Assuming uniform distribution of isotopes like the article already mentions, while discrepancy in the second assumption would indeed cause the points to diverge from a straight line, the first assumption could be grossly invalid and the points will still form a straight line. Since there's no way to objectively determine how much of an isotope was present in the initial state, the first assumption is bunk anyhow.
Did you actually read the whole document you referenced? That assumption is listed as a problem for other methods in contrast to isochron dating. There's a section that follows that explains how isochron dating avoids those assumptions. To save you some time, here's the relevant portion:
The amount of initial D is not required or assumed to be zero. The greater the initial D-to-Di ratio, the further the initial horizontal line sits above the X-axis. But the computed age is not affected.
You're correct that it would remain a straight line, but you've neglected the fact that it also doesn't make a difference to the age calculation. The assumption that I ate beans for dinner could be grossly invalid and the points would still form a straight line, and that straight line would still represent a valid age. So the question remains, how does one reconcile that graph with a young universe without resorting to miracles?
You claim there is no absolute morality, yet I don't hear you (or any other evolutionists for that matter) calling for the abolishment of all the laws which legislate morality, such as the laws against murder, rape, torture, and robbery. Typically people just don't like the laws about homosexuality, abortion, and the ten commandments. That's hypocrisy.
You still haven't read any Hume or Locke or Bentham or Mill or Russell or the zillions of other philosophers who have tackled this problem from a number of angles that don't involve the arbitrary will of a deity.
The distinction here is which crimes have victims and which do not. I'll leave out abortion as that one is clearly debatable and could be justified either way with a number of philosophies. Society and its rules exists to protect its members. That's why social animals are social. As I see it, any activity that an individual engages in that doesn't measurably harm another should not be punishable. Punishing victimless crimes does nothing for society and harms the individual. It's a net loss across the board. That's why I'm all for punishing murderers and leaving homosexuals alone.
Practically speaking, any law that exists entirely as a result of a religious tradition and can't be justified to society outside of that tradition does nothing but ask for trouble. All it will do is create an underclass of people whose freedoms are restricted for no objective benefit. You just end up with resentment. In a pluralistic society, if you can't justify it to people who don't share your invisible law givers, it probably shouldn't be a law.
An interesting question in all this: If there was no God to tell you not to and punish you if you did, would you murder people and steal things?
The next interesting question: Are you suggesting that there are moral rules that are absolutely true for all people at all times that do not have edge cases where they fail? If so, can you name some?
The Theory of Evolution is a book by English evolutionary biologist [wikipedia.org] and geneticist [wikipedia.org] John Maynard Smith [wikipedia.org], originally published in 1958. It serves as a general introduction to the eponymous subject, intended to be accessible to those with little technical knowledge of the area.
What do you suppose the eponymous subject refers to in that context?
The article on "evolution", by the way, clearly states "This article is about evolution in biology. For other uses, see Evolution (disambiguation) [wikipedia.org]." In other words, "evolution" applies to biology among other things.
Yes. You've successfully shown that the word "evolution" is used in other contexts. A few things:
1) The fact that it's used in multiple contexts doesn't support your attempt to take a bunch of them and roll them up into one theory. No such singular theory exists, and attempting to paint it as such is nothing more than equivocation.
2) Did you actually look at the other uses? Apart from the Doctor Who novel and the Boyz II Men album (are those part of "evolution" as you define it?), there aren't a lot of definitions that apply to what you're claiming. Certainly, there are scientific theories that use the word "evolution" in the common name, but that doesn't mean that you can paste them all together. A mathematician would certainly slap my hand for complaining about "the uniqueness theorem" without specifying context.
3) Note that the Wikipedia article "Theory of evolution" redirects to the definition of biological evolution. This is not coincidence.
Maybe I'll try that, but I doubt you're right.
I highly recommend it. You'll typically find that scientists referring to other theories with the word "evolution" in the name will name the whole theory or process, like "stellar evolution." They tend to postdate The Theory of Evolution. That name was taken.
I'm willing to say that's a fair assessment, but it's not just those people. It's also the people who randomly say something about the universe being 10 billion years old, because they heard something about it in the news, and if I have the forthrightness to say "actually, I don't believe that" their response is (more or less) "Wow, you're dumb. Everyone believes that."
I wouldn't say "Wow, you're dumb. Everybody believes that." However, I might suggest that you probably don't have a good explanation for why the graph at the top of this article happens to plot to a beautifully straight line and that until you do, your opinion on the age of the universe, solar system, or planet is probably not as credible as the one mainstream science offers.
You assume the Feds will catch him. Is he even a priority?
I don't know this for sure, but I suspect that even low priority criminals become high priority when they escape from custody. If you just let people walk away from minimum security prison instead of chasing them down and punishing them for it, you set a bad precedent. The whole point of minimum security prison is that the people aren't likely to run or cause trouble because it's just not worth it and they have something to lose.
You, sir, are the one who's wrong. "Evolution" is much more than "evolution of biology". Evolution of biology is merely a small application of the theory of evolution.
I weep. Seriously. The equivocation burns. I'm talking about (and it's typically what EVERYBODY is talking about when talking about evolution, ID, etc.) The Theory of Evolution. Look it up. The fact that other theories use the word "evolution" in them does not make them part of The Theory of Evolution. As a cosmologist about The Theory of Evolution and he will almost certainly refer you to the biology department. The position you seem to be referring to is not a scientific theory but rather the philosophical position of atheism.
Typically, when people start taking every scientific theory that uses the word "evolution" or explains the origins of anything and then package it up as some sort of omnibus position, they're usually making a very common mistake: They assume that because the theory of evolution conflicts with Biblical literalism that it must be part of some sort of massive philosophical package designed to replace everything they believe in. They then evaluate it and say, "This doesn't completely replace everything I believe in! What a crock!"
I call BS. I addressed your question in a perfectly acceptable fashion from a logical standpoint. You fail to understand the very nature of the material conditional [wikipedia.org]. If the condition is false, the consequence is irrelevant. You're using a material conditional "A -> B" with a contradiction, and my response is, "A is false". When you whined about my failure to address B, I clarified that A is always false by definition. A can never be true, so I will never have to deal with outcome B.
How do you know? God orders all sorts of things. He flooded the Earth and murdered almost everybody. He scorched cities off of the face of the planet. He Works In Mysterious Ways. He told Abraham to kill Isaac, and Abraham is considered a good guy for stepping up to do it. If he had done what you're doing, I doubt it would have worked out so well for him.
I think that this goes to my fundamental point: You're uncomfortable with the idea that your morality can be arbitrarily dictated by a being whose will may not always match up with what appear to be your morals. You can't even bring yourself to do the thought experiment, so you'd rather assert, despite all evidence to the contrary, that God would never order you to do something mean like that. The bottom line is that your morality is determined by the arbitrary whims of a being whose history on treating people kindly is not exactly stellar.
Also, are we in agreement that you seem to have chosen the axiom "the creator's will = morality" to answer the questions of morality? Please understand that bragging about having a solution to the problem of morality and then saying, "My solution is to choose this particular being and listen to anything he says," may not impress those of us who don't agree with your assumption, especially when that being has a history of behavior that most of us would consider immoral these days.
