What are your thoughts about science and religion?

[Kaitlyn]

We make our own bread to avoid corn syrup

Neat.  I hate how they use corn syrup as a substitute for sugar everywhere in the states.  It's a stupid legacy of WWII, compounded by corporate welfare.

Organic does not mean without slaves or chemicals, the USDA has approved the use of that word to accommodate almost everything.

Yep, and people buy into it nevertheless.  That's my biggest reason for opposing "trust me" government regulation - it's corruptible, corrupt, and corrupting.

Buy nothing made in China and use less than a tank of gas a month.

Why shouldn't I buy anything made in China?  Are the Chinese evil?  Are all their products of demonstrably lower quality?  Are they all slaves?  I don't understand - I thought I was doing good by supporting the economic and social liberalization of a country that 'till recently had known nothing but tyranny and stagnation.  Should they go back to communism?  I could boycott the entire country, but that hasn't worked very well against Cuba or Iran, from my perspective.

can never be provided in quantity enough to replace the standard good?

Americans do not need 90% of what they buy. Check out the land fills a quality product does not need to be replaced. It should last a lifetime.

Two issues with this one... first, I wasn't referring to the "durable goods" sort of product, but the idea of all people replacing their consumption of something like... ordinary beef, with ultra-deluxe corn-fed free-range no-hormone beef, or something similar.  It's just not possible.  They can't produce enough.  If it's morally right to support the expensive high-end beef producers, and wrong to support the factory farmers, than a lot of people are going to have to give up eating beef in order to do what's right.  The demand would drive the price up to astronomical levels, with no relief in sight.  All the techniques for making production more efficient would be what drove people away in the first place.  Lots of people would be out a staple food, and the economy as a whole would be out a large amount of productivity.

What needs to be done is pretty simple - the more socially responsible producer needs to come up with some other way to produce, and undercut the mainstream.  Until they do that, it can't be anything more than an indulgence.

Second, the idea that durable goods should last of a lifetime isn't just uneconomical and unrealistic, but ecologically destructive.  If refrigerators made before Energy Star and the switchover from Freon were still around, we'd be a lot worse off.  What if all the cars made without emission control systems were still on the roads?  How high would the price of oil be if lots of older juice-hogging appliances were still plugged into the electrical grid?  Could we have anything like digital radio and TV broadcasts, and cell networks, and wireless Ethernet, if older radio devices and unshielded appliances were still blaring all over the radio spectrum?  I'm convinced that the damage to the ecosystem and our level of technological progress would both have been worse off without the high rate of obsolecence.

[Margaret Ann]

Cognitive dissonance is vastly over rated as a mental corrective for illogical beliefs

See:  Republican Party of the United States of America.


People use reason to justify their irrational beliefs, not to examine them.

See:  Republican Party of the United States of America

I used to have no doubts about that (the irrationality of the right wing). But, I'm afraid irrational beliefs have little to do with right/left politics or right/left ideology. IMO they do have a lot to do, however, with the emotional strength that those beliefs are held to be absolute and true - on either the right or the left.

[Kaitlyn]

Cognitive dissonance is vastly over rated as a mental corrective for illogical beliefs and the behavior they produce. It's based on the false premise that cognition is a greater force in the human mind than emotion.

If those who cling to irrational beliefs ever change their behavior it is because of reality dissonance biting them in the ass. Not because they couldn't handle the "terrible pain" of holding beliefs that obviously did not conform to reality.

People use reason to justify their irrational beliefs, not to examine them.

Just a few scary thoughts that seemed to be lacking in this thread. 

Cognitive dissonance isn't about an idea clashing with reality, but with another idea.  One, both, or neither of the ideas may be based on reality, but that doesn't matter in the abstract.  Take the Arian Heresy, for example.  You can't believe in both Trinitarianism and Arianism simultaneously, not without severe cognitive dissonance.  Ultimately, you've got to reconcile the beliefs somehow.  And neither of them has anything to do with reality .

