I have always, and will always continue to argue, that wisdom is only found in the scientific method. Everything else is just an opinion.
What part don't you understand? Wisdom is, according to Merriam Webster: "a: accumulated philosophic or scientific learning ," but it also means the knowledge obtained by experience. Everyone is biased and has different perspectives. We all see the world slightly differently, sometimes radically. If we want to know what's really going on, what a robot or alien would see when arriving on Earth, then we have to try and eliminate those biases. The scientific method is, to my knowledge, the only attempt to gain knowledge or wisdom that does so. Removing your personal attachment to the topic, letting the theory and the data speak for itself, and reporting everything you do so that someone else can disprove you later...that's how you obtain wisdom. Any other means of obtaining wisdom fails to remove personal biases. That's why "common sense" always falls apart once you spend more than a minute looking at it. It's why very-experienced stock traders didn't see the Great Recession coming. It's why some posters here have failed to predict Obamacare's demise time and time again. At the end of the day, if you're not using the scientific method to collect a random sample or full population of data, and let an objective mathematical test tell you the answer, you're just holding opinions. Beliefs. And your opinions and beliefs are completely wrong in the eyes of someone else, whose beliefs and opinions you also hold wrong. Here's the most illustrative example I can provide. My biggest thing on P&CE is using polling aggregators to predict the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. I relied on those aggregators because randomly-sampled polling data has been shown to be far more accurate than any other method of election forecasting. I was correct in 2012, but I could have been wrong. I will bet that my first post-Olympics projection will show Hillary Clinton within 30 electoral votes of the final outcome (leaving wiggle room for 1-2 states to flip based on the particulars of the race). I could be wrong. I might very well be. The good news is that you'll know if I'm right or wrong come November 9th. I've made a hypothesis, will test it, and can be falsified in this election or a future election (say if Nate Silver spawns a host of aggregators who start consistently getting the election wrong). By contrast, VFish has spent every year since the implementation of Obamacare, talking about his friends who are losing their insurance, seeing rate hikes, and so on. He has predicted Obamacare's demise since the day Scott Brown was elected. He has never said when it will collapse, or how, but only that it will. He will never be wrong, regardless of what anyone else tells him, because the collapse might happen tomorrow. Or might not. His "wisdom" is nothing more than a shambling collection of opinions about how the world ought to work. Call me names all you want (at least try to be creative), but at the end of the day, your opinions aren't wisdom any more than mine are. The only thing we have available to us is the scientific method.
You're going to get pissed off at me again, but your statements are in contradiction. 1) Wisdom is only found via the scientific method; everything else is opinion. - versus - 2) Wisdom is found in accumulated philosophic, scientific or experiential learning. Your first statement would classify accumulated philosophic or experiential learning as opinion, and therefore not wisdom. The second statement includes them both avenues to wisdom. The first is a pretty hard argument to make considering the varying forms and ways of human existence. Depending upon how narrowly you construe "philosophic," the second might not be inclusive enough for the same reason. -- By the way, it appears to me (opinion's classical opener!) that we routinely differentiate between wise and unwise opinion. Which seems an interesting wrinkle to consider.
No, I understand Webster's definition, and I understand you. I'm saying that my opinion is that the scientific method is the only form of wisdom we can rely on. In my opinion, everything else we "learn" is just an opinion and is subject to change. You can't change the prediction made by Alan Abramowitz about the 2016 election. He has staked some small part of his reputation on getting that right. That's wisdom. To me. If you disagree, fine, but why? On what grounds do you claim that some other form of knowledge acquisition isn't just boiled down to an opinion? And how do you prove yourself wrong?
@crazypete13 sorry,but you've got a massive clean up job here. It might be easier to lock it and start a new thread.
Are those "my opinions" meant ironically? Because, boy, do they put a funny, self-defeating twist on your argument. An election prediction is just about the last thing I'd call wisdom in political science. It's a great bet. It's bragging rights if you're right. But if you're talking about "wisdom" I'd think you'd want to identify a line of thinking or an idea of some sort that really opened up new or different ways of considering something that we thought we understood. In other words, wisdom in political science would be less a prediction than a new theory (in the scientific sense) for how an aspect of politics works. -- The funny thing about the scientific method is that its continuation demands that we never fully rely on its teachings, but always remain skeptical and test what we think we know. Science succeeds most not when it arrives at something final for all time, but when it overturns what had appeared true before. In other words, science succeeds most when it doubts its own wisdom, and proves that doubt warranted.
I would actually suggest closing down this thread as well. And in its place I would suggest weekly running threads along the lines of the weekly running threads in MLSN&A. @crazypete13 would not have to start those. Somebody would just post a new weekly thread on - say - Sunday night. Start fresh every week. We're 13 weeks and a couple days away from the election. Number the first one 13 and count down. At zero, start the election day thread. The same basic informal rule that governs those threads should apply to these running threads as well. I detailed that rule here:
My opinions can be disproved. Just like the scientific method. If I'm wrong, I encourage it. Nothing you've said so far in either of our big discussions can be disproven. See the difference? It's an election thread. Hence the attempt to focus on elections. I've posted dozens - literally dozens - of non-election predictions in this thread in our discussions and elsewhere. It's not my fault you haven't read any of them.
I disagree, and not for the reasons you'd think. It's the Olympics. There's no movement in the polls. Hillary and Donald aren't in the news that much. We've had discussions go on for weeks off-topic before, and when September 1st hits, this thread will go back to where it usually is during elections. I mean, at this point in 2012 we were already on the 2nd general election thread.
It is, of course, all my fault, for asking someone to explain their perspective as it pertains to the received wisdom.
I thought you'd like that. Or whatever the "opposite" of "like" "is." Did you make it to the name of the series? "Post-contemporary interventions" is my all time favorite...
UUUGGGHHH It's like they're deliberately trolling each other. What the ******** does "post-contemporary" even mean? The future? Are they time travelers?
Close, but no cigar, oh sardonic (nit)wit: "moderate right" and "moderate left", in the parlance of today are the ones approximately the same. "Far right" and "far left" is where the interesting differences come in - yet they still generally are super-authoritarian in their own special way.
My guess is that the word "Postmodern" (and/or post-modern, aka "post-modern," "Post-Modern" and maybe even Post-"Modern") had run its course as a useful designation of historical phenomenon/marketing slogan. Hence "Post-contemporary" was/is/will be born as an "always already" phrase. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_already Or not.
As one of the more senior members I recently had to take Timon and Taos John to task for being snitty. The Brumpster still has his GPS ankle bracelet on but Carlos and Knave are sneaky. My rolled up newspaper is getting tattered.
From what I can tell, they're both generally protectionist, hate the 4th Amendment for different reasons, and differ most markedly on LGBT rights and guns. They both appear to be anti-interventionist in the ordinary way - that is, when things in current interventions look bad (though it would seem that Brown is probably slightly more Kucinich/Paul-esque on this by default, but that's just a feeling).
I mean, if you had to - absolutely had to - put them on a line ranging from "most liberal" to "most conservative" where would they go?
Why lock it? There's an interesting argument going on. One I'm not following too closely anymore, granted, but that's the purpose of message boards.