Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
There are many parallels between the Jonathan Gruber story and what has occurred in climate science. Gruber used a computer model to produce justification for a US national healthcare system. This parallels the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) use of computer models produced to justify the need for international climate control. They both claim their models are accurate and solid as the basis for draconian policy changes. They both fail to understand that playing with models in a university requires they satisfy research and scientific standards. We don’t know if they do, because so much of what they produce that is critical to proper analysis, such as computer codes, is proprietary. Gruber’s models are proprietary, even if the taxpayer pays him and they are the basis for public policy. They both fail to understand that a different set of standards and responsibilities are applied when you take your lab work in to the public forum.
From The University To the Real World
There are social consequences, as Gruber discovered when he appeared before Congress on December 9, 2014. Paul Driessen has written on the consequences often on WUWT. Gruber’s appearance underscored the distance between academia and the real world. It is a distance I have experienced and confronted during my 25-year academic career. A distance demonstrated by Gruber and throughout the 6000 emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and countless other horror stories that never reach the public.
I was aware of this distance as a mature student going back to university after military service. I experienced the distance as a faculty member and did many things to bring the world into the university for students. It is a gap academia wants to exist, because if people knew how little they do and what is actually going on, funding would be mostly withdrawn. Faculty does very little teaching. They produce very little research, most of which is to further their career. Other faculty members judge their performance, in a truly incestuous, backbiting system. I could fill a book with my personal knowledge of faculty and academic horror stories.
A colleague (?) at the university where I taught said, in a discussion about teaching, that he was a professor, not a teacher. If the students didn’t understand what he professed, that was their problem, not his. Faculty is hired on the basis of university qualifications, which is usually a doctorate in a very specialized area of research. They are not required to have any training in teaching and may only have a smattering of experience after being graduate students. It appears politicians are the only group in society less qualified for a major part of their job, than university professors. The Department chair told me I was an entertainer, to which I replied, if the students don’t attend or fall asleep, the lecture is a waste of time. Gruber implies he was forced to deceive because the public is stupid and wouldn’t understand. No Sir, the failure is your ability to communicate the truth. Worse, your argument is designed to cover a deliberate deception and that you did well. The IPCC achieved the same deceptions with their Summary for Policymakers (SPM).
Universities abhor the demand for relevance and accountability. Look at the cover-ups they participated in with regard to information exposed by the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). What they fear is exposure to the real world of how little is actually going on. Most of what they do is perpetuate the secrecy and thus maintain their unique and bizarre world.
I fought this darkness through my time in the university. I hung a picture frame with no picture on my office window with a label that said, The Real World”. I never gave a lecture without starting with a news item that related to what we were studying in the course. I gave all my own lectures and set and marked all my own exams and papers. I served on many committees at all levels of government for real world experience. I apologized to one class about not having as many office hours as I would like because of these commitments. The students said they appreciated that their professor had credibility in the real world. Besides, they appreciated the real world examples I brought into the classroom. For example, in a water resources class, the class project involved participation in a commission of inquiry over conflict about a real lake. The students were divided into small groups representing different segments of those affected. In the last week of the course they made presentations to me as the Commission. I also organized a Toastmasters group on campus because most students would need these skills in their careers in the real world. I visited schools and invited high school classes to sit in on my university classes. My department told me that all these activities were a waste of my time, yet I produced more research most years than for the entire department.
Universities Are Self–created, Self-perpetuating, Anachronistic Systems.
The reality is that university education is not for everybody. Despite that society makes the assumption that every child entering kindergarten will end up in university. This, by default, makes failures of a majority of society. Even for those who get in, most students just passing with a C average, are simply getting grades 13, 14, and 15, in what is really only a socially acceptable form of unemployment. Meanwhile the majority, with a multitude of other talents needed in society, is denigrated and made to feel inferior by the academic community. Consider Gruber’s arrogance. Besides, most faculty members only tolerate students in order to maintain funding to protect their jobs. Using graduate students to do their teaching is an abrogation of their teaching responsibility, but they get away with it. I heard one faculty member say, if we could just get rid of the students this would be a great place to work. But it is academics who set up and maintain the system. They decide on what is a valuable type of intelligence and impose that on society. To my knowledge there is no university or college that offers a course in common sense. If they did they would have to bring a person from outside to teach it.
