The real problem with Appeal to authority is that Ad Hominem is a natural counter argument to it. The wikipedia article lists several conditions for a valid appeal to authority, and undercutting any of those conditions would be both valid and an ad hominem attack on that source. For instance, "The authority must have competence in an area, not just glamour, prestige, rank or popularity." leads directly to accusations incompetence. Said ad hominems then get directly challenged as such, and are ignored despite being directly relevant to the actual argument given. I've seen lots of variations on that theme on Slashdot at one time or another. I'd much rather see both drop out of usage, but they're too easy as shortcuts.
Actually, from what is in the article, there is no proof that the AEI is doing anything other than trying to promote existing research. They are asking for articles about the issue and given the second and third paragraph below, it sounds like they want a general review of the topic not a one-sided attack on the IPCC. Without seeing the actual letters sent out, it's hard to say. The first paragraph below is probably lacking context. The article does NOT state at any point that they are trying to fund new flawed research. They obviously contacted at least one scientist who clearly believes that Global warming is real, and the quote from Steve Schroeder indicates they were looking for articles, not new research.
The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".
...
The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.
...
One American scientist turned down the offer, citing fears that the report could easily be misused for political gain. "You wouldn't know if some of the other authors might say nothing's going to happen, that we should ignore it, or that it's not our fault," said Steve Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university.
Because you're a 52 year old man who's been assaulted by a 25 year old schizophenic who specifically threatened to kill you before attacking? Basically, it takes minimal training and physical fitness to defend yourself with a gun compared to a knife, blunt object, etc. Guns allow the otherwise defenseless to protect themselves when there isn't time for any other option.
IANAL, but this is a simple explanation of why the fourth amendment wouldn't automatically apply.
Emails aren't considered personal papers for the simple reason that they've been voluntarily handed over to someone else. In a technical sense, if you send a message via UPS, they have ownership of that package until it's delivered, and could give consent to search absent specific laws or contract agreements to the contrary. I believe wiretaps only required permission from AT&T, not from the homeowners because the company owned the wires, not the users.
It may related to the reason they can use evidence cleanly in your car without a warrant to search, or an overheard conversation in a public place.
Check out Rand Simberg for an alternative view of things, by someone with relevant expertise. Bob is a physicist. Rand is a former aerospace engineer. Who do you think has a better handle on technical details of space exploration? Space != Science. Science is best done in person, not remotely, but I admit it may not be as cost effective for some technical projects. However, if the long term purpose is to put people out there, it makes a lot of sense to get people out there so you can study the effects on people.
Allow me to paraphrase in as bad a light as possible. I'm particularly annoyed by the hand waving argument in the second one.
First link: "We were able to reliably get a hockey stick graph using various modifications to the original methodology. Therefor McKintyre and McKitrick's paper which showed that random data also produces the same shape is irrelevant". You may want to check out a counter argument. It's worth noting that the graph at that link also starts after the MWP, which is one of the complaints about the graph in the first place.
Second link: "A reconstruction of past temperature data using various proxies for temperature does not show a large medieval warm period, contrary to historical knowledge of the time period. Therefor the historical claims are wrong and the medieval warm period did not exist." Effectively, they are arguing that their proxy information is more accurate than reconstruction based on other proxy data and known historical events. They may even be right, but the link provided has no information for why their reconstruction is better. Given that one of the complaints about Mann, et al was specifically leaving out data which indicated a MWP, it's not a good idea to use their graph as proof that the MWP doesn't exist.
Third link: I got nothing. The claim that china was up there is very weakly sourced. It was a particularly weak example of proof that the weather was significantly warmer then. This doesn't necessarily invalidate the rest of the article, but using it does indicate that the author didn't look very hard at some of his information.
Apparently true, but irrelevant. David Denning was the source for a quote about the MWP, and that's it. The rest of the article has nothing to do with him, although it used the quote as a starting point to go into it's own information. You may want to check out the link at the start of the article which has the references and detailed calculations, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were some hand-waving arguments that I missed when skimming it.
