How Obama Got Elected

[MicroBalrog]

The very bright assume without thinking that people can learn anything they choose. A woman who graduates from Yale in biochemistry takes for granted that if she wants to learn Italian, she can. It will take time and effort but she will have no doubt as to the outcome. New digital camera? She can figure out how to use it without the manual. She is used to gas chromatographs and gene sequencers. Learn PhotoShop? She just does it. After all, it’s only software. She assumes, unless she thinks carefully, that people know history, politics, literature, because she does and everyone she knows does.

Why is it that people assume biochemists know history and literature?

[Bogie]

The very bright assume without thinking that people can learn anything they choose. A woman who graduates from Yale in biochemistry takes for granted that if she wants to learn Italian, she can. It will take time and effort but she will have no doubt as to the outcome. New digital camera? She can figure out how to use it without the manual. She is used to gas chromatographs and gene sequencers. Learn PhotoShop? She just does it. After all, it’s only software. She assumes, unless she thinks carefully, that people know history, politics, literature, because she does and everyone she knows does.

I guess that's why campus security did a swing around the parking lots at about 9:30... They'd find cars with the doors open, the engines on, lights on, etc... and their owners inside happy in their labs...
 
My mother had a degree in biology and one in chemistry - and I don't think she read a non-work-required book during the entire time I knew her.
 

[zahc]

The article is flawed in assuming that academic people are smart. I work with them every day, and some of them are, some of them don't know what a wingnut is. There are many kinds of smart. There are many kinds of stupid.

[grampster]

We had dinner tonight with one of my oldest friends.  His son, who is 41, was with him.  (deer camp).  He has been in college continuously since he got of high school, till last year when he got a job selling books at one of the book chains.

That kid is an idiot.  I baited him all night regarding the election.  The only words that came out of his mouth were TV sound bites.  It is very difficult to discuss politics or any subject for that matter with a person like that. 

After about 5 or 6 anti Palen sound bites I asked him why he believed what he did and how did he come to hold the opinion he had.  I got the silent smirk, deer in the headlight look.  I told him that he was wrong in his opinion because I had personal friends that know the entire Palen family and live nearby and that most of what he knew was inaccurate because I had spoken to her friends and neighbors.   He said he needed to get his dinner salad.

[MicroBalrog]

What annoys me is how people think that if someone has mastered one type of academic knowledge, they're competent to pass judgement on all the other fields, too.

I'm now on the fourth year of History. After I'm done with that I'll continue to five more years of MA+Ph.D. combined studies. I do not claim that this qualifies me to pass on medical, engineering, sociological or astronomical matters. Yet I know way, way too many people at Tel-Aviv University (and some from respected American universities) that think their engineering, medical, or other degree makes them 'intelligent people who know history' and can argue with me on stuff like 19th century history.

NO IT DOES NOT.

[Bogie]

They assume they are intelligent, yet they are content to allow a corporate-run media organization do their thinking for them.

I just ask them a question: "Have you researched your belief (because that is what it is...)? Have you dug into it, looking for all the information? Or are you content with having someone else, who may or may not be telling you everything, influence you?"

Every so often I get something more than "huh?"
 

[drewtam]

They assume they are intelligent, yet they are content to allow a corporate-run media organization do their thinking for them.

I just ask them a question: "Have you researched your belief (because that is what it is...)? Have you dug into it, looking for all the information? Or are you content with having someone else, who may or may not be telling you everything, influence you?"

Every so often I get something more than "huh?"
 

But there are limits to this virtue. No one can possibly dig deep into everything. Managers have to trust thier engineers, engineers have to trust their deep subject experts, the deep subject experts have to trust the pure science research, etc.
I trust the pilot he knows how to fly. I trust the translator they know how to handle hebrew/greek/aramaic.
When economists have reasonable theories and tools that create useful predictions on the world, you have to trust their expertise.
I trust that Norm Cantor did the primary research for his book on the middle ages. I don't need to know the details of all the primary records.



Tell me, did you perform deep research and testing of various oils, metal wear rates, piston ring blow by rates, soot levels, HC levels, and thermal analysis of your engine before you let jiffy lube put 5w30 in the engine?

[Tallpine]

The folks that were against a war in Iraq all voted for Obama no matter what he stood for.

Except for me, I guess ... :rolleyes:

The war was a moot issue by election 2008.  McCain said we would get out of Iraq by by 2010, and Obama said we would get out in 16 months (presumably after he took office) which would be late 2010 

What he will/would have done is a different matter.  I half expect Obama to get us into WW3 by 2010.

[grampster]

But there are limits to this virtue. No one can possibly dig deep into everything. Managers have to trust thier engineers, engineers have to trust their deep subject experts, the deep subject experts have to trust the pure science research, etc.
I trust the pilot he knows how to fly. I trust the translator they know how to handle hebrew/greek/aramaic.
When economists have reasonable theories and tools that create useful predictions on the world, you have to trust their expertise.
I trust that Norm Cantor did the primary research for his book on the middle ages. I don't need to know the details of all the primary records. 