There are few better examples of academic arrogance and their belief that the end justifies the means than in a series of recorded presentations featuring Jonathan Gruber. In one of the academic presentations, the audience laughed in sympathy with Gruber’s portrayal of the people as stupid. The end was establishment of the Affordable Health Care (Obamacare) plan. He was recorded on many occasions referring to the deceptions taken to fool a stupid public, who were incapable of understanding economics that were simple for his superior brain and abilities. In Congressional testimony, forced by public and political reaction, he apologized for his remarks, but insisted the end was still worth it. No it isn’t! If it were, it wouldn’t need the deception.
In his article “Give Gruber a Break”, Charles Battig describes Economist Gruber’s views and statements as being normal in the academic world. After 25 years of grappling with that world, I agree, but know that most people don’t know what is “normal” in the so – called Ivory Tower. Remember, the communications within the leaked emails was defined as normal scientific banter. As Clive Crook explained,
The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker said, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu. It goes to the core of that process.
This and my experiences support the Wikipedia definition of the Ivory Tower.
From the 19th century, it has been used to designate a world or atmosphere where intellectuals engage in pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life. It usually carries pejorative connotations of a willful disconnect from the everyday world: esoteric, over-specialized, or even useless research, and academic elitism.
It fits my experience as a student, graduate student and faculty member. The phrase that an idea is, “purely academic” means it is irrelevant to the real world. I can make these judgments because of work experience in government, private business, industry, and the military. I joked about retiring from academia because there was so much scar tissue on my back, there was no place left to put a knife. Academics want the scars they inflict to remain visible. Many have written for centuries about the vicious and nasty politics of universities as Battig identified.
Overall universities are a fraud. How much longer before a student at Harvard sues for false advertising? They go, expecting courses from professors, but end up with graduate students giving the class. These graduate students are indentured servants working for very low wages and little different from serfs, which is appropriate, because universities are mediaeval institutions being dragged kicking and screaming into the 18th century. If you want to see vestiges of the medieval, witness the Elizabethan gowns and hats they wear at convocations. I am no fan of Prince Philip, but maybe as a vestige of medievalism himself, he recognizes what is going on when he said universities are the only true incestuous system in our society. Almost everybody who is working there is a product. Most executives, presidents, vice presidents and Deans and middle management positions, such as department chairs, are academics. How many are given the welcoming lecture that this is not job training, other than in professional schools like law and medicine, but then never told what it is doing.
Economist John Maynard Keynes said,
Education: The inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
He should know because he is the economist who convinced politicians that you get out of debt by going further in to debt. Gruber says people are too stupid to understand economics. Maybe, but they know better than Gruber or Keynes, that economics is purely and simply the balance between money coming in and going out – nothing more. What is even more galling about Gruber is, he knows the public understand this. It is why he admitted hiding the truth that with Obamacare generally more goes out than comes in for individuals and for government.
Failed Predictions; A Measure Of Disconnect.
There is a basic reason why economic predictions fail and it relates to Gruber’s assumption that people are stupid. He thinks they will react in a certain way because he, in his brilliance, has designed a system that forces their reaction. A scientific prediction is either right or wrong. When an economic prediction is made, people, especially the influential, react and modify their behavior, almost always invalidating the prediction. Welcome to the real world, Mr. Gruber. IPCC has done the same. They assumed nature and people would function and react in a certain way. Increased CO2 would result in increasing temperatures. Both were assuming ceteris paribus, but it never is because of feedbacks in nature and human behavior.
