From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 31 2003 - 20:57:49 MST
On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 07:05:26PM -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:
> skeptical stance when listening to arguments from a Marxian or
> Marxist point of view, than we would if listening to say, an
> explanation of current events from a Hayekian perspective.
> Is it because we sense (or we are just lazy?) that the Hayekian
> analysis will be less jarring to our present perception of the
> world?
To segue off of this: while Marxist prescriptions are bankrupt, I'm not at all
sure Marxist critiques are without value. Or Galbraith's critiques of the
roles of economic power and of demand creation. (I'm equally sure some
critiques called Marxist are in fact without value. Sturgeon's Law.) My
father raised me on "Galbraith and Friedman totally agree about the theory of
perfect competition. But Friedman thinks it's a useful approximation of
reality while Galbraith thinks it's so far off as to be dangerously
misleading." You expressed shock at my moving from libertarianism to (some
other variety of) liberalism; it's basically from the Hayekian analysis (at
admittedly a fairly simple level, since I haven't been diving into these
things) no long explaining my perception of the world-as-it-is. Partly
because either Galbraith or Krugman explained Keynesianism in a way that
really made sense; I think that was my tipping point.
> nothing more than an application of Occam's Razor. Why should
> I attend to sincere and apparently sophisticated arguments from
> a Flat-Earther? The main reason is simply that if he were right,
> then I'd have to start from scratch with almost everything I
> believe!
Yes. I tend to dismiss paranormal claims the same way. Some people seem to
have an array of belief toggles they can switch independently: soul,
afterlife, psi, science stuff, etc. I've got a consilient skeletal view of
the universe, and while it could take a god on the outside, there ain't no
room for souls and magick and psi, they just won't *fit* without a lot of
damage. So fuzzy little things on the edge of statistical significance get
ignored. Now if Talia Winters comes up and reads 10-digit numbers out of my
head I'll start paying attention...
-xx- Damien X-)
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