Posted on 09/20/2016 9:00:07 PM PDT by Innovative
If you vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, you’re voting in favor of “climate catastrophe,” according to liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson.
“Anyone who takes climate change seriously had better do everything possible to keep Donald Trump out of the White House,” Robinson wrote in a recent op-ed on why Trump would be bad for the fight against global warming.
“Global warming is affecting weather patterns worldwide,” Robinson wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
The Intellectual Yet Idiot medium.com ^ | 9/16/2016 | Nassim Nicholas Taleb Posted on
9/19/2016, 12:45:55 PM by Darnright
What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us
1) what to do,
2) what to eat,
3) how to speak,
4) how to think… and
5) who to vote for.
But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them.
With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time.
People are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons. Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking.
They cant tell science from scientism — in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types — those who want to “nudge” us into some behavior — much of what they would classify as “rational” or “irrational” (or some such categories indicating deviation from a desired or prescribed protocol) comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models.) They are also prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule.
The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the government’s role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP).
The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and is rarely seen outside specialized outlets, think tanks, the media, and universities — most people have proper jobs and there are not many openings for the IYI. Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite. He fails to naturally detect sophistry. The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”.
What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences.
While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools and PhDs as these are needed in the club. More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver (again, no real skin in the game as the concept is foreign to the IYI).
Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair. The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube. Not only will he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesn’t do so is mentally ill.
The IYI has a copy of the first hardback edition of The Black Swan on his shelves, but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence. He believes that GMOs are “science”, that the “technology” is not different from conventional breeding as a result of his readiness to confuse science with scientism. Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains.
In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).
The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.
The IYI is member of a club to get traveling privileges; if social scientist he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the UK, he goes to literary festivals; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed; he takes statins because his doctor told him to do so; he fails to understand ergodicity and when explained to him, he forgets about it soon later; he doesn’t use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen; he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drank to the point when one starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesn’t know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba; he doesn’t know that there is no difference between “pseudointellectual” and “intellectual” in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past five years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics.
He knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation. But a much easier marker: he doesn’t deadlift. Postscript From the reactions to this piece, I discovered that the IYI has difficulty, when reading, in differentiating between the satirical and the literal. PostPostscript The IYI thinks this criticism of IYIs means “everybody is an idiot”, not realizing that their group represents, as we said, a tiny minority — but they don’t like their sense of entitlement to be challenged and although they treat the rest of humans as inferiors, they don’t like it when the waterhose is turned to the opposite direction (what the French call arroseur arrosé).
(For instance, Richard Thaler, partner of the dangerous GMO advocate Übernudger Cass Sunstein, interpreted this piece as saying that “there are not many non-idiots not called Taleb”, not realizing that people like him are < 1% or even .1% of the population.)
Indeed, the climate will continue changing and people will continue adapting for many years to come.
I have no problem with moving to cleaner forms of energy as long as we also take advantage of our resources in the mean time. I would be happy to double the grid capacity with more nuclear power plants, and they will not add CO2 to the atmosphere. True environmentalists would join this movement, and it would happen under a Trump administration.
Awesome!
Can I surf “Climate Catastrophe”?
longer growing seasons Are Bad ?
SNAILS HIT THE HARDEST!
So Trump essentially controls the weather, apparently. No wonder these weiners are so terrified of him; they can’t even control their bowels.
Didey up, kids, Hurricane Trump’s a comin’.
He must be real powerful to do that.
Gonna be hot when Trump is in office. fer sure.
Moron Extraordinaire
The sun has entered a cyclic pattern of low activity not seen in over a hundred years. If past precedence is any indicator... cooling is much more likely than warming over at least the next couple of decades. None of the actions taken by politicians are likely to have any effect on solar activity.
You sick totalitarian bastards will bring catastrophe to my climate.
Eugene Robinson is about as stupid as they come. His drivel is all over the op-ed pages of the paper I get (mostly for sports and puzzles).
“...the liberals believe that climate change is a much greater threat to more people than terrorist acts.”
I think it’s more like what they think they can control.
Liberals believe that nothing can be done about terrorism because even acknowledging its existence is racist, and trying to do anything about it just causes more terrorism.
OTOH liberals truly believe that taxing and dis-employing climate change “deniers” will actually change the climate. Because there is no God, and liberals control the sky, the clouds, the winds. the seas. By taxing the air we exhale, liberals are certain that they can make the bad hurricanes stop.
I would say 99.9% of these egg sucking dog 🐶 libtards know NOTHING about the weather. How does some dude, who designs jet engines, for example, know anything about the climate. What ass hats 🎩
“I saw an idiot on TV tonight...”
________________________________________
You sure did.
These morons are either clueless or liars; hurricanes have been hitting the East Coast of North America and the Gulf Coast since the dawn of time, long before the internal combustion engine or factories existed.
Why? Is it because he will defund Planned Parenthood so the left will not be able to appease the Sun god with their human sacrifices?
They actually believe “forcing women to have babies” causes global warming. Or, at least Gloria Steinem says so.
“Race Card Robinson” up to a new shtick.
My newspaper can’t understand why I cancelled. So I told them: guys like him and Leo Pitts.
They can print it, but I don’t have to subscribe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.