Gruber accused people of not understanding economics. He should consider that it has long been known as “the dismal science”, so-named by Thomas Carlyle, because of the failed predictions of Thomas Malthus. This provides a connection to the current failed climate predictions of the IPCC, which are neo-Malthusian. The Club of Rome expanded the idea that overpopulation would exhaust food resources and all resources. Maurice Strong, in Agenda 21, at the 1992 Rio Conference, narrowed the focus to the industrial nations. Reducing their impact was achieved by “scientifically” identifying CO2 as their exhaust and falsely claiming it was causing run away global warming.
This identification of a single variable, as almost the sole cause, also aligns climate science with economics. It is said that economic predictions fail because they try to predict the tide by measuring one wave. The IPCC have done the same thing by using the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) to oversimplify, exaggerate and misrepresent what the science actually shows.
My presentations at three Heartland Climate Conferences all spoke to the failure to communicate the skeptical side of global warming. At the first Heartland in New York, only a few in the audience came up after and acknowledged what I actually said. They were all non-scientists, but also communicators. One in particular, Marita Noon, was also in attendance at the 2014 Heartland in Las Vegas; we spent considerable time discussing the issue of helping the public understand. Marita has focused on and done a very good job with the energy sector, who often know the science is bad, but is in no position to voice or act on that. In New York, I pointed out that Al Gore’s movie was a superb piece of propaganda that would likely make Leni Riefenstahl proud. Gore employed Hollywood to produce, because they know how to manipulate people’s emotions. Gore’s Oscar was justified, based on Hollywood values.
The Enemy Within
Judith Curry wrote a revealing summary of reflections on the fifth anniversary of Climategate. It references an early Curry commentary on Steve Mcintyre’s site titled, “On the credibility of climate research.” In that article Curry provides examples of Ivory Tower thinking.
Climate tribalism. Tribalism is defined here as a strong identity that separates one’s group from members of another group, characterized by strong in-group loyalty and regarding other groups differing from the tribe’s defining characteristics as inferior. In the context of scientific research, tribes differ from groups of colleagues that collaborate and otherwise associate with each other professionally.
After becoming more knowledgeable about the politics of climate change (both the external politics and the internal politics within the climate field), I became concerned about some of the tribes pointing their guns inward at other climate researchers who question their research or don’t pass various loyalty tests.
I am grateful for Judith Curry’s experience and explanation of them. It illustrates the Ivory Tower situation well, and how those within can’t or don’t want to see what is going on. It all seems “normal”. It is another carry over of the medieval situation in universities, when they effectively won the “town and gown” battle and generally, only go to town if funding is threatened. Curry appears to have stumbled on the realities of academia and what was going on in the outside world in climate science. In the true spirit of open debate Curry commendably welcomed Steve McIntyre to her university, Georgia Tech, in 2008. Ms. Curry knew the debate wasn’t over and the science wasn’t settled. It appears the reactions Ms. Curry experienced were a surprise and a revelation. As McIntyre explained,
Readers of this blog should realize that Judy Curry has been (undeservedly) criticized within the climate science community for inviting me to Georgia Tech.
Until you push back against the tribe, you have no idea how hard and nasty they react. Often the worst reactions come from within academia. The false information on the web about me came from a former colleague. Another wrote a three-page letter, that a lawyer said was libelous, saying I had no right to be on radio, television or speaking in public.
Beyond that, it appears that I am a challenge for alarmists because they couldn’t say I wasn’t qualified, although they tried, and I was able to explain complex climate science in ways the public understood. The latter ability was honed by teaching a science credit for arts students, making a multitude of public presentations, co-authoring a climate textbook, publishing peer-reviewed articles, and teaching climatology to large (300+) classes for 25 years. I knew my colleagues saw my teaching ability as a handicap. They assume teaching and research are mutually exclusive.
I am not surprised by the inability of climate skeptics to communicate with the real world. They are, for the most part, products of the Ivory Tower. They have all the problems associated, further complicated by an inability to compete, because the climate claims of the IPCC are political, not scientific.
It is time to close most universities, or better still convert them to trade training. If society really wants more equity and an education that meets its needs, then society must consider a tradesperson of more value than an economist or most other university graduates. Most societies, that the academics would call “primitive”, prepare their children for the real world. For the most part, we don’t.