[Margaret Ann]

Two issues with this one... first, I wasn't referring to the "durable goods" sort of product, but the idea of all people replacing their consumption of something like... ordinary beef, with ultra-deluxe corn-fed free-range no-hormone beef, or something similar.

Just a quick comment. Feeding corn to beef is the problem. Cattle evolved to eat prairie range grass. Corn makes them sick which means they need lots of drugs to counteract that effect. Corn is heavily subsidized and has been since WWII. Cattle producers can't feed them anything else and make the same profit - even factoring in the cost of the drugs. They're stuck on corn. We and the cattle are too.

[Kaitlyn]

Noted, and it shows what I know about the details.  However, the argument still stands.

[tekla]

Yeah the dems are just as bad, just not as worse.

[Kaitlyn]

Right-wing economic ideology is really cool, but nobody on the right seems to believe it.  It's just surreal.

EDIT: Not all of it is cool.  Just the laissez-faire parts.

Posted on: September 22, 2008, 11:13:43 PMThis happens to every thread I post in, eventually.  It turns into some sort of economic or political discussion.  It's not just me, is it?  Did I start this?  I can't remember.

Posted on: September 22, 2008, 11:19:43 PMNo, it was Sherue.  Whew!

[Margaret Ann]

Cognitive dissonance is vastly over rated as a mental corrective for illogical beliefs and the behavior they produce. It's based on the false premise that cognition is a greater force in the human mind than emotion.

If those who cling to irrational beliefs ever change their behavior it is because of reality dissonance biting them in the ass. Not because they couldn't handle the "terrible pain" of holding beliefs that obviously did not conform to reality.

People use reason to justify their irrational beliefs, not to examine them.

Just a few scary thoughts that seemed to be lacking in this thread. 

Cognitive dissonance isn't about an idea clashing with reality, but with another idea.  One, both, or neither of the ideas may be based on reality, but that doesn't matter in the abstract.  Take the Arian Heresy, for example.  You can't believe in both Trinitarianism and Arianism simultaneously, not without severe cognitive dissonance.  Ultimately, you've got to reconcile the beliefs somehow.  And neither of them has anything to do with reality .

Not at all. There are millions of people in the world, even in the advanced Western world, who profess a belief in god but live quite depraved lives according to those standards, just for one example. They are perfectly happy to pull out their god-belief when it comes to telling others how to live their lives. But, I seldom see any of them complaining of some discomfort from the difference between what they profess to belief and how they actually live - until they get caught soliciting a prostitute or in bed with a young boy.

I'd say that reconciling Arianism and Trinitarianism in a single mind would be child's play for someone who would benefit sufficiently from doing so. Beliefs are fueled by emotion, not reason. Make the emotional reward big enough and people will believe any crazy thing - or any crazy combination of things - you can imagine. Like for example, there are many folks in this country today who believe that lowering taxes will increase government revenue - and yet they also believe basic arithmetic, like 3-1=2. If there's a big enough emotional payoff they'll use reason to convince themselves (and us) that both can be true at the same time.

One reason for this is that reality is complex. Real systems, like the US economy is complex enough that virtually any scenario can be proposed and justified with reason. Listen to any conservative talking head discuss fiscal policy. Interestingly, their reason always seems to support lower taxes for the wealthy. Strange that.   

Margi 

Posted on: September 22, 2008, 08:24:46 PM

Noted, and it shows what I know about the details.  However, the argument still stands.

Yeah, your point stands. I just wanted to throw that in. 

[Kaitlyn]

At the risk of making a fool of myself here, I'm going to defend the Laffer curve.  Although right-wingers and supply-siders have all sorts of policy prescriptions based off of it, the idea is sound at its core.  Simply put, on a graph of long-run tax revenue vs the average tax rate, your absolute maximum of revenue isn't found at 100% taxation - that shuts down the economy.  It's somewhere between 0% and 100%, which means it's possible to be in a situation where you can take in more money by lowering taxes.  Really, if you accept that 100% isn't optimal, you already believe in the Laffer curve.