Even more interesting, you seem to be railing against the same sin you were committing earlier: "Genocide follows from evolutionary theory. You're not committing genocide, so you're rejecting evolution" is quite the same type of broken reasoning. Genocide is not a logical consequence of the theory of evolution, so the rest of the chain of reasoning fails.
I'm not talking about the moral behaviour typically encouraged by religion; as you said, that just seems to work. I'm talking about the superstition if you will. There has always been belief in the supernatural. Explain that, please.
Well, there's always Dawkins' suggestion that having a wild imagination is a healthy thing for a child to have, and if it's not sufficiently pr
At last check it had claims as to the origin of all those things.
No. You are factually wrong. Full stop. Evolution is a theory in biology that explains the origins of biological diversity, the fossil record, genetics, etc. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the origins of the universe or any other such nonsense. Whoever told you otherwise clearly has an agenda that's well served by equivocation.
If evolution was their origin, it provides the framework in which they operate, and that framework is the moral system we should observe.
Why? You seem to be falling victim to the classic is-ought problem.
As you said, evolution doesn't provide any real moral system. As a result, it's left to the mob rule, basically, to come up with what's acceptable (might makes right... sound familiar?).
If you want to call the application of reason "mob rule" then I suppose you're correct.
If your neighbour Ted thinks burning down classrooms full of preschoolers is good entertainment, you have no basis for saying he's wrong...
Well, I think that Hume, Kant, and a number of philosophers would disagree. Depending on your value of wrong, I would probably disagree as well. If by "wrong" you mean some sort of cosmic wrong built into the universe, I don't think that I could argue that. I would argue that society would totally melt down if we behaved that way and that he would probably not like it if people did that to him. I suppose we could get into a discussion of meta-ethics, but that simple argument seems to be enough for most rational humans. The people who don't go that way, as you pointed out, tend to get their heads piked.
If, OTOH, an adequately large mob decides to kill all the people with a certain set of genes, that's also natural selection at work.
I suppose that for certain definitions of "natural selection" that's correct. It doesn't follow that it's the moral thing to do, though.
God created; satan didn't, and can't. In fact, satan was created by God. The creator sets the rules.
Why, though? What is your basis for selecting the creator as the source of the rules? I'll grant you that the Christian God (ignoring arbitrary nonsense about shellfish and all sorts of other random crap) selected some pretty good morals from a practical perspective, but He is also hardly alone there. Beyond that, though, it seems that your fundamental axiom seems to be that the simple fact that he created everything means that whatever he says is moral. I'm just pointing out that it's just as valid to question that assumption as it is to question any other source of morality.
Furthermore, as I said before, God's rules already tend to line up pretty well with how we think most things should work (ever heard of the golden rule?).
Pretty much every society has ended up with those rules to a greater or lesser extent. They only really seem to disagree on whether it's immoral to shave facial hair and the like. Don't you find that a bit strange? It's almost as though there's a practical, sensible, core set of morals that can be derived independent of deities punishing us or laying claim to creation.
Well, gee, since you're so concerned, I'd better clearly state that my answer is "No, and if an entity that I thought was God told me to do that, I would immediately know that entity wasn't God, because that would be inconsistent with everything else God orders."
You dodged the question and you know it. If God ordered you to do it, would you do it? You don't get to question God. He created the universe, so he makes the
You supposedly believe evolution, yet you still claim to have "inherent rights and dignity as a human being". That's laughable.
You clearly missed the point of that line.
Evolution, being the answer to "life, the universe, and everything", must obviously tell us what sort of morals to hold. It's not a misapplication.
1) Evolution is not the answer to "life, the universe, and everything" in any sense. It's a description of why we have the variety of organisms that we have today and an explanation of the patterns in DNA and the fossil record. Nothing more. You're assuming that because you feel it threatens your deeply-held beliefs about the universe that it must necessarily replace all of those beliefs. It doesn't.
2) Even if evolution did explain the origins of everything, why would it follow that it necessarily had to justify morality? I seriously doubt it. Again, it would be useful to look at the history of philosophical thought on the topic. These questions are not new.
Pure FUD. Furthermore, flamebait, and you're holding me to a double standard by asking that question (namely, "justify this false hypothetical situation").
But morality is whatever God says it is. If follows, for example, that when God ordered the wholesale slaughter of the Amalekites, it was the moral thing to do, yes? I don't think that the question is nearly as abstract as you seem to think. Is genocide sometimes OK as long as God say so? Why the arbitrary distinction?
Again, though, why should God's orders be considered moral? Why not Satan's orders? Is it that God is more powerful than the others? Is it simply that might makes right? You've arbitrarily selected a being and decided that whatever it says to do is the right thing to do. Why, and would that extend to genocide if God gets another wild hair up his ass and decides to order it again?
Would you burn down a classroom full of preschoolers if evolution said that was the moral thing to do?
Since evolution doesn't really say anything about morality, the question is nonsensical. Assuming it did, I would not do it. I see no reason to use evolution as the sole arbiter of morality given that I have the ability to reason. I don't see slavishly following arbitrary rules as a good way to determine what is moral in a complex world.
Murder your family?
Nope.
Release a nerve agent in the subway?
Negative.
At least God says those things are wrong.
Not always, apparently.
Evolution is notably silent on those issues.
As is cosmology, and that does give us more of an explanation of "the universe and everything." Surely the dearth of moral imperatives to be gleaned from the cosmic background radiation is a problem for physicists everywhere.
You're not proving anything here.
I can't help but notice that you got offended rather than answering my question. Seriously, is it moral to slaughter a society, "both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" if God says so? Would you do it if ordered? It seems a relevant. Evolution may be silent on the topic, but God seems a bit flighty.
No scientific theory does. Personally, I'm appalled at our consistent use of the periodic table of the elements as it totally fails to uphold my inherent rights and dignity as a human being.
As I think I said earlier on this thread, the point is that people don't apply evolution to the realm of morals and socal habits.
As well they shouldn't. It's a scientific theory, not a source of morality. You're complaining about it failing at functions it was not designed to perform. Check the cup holder on your laptop.
It has obvious implications (namely, morals are fake and social habits are just conditioning) but people don't like that part of evolution.
How does it mean that morals are fake? As far as I can tell, they're high level constructs brought about by the fact that we're social creatures who need to live together combined with the fact that we're intelligent and capable of abstract thought. By your measure, laws are fake, poetry is fake, and music is fake. They're quite real. They're just not magic.
FWIW, if you don't accept certain implications of a theory, you can't take other applications and ignore the ones you don't like. That's inconsistent and your theory is broken. It might even be a correct theory, but it's still broken because you're only using half of it.
No, it means that we understand the limits of a scientific theory. It describes the world as it is. It makes no statements about what we should or should not do. The fact that bricks fall when I drop them does not mean that I should drop one on your head. Trying to justify it that way is silly.
Wow, that's really easy. "God said so".