A professor is a man whose job is to tell students how to solve problems of life, which he himself has tried to avoid by becoming a professor.
Anonymous.
A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.
W.H.Auden.
Education: that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Ambrose Bierce
You can always tell a Harvard man – but you can’t tell him much.
Elbert Hubbard.
The reason universities are so full of knowledge is that students come with so much and leave with so little.
Marshall McLuhan
I used to be in awe of professors. But having been 30 years in the real world, and having had many arguments with them, I hold them in nothing but contempt.
It never ceases to amze me how they can see every leaf and twig, in the finest of detail, but have never seen a forest and have no idea what one is.
Ralph
How much does the artificiality of tenure enable the development of the arrogant personality of Gruber’s intellect, the Gruber-glibberish.
Here’s another: “The reason academic disputes are so bitter is because so little is at stake.”
And as for Harvard, just this week we witnessed the perfect storm of moral decadence, political correctness, organizational enablement, contemptible wussiness, academic irrelevance and illogical emotionalism. You just *cannot* make this stuff up:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/12/12/primal-scream-protest-chaotic-exchange/
Never has the saying of William F. Buckley been more spot on: “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” No further explanation is needed.
Some random thoughts:
My main take-away from this article is that when scientific data is used to guide public policy, it needs more demanding validation than mere peer review and academic acceptance. When scientific pronouncements are used to drive million/billion/trillion dollar policy decisions like health, energy, or climate policy, the science becomes public financial data. The good ole boys club is not adequate to ensure its reliability. Scientific content which is a material factor in public policy decisions needs to be subjected to the same type of controls as corporate financial data, including transparency, independence, version control, and scrutiny by audit.
Some other observations, just because I have some first hand experience around the periphery of this topic –
o About a decade ago, when completing my masters thesis as a part time brick & mortar student and full time business professional, I was struck by the antiquated nature of the university bureaucracy. I was very frustrated that I had to take time off of work and drive to campus and trudge all around the property from office to office in order to accomplish things that I should have been able to do online in minutes. The school was at least a decade behind the business sector. A competitive business still clinging to these practices at the time would have failed. I suspect that the ivory tower is enabled only because it is backstopped by public funds.
o My current university, an online school, emphasizes the scholar-practitioner role that they target for their PhD graduates. They’re apparently not looking to perpetuate the ivory tower. Over time, online and global competition for students may offer a solution to these problems.
o OTOH, my graduate professors have all taught their own classes and (AFAIK) graded their own papers, so that part of this article is somewhat overstated.
o Years ago, I had a friend who was an academic researcher whose research was funded by federal grants and referred to scientists who left academia for business as, “joining the dark side”. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but as I have considered the nature of government in the intervening years, I have frequently thought back to that comment. It is very odd that scientists whose livelihoods depend on tax payer compulsion apparently view scientists who live by voluntary exchange as being members of the dark side.
Gruber update:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/12/congressional_committee_subpoenas_jonathan_gruber_s_obamacare
Embattled MIT professor Jonathan Gruber was subpoenaed last night for a sweeping collection of Obamacare documents — including records showing how much he was paid for work he performed for state and federal governments — by the same Congressional committee that berated him for more than four hours on his “stupidity of the American voter” comments.
“As one of the architects of ObamaCare, Jonathan Gruber is in a unique position to shed light on the ‘lack of transparency’ surrounding the passage of the President’s health care law, however he has so far been unwilling to fully comply with the Oversight Committee’s repeated requests,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in a statement. “This week, Dr. Gruber repeatedly refused to answer several key questions, including the amount of taxpayer funds he received for his work on ObamaCare. The American people deserve not just an apology, but a full accounting, which Dr. Gruber must provide.”
———–
On that note, a new You Tube channel will up and running shortly:
Best Evidence (presented by an attorney licensed to practice before the Supreme Court and former engineer).
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLvRDyn_rVvZ7RRwdcEiJGw
Stay tuned.
I get a sad chuckle over all of the hub-bub around Gruber. He spoke the truth, then and now.
