On civilized debate

As an obviously opinionated guy I am no stranger to controversy. This does NOT however automatically mean that I am experienced/talented in debate; I'm not bad at it as it turns out, but having an opinion and being willing to debate it is not as common as a lot of people would like. You can count me in with those people. I will go old-school here and take the Oxford definition from an actual paper dictionary:

debate: discuss or dispute about (an issue, proposal, etc.) esp. formally in a legislative assembly, public meeting, etc.

Coming back to the 21ieme siecle, the Internet can be considered a "public meeting" for purposes of this definition, as this is as public as it gets. At least it would be if more than a handful of people (thank you, btw) actually read it. I have over the years continued to put a lot of shaky propositions up on this site in the nearly vain hope that people would take the bait and call me on it. I need the mental exercise which only comes from challenging what I believe to a death match with the wits of others, but that doesn't mean that I'm kidding about what I write.

Even more old fashioned, I was raised to back up what I say. This was always rare in the opinionated, but is vanishingly so these days and the schools don't help. I find this ironic due to the ready access to reams of information which (admittedly with many grains of salt and a lot of fact checking) puts debating gold at your fingertips. We are in fact overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, and a valuable skill is the ability to limit your intake of it.

Boundaries need to be pushed to test them, something I do for fun as often as I can. As I get older I'm slowing down on this (been there, done that), but here's one rule I adhere to: I will always admit if I'm wrong. That sounds easy, and sometimes it it, but you will need to convince me that I am incorrect. There's another problem with many topics; convincing me to care enough to argue about it. People who take contrary positions to EVERYTHING are very annoying, so I try to be discriminating.

People have a lot invested in their view of the world, and you undermine that at your peril. Religious zealots are simply the most obvious; they have in many cases an entire lifetime of indoctrination in whatever it is and it's faith-based so there is really no point in debating religion. It can be dangerous too...

Secular beliefs are often structurally identical to religious ones and often as difficult to debunk. In theory there is no faith involved, but in practice there is a willing suspension of disbelief which is identical. I was going to get into a whole Left-Right thing, but I found that I don't have much interesting to say about that.

Last post's topic of getting along flows more naturally into this. There are times and places (and people) when you can "agree to disagree", and that is the key to civilized debate. This post at WUWT was the catalyst for my ramblings today and it hits that most critical of ingredients for civilized debate: self-selection of participants.

Just building "it" doesn't mean that "they" will come, (faith-based example) and in fact generally the worst reactionaries (of any stripe) will avoid an honest balanced debate like the plague. We like people who agree with us, but you don't learn and grow by preaching to the converted. People who want to convince, not bully, will engage in debate. Bullies will YELL and call you unpleasant things to distract from their inability to support their position on its' merits. In many cases that's their default position, even when they have an easy rhetorical target.

Much like what I proposed for the G8/20 meetings, if you want to keep out the great unwashed masses (e.g. the rabble described above) you need to control the venue, real or virtual. This will allow you to invite people, and if you're honest about it you'll invite your glibbest intellectual opponents. Stacking the deck in your favour only cheats you and your cause of legitimacy. So, the keys to civilized debate seem to be:

• Transparency, which equals a good reputation for those who display it;



• tread carefully on faith based beliefs;



• be enough of a threat to what "they" believe that "they" feel compelled to counter your argument (but not so compelled that they want you dead; see point above), and;



• control of the debating venue.

Again I welcome discussion of this, like everything else you'll find here. Lots of it can be better researched and presented, but as always this is what you get for free. I promise that if challenged I will always give back as good as I get, which will involve more than my usual cursory web searches and pulling things from the dusty corners of my brain. The latter is more fun and sufficient for the "jaw-jaw" part; if it starts getting serious references will start to appear as appropriate before it turns to "war-war". Look for that from any serious pundits, as well as how they talk about their opponents. Civility requires restraint, but doesn't need to be boring...