Why is morality what God says it is? Would you burn down a classroom full of preschoolers if God said that it was the moral thing to do? Murder your family? Release a nerve agent in the subway?
Before you say I'm ignorant or using religion as a crutch, just bear with me a second. It certainly beats "there are no morals", and (strangely enough) a lot of those morals tend to line up pretty well with what people come up with on their own when they're trying to figure out what's distasteful and fair.
No, I'm simply suggesting that your source of morality is as arbitrary as anybody else's. You might as well have said, "I ask my neighbor Ted." Don't you think that it's a funny coincidence that just about every culture ends up with the same core set of morals, independent of any religion? My reasoning on this: Morality is a practical matter, just as government and laws are. It enables us to live with one another and have productive relationships. It's likely the product of instincts that stem from us evolving as a social animal agumented by the fact that we can think abstractly about the rules we follow and reason through the consequences of our actions. Looking to evolutionary theory or number theory or any other theory is just an attempt at a shortcut to answers that philosophers have been struggling with for millennia.
Did you read the post? Not "necessary for survival as a species", simply "difficult to argue they're wrong".
Yes, I did read it. The "necessary for the survival of the species" part is the only way I could think of genocide or eugenics being arguably ethical. I dispute the "difficult to argue that they're wrong" because I don't see a reason why the justification for their wrongness would have anything to do with evolution.
I believe that evolutionary theory is largely correct, and I disagree with both eugenics and genocide because I recognize that those things would be distasteful and unfair if applied to me. It's not really that hard. Whether I share genes with bonobos doesn't enter into it.
We agree, then. Evolution can't give any basis for ethics.
So far so good.
So how do we decide what's immoral? Most people would agree that we shouldn't incinerate cities, but why not? If evolution is accepted, there is no basis to claim that because someone doesn't live nicely with the people around them their ethics are "wrong". Wrong based on what?
Well, you could look at the thousands of years of philosophy discussing the subject rather than selecting an arbitrary scientific theory and expecting it to answer those questions.
According to evolution, ethics are simply the result of billions of years of social development, and different sets of ethics are to be just as much expected as are different species. They're as right as anyone else's.
Why single out evolution for this? Newtonian mechanics does nothing for ethics either, but nobody bitches about that. We agree that we can't derive any meaningful ethics from evolutionary theory. So what? Why would we?
Further, what's the point of pointing this out? It has no bearing on the correctness of the theory. There's obviously some reason why people bring it up every time evolution comes up. I just can't figure out why, unless they're trying to smear it because the idea upsets them.
Let's say that we're not the product of billions of years of evolution. Where would you get your morals, and why?
...I'm not saying to be an evolutionist one has to promote genocide/eugenics, but one does find it very difficult to argue that they're wrong. That's basically my point.
Why? Factual claims about the origins of biological diversity and ethics are entirely orthogonal as far as I can tell. If, in order to survive as a species, we absolutely needed to promote genocide or eugenics, I suppose that it could be argued that it's the correct thing to do. I don't see how this follows from evolution, though. I suspect that he end of humanity will be much less theatrical than a super-race of biological competitors wiping us out.
What exactly more is there? Evolution doesn't give any basis for ethics other than dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest.
Evolution doesn't give any basis for ethics at all. Neither do the germ theory of disease, Newtonian mechanics, relativity, or the fact that gravity makes water flow downhill. These are simply factual descriptions of the world around us. Deciding what we "should" do is totally unrelated. Why should we get our ethics from a single scientific theory instead of a practical appraisal of how we can best live with one another? The fact that relativity makes it possible for us to incinerate a city with a single bomb doesn't mean that we should or shouldn't do it. It simply means that we can.
To quote an old post here, "You must think that we're discussing Darwin's other great scientific work, On the Origin of Spacetime." Evolution says nothing of the sort. Evolution is a theory in the field of biology.
Before this big bang, everything in the universe existed as pure energy, then for some reason, space and time came into existence and all of the matter that we see today is a result of this sudden, massive transformation of energy into matter. My question is this: First, if matter didn't exist before energy, then what triggered the "bang"? Next, for the bang to happen, laws of physics would need to be in place. So did the laws of physics always exist? did energy always exist? did time always exist, or as I said before, was time a result of the big bang? How did this explosion trigger the creation of space?
This type of thing really needs to be studied in depth. Reasoning it out by intuition alone will simply not get you anywhere.
Next, has there been any documented case in which a non-living collection of inorganic matter spontaneously became a living organism? Has this foundationally important step ever been observed, measured, or repeated? Even if I take the Big Bang by faith (is there a better description of it?), how did we end up with life?
The fact that evolutionary theory works is independent of the origin of live. Evolution is about change over time. Life could have gotten here by some fascinating chemical abiogenesis, or it could have been popped in by magic. Evolutionary theory holds either way. Again, you're pulling in ancillary topics that aren't really relevant because you're assuming that evolutionary theory's job is to replace your entire belief system about the universe. It's not.
For example, every form of life would need a means of reproduction in every generation of its existence. If there was a problem with this reproductive system at any point, it would be the end of the species since it is incapable of producing offspring.
A problem with the reproductive system would be a problem for that particular individual organism, not for the entire species. Can you describe a more specific example?
Along a similar vein, every organism has a means of sustaining itself. In most cases it's either photosynthesis, digestion, or chemical processing (as we see on the floor of the deep sea). How could the process of turning light into usable energy have been done gradually?
Have you actually looked into this to see if any work has been done, or are you simply assuming that it's a gap in humanity's knowledge because it's a gap in yours?
In the case of mammals, how could the process of digestion have been done gradually?
Digestion in its many forms predates mammals significantly. If you're asking how an organism with no digestive system at all could develop a modern human digestive system, it wouldn't. Nobody has suggested anything of the sort.
A more glaring example of this would be the Bombardier Beetle, whose defense mechanism, if incomplete, would result in the immediate death of the organism.
Again, have you actually checked this claim? It's simply not true.
The difference between myself and many of those who believe in evolution is that I have absolutely no problem admitting it.
I hate to be overly harsh here, but I think that another major difference is that you don't seem to have done much research into the actual data behind the theory of evolution.
The second definition of science involves the philosophy of naturalistic materialism. All phenomena must be explained in terms of matter and energy governed by natural law. Any view that does not conform to this second definition is also not science.
As usual, the author mistakes philosophical materialism and methodological materialism. I would love to the author's explanation as to how one can test hypotheses in the absence of methodological naturalism. Hypothesis: This sedimentary rock is not the result of dried out layers of sediment from the bottom of a body of water. It was placed here by magic. Test: ?
How does one test the hypothesis that some undescribed intelligence, at some point in history, using some undescribed mechanism, contributed to the (unmeasured) complexity of life and may or may not be continuing to do so today? A more concrete claim is necessary before ID becomes anything more than philosophical wanking.
Modern science does not conclude from the evidence that design is not tenable.
No, it concludes that a vague and untestable hypothesis is not something that the scientific method can operate on. That doesn't mean it's wrong. That just means that you can't get anywhere with it using the scientific method. Come up with a meaningful, concrete, testable prediction or claim from ID (not one that boils down to, "You'll never come up with an alternative explanation that satisfies me more than magic does"), and you'll get into the good graces of the scientific community.
