit, Michigan would be a good example) where foreign competition has probably hurt the local economy.  However, if you take a local scenario and use that to construct a general rule, the general rule must then be applicable to all local instances where it could be applied in order for it to be valid.

Before the housing crisis began, the rich, by your theory, should have a shitload of discretionary income due to lower taxes and the increased ability to outsource jobs overseas.  Therefore, if anything, Las Vegas should have had a thriving economy, as every rich guy in the country gambles away their savings, both before and during the financial crisis.  So... your theory doesn't jive.

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> > Zarf BeebleBrix wrote:

> Xeno:

Explain how a significant portion of the housing crisis happened in Las Vegas, where the economy is primarily tourism, which can't be outsourced.

The rich stopped gambling as much

Why?

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> The last 10 years has shown us that lowering taxes collapses economies.  When empirical fact contradicts postulated theories, one needs to revisit the theory.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/correlation.png

> Mace wrote:

> Does the United States consider Taiwan a separate state?

No, but the US does everything short of recognizing it as a separate state.  The Taiwan Relations Act allows embassies, treaties, and normal diplomatic relations with "the governing authorities on Taiwan," without actually recognizing the "Republic of China."