A letter to Mr. Prentice, Minister of the Environment

December 4, 2009 — xanthippa

Dear Mr. Prentice,

Recently, you have said that, despite the leaked documents from CRU (and, the latest evidence suggests they were not hacked, but leaked by a conscientious whistle-blower), your position remains:

“The science overall is relatively clear on all of this and as a conservationist and as a responsible environmental steward Canada wants to see carbon emissions reduced.”

With the Copenhagen conference coming up, Mr. Minister, I would like to most emphatically point out that the science has never been ‘relatively clear’, at least not clear in support of the claim that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the driving force behind climate change.

There has clearly been a very lively scientific debate since these ACC claims have first been made.

On the one hand, there is the series of IPCC reports, the latest of which claims the support of 2,500 scientists and policymakers.  If this is a matter of numbers – which is something measurable – then let’s contrast this 2,500 scientists and policymakers versus the 31,486 scientists (including 9,029 with PhDs) who have signed a petition disagreeing with this claim, because in their expert opinions, the scientific evidence does not support the ACC claim.

Just because very many of scientists think something is right, it does not makes it so:  I am simply bringing this to your attention as proof that there has never been a consensus among scientists on the topic of anthropogenic climate change.  With 2,500 saying ‘yes’ and 31,486 saying ‘no’, it is clear that the ‘science’ has not been proven and that the debate has never been ‘settled’.

Please note – this petition predates any of the current scandals (the Dr. Jones CRU team, the Dr. Mann data, the Dr. Wang data, or even the Danish cap-and-trade scandal)

Something else that many people have been very uncomfortable with – for a very long time – is the militant way in which those supporting ACC claims have behaved:  some people have labeled them ‘warm-mongers’, because of their bellicosity!  Dr. Suzuki, for example, a once-respected scientist, has even called for jailing people who have different opinions from his!

That is not how scientists behave.  It is not just ‘the heat of the issue’ or its importance:  this is contrary to the very rules of scientific behaviour.  Perhaps the greatest physicist of the 20th century, Dr. Richard Feynman, explained this very clearly:

If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.

As you see, Mr. Minister Prentice, we do not have all the facts, the science is not clear – relatively or otherwise.  No conservationist and no responsible environmental steward would make decisions or commitments based on unsettled science and uncertain data!

Please, keep that in mind during the Copenhagen conference:  my children’s future depends on it!

Sincerely yours,

Xanthippa

[well, actually, I used my real-life name….and provided contact info, just in case…]

Posted in debate, politics, science, scientific fraud, society. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Wednesday, 16. Sept. 2009 – a live chat with Bruce Bawer

September 15, 2009 — xanthippa

Blazing Catfur asked me to pass this on!

Wednesday, 16th of September 2009, you can join in a live chat with Bruce Bawer – and some of your favourite blogosphere personalities!  It will be hosted on ‘Blogger’ – BCF has the full instructions.  (I have a scheduling conflict, but I’ll try to juggle ‘stuff’ around and, if things work out, I’ll try to catch at least a part of it!)

Join in and enjoy!

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Talking ‘live’!

June 18, 2009 — xanthippa

Friday, 19th of June, 2009 – at 8 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time (i.e. GMT-4), my friend, Juggernaut, will be hosting a live BlogTV session:  learning about and discussing the differences between Canadian and American (as in, USAmerican) systems on such various issues as healthcare, education and other ‘public’ policies.

Juggernaut will be hosting:  everyone can join, either by signing up or by participating as a guest.

The link: http://www.blogtv.com/People/TheJuggernauts

I’ll be there – if you would like to add to the discussion, please, join us!

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Blazing Catfur reports the cuisine was the highlight of the evening

May 31, 2009 — xanthippa

A most excellent report by my favourite feline, Blazing Catfur, about an evening spent at the house that Bangash built…

‘My mission’s purpose? Report on the fundraising event for Mohamed Elmasry’s nascent online magazine the Canadian Charger featuring Islamist gadabout Yvonne Ridley.’

Complete with photos!

