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Researcher Condemns Conformity Among His Peers
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mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 3:56 am Post subject:

Sergio Stefanuto wrote:

I very much resent that science being used to advance ideology (namely, socialism).

Watermelons, right? Green on the outside and red on the inside.

bacasper

Joined: 26 Mar 2007

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 4:09 am Post subject:

mises wrote:

Groupthink is not an interest to me solely in regards to my belief that global warming is not as Mr. Gore says. I am honestly concerned that the goalposts of acceptable discourse have been so seriously narrowed that all public debate in the "mainstream" resembles an echo-chamber.

I agree that this is a serious problem, and it occurs in any number of fields.

Quote:

I disagree with you that dissent for the sake of dissent isn't important.

It is.

Walter Lippman wrote:

When all think alike then no one is thinking.

Nowhere Man

Joined: 08 Feb 2004

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 5:33 am Post subject: ...

Quote:

I don't think mises' point was that the views he opposes are wrong because "They are just a bunch of group think," but rather was saying that this type of "group think" is the reason such views could gain such momentum despite the fact that they may be wrong. My response was intended to reinforce that point.

Hmm. "These views are a bunch of group think" as opposed to "Group think provided the momentum behind these issues."

Let's try this with another word: "These views are racist." vs. "Racism provided the momentum for these views."

OK, I can see a difference. However, the difference is obviated by context. This thread is a result of a previous thread wherein Mises argued there was not consensus about anthropogenic climate change. After my argument that there is consensus, he birthed this new thread about group think. In his own new thread, he then flip-flops to argue that there isn't enough opposition to anthropogenic climate change. In other words, he is now offering an opinion about an opinion in absence of a basis for this position. There's not enough opposition to anthropogenic climate change? Who is he to judge whether the opposition is sufficient? Who determines whether there is enough opposition?

That's simply ridiculous.

Better to leave it at this:

Quote:

I'm just cynical.

Quote:

I see agendas, group think and conformity and not enough dissent.

Oh, do you? I see a glaring omission from your list of academia, journalists, and politicians:

It's businessmen.

This is something the Libertarian hayride is going to have to pause and confront at some point:

Less government=more business.

The freedom-fighting laissez-fairists are haunted by the very real and very large spector of business above the law.

Even if global warming is a sham (which it isn't if you're left with concepts such as group think to try and oppose it), the argument for a carbon market is both tight and strong.

Mises's concerns are economic. They have no basis in science.

Julius

Joined: 27 Jul 2006

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 5:57 am Post subject: Re: Researcher Condemns Conformity Among His Peers

mises wrote:

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/researcher-condemns-conformity-among-his-peers

Quote:

�Academics, like teenagers, sometimes don�t have any sense regarding the degree to which they are conformists.�

So says Thomas Bouchard, the Minnesota psychologist known for his study of twins raised apart, in a retirement interview with Constance Holden in the journal Science.

Journalists, of course, are conformists too. So are most other professions. There�s a powerful human urge to belong inside the group, to think like the majority, to lick the boss�s shoes, and to win the group�s approval by trashing dissenters.

The strength of this urge to conform can silence even those who have good reason to think the majority is wrong. You�re an expert because all your peers recognize you as such. But if you start to get too far out of line with what your peers believe, they will look at you askance and start to withdraw the informal title of �expert� they have implicitly bestowed on you. Then you�ll bear the less comfortable label of �maverick,� which is only a few stops short of �scapegoat� or �pariah.�

A remarkable first-hand description of this phenomenon was provided a few months ago by the economist Robert Shiller, co-inventor of the Case-Shiller house price index. Dr. Shiller was concerned about what he saw as an impending house price bubble when he served as an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York up until 2004.

So why didn�t he burst his lungs warning about the impending collapse of the housing market? �In my position on the panel, I felt the need to use restraint,� he relates. �While I warned about the bubbles I believed were developing in the stock and housing markets, I did so very gently, and felt vulnerable expressing such quirky views. Deviating too far from consensus leaves one feeling potentially ostracized from the group, with the risk that one may be terminated.�

Conformity and group-think are attitudes of particular danger in science, an endeavor that is inherently revolutionary because progress often depends on overturning established wisdom. It�s obvious that least 100 genes must be needed to convert a human or animal cell back to its embryonic state. Or at least it was obvious to almost everyone until Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University showed it could be done with just 4.

,,,

If the brightest minds on Wall Street got suckered by group-think into believing house prices would never fall, what other policies founded on consensus wisdom could be waiting to come unraveled? Global warming, you say? You mean it might be harder to model climate change 20 years ahead than house prices 5 years ahead? Surely not � how could so many climatologists be wrong?

What�s wrong with consensuses is not the establishment of a majority view, which is necessary and legitimate, but the silencing of skeptics. �We still have whole domains we can�t talk about,� Dr. Bouchard said, referring to the psychology of differences between races and sexes.