Can we agree to disagree?

I don't follow the State of the Union speeches as a rule, but this one happens to tap into a vein of thought commonly shunned; talking to people you don't agree with.

First quote (from linked article, emphasis mine):

Former House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and President Ronald Reagan would be proud of their heirs -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- for truly demonstrating what civility could look like. We don't all have to agree with each other, but for the good of the country, it's important that we sit together as Americans. After all, this could be good for the country, too.

Nice and touchy-feely boilerplate "why can't we be friends?" stuff. It occurs to me that if it were that simple/easy people would do a lot more of it.

Second quote, Lt. Col Tom Kratman, SF author, from an exchange in the Chaos Manor mail (emphasis again mine):

“In any case,” Kratman concluded, “nobody converts anybody; we, as a society, are way past that. Right and left don’t share basic assumptions, don’t use the same words with the same meanings, and generally just talk past each other.”

Ah, fundamentals; where most mortals fear to tread, but the bread and butter of my blog. People are indeed people wherever you go, but nobody pretends that we're all clones of each other. The nutcase who shot Gabrielle Giffords (and killed those 6 other people, but who remembers them now?) is a garden-variety wacko with a grudge who happened to take it out on a local politician (and bystanders). Most people don't do that sort of thing, nor would they under any reasonably probable scenarios. Here is an automatic Us/Them that nobody in their right mind will argue with.

We start here with proclivities, and from the obviously violently insane we can move to mushier boundaries. How about criminals vs. non-criminals? Here lines start to blur, but most people would see them pretty clearly until past the psycho and sociopaths. There are things which are just "not done" which most people will agree on. Killing for fun isn't part of anyone's culture, at least not one which has survived, as their neighbours would quickly eliminate them.

Not that killing for other reasons is so proscribed; a monothestic religion which will remain nameless (but has over 1B adherents) contains within its basic tenets that killing or enslaving unbelievers is perfectly acceptable. No points for guessing who I'm talking about, but needless to say everyone else doesn't think this is a good idea, at least if they bother to know how things actually are. Could be important to them, but sticking heads in the sand is popular pastime.

No amount of hand holding or exhortations to "civility" will change the fact that people often have very different worldviews. I know lots of people who don't share my basic assumptions about life, but I find as I get older those friends sort of drop off. This is as civil as it gets, but at the end of the day it takes a lot more work to either confront or avoid ideological differences, and like-minded people are more relaxing to hang out with.

I have been in huge arguments with people who see exactly the same information as me completely differently. This was fun sometimes, but it stops being fun pretty quickly when the topics are not hypothetical/recreational. People continue to die for differences far smaller than those I have had with my lefty aquaintances. I like to think I'm reasonably civilized, but the veneer is stripped away rapidly from the best of us if we feel threatened. In my case the list of what I will kill to protect is limited to my immediate family, but history tells us that Ideas have killed a lot more people than Self-Defence ever will.

So can we all be friends? Not everyone with everyone else, and NOTHING will change that, certainly not cheap talk from politicians. Like goes with like, birds of a feather, oil and water, all that is as inescapable as magnetism, which of course repels as well as attracts. This is not a Yin-Yang thing of complementary interconnected opposites, but polar ones, separated from each other. Ideas are trouble when they divide people, and you'll be hard pressed to find any significant Idea (caps intentional) that can't polarize people.

Ideas also distort language, imparting particular meanings to ordinary words; the Bolshevik revolution in Russia changed the connotations if not the outright meaning of the word "red". It was to denote "good", but of course the other side (us) uses "Red" to mean "subversive Commie", a meaning it holds to some extent today. And then of course there's the classic Humpty Dumpty dissertation on meanings:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for youu!’ ”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”

This brings me back to the Left-Right divide, and I think I'll tackle what I think that means another day; that will hopefully be less "impenetrable" than the above. I'll sign off for now by saying that compromise (from ALL parties) is necessary if we're going to keep the lights on and the wheels turning, but that will be done by Centrists, and I guess I'll work up a definition for that next time too.

