Lunch at the Labs

Politics

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Trump's Economic Team of Rivals

  The incoming president's advisers are all over the ideological map.

  It will be hard, and indeed structurally impossible, to reconcile the views on this team. The equivalent in foreign policy would be appointing a group comprised of isolationists, interventionists, realists and moralists. Something's got to give. How to square deregulation with abiding by environmental standards, as Cohn favors? How to square tariffs on imports designed to boost domestic production (Navarro and Ross) with the free flow of capital (Kudlow)? How to balance deconstructing Obamacare without price gouging and chaos in the health-care system that will surely hurt the working class that supported Trump? How to balance punitive tariffs with affordable goods? How to start mini-trade wars without the costs falling on, say, Walmart shoppers? How to juxtapose tax cuts that will benefit the 1% with the need to boost wages and employment for millions of disgruntled workers and unemployed who see Trump as a best last chance to turn things around?
  
  The answer is that you can't. If Trump's goal is to create tension and conflict and see who emerges bloodied but victorious from the fighting, he's setting up one hell of a battle.

• Why Did Planned Parenthood Supporters Vote Trump?

  It's far from certain that these people, or others like them, will turn on Trump when and if he goes after reproductive rights. If the reality of his plans didn't penetrate during the campaign, there's no reason to think the reality of his policies will penetrate afterward, at least for those who aren't directly and immediately impacted. If support for Planned Parenthood was a serious priority for these voters, they wouldn't have voted for Trump in the first place. Nevertheless, there is a lesson here. If Democrats ever want to regain power, they don't need to wedge Trump away from the Republican Party. They need to yoke him to it. These voters might be OK with Trump talking about grabbing women by the pussies. What they didn't know is that they were voting for the federal government to do it.

• Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives

  TED Talk -- video and transcript.
  Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most."
  

  But also read Chris Hedges critical review The Righteous Road to Ruin of Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

• Yes, people really are turning away from democracy

  Public attitudes toward democracy, we show, have soured over time. Citizens, especially millennials, have less faith in the democratic system. They are more likely to express hostile views of democracy. And they vote for anti-establishment parties and candidates that disregard long-standing democratic norms in ever greater numbers.

  1. It's not just that one graph
  2. Young citizens are more critical of democracy than they used to be
  3. Citizens have grown more disenchanted with democracy over time
• The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere

  While the days of its worst behavior are long behind it, the United States does have a well-documented history of interfering and sometimes interrupting the workings of democracies elsewhere. It has occupied and intervened militarily in a whole swath of countries in the Caribbean and Latin America and fomented coups against democratically elected populists.

  I wonder what's the evidence that the United States has stopped. Although not an instance of interfering with an election, given the recent stuxnet computer worm I kind of doubt it.

• Scott Adams: The Non-Expert Problem and Climate Change Science

  Victor Venema, scientist studying variability, responds to Scott Adams.

  • Scott Adams assertion: 1 It seems to me that a majority of experts could be wrong whenever you have a pattern that looks like:
    1. A theory has been "adjusted" in the past to maintain the conclusion even though the data has changed. For example, "Global warming" evolved to "climate change" because the models didn't show universal warming.
    

    The terms Global Warming and Climate Change are both used for decades

  • Scott Adams assertion: 2. Prediction models are complicated. When things are complicated you have more room for error. Climate science models are complicated.

    Climate models are not essential for basic understanding

  • Scott Adams assertion: 3. The models require human judgment to decide how variables should be treated. This allows humans to "tune" the output to a desired end. This is the case with climate science models.

    Model tuning not important for basic understanding

  • Scott Adams assertion: 4. There is a severe social or economic penalty for having the "wrong" opinion in the field. As I already said, I agree with the consensus of climate scientists because saying otherwise in public would be social and career suicide for me even as a cartoonist. Imagine how much worse the pressure would be if science was my career.

    The consensus is a result of the evidence

  • Scott Adams assertion: 5. There are so many variables that can be measured -- and so many that can be ignored -- that you can produce any result you want by choosing what to measure and what to ignore. Our measurement sensors do not cover all locations on earth, from the upper atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean, so we have the option to use the measurements that fit our predictions while discounting the rest.

    Scientists consider and weigh all the evidence

  • Scott Adams assertion: 6. The argument from the other side looks disturbingly credible.

    Arguments from the other side only look credible