I have long assumed that academia is dominated by an extreme form of conformist group think. Journalism too. Given that the entire Western world is pushing very expensive public policy born in the group think of academia, journalism and politics, it is important to remember the nature of the beast. Conformity isn't necessarily consensus.

A perfect depiction of evolutionists.

ie handpicked and certified atheists given cash to prove a theory at all costs, with generous dollops of wild conjecture and imaginative reconstructions, before presenting it to a lap-dog media who are equally in the grip of conformity.
The west is an individualistic society.... only so long as you conform.

Pluto

Joined: 19 Dec 2006

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:09 am Post subject: Re: ...

Nowhere Man wrote:

No omission. What we warn about is corporatism. What happens when big business and big government become a little too cozy with one another?

Nowhere Man wrote:

The freedom-fighting laissez-fairists are haunted by the very real and very large spector of business above the law.

Enron was one of the biggest cheerleaders and supporters of Kyoto. Today, Wal-Mart supports a single mandate. WM doesn't support a single mandate because they have all of a sudden become altruistic and now care about the plight of the workers. They support it so the government will erect barriers to entry, and making business for Target, WM's closest competitor, much tougher. More government involvement into the economy leads to cartels and monopolies. I know of no libertarian who is "pro-business" in the sense you describe.

Quote:

Nowhere Man

Joined: 08 Feb 2004

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:28 am Post subject:

Quote:

Enron was one of the biggest cheerleaders and supporters of Kyoto.

OK, but is Enron a country? No, but what you're suggesting is that Enron was still a significant influence, no?

Quote:

More government involvement into the economy leads to cartels and monopolies.

100 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt did quite the opposite.

Quote:

I know of no libertarian who is "pro-business" in the sense you describe.

I'm not questioning the sincerity. I'm asking about the implications. Less government=a less inhibited Enron. Goldman comes up a lot now. What is the less-goverment solution to the role Goldman has played?

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:34 am Post subject: Re: Researcher Condemns Conformity Among His Peers

Julius wrote:

A perfect depiction of evolutionists.

You can prove evolution is true in your basement with a pack of dogs if you are willing to dedicate a few decades to it.

Only a total idiot would question the idea that life forms evolve over time given the evidence that exists at this point in history. It's been as thoroughly proven as anything can be in this world. If you want to talk about something that only has momentum due to group think, religion is a much more viable candidate than evolution.

I'd also like to mention that it's in pathetically bad taste to beg off discussing evolution in one thread, then bring it up tangentally in another thread.

mises

Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:18 pm Post subject:

Quote:

I'm not questioning the sincerity. I'm asking about the implications. Less government=a less inhibited Enron.

Well the above is belligerently stupid.

Greenspan and Summers were Enron's enablers. I think you know fully zero about that. In fact, Greenspan and Summers went to California to lecture Davis about how he needed to surrender to Enron to stop the brownouts. Is that "capitalism"? Financial interests posing as a government leaning on another domestic government for the benefit of said financial interests? Enron leaned on the SEC and other regulatory agencies to allow them to create mark-to-model accounting and securitization. They bought Congressmen and got their way. And then blew up. Just like Goldman's. Bringing me to this:

Quote:

What is the less-goverment solution to the role Goldman has played?

Is unbelievably bloody ignorant. Goldman's bought your precious big government a long time ago. Bought and paid for. Goldman's would not exist today if not for HPaulson's backdoor AIG bailout of GS to the sum of 13b. The less government -market based- solution to GS would be no GS. That pile of dung would have, and did, fail. Period. Further, it holds 40T in derivatives contracts that will eventually blow up. This will be firm-fail #2. Yet, I'm quite confident she'll live on.

Absurd statement #3:

Quote:

It's businessmen.

This is something the Libertarian hayride is going to have to pause and confront at some point:

Less government=more business.

How silly. After all we've seen in the past 2 years. Libertarians have been screaming about the bailouts and such the whole time. Libertarians are no friend of business. We like the market. The market is very, very unfriendly to business. Which is why virtually all of them fail in short order. I worked for a firm that tries to rearrange the finances of small-medium sized businesses. The market is relentless in creative destruction. Those who survive have their hands in your precious big government pockets or satisfy customer needs/wants/add value better than their peers.

Nowhere Man

Joined: 08 Feb 2004

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:23 am Post subject: ...

Quote:

I'm not questioning the sincerity. I'm asking about the implications. Less government=a less inhibited Enron.

So, you mean Enron, waving the free market flag, could afford to pressure government into deregulation? And then, after this blew up, it was solely the fault of government and not a failure of free market capitalism? Yup, that's what your institute says, eh? That's selectively dwelling on all aspects except the free market argument that was a key element of Enron's demise, and the limp argument that an Enron-like entity couldn't exist in a truly free market is 20/20 hindsight. You can't just will a free market into existence any more than you can simply will the dollar back to a gold standard.

Quote:

What is the less-goverment solution to the role Goldman has played?