I know they aren't expelled, they're just told to shut up and regurgitate what they're told. Teachers are told to just shut up and regurgitate the 'consensus' view.
There has to be a balance there. In elementary school, we teach children how to perform long division without ever showing them why it works. It would be great if we could teach them the facts about operations in a given base and the manipulation of the symbols, but the subtleties of the topic are beyond discussion at that age group and level of expertise.
The problem with the "critical thinking" bills is not what they are on their face. Critical thinking is great. What they inevitably end up being is excuses to trot out tired old creationist canards that have been refuted a thousand times but might sound good to a kid in school.
As I see it, properly implemented "critical thinking" would involve going over some of the background as to how Darwin reached his conclusion and what has been done to test and verify it since then. That covers 150 years of real critical thinking, real experiments, and real results. Reliving those years of critical thinking and actual science is much more productive than speculation on unsettled matters in modern theory. Cutting edge research isn't typically done in high school classes.
It's sad when states have to make laws to allow teachers to teach our kids this.
I don't think that we did have to make that law. Real critical thinking has always been allowed. Laws like this are usually pushed by somebody with a fringe view who, having found that they can't convince adults with the relevant background in the profession, would rather try to get their feet in the door by presenting their material to kids and pretending that it's critical thinking. In reality, it's usually just teachers pushing their own fringe views that wouldn't have made it past a board of experts as a valid curriculum. Fake critical thinking like that is not a win.
If you want to separate it out as a different class, sure, that works. But they still should be permitted to present it. ( at least until it no longer qualifies as 3rd or 4th common theory, and is reduced to a few kook fanatics )
So we should always teach the two most popular opinions, regardless of the gulf in support between them? That would probably make it biblical creationism followed by evolution with everything else a distant third. If we're going to ask the experts in the relevant field, it will be evolution followed by ID & creationism as a sub-1% fringe mishmash. At what point do we say, "You didn't make the cut. Goodbye." Should we present the views of the infinitesimal minority of doctors who believe that HIV does not cause AIDS in health class?
(Before you jump all over that, I wasn't implying they should be. If anything, make ToE into "Saturday School" and let the evolutionists send their kids there. I'll be happy to not have them teach it to MY kids, thank you.)
At what point do we decide that a religious exemption for subject matter is OK vs not OK? Let's say we skip evolution for certain people. Health class for people who reject the germ theory of disease? Physics for people who reject an old earth? I'm not throwing the idea out completely, but where do we sensibly draw a line?
Finding a rodent 500 million years out of place would indicate our knowledge of life's evolutionary path is seriously incorrect. But yeah, it wouldn't invalidate the understanding of the actual mechanics of evolution.
It would invalidate the parts of the theory that creationists claim are "unfalsifiable" though. The mechanisms are observable, so they can't complain about those nearly as much as they do about the historical conclusions drawn from those mechanisms. The problem is that they're usually confusing "unfalsifiable" with "has been tested an not falsified."
Anyway, as I said before, the point wasn't "evolution is wrong". The point was, and still is, "you don't even believe evolution yourself, you just like certain parts".
No, that's not the case at all. If I'm reading you correctly, your assertion is that people who support evolutionary theory don't really believe it because they generally don't move forward with programs of genocide and social Darwinism. Yes?
I believe that evolutionary theory is correct. I reject your proposed public policy because:
1) It doesn't necessarily follow from evolutionary theory that we should do anything about the "weakest" members of our society.
2) Even if it did, public policy and ethics are informed by more than a single isolated scientific theory.
For example, it's probably more economically efficient to kill people as soon as it's clear that they're irreversibly declining in health than it is to try to keep them comfortable and prolong their lives a bit. Why don't we do it? Is it because we don't believe that we're spending resources maintaining the health of somebody who is dying anyway? No. We know that they're going to die anyway. We don't do it because there's more to that decision than a simple question of economic resource allocation. We're not rejecting accounting and finance simply because we're not following them through to their "logical conclusions."
Radiocarbon dating is a form of radiometric dating - that's a fact.:) The three radiometric dating methods I'm aware of (Carbon, Potassium & Uranium) all start out with the notion that we know isotope ratios at a given point in history. But what good is counting half-lives if you don't know the starting quantity or ratio?
Two words: Isochron dating. Uranium-lead is a good example. Please explain the collinearity of the points in the first graph here. What assumptions are problematic in this example? Please be specific.
And even though radioCARBON dating is pretty consistent with written history, archeologist almost always give deference to the carbon date, even when multiple written references say otherwise.
What is your take on the tools used to calibrate carbon dating methods over time? Ice cores, tree rings, etc?
Just look at the Kennedy tax cuts, the 1920s tax cuts, and the changes in US capital gains tax structure in 1997 and the Reagan cuts in 1981.
OK, let's look at those. From a similar essay at The Heritage Foundation:
Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).
Let's run the numbers... I get a 4.1% growth rate out of that. A best fit exponential through the real chained GDP since 1930 gives me an average growth rate of about 3.6% with a standard deviation of 0.36%. So if we're talking about revenue growth as driven by GDP growth, I'm having a hard time swallowing that this was surprising, and an even harder time with the idea that tax policy was the variable that caused the deviation from the mean. I've seen the same exercise done for the 1920s and the 1980s and I'm struck by the same things:
1) Nobody describes the time delay we should expect between the tax cuts and the revenue growth (the actual delay between the policy and the results differs in each scenario).
2) Any increase in growth is statistically not that interesting, once one corrects for inflation and looks at 20th century growth.
3) This analysis ignores the absolute growth over time--tax cuts are usually accompanied by a short term contraction in tax revenue, followed by a return to the normal growth rate. Integrate this, and you'd be hard pressed to show that it's a win over a reasonable interval (going back to 1--what's a reasonable interval)?
4) There's usually pretty big economic news being ignored. In the 1920s, for example, it was a massive bubble that burst immediately after the Heritage analysis cut off its data set.
The problem with these discussions is that they're usually like the papers you linked: Post-hoc rationalization of a few numbers rather than a proper description of the data and a test of whether they're significant. What I'd expect to see would be somebody putting together a proper test of the trends and showing that there's a statstically significant negative correlation between changes in the percentage of GDP taken out as taxes and the total amount of tax revenue in following years. Maybe I'm stupid, but the face of Jesus is not appearing in my toast like it does for others.
The equation should be simple: Change in revenues = new tax rate * change in GDP + (old tax rate - new tax rate) * current GDP. The idea is that the first variable, which should be positive, overwhelms the second, which should be negative, so every dollar in "lost" tax revenue is replaced by more than a dollar in increased GDP. Remember, if your tax rate is ~20% of each dollar in the economy and you decrease taxes by $1, your GDP has to grow by about $5 to replace that dollar. Where is the actual analysis showing this? Why is it that the only people who seem to really believe it are think tank hacks who never actually show their work?
You haven't seen economist claiming there is a shortage in IT and programing qualified students when arguing for "more programs to fix that from the government and Visas for foreigners" while at the same time, experienced people are losing their jobs left anfd right?