Allow me to explain further, since you completely missed the point. In many cases, and I've seen it on this very thread, people make something like the following claim: "The people making the claims are scientist. They know what they are doing, and non-scientists aren't qualified to judge. Therefore, since the majority of scientists believe this to be true, it is." It's an argument from authority, which is semivalid if the individuals really are a trusted source. However, proof of fallibility is a VALID argument to counter claims of authority. Since many of the same individuals have frequently made claims of a looming disaster in the past and been wrong, their claims of authority are worthless, and it is necessary to look carefully at their logic and reasoning rather than just accepting that the claims are accurate without bothering to verify.
There are some bad arguments in favor of anthropogenic climate change, which tend to increase people's doubt even when presented with good evidence. In some cases, it would appear that peer review is a flawed tool at best.
A better paraphrase of the argument would be "Most people have been wrong about similar predictions, therefore it is likely that most people are wrong about these predictions." The logic still isn't great since it's not always the same individuals, but it's much stronger than the straw man argument you provided.
And I'm sure they would never start using taxes to prop them up, nor would they deliberately add hurdles to competing providers. It's unthinkable that they might allow the community broadband rights to city property to place equipment on, and deny those rights to competitors. (Note: competition for wireless service includes wired service, not just other wireless.) Just like cities which promised no tax funds would support their municipal stadiums have never reneged on those promises.
Arguable, but the real issue is defining better of course. Adding seat belts increases the cost of vehicles, so perhaps I would be better in my opinion having saved the cost of those seat belts since I've never been in a crash. This is purely hypothetical, I personally would rather pay the cost and have the belts. Given that the net effect on highway deaths per person per mile is not well documented, you may want to come up with something better than a two word item.
It's not just malice though. IANAL, but I believe the burden of proof in English law rests with the defendent, truth is not a guaranteed defense, etc. It's pretty bad over there.
The problem I see is that student self evaluations may correlate well with actual evaluations in general, but not when stratified by game playing. Game playing may lower your ability to correctly evaluate your performance, while students who don't play as much have a higher correlation. Guilt over playing games more than you think you should would be one possible mechanism for this.
Just because something holds on average, doesn't mean it holds for any particular sub-group. Extrapolating from the general to the more specific is extremely common, and extremely annoying.
The problem is that voting radically changed in 2000. IIRC, that was the first time early absentee voting was widespread, and such votes do not factor into exit polls at all.
I believe there are also concerns with the way exit poll data is manipulated and released as well. The link is for 2004, but does mention that polling companies have always adjusted data. If they adjust incorrectly, it could account for an awful lot of apparent disreptancies. Issues caused by early voting might be magnified quite a bit by adjusting for actual votes cast (which is apparently a standard adjustment).
No, it is NOT banned. Federal funding of research involving new lines is banned. That is all. Check out Stanford's stem cell research institute. Private funding for harvesting new stem cell lines is still possible. Perhaps you should get your facts straight, idiot.
So if I'm wearing body armor, and you start punching me, I have to stand there and take it just because you are rarely causing any damage? Israel has significantly better bomb shelters and the like. Since Hezbollah takes zero steps to protect civilians, and in some cases actively endangers them, the situation is guaranteed to lead to imbalanced civilian deaths, but that in no way alters whether or not Israel is justified in attacking or not.
It was emercency contraceptives, not emergency treatment. There is a distinction there.
I'd have to take the same stance, although not for anything like the reason he stated. If any emergency medical provider has moral objections to some procedure/drug/activity, they ought not be forced to either provide said procedure or to not treat anyone at all. It doesn't really make sense to tell a hospital that since it won't provide a morning after pill, that it can't legally provide emergency care for a gun shot wound either. You personally may consider emergency contraception to be a proper subset of treatment (I think it is), but that doesn't make it absolute provable truth.
Stating that it's only a short drive to another hospital was just stupid on his part, and completely irrelevant.