[Margaret Ann]

At the risk of making a fool of myself here, I'm going to defend the Laffer curve.  Although right-wingers and supply-siders have all sorts of policy prescriptions based off of it, the idea is sound at its core.  Simply put, on a graph of long-run tax revenue vs the average tax rate, your absolute maximum of revenue isn't found at 100% taxation - that shuts down the economy.  It's somewhere between 0% and 100%, which means it's possible to be in a situation where you can take in more money by lowering taxes.  Really, if you accept that 100% isn't optimal, you already believe in the Laffer curve.

Noted, and it shows what I know about the details.  However, the argument still stands. 

I couldn't resist that one. However, it is true that wherever we are on the curve the RW prescription is always to move in the direction of lower taxes on the rich.

[Kaitlyn]

The Republicans think that the tax bracket for the wealthy is always on the right side of the maximum.  Maybe they have a retinal curvature.

The Democrats seem to think the graph should average out to a 50% tax rate, with -100% for the first half, and +150% for the second.

Edit: Math, my oldest foe... we meet again.  That should be 75%.

[Margaret Ann]

The Republicans think that the tax bracket for the wealthy is always on the right side of the maximum.  Maybe they have a retinal curvature.

The Democrats seem to think the graph should average out to a 50% tax rate, with -100% for the first half, and +150% for the second.

Good one. Being in the first half, maybe that's why I usually vote Dem. 

Added: Thanks for the good discussion. I'm off to bed to read a new Amazon delivery. I'll check back tomorrow.

Cheers, Margi

[Kaitlyn]

Maybe we can eat the rich when we run out of food .

[tekla]

They don't taste very good.  Too many preservatives, and the limo deal is hard to crunch around too.

[lisagurl]

The reasons not to buy products from China is because they do not provide the same standards we require here. Air, land and water pollution. Unsafe working conditions, slave wages, contaminated products, corruption, trade imbalance, no human rights, we are hypocrites if we demand good conditions for our own people but think that other people of the world are of less value. Not to mention the inefficient transportation energy use. We also are creating a competitor for energy which has drained our economy.

Corn feed beef is one of the major contributors to heart disease, we need to consume less of it. The digital revolution has done very little to improve the quality of life. It has created a monster of stress, energizing the the consumer mentality to make more and enjoy it less. Humans used to entertain each other, now they are lonely zombies watching flickering lights.

[Kaitlyn]

The reasons not to buy products from China is because they do not provide the same standards we require here. Air, land and water pollution. Unsafe working conditions, slave wages, contaminated products, corruption, trade imbalance, no human rights, we are hypocrites if we demand good conditions for our own people but think that other people of the world are of less value. Not to mention the inefficient transportation energy use. We also are creating a competitor for energy which has drained our economy.

If these workers have it so bad, why should I boycott them?  Are these heartless employers going to keep paying their employees when their products aren't selling?  Also, why do you assume that it's realistic for China to suddenly adopt standards of quality and safety that took more than a hundred years to manifest in America, and which were driven by economic progress rather than me-too legislation?  If you don't believe me, check the statistics on child labor in America, and look at when it became illegal.

China isn't to blame for our problems.

The digital revolution has done very little to improve the quality of life. It has created a monster of stress, energizing the the consumer mentality to make more and enjoy it less. Humans used to entertain each other, now they are lonely zombies watching flickering lights.

Tell that to people who are only alive through the marvels of modern technology.  Tell it to the people with pacemakers, or artificial hearts, or the people in electric wheelchairs.  Tell it to those whose lives were saved by CTs or MRIs, or remote arthroscopic surgery, or just the sheer abundance of info at their doctor's fingertips.  Tell it to political dissidents living under hostile regimes.  Tell it to marginalized groups with no other effective means of protest.  Tell it to people who've looked up long-lost friends and relatives.

Tell it to people who've married their Internet sweetheart.