I've seen "business leaders" and "analysts" on the news say these things. I've certainly heard politicians saying these things. I don't know of any economist who actually studies this stuff who seriously advocates that as wise policy for the US. Anything that sounds like that is usually more nuanced. As with the Laffer curve discussion, the truth is not as clear as the arguments make it out to be.
The laffer curve is more of a moving target then a precise measurement system.
I'd refer to it more as a single-variable abstraction that's static in time attempting to describe a wildly multi variable chaotic system w
Do your number magic and see if you see a pattern there.
Looks to me like a 5% nominal growth rate over the whole period. Taking the 1992-2001 (inclusive) era, we get 7.2% (much higher R^2). Taking your suggestion and dropping 2001, we get 7.7% (R^2 of 0.998). Hopping to the second part of the graph and going 2001--present, we get 5% growth on average. Dumping everything until 2003 to look at only the upward trend, it's 9.7% nominal, bearing in mind that we were coming off some hard economic times.
To get a more realistic picture, let's look at it in real terms (used the CPI--I can try the GDP deflator another time if people really care). The story is a bit different:
2.4% growth over the entire series.
5.2% growth through the boom of the 90s (4.7% if you include 2001).
2.5% 2001-2007.
6.7% 2003-2007.
I don't see a lot of compelling reasons to buy into post-2000 tax policy as a real indicator of revenue growth. The other interesting question would be bringing the Reagan and Bush I years into it. I suspect that any patterns we might be tempted to see here will disappear.
It's quite simple. The amount of growth and increases are already estimated going into the fiscal year based of previous years performance and so on. Whenever there is a meaningful tax cut, that increase is increased resulting in the gains.
Let's see the data. The fact that revenues come in more or less than estimated is more of a reflection on the CBO's ability to estimate GDP growth accurately.
No one is saying that lowering taxes by itself causes revenue to increase, they are saying that is causes movement in the economy that results in more growth then without. This has been pretty consistant with the data.
Again, let's see the data. Specifically, what are the time horizons, and how are you separating out potentially confounding variables?
What clean room assumptions do you need to make? I mean human behavior, while somewhat erratic is also predictable. This is especially true with people who have made their own money out of personal sweat and decisions they have made instead of inheriting it.
The theory behind the "lower taxes increases growth" idea is quite sound. The question of by how much, and whether that amount offsets the lower tax rate is a different one. I'm simply saying that there's absolutely no reason to believe that the Laffer curve isn't riddled with local maxima and minima or that it's even a smooth and continuous function. The idea that we should use an idealized parabolic function to approximate a function whose nature we don't (and likely can't) know is crazy, and making policy based on it is even crazier.
Aslo, the voodoo economists we deplore are the ones who seem to think that if you tell 1/3 of the graduating seniors to become scientists or hair stylist or whatever industry is having a shortage where the employees are making killer case, that flooding the industry with workers is somehow good for you and me working there.
I've never seen a serious economist suggesting something like that.
It is the same voodoo economist who seem to think that the government manipulating a market area (not necessarily markets) can have any advantage other then to the participants in that market area.
These discussions never end up landing on any concrete claims--only vague truisms about abstract bad people wanting to micro-manage things. I don't really have much to say there.
I'm sorry that you don't seem to see the differences there.
Perhaps my point wasn't clear. I see an almost universal disdain for economics as a "soft" discipline with no real truths in these sorts of armchair policy debates, usually from the same people who suddenly think that it's a 100% certainty that our economy is described perfectly by a neat, parabolic Laffer curve and that we're on the downward sloping side of it. The reality is that there's no justification for that claim to be found in the data. It's that sort of reasoning that leads to abominations like this one.
Lol.. What are you talking about? There is almost always an increase in federal revenue when there is a tax cut.
There is almost always an increase in federal revenue every year, period. Consistent economic growth and inflation practically guarantee it. I'm consistently stunned at the post-hoc rationalizations people do to try to isolate tax policy as a cause of change in tax receipts. There is far from a clear pattern in the data, and the reality is that so many "interesting" and significant things happen between major changes in tax policy that any conclusions would be hopelessly confounded.
I suppose that if you made some nice clean-room assumptions about the diminishing marginal utility of money, diminishing marginal product of capital and labor, and assume that the economy is a closed bubble, it would be easy enough to derive a lovely Laffer curve with all the properties that theoreticians love. In the real world, the data is so noisy that there's just nothing that can justify the conclusion. What surprises me most is that it's usually pushed most heavily by people who normally rail against economists for being voodoo science and imagining patterns in noisy data.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you actually read the whole document you referenced? That assumption is listed as a problem for other methods in contrast to isochron dating. There's a section that follows that explains how isochron dating avoids those assumptions. To save you some time, here's the relevant portion:
You're correct that it would remain a straight line, but you've neglected the fact that it also doesn't make a difference to the age calculation. The assumption that I ate beans for dinner could be grossly invalid and the points would still form a straight line, and that straight line would still represent a valid age. So the question remains, how does one reconcile that graph with a young universe without resorting to miracles?
You still haven't read any Hume or Locke or Bentham or Mill or Russell or the zillions of other philosophers who have tackled this problem from a number of angles that don't involve the arbitrary will of a deity.
The distinction here is which crimes have victims and which do not. I'll leave out abortion as that one is clearly debatable and could be justified either way with a number of philosophies. Society and its rules exists to protect its members. That's why social animals are social. As I see it, any activity that an individual engages in that doesn't measurably harm another should not be punishable. Punishing victimless crimes does nothing for society and harms the individual. It's a net loss across the board. That's why I'm all for punishing murderers and leaving homosexuals alone.
Practically speaking, any law that exists entirely as a result of a religious tradition and can't be justified to society outside of that tradition does nothing but ask for trouble. All it will do is create an underclass of people whose freedoms are restricted for no objective benefit. You just end up with resentment. In a pluralistic society, if you can't justify it to people who don't share your invisible law givers, it probably shouldn't be a law.
An interesting question in all this: If there was no God to tell you not to and punish you if you did, would you murder people and steal things?
The next interesting question: Are you suggesting that there are moral rules that are absolutely true for all people at all times that do not have edge cases where they fail? If so, can you name some?
What do you suppose the eponymous subject refers to in that context?
Yes. You've successfully shown that the word "evolution" is used in other contexts. A few things:
1) The fact that it's used in multiple contexts doesn't support your attempt to take a bunch of them and roll them up into one theory. No such singular theory exists, and attempting to paint it as such is nothing more than equivocation.
2) Did you actually look at the other uses? Apart from the Doctor Who novel and the Boyz II Men album (are those part of "evolution" as you define it?), there aren't a lot of definitions that apply to what you're claiming. Certainly, there are scientific theories that use the word "evolution" in the common name, but that doesn't mean that you can paste them all together. A mathematician would certainly slap my hand for complaining about "the uniqueness theorem" without specifying context.
3) Note that the Wikipedia article "Theory of evolution" redirects to the definition of biological evolution. This is not coincidence.