Did any of those companies become abusive monopolies without government intervention on their behalf? Even ignoring patents, you get all sorts of eminent domain actions, taxes, business licenses, zoning restrictions, and any number of other regulations which, whatever their stated intent, acted to reduce competition.
So, government action in the form of anti-trust is necessary to fix the effects of government actions. "The bureaucracy is growing to serve the needs of an ever expanding bureaucracy." Because I don't think the government should have been involved in the first place, I have no compassion for the individuals who suffer because of the companies government supported?
There are few individuals who "... the system has failed" who haven't failed at least in part because they made stupid choices. Having gone through the public school system and paid attention, it's hard to sympathize with people who missed every chance that was given to them to improve their lot. I am willing to help make it possible for them to fix their own situation, but I refuse to keep giving them fish because they refuse to learn how to fish. I'm also happy to help those few who are doing badly due to circumstance which are truly beyond their control, but I prefer to make such donations voluntarily rather than because of government threats.
If you want your dollars to fund this kind of research, go make a donation, and ask the government to shrink so you can have more choice in how your money is spent. Everyone wants the government to support their favored projects, but no one elses. It's far more logical to leave choices up to individuals than to try and make everything the responsibility of government.
One of the fundamental issues with government is that it will spend someone's money on something they don't want. Regardless of whether it's socialized medicine, something in the education system, or some form of science research it can't be avoided. It can be limited, by leaving as much as possible up to private individuals, but it can never be fully eliminated barring a switch to anarchy. (Which isn't a good idea unless a miracle occurs and everyone becomes ethical and peacful.)
I'm not sure there's an actual correlation to back up your claim that "...but children who watch violence on TV tend to be more violent than those who do not." One of the flaws I keep seeing in various studies attempting to link violent media and violent behaviour(or at least the media reporting on them) is that they always measure aggressive behaviour. Aggression is not the same thing as violence, unless you redefine violence to include all forms of aggressive behaviour. A kid play wrestling with a friend is being aggressive, but not actually violent. He's not seeking to cause harm, or even causing any real harm, except by accident. A person who dominates a conversation is more aggressive than someone who is quiet and withdrawn, but nonetheless is not violent. More importantly, acting aggressive immediately after exposure does not automatically indicate an increased tendency towards violents later in life.
This article itself conflates the two terms.
In 2001 the Surgeon General of the United States published a study that read, "...(the) findings suggest that media violence has a relatively small impact on violence."
Yet other researchers claim viewing violent media does cause children to behave more aggressively.
I'm not sure how to fix this in a controlled experiment, because you don't want to give someone a chance to be violent or you may be held accountable for damage done. Measuring real world statistics doesn't let you control for whether or not the parents would normally allow it or not, although it can at least give you a correlation. Given that correlation, it does not follow that 1 leads to the other. It could be that kids who enjoy and are allowed to watch violent TV are also the kind of kids who enjoy real violence, regardless of the availability of said TV. Seems pretty likely that this is at least a contributing factor.
And there, neatly summed up, is one of the reasons some of us will never support socialized medicine. It WILL be used an an excuse for the government to intervene in private choice. With the current level of government support in the US, we're already seeing pushes to regulate food choices based on future medical expenses. At least with private insurance they can vary rates based on your choices, and no one is forced to have it. But didn't some state just require all individuals to carry medical insurance?
My life is mine to do with as I please. You FORCING me to support some form of government program to provide health care, which I might as well claim for myself since I'm paying for it, in no way gives you the right to FORCE me to eat in what YOU THINK is a healthy manner. If government allowed a waiver such that I neither paid for nor recieved that socialized care, that could almost work. That would never happen, because the people who want the care don't want to foot the bill themselves, or they wouldn't bother getting government involved in the first place. And it would still be used as justification for any number of government regulations.
Although I oppose Prohibition II: The War on Drugs, I must argue with your presentation of facts. Smoking marijuana leads to an increased risk of cancer just like tobacco does (although assigning hard numbers to either substance is difficult, and the rates are probably different), there are car accidents caused by stupid users, etc. Although there may not be any overdose reactions on record, I have a friend who nearly died from an allergice reaction. That zero entry for marijuana is just bad and wrong... it is badong!