When he said the American voters were stupid, he was absolutely correct. So now they’ve been told they were stupid, and got stumped, what are they upset about?…Not about being duped. They’re upset because they’ve been called stupid. Amazing. And the politicians are doing everything they can to paint him as the bad guy…when THEY were the ones that cajoled the voters into buying off on the healthcare insanity hook, line, and sinker.
I keep asking my liberal friends “What have you got against Gruber?”…and they all respond with how terrible his is. For what reason?…not because he and some politicians got the best of them. No. They’re upset because they’ve been insulted by him. They literally cannot see the forest through the trees.
As for this part of the post: “They both claim their models are accurate and solid as the basis for draconian policy changes. They both fail to understand that playing with models in a university requires they satisfy research and scientific standards. ”
No…it does not, as evidenced by both the success of both subjects. If there WERE such a requirement, we wouldn’t be having either conversation. We’ve been dealing with model bullcrap for 30yrs now, none of which has been validated, and yet we march on towards economic destruction (in BOTH camps).
They don’t “…fail to understand…” anything, in fact, they’ve played the game (and us) exceedingly well, and continue to do so. Put another way, if they’re so dumb, and we’re so smart, why do they keep winning?
While I agree that I’d like model-verification to be a requirement, this is very much like asking the foxes lined up around the henhouse, with feathers on their lips, to please do a better job of guarding the chickens.
As they say back in Massachusetts: “Fugedaboudit”.
Thanks Dr. Ball.
The universities, or at least most of them have become bureaucracies C. Northcote Parkinson would be quite proud off, totally removed from and unrelated to their original purpose.
Several years ago, while living in Colorado, the University failed to give tenure to the professor voted by the students as the ‘best teacher’ for the previous three years. The excuse given by the president was that they were a ‘research institution’ and not a ‘teaching institution’. I thought that was interesting, to say the least, since a good portion of our state tax money went to the university with the stated objective of them educating our young people. I was quite surprised when no one else seemed to complained.
“State” universities are getting less and less of their budget from taxpayers these days, and thus practically all professors are expected to bring in external funds for research and educational programs. It’s great when faculty win “best teacher” awards, but was this person pulling their weight in other areas? I would want to see the person’s resume before harshly criticizing the university.
I’m surprised the university (I believe it is the same one to which you refer, near our tax-supported institutions of NREL, NIST (formerly Bureau of Standards), and bastions of “climate science,” NCAR & NOAA?) did not loose its accreditation by protecting the tenure of a certain widely publicized “professor” who was proven not to have a PhD nor a descendant of Native Americans as he claimed. How many other professors in the school have no credentials? The lack of any censure whatsoever for the findings suggests the school has many suspect “professors” – perhaps even in the fields of science & engineering. The faculty & administration needs a complete credential audit, with threat of loosing accreditation, to restore its credibility in any field for which it awards degrees!
A major contributor to the decline of Aristotle’s philosophy of science (and the integrity thereof) was renaming Political and Social “Studies” as “Sciences.” Questionable too is giving equal weight to “pseudo-sciences” (those that largely rely on statistical inference – the part which makes them appear to be science, but which do not produce reliable results) like Psychology and Meteorology, though I don’t dispute they belong in the college of science as opposed to art. I recently read about 30,000 students graduate per year in the US with degrees in Psychology, but that the total number of those earning a living in the US as Psychologists is about 300,000. I know many divert into medicine, pharmacology, research and the like, but clearly supply is well in excess of demand. This is just one example of why just any old “college degree” is no guarantee of a good career or even a job, and why I differentiate between practical and impractical choices of major to those entering college. A corollary problem is a recent trend to award BA’s (vs BS’s) in sciences like biology – hard to understand why, but it seems to be based on lowering standards (i.e., course work/hours, no labs).
