Summary: In his column today Paul Krugman makes an important observation, although he’s oddly unaware of its full significance.
Paul Krugman explains “Why I Haven’t Felt The Bern” — He complains about Team Sanders.
“In each case the story runs into big trouble if you do a bit of homework; if not completely wrong, it needs a lot of qualification. But the all-purpose response to anyone who raises questions is that she or he is a member of the establishment, personally corrupt, etc.. Ad hominem attacks aren’t a final line of defense, they’re argument #1.
“…It’s about an attitude, the sense that righteousness excuses you from the need for hard thinking and that any questioning of the righteous is treason …When you see Sanders supporters going over the top about “corporate whores” and such, you’re not seeing a mysterious intrusion of bad behavior into an idealistic movement; you’re seeing the intolerance that was always just under the surface of the movement, right from the start.”
He complains about unfair tactics of the Left, the same tactics that the Left’s climate activists have used to all who challenge their apocalyptic news stories — which go far beyond anything in the IPCC’s reports. He describes them quite accurately, showing (again) that although he is a brilliant economist, he is lacks self-awareness.
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- Mother Jones sounds the alarm about global warming! This time about the North Pole.
- Alaska’s climate scientists tell us the rest of the news, what Obama forgot to mention.
- 90% of the biggest Yosemite glacier has melted. Did we do it?
- Are we “choking the ocean with plastic”? — Spoiler: no.
- The New Yorker’s “The Siege of Miami” reveals a serious problem.
- What we learned from the freak storm that “melted the North Pole” on December 30.
- Science debunks the eco-fable of Easter Island.
- Rising seas alert! Watch how science becomes a sensational news story.
Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it!.
Sadly, the Krug is adrift, his ideas only appeal to a shrinking urban-liberal elite, or at least upper middle class base of aging boomers that want to slide into comfortable old age with little upset or sacrifice to the larger common good. He isn’t able to transcend the D party, urban-liberal assumptions and values that he rode to his own personal success/fame, thus he can’t understand the real discontent that people (including the “anti-establishment” Bernie faction on the Left) have with a dysfunctional economy (and politics, culture, etc.) that increasingly benefits the 1% and does not benefit the lower classes.
Many years ago I lost all respect for the title professor. I have now lost respect for the title Nobel laureate. I have no idea what Paul Krugman once earned his Noble prize for – but It has no relevance whatever for the propaganda he is now producing.
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This is an analysis I posted at Watts Up With That a while ago. However, it seems relevant here:
I thought it could be interesting to analyze what nobel laureate Paul Krugman actually wrote in this article: Republicans’ Climate Change Denial Denial to see if what he wrote was substantiated. It turns out that there are more logical fallacies than there are sentences. In the 11 first sentences I found 0 objective scientific statements and about 20 logical fallacies – give or take a few. I used the following net site to identify the fallacies: Logical fallacies
The fallacies i found seems to mostly fall within the category of tactical fallacies:
«Tactical fallacies are those in which there is an attempt to marginalize your opponent’s position with a rhetorical device to distract or evoke emotion rather than providing a genuine argument.»
Here are the first 11 sentences of what Paul Krugman writes and my identification of the logical fallacies which seemed to fit best. This is not very precise science, but it gives a rough idea about the objective, empirical and scientific content provided by Paul Krugman – which seems to be zero, zap, zilch, nada. The reason I stopped after 11 is that I simply got tired. I have not read any more sentences than those which I included here. Hence I have no idea what comes after these 11 sentences. It could be the most brilliant science for all that I know.
«Future historians — if there are any future historians — will almost surely say that the most important thing happening in the world during December 2015 was the climate talks in Paris.»
bare-assertion-fallacy
«True, nothing agreed to in Paris will be enough, by itself, to solve the problem of global warming.»
bare-assertion-fallacy * 2
«But the talks could mark a turning point, the beginning of the kind of international action needed to avert catastrophe.»
bare-assertion-fallacy
«Then again, they might not; we may be doomed.»
appeal-to-emotion
«And if we are, you know who will be responsible: the Republican Party.»
appeal-to-emotion
bare-assertion-fallacy
«O.K., I know the reaction of many readers: How partisan! «
association-fallacy
«How over the top!»
appeal-to-emotion
«But what I said is, in fact, the obvious truth.»
bare-assertion-fallacy * 2
«And the inability of our news media, our pundits and our political establishment in general to face up to that truth is an important contributing factor to the danger we face.»
bare-assertion-fallacy * 6
«Anyone who follows U.S. political debates on the environment knows that Republican politicians overwhelmingly oppose any action to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, and that the great majority reject the scientific consensus on climate change.»
argumentum-ad-populum
bare-assertion-fallacy
« Last year PolitiFact could find only eight Republicans in Congress, out of 278 in the caucus, who had made on-the-record comments accepting the reality of man-made global warming. «
Link leads to an article starting with the following:
«More than 1,500 wildfires have ravaged California so far in 2014, more than twice the state sees in an average year.»
