skepolitical

Last week on Science Friday, Ira Flatow and three guests discussed the idea of having a Presidential Science Debate, or at least sneaking some science questions into a regular debate. This blend of skepticism and politics seems like the perfect topic for me to cover in order to make up for the less-than-entirely-political topic I covered last time. Science and skepticism go hand-in-hand, with science being a sort of a formalized way of overriding our “System 1” biases and inclinations, and it doesn’t get much more political than a discussion of Presidential Debates. The panel discussed the need for both scientific questions in the debates and more politicians who are scientists.

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As a “skeptic” it’s important to know the limits of one’s own knowledge and powers of prognostication.  One good way to hedge your bets when it comes to making predictions is to use provisional words like “I believe” or “there’s a good chance”, etc.  Sometimes when I write I neglect to couch my prognostications in such open ended terms, and a more pedantic or critical reader would be quick to take issue with this semantic choice.  And that’s a fair criticism. But it’s not a criticism I really care about b/c I don’t mind admitting when I’m wrong.  In fact, I actually like being wrong b/c it means I have an opportunity to learn why I was wrong.

Anyways, when I talk about the European Debt Crisis, in particular the Greek debt crisis, I say things like “it’s inevitable that Greece will exit the EU”.  Obviously though, I know it’s not “certain” that Greece will end up exiting the EU. In a recent post I included Intrade odds of any country leaving the EU which were well short of 100%, so I know there’s still a chance that Greece can remain in the EU.   Continue reading → (12)

The passage of a new constitutional amendment banning civil unions and same sex marriages, coupled w/ a comment by one of my fellow skeptics at this blog, has inspired me to write a post about some of the biggest civil rights transgressions the Tar Heel State (North Carolina) has committed in its 220+ years.  Some of them are obvious (e.g. slavery), but some may surprise, not only by how extreme they were, but by how esoteric it seems their existence was (i.e. growing up in Wilmington, I was NEVER taught about the insurrection of 1898, nor were my parents, nor was anyone I know of…) Continue reading → (3)

A long, cumbersome title for my first post after a long, cumbersome absence….

A week or so ago, my home state, the state where I live, voted for enshrining discrimination in our state constitution.  However, I’m very interested to see if our national constitution will make this codification of prejudice a moot point. Continue reading → (2)

A truly significant cultural event occurred this week in America: our President declared his belief that homosexual couples should be allowed to marry. As Glenn Greenwald points out in an Op-Ed in the Guardian, this was unthinkable twenty or thirty years ago, when homosexuality was still punishable by death in some states. That the mainstream American position on gay rights has evolved so significantly is a genuine inspiration to those of us who sometimes despair at the seemingly impossible task of pushing America towards better ethical leadership and policy. Continue reading → (1)

I’ve been neglecting posting on this blog, but I have been having an interesting discussion in the comments about the economics post and, specificially, about the tragedy of the commons. Here is my most recent comment. A real post will be forthcoming by the end of the week… Continue reading → (0)

To further pin down what I mean by “socialist” and “capitalist”, but to also risk creating a false dichotomy of sorts, I essentially mean that socialism and capitalism are opposite ends of an economic continuum.  On the socialist end the “community” owns the capital (i.e. anything you can use to create stuff with), and on the capitalism end just one person could own it all.  To put it another way, at the socialist end of the spectrum the community decides how to allocate resources, and on the capitalism end of the spectrum, market forces (e.g. supply, demand, prices) decide how to best allocate resources. Continue reading → (4)

I’ve wanted to write about how to apply skepticism to economic schools of thought for a while.  I’ve also just wanted to write about economic schools of thought for a while.  Like 10+ years “a while”.  But the conversation I want to have, the post I want to write, could easily turn into a monograph if I wasn’t too lazy to do all the research it’d take to write it appropriately.  But I am too lazy to do that.  At least right now.  Maybe if I had some adderall…but I don’t.

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Comcast has a new video streaming service on XBox Live which will not count towards Comcast internet subscriber’s 250GB/month data limit.  The service will be provided over Comcast’s “private IP [internet protocol] network and not the public internet.”

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