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‘The Shawn Little affair’: background to the ‘influence-peddling’ trial of Ottawa’s ‘Mayor Larry’

May 4, 2009 — xanthippa

Today was the first day in the ‘influence peddling’ trial of Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien. While this in itself may hold only limited interest, there are ‘other factors’ which are at play here: and these ‘other factors’ have implications way beyond the sleepy little town of Ottawa…

It is these ‘other factors’ which I would like to look at. Still, I ought to provide a little background of the events to date and their historical context….from my personal point of view.

  • In 2000/2001, the many municipalities of the Ottawa area and their over-arching regional government were all  amalgamated into one entity:  The City of Ottawa.
  • This created a geographically large city, with urban, sub-urban, and rural wards.
  • The former ‘Regional Chair’, Bob Chiarelli (acknowledged as a very skilled ‘political operator’), was elected to be the Mayor of the newly amalgamated city.

During that first amalgamated election (2000), an interesting thing happened…

‘The Shawn Little affair’

    • Shawn Little ran against Linda Davis, who had previously been on the Regional Council (headed by Bob Chiarelli, who was now running for Mayor)
    • The campaign got nasty.
    • Following the election, based on a complaint by Ms. Davis, Elections Ottawa investigated Mr. Little’s campaign spending.
    • The audit found that Mr. Little had not declared all of his campaign spending and made a list of the ‘undeclared items’, estimated their cost and incorporated this cost into Mr. Little’s account of the campaign spending.
    • This list included such items as a toilet-bowl brush for the campaign office washroom.  Mr. Little defended himself, saying this was not purchased but that a volunteer working in the office brought it in, and following the campaign, took it back home.  Still, the auditors said, the toilet-bowl brush had value, and he had not declared it:  this, in their eyes, was Mr. Little’s admission of guilt…
    • With the ‘estimated cost’ of the ‘omitted items’ incorporated into his spending, the auditor (after months of investigating) declared that Mr. Little had gone over his election spending cap by $2,600.00
    • Mr. Little was charged with violating the Municipal Elections Act
    • After a lengthy court battle Mr. Little was cleared of any legal wrongdoing
    • It took another legal battle for Mr. Little to get the City of Ottawa (who lost the case against him) to cover at least a part of his legal fees (he had almost lost his house…)
    • Throughout the affair, and for years following it, the press, led by The Ottawa Citizen, ran many unfavourable stories about Mr. Little.  (Perhaps these were deserved – it is true that while this was all going on, Mr. Little was not as effective a councilor as he ought to have been…)
    • An aside:  in the past, Shawn Little was a vociferous opponent of the ‘National Capital Commission’ (NCC) – a federal body which looks after ‘stuff’ in the nation’s capital region on behalf of the Federal Government.  At times, the NCC has been known to unilaterally (as in, they set the ‘market price’, no appeal process available) expropriate land – for the good of the ‘Capital Region’….only to flip the land in a few years for more than 50 times what they paid for it during the ‘expropriation’, making millions in the process…  This was not obvious during this affair, but… the majority of the directors of the board of the NCC at that time (MANY new appointments had been made, especially in 2007 – and I cannot seem to find the ‘historical snapshot’ from ealier – if anyone can find it, I will be happy to link to it here!!!  Let it suffice to say that during this era, the NCC BOD was heavily laden with ‘Chretien Liberal’ appointees…) were ‘land developers’ (or ‘urban planners’), many of them were rumoured to have had ‘ties’ with the ‘Chiarelli family’.
  • OK – this was DEEP background:  still, the important things here are:
    • ‘Lawfare’ (on this scale) was found to be a highly useful tool to render an elected councilor ineffective, both due to distraction (legal proceedings, financial issues, stress) and because it tarnished that politician’s public image.
    • ‘The Ottawa Citizen’ coverage of this election was – in my opinion – highly favourable to Mr. Bob Chiarelli.
    • Even years after this affair had been settled, ‘The Ottawa Citizen’ continued to run stories highly unfavourable of Mr. Little.

This is going really far – for ‘political memory’ of the average ‘voter’.  But, it is my never-humble opinion that ‘The Shawn Little’ affair has direct bearing on what is happening in the current trial of Larry O’Brien, Ottawa’s ‘Mayor Larry’.