Tell me, did you perform deep research and testing of various oils, metal wear rates, piston ring blow by rates, soot levels, HC levels, and thermal analysis of your engine before you let jiffy lube put 5w30 in the engine?

Come on Drew.  Your level of snark is elevated here.  The point is that it is getting harder to obtain unbiased knowledge about some reasonably important issues such as, but not limited to, political candidates and global warming for example, from common sources.

  A lot of the institutions we have trusted in the past are now promoting agendas or are presenting only one side of an issue.  Education and information are based on trust, yet these institutions are getting less trustworthy.  But many people are just shallow enough to take what they are told without question, nor without any effort to discover what they are told is accurate. 

My experience is quite similar to others with respect to highly educated folks.  Their focus has been very narrow in the their education, but somehow, because of their advanced degree inter alia, they believe themselves to be well read and spoken on issues they know nothing about except from media sound bites.  No one is more arrogant and bull headed than a person with an advanced degree and no common sense.

[drewtam]

No snark intended. In fact, I call it a virtue to do research oneself. I enjoy it immensely.

Bogie's comment (and the context of the thread) didn't limit itself to controversial topics. It was a generic one about all these people blindly following the group, because they don't always deeply research the topic before opening their mouths. But in both my professional research and hobby research, there are limits to what I will investigate. There are limits to what anyone will investigate.

So my criticism has two parts:
First part: This reverse arrogance about anyone with advanced degrees.

Second part: I have observed very often the attitude you and everyone else is describing: a person who only knows the sound bites but really doesn't understand anything. Again I have seen this attitude from all spectrum. Dem to Rep to Lib, highly educated to pig ig'nant.

It disgusts me. Which is why I rarely talk politics or controversial topics with anyone I don't already have a rapport with and can respect their opinion.

[Nitrogen]

I half expect Obama to get us into WW3 by 2010.

I think its the only way our economy is going to get fixed quickly; socialising it for a large war effort.

[CNYCacher]

But there are limits to this virtue. No one can possibly dig deep into everything. . .

. . . Tell me, did you perform deep research and testing of various oils, metal wear rates, piston ring blow by rates, soot levels, HC levels, and thermal analysis of your engine before you let jiffy lube put 5w30 in the engine?

A relevant question, if the election were about choosing a national oil weight.

[CNYCacher]

I just ask them a question: "Have you researched your belief (because that is what it is...)? Have you dug into it, looking for all the information? Or are you content with having someone else, who may or may not be telling you everything, influence you?"

I have recently begun using this in debates:  "Well, I would love to see your data."

Sometimes you can almost hear the mental tire screech.

[makattak]

I think its the only way our economy is going to get fixed quickly; socialising it for a large war effort.

>.<

Ah yes, the sorry state of economics education.

Getting the government involved will SLOW DOWN any recovery.

WWII did not "save" the US from the Great Depression: removing the STUPID regulations that Roosevelt put in place in the 30's did that.







I've got an idea. In order to make you wealthier, how about I drive your car off a cliff and then take a wrecking ball to your house? (N.B. I am not threatening this, I'm using it as an example)

If demolishing your house or your car won't make you better, how will blowing up crap in a war make a country better?

[Nitrogen]

Really?

The government pouring tons of money into the war effort, retooling factories and creating demand that previously didn't exist didn't do a thing to end the great depression?

[longeyes]

The next "Great War" isn't likely to provide us with a massive "five-year plan" of economic development and citizen togetherness, just a complete breakdown of a fragile, interdependent global economy that cannot run without a constant, high-volume transfusion of oil and unhackable computers.  It will probably provide a lot of jobs for illegal aliens, who by that time will probably have been legalized in the New America.

Message to Obama: sometimes you need to act counter-intuitively.  Example: turning INTO a skid.  Cut taxes.  Reduce governmental strictures.  Right now with all the luminous Keynesian brain-trusters on the Obama roster we are heading for the shoulder, then the ditch, then the roll-over and spinning wheels...

[makattak]

Really?

The government pouring tons of money into the war effort, retooling factories and creating demand that previously didn't exist didn't do a thing to end the great depression?

In a word: YES.

Does it matter how much money you spend when you just go and blow it up?

Why do people think some sort of magic happens when the government is involved, but can clearly see how bad an idea something is if they were to do it?

Let's say if I did this: I go and buy a $20,000 car and push it off a cliff. Am I better off?

[longeyes]

We have to destroy the globe in order to save it...

Seems to me I remember that phrase or something like it somewhere.

Anyone who thinks we pull ourselves out of a global crisis built on debt by a war is mad.  America, which emerged unbowed but comparatively (and only comparatively) unbloodied by WW II, has some odd notions about war and what it can do.  Ask the Europeans and the Russians and the Japanese how they liked the five-year "recovery."