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Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)
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Edwin



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I am reminded of the protagonist in the History Man and his singular definition of sociology, according to his own prevailing thoughts at the time which he projected as being the "only correct", by the claims for what AE is or does.

It is of course perfectly possible to have what might be assumed to be Right or Left wing views which have been worked out from first principles.

Take the author of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists for example and tell me that he received a brainwashing from the media to hold to the points he made. Now you might say that everyone after him is so influenced one way or the other by his and others "left-wing" propaganda that they cannot think clearly for themselves but that is to confuse sequence for yielding to authority. This mistake appears right throughout the Library
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Mick Harper
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So, let me see if I have it correct, Edwin. The left position is in some sense 'true' and it is not a coincidence that you happen also to be 'left'. The reason that you have arrived at this 'true' position is because of some superiority on your part (or possibly a fortunate brainwashing, too early exposure to Ragged Trousered Philanthropists etc, you can tell us).

This leaves two small points for you to clear up.
1. How is it that you are superior to millions of people who, to outsiders, seem very similar to you in terms of possession of data, brain power, moral values etc etc and yet have arrived at a right-wing position? and
2. How is that millions of people who, to outsiders, seem markedly inferior to you in terms of possession of data, brain power, moral values etc etc but have yet managed to arrive at roughly the same political position as you?
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GrouchoMarxthespot



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The left position is in some sense 'true' and it is not a coincidence that you happen also to be 'left'. The reason that you have arrived at this 'true' position is because of some superiority on your part (or possibly a fortunate brainwashing, too early exposure to Ragged Trousered Philanthropists etc, you can tell us).


Far far too complacent an attack Harpo.

Right/left can be more than one thing at a time, (annoyingly).

They can indeed be a comforting prism through which to view the world, (God knows - Catholic - I should know).

Equally they can contain a grain of truth. I am no lover of the right, and their naive neo-cons (see Graham Greene, The Quiet American), but some truths are contained in even right wing beliefs: and therein lies the issue.

They are beliefs, not knowledge: I might order someone to believe something, but I cannot order someone to understand something.

You are confusing belief and knowledge, and engaging in a criticism of a belief that is not justified - it is just that, a preference when a question arises.
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Edwin



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To detect an air of superiority in others smacks to me of an inferiority complex. Tell me this isn't the basis of your AE. That you realise or fear that you can never be the intellectual equal of the linguists, earth scientists and even reasoning lefties et al that you affect to despise.

Fortunately I know my limitations as my recent rubbish performance in a well-known quiz show will illustrate in due course.
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Mick Harper
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Are you saying, Edwin,. that you decline to answer my two questions?
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GrouchoMarxthespot



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He is wrong about all three
.

Why so hungry to prove the convenient beliefs of others wrong?

And convenient is exactly the right word.

If the AE enterprise is only about a neo Logical Positivist metaphysical debunking of widely held convenient thoughts then you have missed the point.

Beliefs are about sentiment - there is no mileage in de-bunking sentimental beliefs, except where they masquerade as science.

Beliefs is what they are.

Surely an AE would ask quite different questions, not least as to why they persist, and the value they offer.

You've come to the wrong place


Again?
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Mick Harper
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I don't mind you two forming a left-wing tag team against me but you must both try harder to be more technical. Your posts especially, Groucho, are getting silly -- your last one on Questions of the Day was quite incomprehensible (repost). Edwin, try to answer my two questions, you will find it useful. That is you will find it useful that you will not be able to.

Please remember I am here to teach you wisdom and the sole reason for your joint animus is that I don't share your political position and you labour under the assumption that people who don't are, as a matter of definition, some combination of less knowledgeable, less moral and/or less intelligent than you.

This is pretty unlikely in my case if you really think about it. And never forget, you don't actually know what my political position is.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
This is pretty unlikely in my case if you really think about it. And never forget, you don't actually know what my political position is.


Too easy.

I never engage with Marxists without first informing them I'm a Nazi.
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Edwin



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. No claim as to superiority. Baffles me why some people come to different conclusions from the same facts perhaps the Sphinx could say.

No capitalist that I know of wants untramelled market forces either so it is a matter of degree. Few of them want fellow citizens starving in the gutter but their solutions might be different from mine. However we do have a problem in that it seems for Lefty covers a package that you seem unable to divide up into it constituent parts so you believe you know what the response will be from whoever you label as Lefty or Righty.

In Margaret Thatcher's case I suspect her opinions were the effect of her alderman father going on about socialist iniquities and her whole political life was an effort to please him. My own may be the result of upbringing but if you start from the premise that market forces must be curtailed then it is a matter of degree.