If it is hard to see the connections – please, stay tuned.  I will first point out a few other ‘pieces of the puzzle’ (from my highly personal point of view), then and only then will I be able to explain just how they fit together….

My next post will look at (to be linked here, once posted) at the issues which dominated the next municipal election in 2003.

Posted in debate, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

The problem with vaccines….

April 27, 2009 — xanthippa

As the reports about the ‘swine flu’ are spreading like wildfire, people are wondering how to protect themselves.  This brings up more and more talk about ‘vaccines’:  how large are our supplies, how easily we can create more, and so on.

Frankly, we have a problem with vaccines…

No, I don’t mean the ‘accidents’ that can happen in the manufacture and distribution of vaccines.  These are real problems, because ‘human error’ is, well, something we, humans do.  But, we do learn from our mistakes (I hope!) – plus, depriving oneself of a useful defense against disease just because someone might have made a mistake somewhere along the way is a little extreme…  We ‘ought to’ worry about this in the sense that we demand good oversight and testing and all that – but there comes a point when we must trust our government institutions to do their job!

Nor am I talking about the laughable ease with which terrorists could use ‘live vaccines’ to inject multiple live viruses into willing persons, in the hope that the viruses simultaneously attacking the same cells will produce a ‘super-virus’ in at least one of them (this is called ‘reassortment‘), then using our mass transport system to spread them.  That is just a little paranoid… and worries like this are best left to our law-enforcement agencies!

The real problem we all have with ‘vaccination’ is much deeper and much more serious.

The real problem lies in the unrealistic expectations we place in vaccination!

The fault  for this lies – to a great degree – with the medical community.  (To a lesser degree, the fault lies with the mainstream media (MSM) for accepting the medical community’s word without digging deep enough to get the facts, and with each and every one of us who lets the medical and journalistic communities get away with doing such a poor job.)

Please, don’t get me wrong:  I am not ‘anti-vaccine’.

It’s just that I cannot stand it when people are given ‘partial information’ when they are expecting ‘the whole truth’ and when people are generally misled about ‘stuff’ – especially about ‘stuff’ which involves science!

And, when it comes to vaccines, we are often told by our MDs and other ‘health workers’ only part of the truth:  only the information which will manipulate us into doing what they think  is best for us, instead of letting us make the choice ourselves.  They may mean ‘best’ for us – but, by not telling us all we need to know, they are depriving us of the ability to make an informed choice for ourselves.

I am not joking – or making this up.  Physicians are taught (according to an MD in Ontario) in their medical ethics class that their responsibility is to the ‘greater community’, not individual patients.  Therefore, it is their ethical responsibility to only give their patients positive information on vaccination so that they will build a ‘greater herd immunity’ (his words, not mine) – even if this will harm a percentage of their patients.  This ‘will lead to overall benefit to society’, so ‘the end justifies the means’…

So, please, take a moment to consider for yourselves whether or not we have a problem ‘with vaccinations’:

  1. Every medical procedure has risks associated with it – even vaccination. We need accurate information on the risk to each one of us – as an individual, so we will have the ability to make informed choices for ourselves. Yet, we are told no more than vaccinations are ‘safe’.
  2. No vaccine is 100% effective. Some people will have no protection against a virus, even though they have been vaccinated against it.  Yet, before we are given a vaccine, we are not shown any figures which show what the efficacy of this vaccine is, and how likely someone within our ‘demographic’ is to benefit form it! (Most doctors who administer the vaccines do not have these figures – I have asked, many times!)  Yes, there are various methods of measuring the efficacy of a vaccine, but some of the vaccines we are currently offered are known to have less than 50% (some less than 20%) in ‘field application’ (meaning in ‘trials outside the lab’ – like when administered to ‘general population’). Yet, we are told that vaccinations WILL protect us against infectious diseases!
  3. Believing that they have 100% protection because they’ve been vaccinated, people are not likely to take other precautions. Of course, this will raise the danger of exposure to the very danger they think they are safe from. And THIS is the REAL problem…

Nothing we do in life is without a risk associated with it!

