Conservatives, have you considered the consequences if you're wrong about things like global warming, the economy and the debt ceiling?

As a con man, I wouldn’t say I’m wiser than the “world’s wise men”, but at least I’ve given my most accurate hypothetical analysis of the situation and stuck with it. I think the problem is that we spend too much money on studies that usually don’t prove anything or don’t give solid answers, studies that one could easily have guessed with just some common sense. That’s why I think I’m just as good with my analyses as the PHD climatologist who we fund millions yearly, or the politicians.

While I do think this is a good question, there is an easy way to stand on principle and get around it. In many ways, politics is not really a debate over who is right and who is wrong. It is instead a debate about how we want the world to look and how we want the world to work. For those who think that certain economic or governmental mechanisms are more important than the results they yield, any world generated by their preferred mechanisms is preferable to any world generated by alternative mechanisms. That is, people who truly want the market to decide can be happy with economic collapse just so long as it came about in what they think is “the right way.”

Imagine two painters collaborating on a single work. There are various ways they might come to an impasse. One might insist that a certain element in the painting should be red, while the other might insist that this same element should be blue. This is a debate over how the painting should look. Alternatively, one might argue that the color of the element should be chosen by formalist principles, while the other might argue that aleatoric methods are preferable. This is a debate over how the painting process should work.

In these cases, neither painter has to say that the other painter’s process wouldn’t create a complete painting or even that it would create a bad painting. It is a clash of aesthetic preferences. Similarly, a lot of politics is a clash over equally subjective political preferences. One person prefers a world in which all people have their basic needs met regardless of how they’ve lived their life, even if it means redistributing wealth. Another person prefers a world in which a sizable percentage of the population starves to death because they have not lived a life with the correct balance of fortune and hard work to provide enough wealth for themselves.

Then there are all sorts of positions in between and outside of these (though many political discussions seem to operate on the false premise that those are the only two choices). So while it is definitely worthwhile to take certain debates and point out that one side is a safe choice even if it is fundamentally incorrect about the facts, this will only appeal to people who are interested in making safe choices. Many people are willing to risk safety for their principles, even if those principles are actually subjective preferences. I’m not saying we shouldn’t argue, but only that what we’re doing is more about persuasion than truth.

I happen to think that there’s a lot to be said for the theory of “global warming,” but as far as the debt ceiling and the economy go, I truly believe that my position is the correct one. I don’t take a position on anything which doesn’t make sense to me, and I am always ready to alter my stance in the face of valid evidence which indicates I should. I often worry about liberals on this score though.

Part of the overall problem is that partisans tend to believe whatever their respective parties say, without full consideration of the facts.

Thanks to @SavoirFaire for educating me on biases. Here are some that are applicable for this subject, to name a few.

Confirmation Bias

Bandwagon Effect

Hostile Media Effect

Anchoring

Focusing Effect

Regardless of the BS reasons for disrespecting our environment, I think we should take the safe, thoughtful approach.

@rOs

Those fallicies and biases affect liberals and conservatives alike, not just conservatives.

@CaptainHarley Never said they didn’t! As a non-partisan I believe both parties are nothing more than propaganda machines. Being the classy guy I am, I’ll invoke the old addage, “Same shit, different pile!”

LOL! Nice saying. : ))

The problem is, I hypothesize, in making these issues political. Logic, science and debate, if effective are by necessity apolitical. Thus making the subjects conservative or liberal are by definition leading to compartmentalized answers to complex subjects. Somehow it has been derived that liberals believe in climate change and conservatives do not, or should not. I have always believed that science is superior to political groups and their biases and is the direction to solve the problems you cite. But science itself has become so political the lines become blurred and thus the general public, the non-experts you cite, do indeed challenge the science as it has become political. So, if you are liberal, and paint yourself in that group, is irrelevant and actually unhelpful in solving the very matters you so well delineate in the description of your query. I suggest that even a subject like the debt ceiling being some sort of catastrophic event, or not, is just rhetoric as the real effect is unknown. Those who disagree with your belief it should be raised may or may not have the motivations you present. Either way, in retrospect, one can argue the same non-ending loop of futility of whatever the decision is made. It is time for people to get off that treadmill of inuendo and politics as the world deserves better.