I also agree with Kate @ur momisugly 8:51a. There is a clear inverse relationship between spending on education and the results (on absolute AND per capita bases), both of which are measurable over time and the inverse relationship is demonstrable. Ergo, drastic reductions in Federal spending and subsidies on education will improve the lot of all citizens in both dimensions. My recommendation would be to allow no undergraduate degrees in education be offered, and only teachers with degrees in the subject they teach would be employable, with a graduate degree in education optional (or perhaps required). Also, the term “science” would be limited only to the real stuff (chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, etc.,) and “studies” restored to the subjects that are just that.
Anthony:
Please. Stick to climate and stay off the Koch Bros bandwagon to deny healthcare to millions… specifically people such as I am. I suffered a massive heart attack at a time when I couldn’t get health insurance at any price because of preexisting conditions.
I’ve tried the Tea Party- GOP right wing health care system… almost died and definitely went bankrupt. At least with Obama’s ACA I can get half-way affordable healthcare.
Please stop trying to murder me. You got your hearing restored by modern medicine. Let me have the same chance.
No one needs a computer to figure out what “preexisting conditions” means.
Aside from the fact that Dr. Ball’s post has nothing to do with your complaint, or healthcare, and we have no idea or information concerning your poor health or its causes, or treatment, or why you are commenting on a blog that has nothing to do with your complaint. You should take your problem to Oprah. I’m sure she will cry.
sarastro92:
You also don’t need ACA to guard against it. Pre-existing conditions were already covered in 37 states.
And because someone doesn’t like the ACA doesn’t mean they’re a supporter of the Koch brothers, or the tea party.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming 🙂
Golly, Tim. I wish I’d had more professors like you in school. Actually I did have a few outstanding profs at my university. One set up a free tutorial for me in logic. Another came in one day and handed everybody in the class a 1/2″ thick stack of papers: copies of his lecture notes for the entire course. And another who told me, “Jorge, you may be under the misapprehension that research here at U of XX comes first and teaching second. I can assure you that is not true. Research is our second priority. Committee work comes first; teaching is third.”
sarastro92,
First, Anthony didn’t write this, it is a guest post.
Second, the guest author never mentioned the TEA Party, you did.
And third, no one here is trying to murder you.
db- Anthony’s name is at the top of the article and clearly he approved the posting.
The position Ball takes IS the Tea Party- Koch-Extreme Right Wing party line… ie. That the ACA is Mannian style chicanery… and (implicitly) needs to be defunded and repealed.
And third… when you deny people health care you are condoning murder. Scrub your hands all you like… that’s what it is.
My family paid for our healthcare when I was growing up 1942-1962, and so did our friends and neighbors. Those who did not take care of themselves had problems – some died prematurely – but we did not accuse them of suicide, and we were not accused of murder. It has taken a strange turn of irresponsibility and illogic to get to the mental state you and many others are in.
Gruber proved Obamacare is INDEED mannian (no need to capitalilze an adjective) style chicanery. As for the Kochs, that is the bogey man that the sheep love to trot out, even when they are not relevant.
Anthony’s name is at the top of the article and clearly he approved the posting.
That dog won’t hunt. Charles Krauthammer’s articles are in the NY Times, and I am sure they disagree with him. Anthony invites articles from all points of view. Even you could write one for him. Why don’t you give it a try?
The position Ball takes IS the Tea Party- Koch-Extreme Right Wing party line
Says you. Once more: you are the only one mentioning Koch & the TEA Party.
…when you deny people health care you are condoning murder.
Strike Three:
1) I am not denying people anything.
2) Neither is Dr. Ball, or Anthony. Or the TEA Party or Koch, for that matter.
3) Health care is not a right.
U R welcome.
When YOU deny people energy and restrict energy development in the name of useless efforts to “fight” a non-existent problem that cannot be limited by stopping man’s CO2 release, YOU kill millions of people each year.
That’s right… which is why I am not a green environmentalist … and why I join others at WUWT who are dubious about CAGW claims. Those who deny cheap energy to populations are murders… those who deny healthcare coverage are murders too.
sara – health insurance =/= health care. That is why a large majority of the citizens do not want it (and were not fooled by Gruber).