This does not mean we ought to ‘stop living’….  But it does mean that as responsible people, we must make choices about what we do, and how we do it.  Therefore, we MUST be given accurate information about just how effective the various actions we take to protect ourselves from infectious diseases truly are!

Vaccinations are likely a key weapon which we can (and should) use to combat the spread of infectious diseases.  But to use any weapon effectively, we need to know its strengths as well as its weaknesses.

When it comes to vaccinations, we know we are not being told the whole truth. That is dangerous!

And THAT is the problem with vaccinations…

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Marijuana-smoking athlete should be stripped of medals

February 5, 2009 — xanthippa

Over the last little while, I have been amused at the discussions generated by an admission from an athlete that he smoked cannabis.

This, in a nutshell, is the situation as I see it:

  1. Michael Phelps, an athlete with 8 Olympic blood medals, is photographed inhaling from a marijuana pipe.
  2. Following the publication of the photo, he admits to cannabis use.
  3. This creates negative publicity:  from dismay over an again-tainted role model (he faced a drunk-driving charge earlier), to the discussion of ‘recreational use of cannabis’, to calls that he be stripped of his medals.
  4. The athlete issues an apology.
  5. Public debate continues – but not only does it not look like the athlete will not be stripped of his medals, it looks like he will be eligible to continue to compete in athletics!

THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!!  WRONG DEBATE!!!

While I have some very strong opinions (sic) about the use of illegal drugs – recreational or otherwise – this is not the post where I would like to explore them. I’ll be glad to oblige later.

The ‘legal status’ of cannabis should not be the main focus of public debate about any athlete admitting to smoking cannabis.  The debate should be about how to treat an athlete who admits to using a performance-enhancing drug, after the competition is over…

After all, cannabis is a performance-enhancing drug!

There are several active chemicals in cannabis which have medicinal effects. One of the two main ones is Beta-Caryophyllene, an anti-inflammatory which may be very useful in fighting immune system diseases.  Yet, I would like to focus here on the other one – cannabidiol, which turns into THC under some conditions and into quinine under others. THC is the ‘active’ ingredient in cannabis, which gives people the ‘high’ associated with its use.

THC, of course, is known to trigger the release of dopamine – the very word from which ‘doping’, as in ‘using performance-enhancing drugs’, comes!

In a very real way, by triggering the release of dopamine, THC affects the endorphins (natural pain-killers) and serotonin levels in the brain, both immediatelly and in the long term.  These two effects, in my never-humble-opinion, classify it as a ‘prformance-enhancing-drug’!

Cannabis creates a temporary high – that is true, and that is why it is illegal in many jurisdictions.  THC blocs pain-perceptions by causing the brain to produce too much dopamine, which numbs one to pain and causes a euphorea.

Even after the ‘high’ associated with cannabis use is gone, not all of this chemical is metabolized.  Some of the THC gets stored in a person’s fatty tissues, where it stays inactive for weeks – perhaps months.  When a person is in a situation of great pressure or stress, their body releases adrenalin (and related hormones).  This ‘under-stress-hormone coctail’ triggers a chemical reaction which causes the stored-up THC to be released into the body.  And, yes, this has the same physical effect on the body as if the person had just toked up!

In other words, cannabis can produce the immediate, ‘short-term’ effect of a ‘dopamine high’ even months after it was used.  It’s called a ‘marijuana flash’.

Also, it has been medically demonstrated that people with low serotonin levels feel pain much more easily and much more acutely.  (This is especially true of people suffering from depression.)  When the serotonin levels are increased, the person’s long-term pain threshold goes up significantly.

Cannabis effectively raises the serotonin levels in that brain.  That is why it has consistently been found effective in treating medical conditions involving dopamine-serotonin balance:  migraines, melancholia, loss of appetite, nausea, pain –  both topical and systemic, insomnia…and is used in treating very serious psychiatric conditions, like dementia and schizophrenia.  This very real, long-term effect is why cannabis has been prized since the times of ancient Egypt!

So, let us consider these effects on an athlete who had, in the past, used cannabis.