I never claimed to be pro-life. I was just trying to illuminate the flaw in "But seriously, anyone being executed has already been isolated from the rest of society for a long time, with little danger to the public, so life in prison is clearly an option." They are still capable of murdering, and are still a danger to at least their fellow inmates.
For the record, I think murderers have forsaken their right to life when they take the life of someone who hasn't themselves forsaken that right. Basically a form of radical egalitarianism. Protecting others from harm might be a reason to consider it a duty, but is not directly relevant to whether it's acceptable or not. I don't trust the government to make that judgement though, and I oppose the death penalty on those grounds, except possibly in very extreme cases.
Slashdot Mirror
The real problem with Appeal to authority is that Ad Hominem is a natural counter argument to it. The wikipedia article lists several conditions for a valid appeal to authority, and undercutting any of those conditions would be both valid and an ad hominem attack on that source. For instance, "The authority must have competence in an area, not just glamour, prestige, rank or popularity." leads directly to accusations incompetence. Said ad hominems then get directly challenged as such, and are ignored despite being directly relevant to the actual argument given. I've seen lots of variations on that theme on Slashdot at one time or another. I'd much rather see both drop out of usage, but they're too easy as shortcuts.
Because you're a 52 year old man who's been assaulted by a 25 year old schizophenic who specifically threatened to kill you before attacking? Basically, it takes minimal training and physical fitness to defend yourself with a gun compared to a knife, blunt object, etc. Guns allow the otherwise defenseless to protect themselves when there isn't time for any other option.
IANAL, but this is a simple explanation of why the fourth amendment wouldn't automatically apply.
Emails aren't considered personal papers for the simple reason that they've been voluntarily handed over to someone else. In a technical sense, if you send a message via UPS, they have ownership of that package until it's delivered, and could give consent to search absent specific laws or contract agreements to the contrary. I believe wiretaps only required permission from AT&T, not from the homeowners because the company owned the wires, not the users.
It may related to the reason they can use evidence cleanly in your car without a warrant to search, or an overheard conversation in a public place.
Check out Rand Simberg for an alternative view of things, by someone with relevant expertise. Bob is a physicist. Rand is a former aerospace engineer. Who do you think has a better handle on technical details of space exploration? Space != Science. Science is best done in person, not remotely, but I admit it may not be as cost effective for some technical projects. However, if the long term purpose is to put people out there, it makes a lot of sense to get people out there so you can study the effects on people.
Allow me to paraphrase in as bad a light as possible. I'm particularly annoyed by the hand waving argument in the second one.
First link: "We were able to reliably get a hockey stick graph using various modifications to the original methodology. Therefor McKintyre and McKitrick's paper which showed that random data also produces the same shape is irrelevant". You may want to check out a counter argument. It's worth noting that the graph at that link also starts after the MWP, which is one of the complaints about the graph in the first place.
Second link: "A reconstruction of past temperature data using various proxies for temperature does not show a large medieval warm period, contrary to historical knowledge of the time period. Therefor the historical claims are wrong and the medieval warm period did not exist." Effectively, they are arguing that their proxy information is more accurate than reconstruction based on other proxy data and known historical events. They may even be right, but the link provided has no information for why their reconstruction is better. Given that one of the complaints about Mann, et al was specifically leaving out data which indicated a MWP, it's not a good idea to use their graph as proof that the MWP doesn't exist.
Third link: I got nothing. The claim that china was up there is very weakly sourced. It was a particularly weak example of proof that the weather was significantly warmer then. This doesn't necessarily invalidate the rest of the article, but using it does indicate that the author didn't look very hard at some of his information.
Apparently true, but irrelevant. David Denning was the source for a quote about the MWP, and that's it. The rest of the article has nothing to do with him, although it used the quote as a starting point to go into it's own information. You may want to check out the link at the start of the article which has the references and detailed calculations, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were some hand-waving arguments that I missed when skimming it.
