The inference of your statement was that it only applies to the Social Sciences, and that other areas consciously intend to speak above the masses.
Oh, I just don't know enough about other areas. All I know is that social science has stolen most of its ideas about science from elsewhere, and our attitude is anybody can do it. If that was a homegrown value, then I'm extrapolating needlessly.
Hence my comment. You really should hang out with people in the lab sciences departments more, and talk to them about the difficulties it is getting the lay person to understand the complexities of what they do.
In some respects, that's their fault. Physics has done a great job communicating what it does, both applied and theoretical. Chemistry and molecular biology can't be so much harder.
I tend to defer to the ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle, on the definition of wisdom and the virtue of wisdom. Of course, there is no reason why their ideas alone should have any purchase on the way we understand the term. Wisdom in Greek is "sophia," which is the root of words like "sophistication" and "philosophy." It literally means "clear," but also means "properly" and "clarity." So philosophy literally means "the use of wisdom." And wisdom, of course, is a big deal for the Greeks because it veers into the question of the good. And basically Aristotle says the virtue of wisdom is the ability to live a good life. Knowledge in Greek is "gnosis," which means "insight" or "mystical enlightenment." So for the Greeks, knowledge can be both empirical and spiritual. The Enlightenment's focus is on reason, such as Immanuel Kant's definition in "What is Enlightenment?": "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." Kant thinks that people rely on "truth and knowledge" that is provided by the church, and that people can and should use their own disinterested reason to know and understand. And everyone, according to Kant, has this ability to use reason. Although I'm sure he probably had personal reservations about women, Catholics, and brown people. But, essentially, this understanding of reason as available to everyone is a great democratizer because we no longer need to refer and rely on experts. But, of course, the universalism of reason has a cultural context, such as the Guttenberg Bible, printing press, Protestant reformation, colonialism, and nationhood, so we should consider that particular rhetorical point of enunciation when discussing such universal proclamations. But this is where Kant has some bearing on the question of ideology, because he believes reason is disinterested and universal, there is no potential for people to be subject to ideology (such as the Church) if they use reason. Now Marx discusses ideology as "false consciousness" about the appropriation of labor, class division, and the logic of commodities, so for him breaking with ideology is as simple as moving from falsity to truth. Then there is a dude name Louis Althusser, who has an important chapter called "Ideological State Apparatuses," in which he discusses ideology as more than false consciousness. Instead, it's more the way power is used to create subjectivity by what he calls "hailing" or "naming." In his example, when a police man hails you, you respond and recognize yourself as "the subject" of that hailing. So Althusser plays on the meaning of "subject" as both "identity" and "subjecting" yourself to the call of power. For him, there is no space outside of ideology because the creation of subjectivity and identify is formed through ideology.
Of course, for the Greeks politics was neither the domain of sophia nor gnosis. Indeed, these played no real part in the affairs of men, where doxa held sway. (This is, of course, Plato's big complaint about politics.) What mattered for politics was phronesis -- practical wisdom.
@American Brummie I hope you are ready to accept the communist ideology. The Russians will be taking over soon.
If your in South Florida you'll experience it sooner. The Russians are gonna make a move, assisted by the Cubans.
Ya know....this isn't fair. A while ago I made a perfectly innocent complimentary remark about a buxom Polish farm girl and was brutally admonished. I got a miff about that. I was miffed!
Humor me while I try again. You're holding up a 50/50 score based upon state polls in July as evidence that this system of yours is an analytical triumph. It's not like correctly predicting 50 soccer careers because the vast majority of electoral outcomes were never in doubt. The only way to test this is to look at simpler alternative models. Not a monkey drawing a D or R out of a hat (25/50 expected score). The bar is higher than that. Dummy Model 1: take a simple, unadjusted rolling average of state polls at any point in time from May-Election Day to estimate electoral outcome. At any point in time, a simple average would have done no worse than 47/50. In July, it would hit 50/50 because the national polls, and by extension the state polls generally, were very close to the actual outcome. In October, they weren't, so being "lucky" or "unlucky" enough to pick the right time to do the study was a difference of +/- 1.5 wrong picks. Dummy Model 2: apply a metaphorical blindfold to state polls. Don't even look at them. The rolling average of the national polls from May-Election Day ranged from 0 to 5.5 pts for Obama at a single point in time. At any point in time, calculate the difference of the poll MOV to the actual national MOV from 2008. Apply the difference to all states. You would always get 47-50 states, regardless of poll margin. it could be enhanced with other prior info as well. The first is trending partisan lean changes from prior cycles (Cook PVI) which would make NC and VA 1 pt more Dem than the prior election, all else equal. This would keep NC and VA in their appropriate R/D columns regardless of what the national poll said at any point in time. The other is looking at how standing Presidents home state advantage almost always materially regresses when they run a second time. It wouldn't make a difference in non-competitive IL, but a muted version in IN ( in the Region) is enough to suggest IN would be at least R+2.5 no matter where the national polls were. Note that without, IN would have always been R anyway. This merely increases the confidence in a big Obama victory scenario. OH and FL would be the only 2 states that may/may not be correct based upon the status of national polls May-Election Day. In one corner, we have a model that requires adjusting/aggregating many polls for dozens of states to capture electoral projections at any point in time. It is time consuming to update. In the other corner, we have a simple/vanilla model where you can go to the HuffPo rolling poll average page and plug in 2 candidate vote shares every 2 minutes if you feel like it. The former model on average over the full cycle will fare about 0.8 states better, but sometime it will be worse. The easier dummy model was actually never as wrong as poll aggregation. I'm not seeing the former as an analytical victory in the basis of 50/50 at one point in time here.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL I'm apparently not the only one who finds your prolix posts and assertions tedious. This is brilliant. Brummie may not be right, but he is never in doubt. Hysterical. Oh, and for those of us who have neither the time nor the inclination to treat a discussion on these boards as anything more or less than the sort of chat you'd have with some stranger over a pint in a pub -- it ain't your dissertation defense. I'm not checking your sources and I sure as hell ain't going to read the article you got published the in the peer-reviewed Journal of Dangus Studies. My guess is you wore out your welcome in the Student Union and Social Studies House long ago.
The modal outcome for 50 soccer careers is "failure." Not sure how this differs. There's no reason why we can't compete for the better model. I've never claimed this was more than marginally better than national polls - indeed, you can peruse the primary threads for a discussion between me and JittySlitter on the validity of the national polls even as far back as December of last year. Again, that sounds great. Let's compare the two. I will add that anything you've suggested is a vast improvement over the modal strategy in 2012 was, which was to project one's personal experiences in the states they had visited on the electoral map. I'm happy to improve. Okay, let's compare them. Go to the balls and strikes thread and start them up. To the victor go the spoils!
Russia and Cuba are here and they will dominate us within the next ten years. I fear for the safety of those who have lots of money. The communists aren't kind to such people.
Well, even though I have no idea if this is serious or not, evidently it is a crime in Venezuela to go out of business - even for the employees of the company that folded up! So says Maduro.