The athlete now has an overall higher tolerance to pain than is natural – so he can push himself harder during training than his peers.  This will necessarily result in achieving an artificially high physical condition, one the athlete could not have attained without the use of cannabis.  Even if there were no THC left in his body by the time of the competition, the athlete would still have used performance enhancing drugs to achieve his physical condition, making any competition unfair.

Perhaps even more importantly, if there are still even small amounts of THC in the athlete’s system, the stress of a high-level contest, the ‘competitive juices’ that flood an athlete’s body, will ‘flush them out’.  Now, this athlete has a flood of extra dopamines in his blood stream!

In a very real sense, the athlete’s own body released the ‘stored-up dope’!

Unless I am greatly mistaken, competing while ‘doped up’ is against the rules…

Now, back to Mr. Phelps:

Since he has admitted to cannabis use, he had – knowingly or unknowingly – used drugs to enhance his performance. Therefore, it would be unjust to other athletes if he were allowed to compete again.

The only question remains:  did he use cannabis BEFORE he won 14 Olympic medals?  If the answer is ‘YES’, then he must indeed be stripped of each and every one of them.  Even if unintentionally, he was ‘doping’…

It has nothing to do with ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ drugs.  It has nothing to do with making ‘good’ or ‘bad’ choices.  It has everything to do with fair play!

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A letter to my PM

May 14, 2008 — xanthippa

For those of you not following the Canadian struggle for free speech, this letter, which I emailed my Member of Parliament today, may seem a little confusing.  Here is a REALLY quick recap:

In order to provide disadvanteged groups easy and affordable access to legal protection agains illegal discrimination, Human Rights Commissions (HRCs) were established several decades ago:  one federal (Canadian, or CHRC) and one for each province.  These HRCs have, lately, been interpreting their mandate in unforseen ways, asserting that any speech which ‘potentially could’ have negative impact on individuals or groups because of their race, creed, disablitiy, and other reasons, must be censored and that this censorship overrules any rights of freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of thought.

Many individuals, and some media organizations, have been going through several years long legal battles in their defense of their inalienable rights.  Even the very people who originally created the HRCs have been apalled at the misuse of their powers in recent years…  What is even worse, recently released tribunal transcripts contain admissions by some HRC employees which suggest that in their zeal to pursue (and entrap) people whom they are investigating, criminal laws are being violated.  That is a serious matter, because no government agency should be allowed to break laws in order to enforce laws…

The Minister of Justice recently said what I understand to mean that as far as the Canadian Government is concerned, all is fine…hence, my letter.

Dear Mr. [MP], 

Thank you for your kind reply, in which you say you will direct my concern over the HRCs and their actions directly to the Minister of Justice.  It arrived at about the same time as the Minister of Justice made his position on this situation known….   

How unfortunate that the official Government position is based on a brief by Mr. Tsesis, who is not regarded highly among the experts in this area and whose disregard for supportable facts required to assess causality can clearly be seen in the document he produced. 

For example, Mr. Tsesis claims:  “[Hitler fomented] a mass delusion that Jews were responsible for bad times, and as a result, a Holocaust could be perpetrated against them without general opposition.”   This displays blatant ignorance of (or disregard for) the fact that during the 1930’s, Germany did indeed have ‘hate speech’ laws, which (ironically?) were almost identical to those we have in Canada today!  Jewish leaders in Germany in the 1930’s expressed satisfaction with the protections from persecution which they and their community received under these ‘hate speech’ laws. 

Since ‘hate speech’ laws were present in Germany of the 1930, proposing (as Mr. Tsesis does) that our current ‘hate speech’ laws are the one tool necessary to prevent another Holocaust-like event is an error of judgment at best, intentionally misleading at worst.  Either way, it clearly demonstrates the unsoundness of the conclusions in this document.   Basing our national Justice policy on it would be ill advised.

How embarrassing for our Government, to reveal that this is indeed its intention!  How embarrassing for our Minister of Justice!

 Yet, my original comment was not intended to request a simple review of the policies of the Human Rights Commissions by the Government.  It is essential that the Government maintain its ‘arm’s length’ distance from judicial and quasi-judicial bodies.  That should not change.   