@MRSHINYSHOES There was a great lecture on the validity of studies you should catch. What you say is true. Not all studies yield valid results. As this lecture points out, almost all published research studies are wrong. But anybody that thinks gut instincts are a superior tool to science is way more wrong, and has no real understanding of the scientific method and its power. Watch the lecture. Without studies, we’d still logically think the Earth is flat, and the Sun, planet and stars still revolve around it. We’d still think disease, famines and drought are the work of witches,; and be executing kids and women for being possessed by demons. Sometimes it is necessary to check how well the real world corresponds with gut instincts.

@SavoirFaire Excellent point. There truly are those who are willing toburn a house down around them if they are certain enough that the house itself is evil. But I think we;‘ll find that most of the Tea Party populists angry as Hell at evil gubment and ready to destroy it will be the loudest mouthed complainers when they manage to bring the economy down on their own heads. They will deny any blame for what they just got done doing, and claim it was all someone else’s fault.

Bear in mind that the consequences acssociated with the three issues above are far more dire than the choice between a good painting, a bad painting, or no painting at all. The Global Warming deniers may find that their intransigence has brought on a climatic calamity which may threaten the very existence of the human race and indeed many of the species alive today. What benefit can that yeild in “Doing it the right way?”

@CaptainHarley I don’t know what your position on the debt ceiling question is. If it is that it’s inconsequential can you name any major nation states who have deliberately refused to pay their bills even though capable of doing so and found it went well for them. It’s clear as crystal what the experts in economics, finance, banking and big business have to say. But if there is contrary evidence around, I’d like to hear about it.

@dannyc One can argue about reality, but that never delays its arrival. Those who didn’t believ there could be a great dust-bowl in the 1930s were not privy to a wonderful climate while belivers walked around in endless clouds of dust and surveyed failed crops. It affected believers and non-believers exactly alike; and all soon came to realize that reality exists outside of and above rhetoric.

True.

@ETpro I’m not dismissing all studies, but it seems that many just re-hash what people already know and predict. Just the other day, I read in the paper about how asthma cases are on the rise due to increased pollution. I could have told you that! It seems researchers are wasting our money studying about things that need not be studied, and can better spend their time focussing on things not well researched.

@MRSHINYSHOES I’m not about to argue that there are silly studies done. But one on linking air pollution to asthma is far from silly. If enough research shows a causal link between air polution and human health problems, that gives government ammunition to pursue regulation. Remember, there are a large and loud lobby out there that claim to favor freedom—but that means corporation’s freedom to do anything in pursuit of higher profits, and your freedom to breathe the foul air and drink the putrid water their profits require.

@ETpro But the fact that there have been so much research on certain topics, and the government STILL does not do anything, confirms my belief that such studies are indeed wasteful. For example, there have been countless studies on how television/movie violence negatively affects children, yet the government has done little if anything, to regulate the level of violence in entertainment. As a matter of fact, in the past 40 years, the regulations imposed in movie theatres and on DVD sales has become much more “lax” in its ratings. Forty years ago, there were a few but strictly defined ratings——General, Parental Guidance, and Restricted. Now there’s like 5 or 6 different ratings, so obscure and ill-defined that even teenagers can watch a movie in a theatre today that 40 years ago would have been deemed “Restricted” for adults!

See the irrationality behind it?

@MRSHINYSHOES Government is not science, it is politics. It is driven by many forces which are economic, idealistic, moralistic, or just plain irratonal. That does nothing to make the acquisition of knowledge useless. If we’d followed that logic in the dark ages, we’d still be dying in droves when the plague sweeps through, and buring people at the stake for sorcery causing the plague.