Blind link = bare-assertion-fallacy
bare-assertion-fallacy
«On ABC’s This Week, Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, cited scientific research that links the increased number of fires to the state’s changing climate. Host George Stephanopoulos asked Brown how he’d adapt to the future, given skepticism among Republicans in Washington. Short answer: not easily. “That’s a challenge,” Brown said. “It is true that there’s virtually no Republican who accepts the science that virtually is unanimous. I mean there is no scientific question. There’s just political denial for various reasons, best known to those people who are in denial.”»
bare-assertion-fallacy
appeal-to-emotion
Ok I think we are ready to conclude now:
The idea that
– Paul Krugman
and thereby the category of:
– nobel laureates
– professors
might consistently avoid logical fallacies – is hereby falsified, it is wrong. QED.
However, it seems that near half of the novel laureates present at the 2015 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting had the integrity to not sign the subjective and unsubstantiated
2015 Maineau Declaration
More on that here: Oddly, ‘Nobel prize winner’ Michael Mann was not invited to sign The Mainau Declaration for climate protection.
So – a nobel laureate may have the integrity, which is required to not sign an unsubstantiated appeal – even under pressure – but you have no guarantee. And what the nobel committee might have been looking for – I have no idea whatsoever. But, in my opinion, some nobel laureates still seems great.
—
This time however Paul Krugman seem to be honest about at least one thing in saying:
“But never mind. As you know, I’m only saying these things because I’m a corporate whore and want a job with Hillary.”
I dont´t know what kind of occupation he now aspires for, he seems to engage with both inductivism, logical fallacies and propaganda.
You appear a bit unclear what Krugman was writing. It was an op-ed, not a PhD dissertation or IPCC report. Almost every op-ed consists of “bare assertions” and “appeals to emotions.” That’s why they’re called opinion editorials.
You appear to confuse op-ed’s with technical writing in the peer-reviewed literature — for which Krugman won the Economics prize. You might as well evaluate his cooking or poker-playing skills. Nobel prizes don’t mean the Committee believe him a demigod or an omnicompetent source of wisdom. Just that he’s advanced one sliver of human knowledge.
I see that – point taken. However – even an opinion can be substantiated by a valid argument. What is special about his op-ed, is that it is completely without any valid arguments.
I think he should suspect that his name might add credibility to a text that isn´t otherwise credible. I would expect from that a Nobel laureate that he has the integrity to not misuse his name to spread pure propaganda.
Hence – the problem I have with his opinion piece, is based on my expectation that a Nobel laureate would not misuse his name to spread pure propaganda.
“that it is completely without any valid arguments.”
I suspect your meaning of “valid arguements” is “those I find reasonable”. When you believe others are acting irrationally — such as a famous economist giving obviously invalid arguments in a major US newspaper — I suggest rethinking your analysis. It’s probably wrong.
I would say that if a argument is resting on a logical fallacy it cannot be a logically valid argument. I´m not thinking that he was acting irrationally. Invalid arguments can be both rational and very influential.
Maybe I´m wrong in expecting valid arguments in an opinion piece, maybe I´m wrong in thinking that Paul Krugman is misusing his famed name, and
maybe, the opinion piece I analyzed is not representative for Paul Krugman. Clearly I´m wrong in expecting science in an opinion piece, and I´m wrong in judging Paul Krugman on a single piece. Still – in my opinion – the piece I analyzed indicates a lack of integrity by Paul Krugman – it may have been a miss.
So you mean by unawares of its full significance the fact that the left uses the same tactics via Climate Change? Yes? Good point and all but PK has been doing such wind twisting since maybe right after Obama asked him over for a breakfast chat to soothe his feelings after Geithner, Summers and Romer were installed.
Politics is a very nasty game. We should expect as much from our Aplogists, I think. Is Paul rehearsing for Sec of the Treasury gig? Maybe. Rather expect he just feels comfortable offering opinions his neighbor’s resonate with. Econ is a rather dry subject. The ideas of the Proles…well that is quite fun. Notice his use of “Bern”. Smiling, meant to be quite deprecating.
Breton