America had universal health care – just not government sponsored. And it worked. What it did not have (and according to the US Census bureau still does not have) is universal insurance. Indeed, according to the US Census bureau, coverage has gone down with the implementation of Obamacare.
Bad law is worse than no law.
Repeal of the ACA will deny healthcare to millions AS IT DID before the ACA (though universal coverage still has not been attained) Those who support such measures are following the Tea Party- Koch wing of the GOP… even if they don’t invoke the names of such figures and organizations.
And, yeah, it’s murder.
False. Just like repealing Roe v. Wade will not universally outlaw Abortion. Obamacare is denying coverage to millions already. According to the figures released early this year, 1 million fewer people are insured now, than they were before Obamacare, So repealing it will probably increase coverage since enacting it decreased it. WHen you give people real choices, surprisingly, most make the best ones for themselves.
Tim Ball says, “…then society must consider a tradesperson of more value than an economist or most other university graduates.”
There has been an absolute dearth of appreciation, gratitude and respect for the people in this country who have given us running water, toilets (wastewater), inexpensive electricity in the home, an incredibly rich and varied diet (conventional farmers), personal transportation, flight, and mass manufactured items. Whatsmore, most young people today do not know anything about these subjects, and as we now see, their minds are easily poisoned against all of these benign, neutral, or beneficial gifts.
For the beginning of this year, I had my kids each draw up a tree of knowledge. This is a way of visualizing the branches of study that encompass what we mean when we use the word “education.” In my view, many subjects which receive so much attention in academia are really only suckers at the base of the tree, and many important branches are missing.
(The diagram is also indespensable when kids say, “Why do we have to study that?“)
“…economics is purely and simply the balance between money coming in and going out – nothing more.”
By this statement Dr. Ball demonstrates his lack of knowledge of economics. Economics is the study of the alternative uses of scarce resources to meet human wants and needs. He obviously does not understand that a barter economy is still an economy.
You are correct. Ball doesn’t realize there are times when economics is not a balance of money flows. . For example, when the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air, there is no “balance” but there is a measurable impact on the economy. Your example of barter, where there is no flow of money is a real good example also.
‘To my knowledge there is no university or college that offers a course in common sense. If they did they would have to bring a person from outside to teach it.’
I’m afraid, Dr/Professor Ball, that the definition of common sense is ‘what you are good at’. Every person I’ve met on this earth has a slightly different definition of common sense, but the universal commonality is that they are good at what they think common sense is.
Common sense to some is analytical; for others it is emotionally empathic; for others it is power-based reality; for others it is familial bonds, responsibilities and reciprocal duties.
It’s common sense to me that if your parents are practical idiots and don’t share what practical skills they have, that an intellectual schooling isn’t really adding much value. It wasn’t common sense to the whole education world in my country growing up.
It’s common sense to you and to me that the value to greater society of an individual researcher’s output is not measured in how many papers he/she publishes, but how many people’s lives are affected favourably in the years after the research was communicated. The value to greater society is not, however, necessarily the value to their employers, to whom they usually, if they are selfishly ambitious, more attentive toward.
It’s common sense to Wall Street traders that they can make money most easily relieving Joe Schmo of his hard-earned modest savings, since those folks are entirely without understanding of the less savoury of Wall Street practices. It’s common sense to me that societies that tolerate such behaviour are sick, but it’s not common sense to anyone in any position of political power.
When you talk about common sense, you need to define what you mean by it.
It’s one of the most fluid concepts around and one which is least discussed.
Common sense is as dangerous as it is useful when applied unwisely.
…totum iudex
All is dangerous when applied unwisely, except some comments which are just funny.
Guess what I’d like to get across is that common sense does not involve emotions, empathy, Power, or one’s legacy and indebtedness, Read Carl Sagan’s works.
.And also, don’t conflate common sense with justification.
Oops, my bad… a websearch has shown me that that ‘the scientific method’ and ‘common sense’ are not necessarily the same thing. My arguments were admittedly non sequitur and are withdrawn (now I see my unwitting humor, majormike). Common sense is a very “open” term.