I highly recommend it. You'll typically find that scientists referring to other theories with the word "evolution" in the name will name the whole theory or process, like "stellar evolution." They tend to postdate The Theory of Evolution. That name was taken.
I wouldn't say "Wow, you're dumb. Everybody believes that." However, I might suggest that you probably don't have a good explanation for why the graph at the top of this article happens to plot to a beautifully straight line and that until you do, your opinion on the age of the universe, solar system, or planet is probably not as credible as the one mainstream science offers.
I don't know this for sure, but I suspect that even low priority criminals become high priority when they escape from custody. If you just let people walk away from minimum security prison instead of chasing them down and punishing them for it, you set a bad precedent. The whole point of minimum security prison is that the people aren't likely to run or cause trouble because it's just not worth it and they have something to lose.
I weep. Seriously. The equivocation burns. I'm talking about (and it's typically what EVERYBODY is talking about when talking about evolution, ID, etc.) The Theory of Evolution. Look it up. The fact that other theories use the word "evolution" in them does not make them part of The Theory of Evolution. As a cosmologist about The Theory of Evolution and he will almost certainly refer you to the biology department. The position you seem to be referring to is not a scientific theory but rather the philosophical position of atheism.
Typically, when people start taking every scientific theory that uses the word "evolution" or explains the origins of anything and then package it up as some sort of omnibus position, they're usually making a very common mistake: They assume that because the theory of evolution conflicts with Biblical literalism that it must be part of some sort of massive philosophical package designed to replace everything they believe in. They then evaluate it and say, "This doesn't completely replace everything I believe in! What a crock!"
How do you know? God orders all sorts of things. He flooded the Earth and murdered almost everybody. He scorched cities off of the face of the planet. He Works In Mysterious Ways. He told Abraham to kill Isaac, and Abraham is considered a good guy for stepping up to do it. If he had done what you're doing, I doubt it would have worked out so well for him.
I think that this goes to my fundamental point: You're uncomfortable with the idea that your morality can be arbitrarily dictated by a being whose will may not always match up with what appear to be your morals. You can't even bring yourself to do the thought experiment, so you'd rather assert, despite all evidence to the contrary, that God would never order you to do something mean like that. The bottom line is that your morality is determined by the arbitrary whims of a being whose history on treating people kindly is not exactly stellar.
Also, are we in agreement that you seem to have chosen the axiom "the creator's will = morality" to answer the questions of morality? Please understand that bragging about having a solution to the problem of morality and then saying, "My solution is to choose this particular being and listen to anything he says," may not impress those of us who don't agree with your assumption, especially when that being has a history of behavior that most of us would consider immoral these days.
Even more interesting, you seem to be railing against the same sin you were committing earlier: "Genocide follows from evolutionary theory. You're not committing genocide, so you're rejecting evolution" is quite the same type of broken reasoning. Genocide is not a logical consequence of the theory of evolution, so the rest of the chain of reasoning fails.
Well, there's always Dawkins' suggestion that having a wild imagination is a healthy thing for a child to have, and if it's not sufficiently pr
No. You are factually wrong. Full stop. Evolution is a theory in biology that explains the origins of biological diversity, the fossil record, genetics, etc. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the origins of the universe or any other such nonsense. Whoever told you otherwise clearly has an agenda that's well served by equivocation.
Why? You seem to be falling victim to the classic is-ought problem.
If you want to call the application of reason "mob rule" then I suppose you're correct.
Well, I think that Hume, Kant, and a number of philosophers would disagree. Depending on your value of wrong, I would probably disagree as well. If by "wrong" you mean some sort of cosmic wrong built into the universe, I don't think that I could argue that. I would argue that society would totally melt down if we behaved that way and that he would probably not like it if people did that to him. I suppose we could get into a discussion of meta-ethics, but that simple argument seems to be enough for most rational humans. The people who don't go that way, as you pointed out, tend to get their heads piked.
I suppose that for certain definitions of "natural selection" that's correct. It doesn't follow that it's the moral thing to do, though.
Why, though? What is your basis for selecting the creator as the source of the rules? I'll grant you that the Christian God (ignoring arbitrary nonsense about shellfish and all sorts of other random crap) selected some pretty good morals from a practical perspective, but He is also hardly alone there. Beyond that, though, it seems that your fundamental axiom seems to be that the simple fact that he created everything means that whatever he says is moral. I'm just pointing out that it's just as valid to question that assumption as it is to question any other source of morality.
Pretty much every society has ended up with those rules to a greater or lesser extent. They only really seem to disagree on whether it's immoral to shave facial hair and the like. Don't you find that a bit strange? It's almost as though there's a practical, sensible, core set of morals that can be derived independent of deities punishing us or laying claim to creation.
You dodged the question and you know it. If God ordered you to do it, would you do it? You don't get to question God. He created the universe, so he makes the
You clearly missed the point of that line.
1) Evolution is not the answer to "life, the universe, and everything" in any sense. It's a description of why we have the variety of organisms that we have today and an explanation of the patterns in DNA and the fossil record. Nothing more. You're assuming that because you feel it threatens your deeply-held beliefs about the universe that it must necessarily replace all of those beliefs. It doesn't.
2) Even if evolution did explain the origins of everything, why would it follow that it necessarily had to justify morality? I seriously doubt it. Again, it would be useful to look at the history of philosophical thought on the topic. These questions are not new.
But morality is whatever God says it is. If follows, for example, that when God ordered the wholesale slaughter of the Amalekites, it was the moral thing to do, yes? I don't think that the question is nearly as abstract as you seem to think. Is genocide sometimes OK as long as God say so? Why the arbitrary distinction?
Again, though, why should God's orders be considered moral? Why not Satan's orders? Is it that God is more powerful than the others? Is it simply that might makes right? You've arbitrarily selected a being and decided that whatever it says to do is the right thing to do. Why, and would that extend to genocide if God gets another wild hair up his ass and decides to order it again?
Since evolution doesn't really say anything about morality, the question is nonsensical. Assuming it did, I would not do it. I see no reason to use evolution as the sole arbiter of morality given that I have the ability to reason. I don't see slavishly following arbitrary rules as a good way to determine what is moral in a complex world.
Nope.
Negative.
Not always, apparently.
As is cosmology, and that does give us more of an explanation of "the universe and everything." Surely the dearth of moral imperatives to be gleaned from the cosmic background radiation is a problem for physicists everywhere.
I can't help but notice that you got offended rather than answering my question. Seriously, is it moral to slaughter a society, "both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" if God says so? Would you do it if ordered? It seems a relevant. Evolution may be silent on the topic, but God seems a bit flighty.
No scientific theory does. Personally, I'm appalled at our consistent use of the periodic table of the elements as it totally fails to uphold my inherent rights and dignity as a human being.
As well they shouldn't. It's a scientific theory, not a source of morality. You're complaining about it failing at functions it was not designed to perform. Check the cup holder on your laptop.
How does it mean that morals are fake? As far as I can tell, they're high level constructs brought about by the fact that we're social creatures who need to live together combined with the fact that we're intelligent and capable of abstract thought. By your measure, laws are fake, poetry is fake, and music is fake. They're quite real. They're just not magic.