The HRCs answer directly to the Parliament of Canada.  It is essential that the Parliament of Canada ensures that bodies such as the HRCs do indeed perform the tasks for which they had been created, and that they conduct themselves in accordance with the laws of Canada, the very laws they were created to uphold!  

 There is a widespread perception among the citizens of Canada that employees of these commissions may have broken criminal laws of Canada while performing investigations on behalf of the HRCs.  This perception is largely based on the information in legal documents, transcripts of hearings from the HRCs themselves.  These statements were given under oath, and in them an employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission describes actions he took while acting on behalf of the HRC which appear to be a clear and direct breech of the criminal laws of Canada, as well as a blatant breech of the very ‘hate speech’ laws the CHRC was created to uphold.

 It is not, and must never become, tolerable for an Agent of the State to break the laws of the State while acting on behalf of the State.  In order to assure the integrity of our governance structures, it is essential that a full criminal investigation be launched immediately, to determine whether laws were indeed broken, or not. 

 If it is found that criminal laws were broken, a further in-depth investigation will be required to determine whether some rogue employees broke criminal laws on their own, or if the policies of this public institutions are the root causes of criminal behaviour by its employees – in which case, a full evaluation of all the procedures and methodologies of the HRCs would need to be done.  If a criminal investigation determines that laws were indeed broken, laying criminal charges will be required against every employee who broke our laws as well as against all supervisory personnel (currently or in the past employed by the HRC’s), who, through ignorance or complicity, allowed this illegal behaviour within their department to take place. 

 If the perception that criminal laws are being broken at the HRCs is erroneous, it is important that we, the citizens of Canada, see them exonerated, so that we may again place our trust in our government agencies and institutions.  

 This determination cannot be made without a full criminal investigation of the HRCs, their procedures, methodologies and practices, as well as of the conduct all of its employees, past and present.  Therefore, I ask that you, Mr. Poilievre, as my Member of Parliament to which the HRCs report directly, channel your efforts and energies to launching a full and thorough investigation into this whole mess.

 Thank you.

If you wish to read more on this saga, please see the excellent sites Blazing Catfur, Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn, Small Dead Animals, and many, many more…

Posted in debate, freedoms, human nature, language, philosophy, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Easter: what’s in the name?

March 21, 2008 — xanthippa

This time of year, there are many religious festivals and events. Please, let me take a moment and wish you all ‘Happy Holiday!’

What’s in the name of a holiday, anyway?

Shortly before Christmas, on ‘Convince Me’ – my favorite online debating site – someone started a lively debate about that holiday and whether it ought to be celebrated by non-Christians. One position presented was ‘Of course it’s only about Christ! That’s why it’s called Christmas!’

Yes, I am sure there are many people ‘out there’ who – with a prim-little condescending smile – have said that very thing. Of these people, I would like to ask the following question:

If Christmas is exclusively about Jesus Christ, because his name is right in there, what about Easter?!?!?

I am not, in any way, shape or form, saying this holiday season is – or ought to be – only about the Goddess Eostre (also spelled Eastre, though I have also seen it spelled Eostera and Eastera and about 5 other ways). Everyone knows many other spring fertility festivals, like Luprenalia, are also going on. And, I think the Christians and Jews might also be marking holidays. :0)

All I am curious about is if the ‘logic’ about the name of Christmas also holds about the name of Easter!

If you are not familiar with her by her name, you may have heard of the Goddess Eastre in another way. She is one of the ancient fertility goddesses of spring. Her power begins to awaken on the winter cross-quarter day – the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox – the coldest part of the year…February 2nd. She is said to begin to drive winter away, so the weather turns warmer and paves the way for spring. Her strength is at its fullest during the first full moon following the spring equinox. As winter vanes, Eastre causes the Earth to sprout, green things to grow, nature to re-awaken.

When she shows herself to humans, Eastre is said to take on the form of either a rabbit or a groundhog. Yes, she is the ‘Easter Bunny’ and the groundhog of Groundhog Day!