OK. And this is where the reality of a bunch of talking points come to fail. The anti-bailout solution appears to be allowing a full-on freefall and then rebuilding after what would be a devastating depression. I guess that's good if you want to hit the reset button and start anew with the magic free market, but I'd love to see a political party get the White House and put this into practice.

By the way, what is that T in 40T? Trillion? Link?

Quote:

It's businessmen.

This is something the Libertarian hayride is going to have to pause and confront at some point:

Less government=more business.

Ooh, lovin' the market. Especially framing it in terms of small and medium businesses. What you're de facto suggesting is that those who survive tend to be ruthless, large, or more likely both. So, deregulating the market and keeping government from interfering will keep big business out of politics? That's belligerently naive. And all this business about being no friend of business, just the market is idealistically silly.

And, at the end of the day, that's the problem. This less government notion sounds good, but a practical method to implement such change is more elusive. In fact, what it sounds like most is that the libertarians, no friends of business, would be creating power vacuums that no entity other than business would step in to fill. "What's to be done"sounds a lot more like "this is what should have been done". Fabulous ideas for 20-50 years ago, but lacking in the current.

Now, back to the beginning:

Quote:

Well the above is belligerently stupid.

Well, this is coming from a guy who quite obviously chose a political position on climate change first, then started looking for data to fit said position. That's what I'd call belligerently stupid.

And where does he find his data? In a report commissioned by the oil/tobacco lobby....But hey, they're no friends of his. Unlike all the group thinking academics, politicians, and journalists, the businessmen are fiercely independent straight-shooters, and "the market" is oh so deft at handling environmental issues.

And finally,
Disclaimer: The above is not to be misconstrued as me liking big government or GS. Rather, the point here is that I don't see a Libertarian strategy that is a viable alternative/solution.

Sergio Stefanuto

Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 8:58 pm Post subject:

Nowhere Man wrote:

and "the market" is oh so deft at handling environmental issues

Government, also, has a fantabulous record. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 made atomic energy an absolute monopoly of the federal government. Had nuke plants been able to be privately owned, they would've been built en masse thanks to the ease and efficiency of transporting uranium/plutonium compared to coal. US carbon emissions might, as such, be a fraction of what they otherwise are, had the US developed nuclear power to the same extent as France and Japan.

Great idea, eh - withdrawing the greatest discovery of the 20th century from the market.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 5:36 am Post subject:

Sergio Stefanuto wrote:

Government, also, has a fantabulous record.

It has a substantially better record on this issue than private enterprise, even you surely must accept that.

Sergio Stefanuto wrote:

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 made atomic energy an absolute monopoly of the federal government. Had nuke plants been able to be privately owned, they would've been built en masse thanks to the ease and efficiency of transporting uranium/plutonium compared to coal.

Quite possibly true, but just as easily the government could simply have intelligently opted to build more such plants in its own right, which would still provide the benefits of said additional plants.

Sergio Stefanuto

Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:43 pm Post subject:

The US govt not only withdrew nuclear power from the market; it also heavily subsidized fossil fuels.

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:42 am Post subject:

Sergio Stefanuto wrote:

The US govt not only withdrew nuclear power from the market; it also heavily subsidized fossil fuels.

Correct, meaning on that one issue, the government and private enterprise have both acted in a way harmful to our environment.

Beyond that single point, the government freely taken numerous steps to attempt to preserve our environment and to limit the ways in which corporations can harm our environment, while intending to do even more. Free enterprise, on the other hand, does substantially less.

Most of the pollution that doesn't come directly from individuals comes from free enterprise, and most of the pollution individuals indulge in is enabled by free enterprise. The government by comparrison pollutes very little, but acts to limit pollution fairly often.

If you tallied together all the pollution and environmental damage caused by free enterprise, and all that was done by the government, then factored out all the environmental protections enforced by the government and all those willingly adopted by free enterprise, I think you'd see an immense disparity that heavily favored the government.

Nowhere Man

Joined: 08 Feb 2004

Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 4:18 am Post subject: ...

Quote:

Great idea, eh - withdrawing the greatest discovery of the 20th century from the market.

France's nuclear plants have been run by state-sanctioned monopoly. Only recently, post 2000, has there been privatization, but that was due in part to attempts at cohesion with the EU in general.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

Japan's nuclear plants, likewise, are run by utility companies that are state-sanctioned monopolies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan

Both are regulated out the wazoo.

There's nothing "free market" about them.

Quote:

US carbon emissions might, as such, be a fraction of what they otherwise are, had the US developed nuclear power to the same extent as France and Japan.

That's another example of 20/20 hindsight, but I applaud your apparent concern about carbon emissions.

Sergio Stefanuto

Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK

Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 5:57 am Post subject:

Nowhere Man wrote:

There's nothing "free market" about them.

I wasn't previously under the impression that there was. But the state-owned nature of nuclear power in France and Japan hardly undermines my charge that the policies of the US govt clearly obstructed the development of nuclear power in the US and also accelerated the predominance of CO2-emitting fossil fuels in the US.

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