No, it means that we understand the limits of a scientific theory. It describes the world as it is. It makes no statements about what we should or should not do. The fact that bricks fall when I drop them does not mean that I should drop one on your head. Trying to justify it that way is silly.
Why is morality what God says it is? Would you burn down a classroom full of preschoolers if God said that it was the moral thing to do? Murder your family? Release a nerve agent in the subway?
No, I'm simply suggesting that your source of morality is as arbitrary as anybody else's. You might as well have said, "I ask my neighbor Ted." Don't you think that it's a funny coincidence that just about every culture ends up with the same core set of morals, independent of any religion? My reasoning on this: Morality is a practical matter, just as government and laws are. It enables us to live with one another and have productive relationships. It's likely the product of instincts that stem from us evolving as a social animal agumented by the fact that we can think abstractly about the rules we follow and reason through the consequences of our actions. Looking to evolutionary theory or number theory or any other theory is just an attempt at a shortcut to answers that philosophers have been struggling with for millennia.
Yes, I did read it. The "necessary for the survival of the species" part is the only way I could think of genocide or eugenics being arguably ethical. I dispute the "difficult to argue that they're wrong" because I don't see a reason why the justification for their wrongness would have anything to do with evolution.
I believe that evolutionary theory is largely correct, and I disagree with both eugenics and genocide because I recognize that those things would be distasteful and unfair if applied to me. It's not really that hard. Whether I share genes with bonobos doesn't enter into it.
So far so good.
Well, you could look at the thousands of years of philosophy discussing the subject rather than selecting an arbitrary scientific theory and expecting it to answer those questions.
Why single out evolution for this? Newtonian mechanics does nothing for ethics either, but nobody bitches about that. We agree that we can't derive any meaningful ethics from evolutionary theory. So what? Why would we?
Further, what's the point of pointing this out? It has no bearing on the correctness of the theory. There's obviously some reason why people bring it up every time evolution comes up. I just can't figure out why, unless they're trying to smear it because the idea upsets them.
Let's say that we're not the product of billions of years of evolution. Where would you get your morals, and why?
Why? Factual claims about the origins of biological diversity and ethics are entirely orthogonal as far as I can tell. If, in order to survive as a species, we absolutely needed to promote genocide or eugenics, I suppose that it could be argued that it's the correct thing to do. I don't see how this follows from evolution, though. I suspect that he end of humanity will be much less theatrical than a super-race of biological competitors wiping us out.
Evolution doesn't give any basis for ethics at all. Neither do the germ theory of disease, Newtonian mechanics, relativity, or the fact that gravity makes water flow downhill. These are simply factual descriptions of the world around us. Deciding what we "should" do is totally unrelated. Why should we get our ethics from a single scientific theory instead of a practical appraisal of how we can best live with one another? The fact that relativity makes it possible for us to incinerate a city with a single bomb doesn't mean that we should or shouldn't do it. It simply means that we can.
To quote an old post here, "You must think that we're discussing Darwin's other great scientific work, On the Origin of Spacetime." Evolution says nothing of the sort. Evolution is a theory in the field of biology.
This type of thing really needs to be studied in depth. Reasoning it out by intuition alone will simply not get you anywhere.
The fact that evolutionary theory works is independent of the origin of live. Evolution is about change over time. Life could have gotten here by some fascinating chemical abiogenesis, or it could have been popped in by magic. Evolutionary theory holds either way. Again, you're pulling in ancillary topics that aren't really relevant because you're assuming that evolutionary theory's job is to replace your entire belief system about the universe. It's not.
A problem with the reproductive system would be a problem for that particular individual organism, not for the entire species. Can you describe a more specific example?
Have you actually looked into this to see if any work has been done, or are you simply assuming that it's a gap in humanity's knowledge because it's a gap in yours?
Digestion in its many forms predates mammals significantly. If you're asking how an organism with no digestive system at all could develop a modern human digestive system, it wouldn't. Nobody has suggested anything of the sort.
Again, have you actually checked this claim? It's simply not true.
I hate to be overly harsh here, but I think that another major difference is that you don't seem to have done much research into the actual data behind the theory of evolution.
As usual, the author mistakes philosophical materialism and methodological materialism. I would love to the author's explanation as to how one can test hypotheses in the absence of methodological naturalism. Hypothesis: This sedimentary rock is not the result of dried out layers of sediment from the bottom of a body of water. It was placed here by magic. Test: ?
How does one test the hypothesis that some undescribed intelligence, at some point in history, using some undescribed mechanism, contributed to the (unmeasured) complexity of life and may or may not be continuing to do so today? A more concrete claim is necessary before ID becomes anything more than philosophical wanking.
No, it concludes that a vague and untestable hypothesis is not something that the scientific method can operate on. That doesn't mean it's wrong. That just means that you can't get anywhere with it using the scientific method. Come up with a meaningful, concrete, testable prediction or claim from ID (not one that boils down to, "You'll never come up with an alternative explanation that satisfies me more than magic does"), and you'll get into the good graces of the scientific community.
There has to be a balance there. In elementary school, we teach children how to perform long division without ever showing them why it works. It would be great if we could teach them the facts about operations in a given base and the manipulation of the symbols, but the subtleties of the topic are beyond discussion at that age group and level of expertise.
The problem with the "critical thinking" bills is not what they are on their face. Critical thinking is great. What they inevitably end up being is excuses to trot out tired old creationist canards that have been refuted a thousand times but might sound good to a kid in school.
As I see it, properly implemented "critical thinking" would involve going over some of the background as to how Darwin reached his conclusion and what has been done to test and verify it since then. That covers 150 years of real critical thinking, real experiments, and real results. Reliving those years of critical thinking and actual science is much more productive than speculation on unsettled matters in modern theory. Cutting edge research isn't typically done in high school classes.
I don't think that we did have to make that law. Real critical thinking has always been allowed. Laws like this are usually pushed by somebody with a fringe view who, having found that they can't convince adults with the relevant background in the profession, would rather try to get their feet in the door by presenting their material to kids and pretending that it's critical thinking. In reality, it's usually just teachers pushing their own fringe views that wouldn't have made it past a board of experts as a valid curriculum. Fake critical thinking like that is not a win.
So we should always teach the two most popular opinions, regardless of the gulf in support between them? That would probably make it biblical creationism followed by evolution with everything else a distant third. If we're going to ask the experts in the relevant field, it will be evolution followed by ID & creationism as a sub-1% fringe mishmash. At what point do we say, "You didn't make the cut. Goodbye." Should we present the views of the infinitesimal minority of doctors who believe that HIV does not cause AIDS in health class?
Yeah, what kind of scientific research could possibly be done at one of the largest research university systems in the world?
At what point do we decide that a religious exemption for subject matter is OK vs not OK? Let's say we skip evolution for certain people. Health class for people who reject the germ theory of disease? Physics for people who reject an old earth? I'm not throwing the idea out completely, but where do we sensibly draw a line?