There was a hilarious chart posted by AW on WUWT some years back that showed how academics viewed engineers, and how students viewed them.
I tried to find it but I just don’t have the right search term.
Well at least the warmers have added two new items to the English language:
1) A new phrase- “Hide the decline:,
Which means using deception to advance an agenda.
2) A new word- “Gruberization”.
Which means using deception to advance an agenda.
Do I detect a trend here?
Maybe “Hide the Gruberization”? 😉
David S., thanks to the Internet, “gruberizing,” “gruberization,” and maybe “gruberian” has joined “malthusian” as a part of our vocabulary. If it becomes a permanent part, Ma and Pa Gruber can be proud of their little Gruber.
University Education = “a socially acceptable form of unemployment”; Dr. Ball you created a gem right there.
I am very afraid of other parallels. Government programs and ideas bound to cause problems from this time forward are oozing from academia all over. This is the expected result of employing a “brain trust” in government administration devoid of wisdom or accountability and mainly interested in ideology and promoting themselves. Today I read about “Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG)” which is a statistical means of determining a person’s race from last name and zip code. No need to ask the person directly about their racial identity–especially if the method can provide the answers that government regulators want to find in advance. With it the CFPB has managed to determine that persons of color pay on average something like 0.1% more that “white” persons for a car loan. No end of mischief we can expect from a tool like this.
“With it the CFPB has managed to determine that persons of color pay on average something like 0.1% more that “white” persons for a car loan.”
Believable if the area is infested with the young-black-male culture, who shoot each other and probably leave females to raise kids by themselves.
Some universities and/or jurisdictions have awards for profs who are great teachers. Walter Gage at UBC and John Ridpath at York come to mind.
Gruberism is certainly at work in the CAGW movement.
However it is not aimed primarily at the public.
Its target is the climate research community themselves.
They are the ones who have been shown to be too ignorant and stupid to resist the CAGW deception.
This is for a number of reasons:
1. Ignorance of nonlinear-chaotic dynamics. Generally anyone using the word “forcing” in regard to climate falls into this category of catastrophic ignorance in regard to nonlinear climate dynamics.
2. Epistemological collapse. The fact that you may not understand the word epistemology illustrates this point. The structure of logic is also a necessary underpinning of science, and without it all scientific effort will work to destroy not to create knowledge. If for instance you think that the real world changes due to the discovery of a new phenomenon, its back to the epistemology classroom for you. If both warming and cooling, both shrinking and growing sea ice, both more and less hurricanes and tornados, both increasing and decreasing climate variability, all prove CAGW, then CAGW is unfalsifiable and by Karl Popper’s deductive law of science, not science at all. Confused? Go back to school.
The explosion of technical data in recent decades has led to an arrogant hubris that has allowed the atrophy of logical thought. This means that the majority of published research works against knowledge and not for it.
3. Left wing politicization of academia. Political polarization has led to the ruling culture of academia being extreme left-wing. This means that scientific ideas that can be used as a stick to beat up on capitalism are promoted are facts distorted to support these ideas, most notably CAGW.
4. Loss of grounding in previous research and respect for previous research.
Most new climate research which is loudly trumpeted such as Mann, Marcott, Miller etc. begins by totally ignoring and brushing aside all previous research on the subject. In particular palaeo climate related research consigns to oblivion all published work showing climate variation to be natural and tries to show that climate never changed before humans increased atmospheric CO2.
Any society in which respect for old guys is lost, is on a slippery slope to oblivion. This could be called the “Rehoboam horizon”.
phlogiston says: “They are the ones who have been shown to be too ignorant and stupid to resist the CAGW deception.”
+10… I could not agree more.
and: “Generally anyone using the word “forcing” in regard to climate falls into this category of catastrophic ignorance.”
This sentence is also correct but better terminated as above.
Fits in with what I’ve been noting on my blog.
I’ll add some excerpts from this page to my blog page if that’s OK.
Same old same old.
1999:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
2013:
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
Same old same old.
1999:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
2013:
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”