Allow me to explain further, since you completely missed the point. In many cases, and I've seen it on this very thread, people make something like the following claim: "The people making the claims are scientist. They know what they are doing, and non-scientists aren't qualified to judge. Therefore, since the majority of scientists believe this to be true, it is." It's an argument from authority, which is semivalid if the individuals really are a trusted source. However, proof of fallibility is a VALID argument to counter claims of authority. Since many of the same individuals have frequently made claims of a looming disaster in the past and been wrong, their claims of authority are worthless, and it is necessary to look carefully at their logic and reasoning rather than just accepting that the claims are accurate without bothering to verify.
There are some bad arguments in favor of anthropogenic climate change, which tend to increase people's doubt even when presented with good evidence. In some cases, it would appear that peer review is a flawed tool at best.
A better paraphrase of the argument would be "Most people have been wrong about similar predictions, therefore it is likely that most people are wrong about these predictions." The logic still isn't great since it's not always the same individuals, but it's much stronger than the straw man argument you provided.
And I'm sure they would never start using taxes to prop them up, nor would they deliberately add hurdles to competing providers. It's unthinkable that they might allow the community broadband rights to city property to place equipment on, and deny those rights to competitors. (Note: competition for wireless service includes wired service, not just other wireless.) Just like cities which promised no tax funds would support their municipal stadiums have never reneged on those promises.
Arguable, but the real issue is defining better of course. Adding seat belts increases the cost of vehicles, so perhaps I would be better in my opinion having saved the cost of those seat belts since I've never been in a crash. This is purely hypothetical, I personally would rather pay the cost and have the belts. Given that the net effect on highway deaths per person per mile is not well documented, you may want to come up with something better than a two word item.
It's not just malice though. IANAL, but I believe the burden of proof in English law rests with the defendent, truth is not a guaranteed defense, etc. It's pretty bad over there.
Fixed the link. The slash at the end was killing it.
The problem I see is that student self evaluations may correlate well with actual evaluations in general, but not when stratified by game playing. Game playing may lower your ability to correctly evaluate your performance, while students who don't play as much have a higher correlation. Guilt over playing games more than you think you should would be one possible mechanism for this.
Just because something holds on average, doesn't mean it holds for any particular sub-group. Extrapolating from the general to the more specific is extremely common, and extremely annoying.
The problem is that voting radically changed in 2000. IIRC, that was the first time early absentee voting was widespread, and such votes do not factor into exit polls at all.
I believe there are also concerns with the way exit poll data is manipulated and released as well. The link is for 2004, but does mention that polling companies have always adjusted data. If they adjust incorrectly, it could account for an awful lot of apparent disreptancies. Issues caused by early voting might be magnified quite a bit by adjusting for actual votes cast (which is apparently a standard adjustment).
No, it is NOT banned. Federal funding of research involving new lines is banned. That is all. Check out Stanford's stem cell research institute. Private funding for harvesting new stem cell lines is still possible. Perhaps you should get your facts straight, idiot.
So if I'm wearing body armor, and you start punching me, I have to stand there and take it just because you are rarely causing any damage? Israel has significantly better bomb shelters and the like. Since Hezbollah takes zero steps to protect civilians, and in some cases actively endangers them, the situation is guaranteed to lead to imbalanced civilian deaths, but that in no way alters whether or not Israel is justified in attacking or not.
It was emercency contraceptives, not emergency treatment. There is a distinction there. I'd have to take the same stance, although not for anything like the reason he stated. If any emergency medical provider has moral objections to some procedure/drug/activity, they ought not be forced to either provide said procedure or to not treat anyone at all. It doesn't really make sense to tell a hospital that since it won't provide a morning after pill, that it can't legally provide emergency care for a gun shot wound either. You personally may consider emergency contraception to be a proper subset of treatment (I think it is), but that doesn't make it absolute provable truth.
Stating that it's only a short drive to another hospital was just stupid on his part, and completely irrelevant.