It would invalidate the parts of the theory that creationists claim are "unfalsifiable" though. The mechanisms are observable, so they can't complain about those nearly as much as they do about the historical conclusions drawn from those mechanisms. The problem is that they're usually confusing "unfalsifiable" with "has been tested an not falsified."
No, that's not the case at all. If I'm reading you correctly, your assertion is that people who support evolutionary theory don't really believe it because they generally don't move forward with programs of genocide and social Darwinism. Yes?
I believe that evolutionary theory is correct. I reject your proposed public policy because:
1) It doesn't necessarily follow from evolutionary theory that we should do anything about the "weakest" members of our society.
2) Even if it did, public policy and ethics are informed by more than a single isolated scientific theory.
For example, it's probably more economically efficient to kill people as soon as it's clear that they're irreversibly declining in health than it is to try to keep them comfortable and prolong their lives a bit. Why don't we do it? Is it because we don't believe that we're spending resources maintaining the health of somebody who is dying anyway? No. We know that they're going to die anyway. We don't do it because there's more to that decision than a simple question of economic resource allocation. We're not rejecting accounting and finance simply because we're not following them through to their "logical conclusions."
Two words: Isochron dating. Uranium-lead is a good example. Please explain the collinearity of the points in the first graph here. What assumptions are problematic in this example? Please be specific.
What is your take on the tools used to calibrate carbon dating methods over time? Ice cores, tree rings, etc?
Correction to the above: The standard deviation of GDP growth is about 0.5 (0.49 if we toss out the crash before the Great Depression).
OK, let's look at those. From a similar essay at The Heritage Foundation:
Let's run the numbers... I get a 4.1% growth rate out of that. A best fit exponential through the real chained GDP since 1930 gives me an average growth rate of about 3.6% with a standard deviation of 0.36%. So if we're talking about revenue growth as driven by GDP growth, I'm having a hard time swallowing that this was surprising, and an even harder time with the idea that tax policy was the variable that caused the deviation from the mean. I've seen the same exercise done for the 1920s and the 1980s and I'm struck by the same things:
1) Nobody describes the time delay we should expect between the tax cuts and the revenue growth (the actual delay between the policy and the results differs in each scenario).
2) Any increase in growth is statistically not that interesting, once one corrects for inflation and looks at 20th century growth.
3) This analysis ignores the absolute growth over time--tax cuts are usually accompanied by a short term contraction in tax revenue, followed by a return to the normal growth rate. Integrate this, and you'd be hard pressed to show that it's a win over a reasonable interval (going back to 1--what's a reasonable interval)?
4) There's usually pretty big economic news being ignored. In the 1920s, for example, it was a massive bubble that burst immediately after the Heritage analysis cut off its data set.
The problem with these discussions is that they're usually like the papers you linked: Post-hoc rationalization of a few numbers rather than a proper description of the data and a test of whether they're significant. What I'd expect to see would be somebody putting together a proper test of the trends and showing that there's a statstically significant negative correlation between changes in the percentage of GDP taken out as taxes and the total amount of tax revenue in following years. Maybe I'm stupid, but the face of Jesus is not appearing in my toast like it does for others.
The equation should be simple: Change in revenues = new tax rate * change in GDP + (old tax rate - new tax rate) * current GDP. The idea is that the first variable, which should be positive, overwhelms the second, which should be negative, so every dollar in "lost" tax revenue is replaced by more than a dollar in increased GDP. Remember, if your tax rate is ~20% of each dollar in the economy and you decrease taxes by $1, your GDP has to grow by about $5 to replace that dollar. Where is the actual analysis showing this? Why is it that the only people who seem to really believe it are think tank hacks who never actually show their work?
I've seen "business leaders" and "analysts" on the news say these things. I've certainly heard politicians saying these things. I don't know of any economist who actually studies this stuff who seriously advocates that as wise policy for the US. Anything that sounds like that is usually more nuanced. As with the Laffer curve discussion, the truth is not as clear as the arguments make it out to be.
I'd refer to it more as a single-variable abstraction that's static in time attempting to describe a wildly multi variable chaotic system w
Looks to me like a 5% nominal growth rate over the whole period. Taking the 1992-2001 (inclusive) era, we get 7.2% (much higher R^2). Taking your suggestion and dropping 2001, we get 7.7% (R^2 of 0.998). Hopping to the second part of the graph and going 2001--present, we get 5% growth on average. Dumping everything until 2003 to look at only the upward trend, it's 9.7% nominal, bearing in mind that we were coming off some hard economic times.
To get a more realistic picture, let's look at it in real terms (used the CPI--I can try the GDP deflator another time if people really care). The story is a bit different:
2.4% growth over the entire series.
5.2% growth through the boom of the 90s (4.7% if you include 2001).
2.5% 2001-2007.
6.7% 2003-2007.
I don't see a lot of compelling reasons to buy into post-2000 tax policy as a real indicator of revenue growth. The other interesting question would be bringing the Reagan and Bush I years into it. I suspect that any patterns we might be tempted to see here will disappear.
No, just pointing out that you're simply wrong. Making wrongness 50 pages longer doesn't help anything.
Let's see the data. The fact that revenues come in more or less than estimated is more of a reflection on the CBO's ability to estimate GDP growth accurately.
Again, let's see the data. Specifically, what are the time horizons, and how are you separating out potentially confounding variables?
The theory behind the "lower taxes increases growth" idea is quite sound. The question of by how much, and whether that amount offsets the lower tax rate is a different one. I'm simply saying that there's absolutely no reason to believe that the Laffer curve isn't riddled with local maxima and minima or that it's even a smooth and continuous function. The idea that we should use an idealized parabolic function to approximate a function whose nature we don't (and likely can't) know is crazy, and making policy based on it is even crazier.
I've never seen a serious economist suggesting something like that.
These discussions never end up landing on any concrete claims--only vague truisms about abstract bad people wanting to micro-manage things. I don't really have much to say there.
Perhaps my point wasn't clear. I see an almost universal disdain for economics as a "soft" discipline with no real truths in these sorts of armchair policy debates, usually from the same people who suddenly think that it's a 100% certainty that our economy is described perfectly by a neat, parabolic Laffer curve and that we're on the downward sloping side of it. The reality is that there's no justification for that claim to be found in the data. It's that sort of reasoning that leads to abominations like this one.
There is almost always an increase in federal revenue every year, period. Consistent economic growth and inflation practically guarantee it. I'm consistently stunned at the post-hoc rationalizations people do to try to isolate tax policy as a cause of change in tax receipts. There is far from a clear pattern in the data, and the reality is that so many "interesting" and significant things happen between major changes in tax policy that any conclusions would be hopelessly confounded.
I suppose that if you made some nice clean-room assumptions about the diminishing marginal utility of money, diminishing marginal product of capital and labor, and assume that the economy is a closed bubble, it would be easy enough to derive a lovely Laffer curve with all the properties that theoreticians love. In the real world, the data is so noisy that there's just nothing that can justify the conclusion. What surprises me most is that it's usually pushed most heavily by people who normally rail against economists for being voodoo science and imagining patterns in noisy data.