2. "Tisn't fair" is a logical conclusion that can be reached by someone with a low IQ as easily as by someone with a high IQ. But maybe the lower brain-powered individual is less likely to be distracted from the main point that we live in a world of scarce resources but that cooperation can make this less critical.
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Edwin



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If one can solve logic puzzles more easily than another person this doesn't mean superiority just more ability with logic puzzles. So if I ask the old one about two aliens (Blue faced and Green faced, one will lie and the other tell the truth) each standing in front of a door one of which leads to safety are you superior if you come up with the right question.

But am I more superior if I catch out the questioner by adding an extra element revealed only after the question has been compose? For example, that they might be wearing differently coloured masks or would I be just a know-it-all arsehole?

Applying this to the puzzle of economics different solutions cannot imply superiority or inferiority. They are just different solutions arrived at by research, authority, upbringing etc as is every product of the mind even Mike's book on Anglo-Saxon as a foreign language.

Incidentally I still enjoy reading my secondhand copy, best 50p I have spent in a long time.
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Mick Harper
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Baffles me why some people come to different conclusions from the same facts

Then this must apply to you. You should be baffled as to why you come to any particular conclusion since you are a person who has come to a different conclusion on the same set of facts.

No capitalist that I know of wants untramelled market forces either so it is a matter of degree. Few of them want fellow citizens starving in the gutter but their solutions might be different from mine.

You don't know any capitalists. This is the kind of false categorisation that people with fixed political positions are obliged to go in for. [This is an important AE subject which I shall go into at another date.] This is why you are obliged to use slippery phrases like "a matter of degree". And of course it is not true that few capitalists want their fellow-citizens to starve -- none of them do. But I will send you a cheque for anybody you care to name.

However we do have a problem in that it seems for Lefty covers a package that you seem unable to divide up into it constituent parts so you believe you know what the response will be from whoever you label as Lefty or Righty.

Not me, bub. You describe yourself that way. My arguments apply to any kind of Lefty (or any kind of Righty or any kind of Centrist). All Lefties (and Righties and Centrists) claim they are personally unique in their Lefty-ism (or R-ism or C-ism).

In Margaret Thatcher's case I suspect her opinions were the effect of her alderman father going on about socialist iniquities and her whole political life was an effort to please him. My own may be the result of upbringing but if you start from the premise that market forces must be curtailed, then it is a matter of degree.

So you are perceptive enough to understand that you and Margaret Thatcher are identical in the well-springs of your beliefs. I see that you have awarded yourself that slippery get-out clause "matter of degree" again. I've just rung Mrs T and she says it's always a matter of degree.

2. "Tisn't fair" is a logical conclusion that can be reached by someone with a low IQ as easily as by someone with a high IQ. But maybe the lower brain-powered individual is less likely to be distracted from the main point that we live in a world of scarce resources but that co-operation can make this less critical.

I think you are saying that less intelligent people are more likely to be left-wing. A reasonable observation though more for the factors that correlate with intelligence rather than intelligence itself, I would have thought.

But anyway surely more intelligent but right wing people would therefore have no difficulty spotting that "we live in a world of scarce resources but that co-operation can make this less critical" as well. Or are you saying that intelligence distracts people from seeing things which even less intelligent people can see? A truly awesome discovery if true.
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Ishmael


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Edwin wrote:
No capitalist that I know of wants untramelled market forces either...


You don't know many of us then do you.

Thought not.

All your friends agree with you. Come on. 'Fess up.
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Ishmael


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Edwin wrote:
....but if you start from the premise that market forces must be curtailed then it is a matter of degree.


Who the fuck would start from such a premise?

Exactly.

...the main point that we live in a world of scarce resources...l.


But we don't.

Or is that another premise?
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Edwin



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There is a mystery of omnipotence here in that you "know" that I don't know any capitalists. Or have I got that wrong in that I know nobody that you would define as a capitalist according to your own secret formula?
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Brian Ambrose



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Edwin, there's no mystery. There are some people who actually believe that it is the constant urge to curtail ultimately irresistible market forces that is at the root of many of the world's problems (witness the increasingly desperate measures being invoked to prevent the market from dealing with the debt crisis, for example). When a person applies this belief to solving real-world problems and the immediate resultant effects are considered, the automatic response is to regard that person as an uncaring monster. Certainly, as a caring person you would not want to know one of them, and it only takes a little omnipotence to know that you don't.

But I wonder if, as you have demonstrated, 'capitalist' is now too imprecise a word for clarity of discussion. Perhaps it has indeed come to mean just an extremely rightwing lefty. I suppose Nazi (as suggested by Ishmael) is sufficiently distasteful to convey the full horror, but I don't like the misleading impression it gives. How about 'untramellist' instead? You don't know any untramellists, do you? There, sorted.
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