Ricky Gervais and making omlettes

Way off my usual beat, but I thought I'd weigh in in defence of a beleaguered comic. I'm sure he doesn't need my help, but who in the entertainment business does? The subject is of course his hosting of the Gloden Globes last night, his second and assuredly last time doing it. I saw very little of it, but I think I know his general intention: don't be boring.

Comedian Ricky Gervais promised this year he would push the boundaries as he hosted the Golden Globes for a second time. "I think I'll go just close enough to the edge but not go over it," he said on the red carpet before the ceremony.

But by the end of the star-studded bash, many were left debating whether he had gone too far in his jibes at the gathered celebrities and even organisers the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA).

Of all of the nasty jokes he made the only one I that really think went over the (my) line was his crack at Robert Downey Jr.: "Many of you in this room probably know him best from such facilities as the Betty Ford Clinic and Los Angeles County Jail." Downey has fucked up a lot, but has managed to clean himself up and do really good work for years now. This sort of thing suggests some tone-deafness on Ricky's part, but you can't push the boundaries without going over from time to time.

Oh well. No-one seems to be making much of a deal about the death and blacklisting threats made after the show so hopefully he remains employable and breathing. In any event last night's performance won't be forgotten soon, and if he goes out at least he doesn't go like Billy Chrystal, the "safe" host of multiple years of award shows.

You can't have your climate change cake and eat it too.

(BBC) An extensive study of tree growth rings says there could be a link between the rise and fall of past civilisations and sudden shifts in Europe's climate.

A team of researchers based their findings on data from 9,000 wooden artifacts from the past 2,500 years.

They found that periods of warm, wet summers coincided with prosperity, while political turmoil occurred during times of climate instability.

This is not rocket science. If it's nice, life is better and (because) food grows well; if it's shitty food gets scarce and life generally sucks. So far no surprises, so what am I getting at here?

This is actually a big deal due to the source (BBC) as it flies in the face of the "establishment" climate change line. There is no possible way that human industrial activity caused these fluctuations, as what we would consider "industry" in this sense is maybe 200 years old, and I'd say more like 100.

You can suppress history, re-write it, do what you want, but you don't (can't) change the facts. In many cases the facts are nebulous, but data is what it is. You may not have enough, and it can certainly be manipulated (Climategate, anyone?) but when it's all there and you connect the dots you will get as close to the truth as is possible.

So if I'm the editor of this piece, do I have an angle? I'm being slightly (justifiably) paranoid in assuming a motive for passing this, but the bulk of the traditional media is still in the thrall of the Warming/Changing/Disrupted climate racket. I suspect that this is intended (editorially) to fan the flames of panic over Climate Change, which have been fading for some time.

If so, it's a big mistake. Sure unstable climate is distressing to people, as they can't predict it. By definition on a dynamic planet weather is changeable; the moon has no weather and is therefore quite predictable. Mars, which retains a thin atmosphere has experienced it's own "global warming" a few years back when the icecaps melted earlier than expected. You know for sure even more than here on Earth 2000 years back that human activity didn't cause that, but predictions are still complex. Once you get oceans and the associated heat transfer mechanisms (el Nino, la Nina, hurricanes, etc.) it gets unworkably complex to model accurately. That is not a flippant remark either; existing models cannot even (with all the historical data fed in) reproduce historical weather from the same start time.

It shows how polarized this stuff is that I can't just read an article anymore without suspecting the political slant it represents. This isn't obvious propaganda, but I can see how it may be a stalking horse for the real deal. On the other had, it's a great logical stick to beat them with on this whole "Climate Disruption" scam, though not in the league of that "10:10 No Pressure" video from last fall. Though not data driven, that video did a LOT of damage and I had more to say about it back in October.