Did any of those companies become abusive monopolies without government intervention on their behalf? Even ignoring patents, you get all sorts of eminent domain actions, taxes, business licenses, zoning restrictions, and any number of other regulations which, whatever their stated intent, acted to reduce competition.
So, government action in the form of anti-trust is necessary to fix the effects of government actions. "The bureaucracy is growing to serve the needs of an ever expanding bureaucracy." Because I don't think the government should have been involved in the first place, I have no compassion for the individuals who suffer because of the companies government supported?
There are few individuals who "... the system has failed" who haven't failed at least in part because they made stupid choices. Having gone through the public school system and paid attention, it's hard to sympathize with people who missed every chance that was given to them to improve their lot. I am willing to help make it possible for them to fix their own situation, but I refuse to keep giving them fish because they refuse to learn how to fish. I'm also happy to help those few who are doing badly due to circumstance which are truly beyond their control, but I prefer to make such donations voluntarily rather than because of government threats.
If you want your dollars to fund this kind of research, go make a donation, and ask the government to shrink so you can have more choice in how your money is spent. Everyone wants the government to support their favored projects, but no one elses. It's far more logical to leave choices up to individuals than to try and make everything the responsibility of government.
One of the fundamental issues with government is that it will spend someone's money on something they don't want. Regardless of whether it's socialized medicine, something in the education system, or some form of science research it can't be avoided. It can be limited, by leaving as much as possible up to private individuals, but it can never be fully eliminated barring a switch to anarchy. (Which isn't a good idea unless a miracle occurs and everyone becomes ethical and peacful.)
This article itself conflates the two terms. I'm not sure how to fix this in a controlled experiment, because you don't want to give someone a chance to be violent or you may be held accountable for damage done. Measuring real world statistics doesn't let you control for whether or not the parents would normally allow it or not, although it can at least give you a correlation. Given that correlation, it does not follow that 1 leads to the other. It could be that kids who enjoy and are allowed to watch violent TV are also the kind of kids who enjoy real violence, regardless of the availability of said TV. Seems pretty likely that this is at least a contributing factor.
And there, neatly summed up, is one of the reasons some of us will never support socialized medicine. It WILL be used an an excuse for the government to intervene in private choice. With the current level of government support in the US, we're already seeing pushes to regulate food choices based on future medical expenses. At least with private insurance they can vary rates based on your choices, and no one is forced to have it. But didn't some state just require all individuals to carry medical insurance?
My life is mine to do with as I please. You FORCING me to support some form of government program to provide health care, which I might as well claim for myself since I'm paying for it, in no way gives you the right to FORCE me to eat in what YOU THINK is a healthy manner. If government allowed a waiver such that I neither paid for nor recieved that socialized care, that could almost work. That would never happen, because the people who want the care don't want to foot the bill themselves, or they wouldn't bother getting government involved in the first place. And it would still be used as justification for any number of government regulations.
Ok, that's interesting actually. I stand by the auto accident point though. :)
Although I oppose Prohibition II: The War on Drugs, I must argue with your presentation of facts. Smoking marijuana leads to an increased risk of cancer just like tobacco does (although assigning hard numbers to either substance is difficult, and the rates are probably different), there are car accidents caused by stupid users, etc. Although there may not be any overdose reactions on record, I have a friend who nearly died from an allergice reaction. That zero entry for marijuana is just bad and wrong... it is badong!
I never claimed to be pro-life. I was just trying to illuminate the flaw in "But seriously, anyone being executed has already been isolated from the rest of society for a long time, with little danger to the public, so life in prison is clearly an option." They are still capable of murdering, and are still a danger to at least their fellow inmates.
For the record, I think murderers have forsaken their right to life when they take the life of someone who hasn't themselves forsaken that right. Basically a form of radical egalitarianism. Protecting others from harm might be a reason to consider it a duty, but is not directly relevant to whether it's acceptable or not. I don't trust the government to make that judgement though, and I oppose the death penalty on those grounds, except possibly in very extreme cases.
And what of the cases where someone with life in prison murders another inmate?