That's just the smallest molecule on the tip of one end of the digital iceberg.  Microprocessors are everywhere.  You know Intel, the PC chip manufacturer?  The things we usually think of as computers (PCs) are small potatoes to them.  More than 90% of their products go into things you'd never think of - microwaves, coffee makers, cars, alarm systems, climate control systems, industrial robotics, etc, etc.  What's truly amazing is that people who have lived without these things were the ones who created them.

[lisagurl]

Microprocessors are everywhere.

We did fine with out them.

remote arthroscopic surgery

A sham for doctors to make money. My knee healed fine without the surgery that the doctor wanted to do.

Tell that to people who are only alive through the marvels of modern technology.

With a poor quality of life that many want to end sooner.

Are these heartless employers going to keep paying their employees

The employees will go back to the farms and have less kids. They may even start a revolution and improve China just as it took place here.

China isn't to blame for our problems.

They are the blame for their problems which we are willing to take advantage of. So in a few years those poor people will be mad at us and create problems for us. Our problems come form the propaganda of marketing the consumer mentality and education controlled by the same ideas.

Tell it to people who've married their Internet sweetheart

People are having trouble making their own alfa brain waves as the TV and Internet have them addicted to beta waves which does not allow them to focus long enough to enjoy life.

Tell it to marginalized groups with no other effective means of protest

Does no one know how to write a letter?

We can do just about everything possible now without spending a large fraction of life with machines and have a better quality of life. It is just that people forgot how and are victims of marketing.

[Kaitlyn]

Tell it to marginalized groups with no other effective means of protest

Does no one know how to write a letter?

"Yes, let's use the government postal service to express our opposition to our tyrannical government.  While we're at it, let's run anti-establishment ads in the state-run news!   They'll never suspect!"

Microprocessors are everywhere.

We did fine with out them.

Tell that to people who are only alive through the marvels of modern technology.

With a poor quality of life that many want to end sooner.

I'll let you in on a secret... I'd have died in the womb without ultrasound, and I don't feel like my life is less worth living because of it.  I would not have been fine without the microprocessor that made the ultrasound unit possible.  I think you're taking a lot for granted.

[cindybc]

**Go back to the horse and buggy age!!** But even then the budding Industrial Revolution had already begun to rear its ugly head.The horse and buggy age they had what is called the "buddy system", like everyone in the neighborhood worked together to help one another.  The many vagrants during the Great Depression were offered free room and board in exchange for providing farm labor for the farmer. "I'll help you build your barn if you help me build my barn," and "I'll lend you my wheelbarrow if you can lend me your shovel."

The advent of the steam locomotive and the internal combustion engine provided more power for the growth of industry.  One train could haul more freight, meats, and groceries, and other consumer goods than 20 freight wagons or stage coaches, and in a lot less time.

Ah then here comes the good old Model T Ford, the wonderful machine to move peeps around the country a good deal faster than the horse and buggy and with more flexibility than the train. The steam locomotive  along with the automobile were both a product of the Industrial Revolution. More and more machinery was invented and produced, swamping the technological industry like it had taken place almost overnight.

We just went along with the then-current technology until modern machinery sneaked-up behind us overnight and kicked us in the britches or bloomers, whichever you prefer. Almost overnight we  became dependent on technology in order to survive. Even if we were to try to go back to living like back in the horse and buggy days the biggest problem is that the necessities of life as well as its comforts are technology-based. In order to survive it would kill to a greater degree the life style we have grown accustomed to. Without it most of those mega farms out there and much of the industry in the big cities would also die for shortage of employees working for them and this, too, would become to be a thing of the past, history, kaput, dust and disarray. This sudden halt in the production of consumer goods would kill off about a third of humanity in the process. Are we ready for that? Will you be one of the survivors? Hmmmmmm, starting to sound like something out of the Bible, isn't it?

It will be like dying of asphyxiation or dying of lack of air.

The only thing that could fix anything is a change in the system which would also not happen without change pain of one type or another, and even then end up with about the same total of deaths.

Cindy   

[lisagurl]

I think you're taking a lot for granted.

It is all the people taking antidepressants that are not taking it seriously.