I really hope that this is simply a science article, reporting on solid field and lab work. Most people don't pay attention to things that don't affect them, and Climate X (for whatever they'll re-brand it next) has shot its bolt with the general populace. If intended to introduce buzzwords and themes of disaster in support of the dystopian energy-starved future the Greens and fellow travelers want for us, this is another fail.

Good fences make bad optics (to some)

Here's the new year (by my calendar, anyway) and the first things that pops up on my blog radar is this:

Athens, Greece (CNN) -- Greece's decision to build a 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) fence along its border with Turkey in a bid to curb illegal immigration has caused mixed reactions, with humanitarian agencies saying the fence could prevent asylum seekers from reaching safety.

Not the idea, the place or anything, just that the reactions quoted in the article cover a lot of ground on the general subject. Before I get to that, a bit of history.

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) created the Nation State as we know it today. It was also the beginning of the end for overt religious wars in Europe and a lot of other things, but the biggest residue remaining today is the concept of sovereign states. Nationalism has of course caused a lot of trouble (WWI in particular) but your options are roughly as follows:

1. Empire: the default state for much of history and most people until the mid 20th Century. Can be secular or religious in nature. Rome and various Caliphates are your examples;


2. Kingdom: can be independent or a sub unit of empire; think Monaco or kingdoms of the British Raj respectively;


3. Anarchy: never lasts in it's pure form since nature abhors a vacuum; modern analogue is the "failed state", Somalia the most obvious current case. Rapidly turns to brigandage and quasi-feudal organizations and may stay like that for a long time in the absence of anyone strong enough to pull it into either of the above.

Political scientists can quibble with my divisions/descriptions, but they hit the high points. The point I'm working toward is that the concept of a State with firm borders which is ruled in all respects by the government of that State really dates from that era. This leads to the following pull quote from the article:

Kalliopi Stefanaki, the UNHCR protection officer for Greece, has described the fence as a "strong measure" but said every country has the right to guard its own borders. "We agree that Greece in entitled to enhance security at its borders in any way it sees fit," she said.

Ok, I chopped that one a bit for the part that I wanted. These NGOs are not so powerful that they can force countries how to police their borders; they will try, but one of the things inherent in being a State is that it can decide who comes into it. What I find interesting is that groups like the UNHCR now feel the need to publicly acknowledge strong borders, even if the second part of the sentence (snipped) tried to weasel around that.

In the case of Greece, they can't afford their own lifestyle, let alone half of Africa fleeing their shithole countries. Harsh language, but anything less would merely be a euphemism because it's true. Immigration has always been osmosis from countries/regions of more crap to ones of less crap pressure. Of course with osmosis, whatever is in the "more" area moves to the "less" and takes some of its' (in this case "crap") with it.

I dislike stupid people equally, so I will give a middle finger to charges of racism. People of good character who make a net positive contribution to a country are the ones you want as immigrants to yours. This requires some sorting, which requires control measures. This brings us back to the fences.

Greece wants fences, Arizona wants fences, and I doubt you'll find many border regions in comparatively affluent countries who are in favour of letting in whoever wants to come. The real problem with immigration today is Entitlements. In the old days when you worked or you starved, you got motivated immigrants. Today when you can crash the gates and get on benefits that will have you living better than you could back home, you tend to get the wrong sort of person. This mostly applies to the refugee policies which is appropriate since that's most of the problem.

Just ask legal immigration applicants how they feel about the queue jumpers and you'll see the same rage that many taxpayers and people put out of work by cheap immigrant labour will express on the subject. The time has come for this to be dragged out into the open for debate, and I see that starting to happen, all over the world.

Good fences make good neighbours, and happy citizens. Finally the chattering immigration lawyers, politicians and bleeding-heart hypocrites are being challenged, and I hope to see more of it, and some realistic figures on how many people we can have in Canada before we ruin what's left that makes the county attractive to decent people from around the world. That way we get the best, and so do they.