It is no coincidence that chickens only lay eggs when days are longer than nights. Nowadays, chicken farmers use electric lights to stimulate chickens to lay eggs all year long, but until electric lights made this possible, eggs were simply not available during the winter. They only reappeared each year when days outlasted nights…following the spring equinox…it’s almost as if Eastre brings the eggs with her ascent to power.

I suppose this is another way of saying that the Easter Bunny brings us eggs!

Now all I have to do is figure out how chocolate fits in. Because if I can’t, disposing of all these stores of it is bound to trigger a migrane…

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What Convinces Us: the corollary to ‘How We Argue’

March 14, 2008 — xanthippa

Often, I feel like an outsider looking in on how the rest of the world lives, bewildered by all these ‘unseen rules’ that guide human interactions.  The fact that I am heavily ‘Aspergers’ probably has a lot to do with it:  I compensate for my lack of intuitive understanding by obsessively observing and cataloging behaviour.

Noticing how people argue seemed relatively easy:  the evidence was ‘out there’.  But understanding what convinces people to change their minds….that I have found much tougher.  I can see the arguments ‘out there’, in the open, but the ‘convincing’ process itself is inside a person’s head – hidden from direct observation.  It was easy to see that some arguments were more effective than others, but it always puzzled me how come an argument could convince some people, but not others.  Do not all people undergo similar thought processes?

I’m still not sure I get it.  But, it seems to me that both how much of an ‘investment’, and of what type it is, is of importance. 

A few years ago, something unusual happened: I was wrong.  Yes, it does happen, occasionally….  :0) 

During a get-together, I got into a heated-yet-amicable discussion with someone on an inconsequential topic – and, not having proof for either side on hand, we came to an impasse.  Another person came in, who just could have had the answer, so we asked her.  As she began to speak, it became apparent that the information was not favourable to my position, but the general revelry of the get-together was beginning to drown out her voice.  So, I started to ‘shush’ everyone, so we could hear the rest of what she had to say.

My opponent, sparks of laughter in his eyes, commented that perhaps it was not in my interest to be getting her to speak, as she’ll only prove me wrong!  This puzzled me, and I said so:  I’d rather be proven wrong, than persist in an incorrect position.  It was my opponent’s turn to be puzzled – it seemed this approach, which I took to be the only plausible one, had never occurred to him.

This gave me a big clue:  some people cannot be convinced, because they value winning an argument (and not ‘loosing face’) higher than they value being right.  And if this could be true of an inconsequential thing, among friends – where laughter was the measure of the volume of the argument – how much more true this would be for ‘big things’!

One of the ‘big debates’ that is going on now centers on the veracity of the ‘Anthropogenic Climate Change’ model.  I was one of the earliest proponents of ‘global warming’ – it sounded reasonable to me.  However, over more than a decade of  reading up on the underlying science, the IPCC reports, and after speaking with some of the scientists (and an economist)who were part of the whole UN shindig about it, I have concluded that it is much more of a political tool for behaviour modification than it is a scientific theory…

Not that long ago, I got into a discussion about ACC with an intelligent, educated young man – and an excellent debater – whose positions fall far left of the centre.  I made an observation that most of the ACC’s proponents were left of centre, and he accused me of politicizing the debate.  Yet, he was logical, and challenged me to convince him that ACC is a load of dingo’s kidneys, without ‘politicizing’ it. 

So, I explained a lot of the ideas that the ACC’s proponents are using, and explained the underlying science behind them…and why this model does not fit the scientific evidence.  I also explained the IPCC’s process in writing the report, and how the methodology was used to exclude science to play significant role in the report.  I even pointed out a few bits where frustrated scientists used wording that acted as ‘red flags’ to other scientists, indicating the unsoundness of the statement.

Nothing seemed to work.  I simply did not know how to convince this man.  Frustrated, I made an offhanded comment about how the whole pseudoscience of ACC was started when Margaret Thatcher commissioned a report that would show ‘fossil fuels should be abandoned in favour of nuclear power’, in order to use it as a weapon with which to end a pesky coal-miners strike….

I was quite floored when he retorted:  “You might have mentioned Thatchers involvment at the start and I would have instantaneously lost all of my credible thought procceses and immediately jumped on your wagon.”

Perhaps it is beyond me to figure out what convinces people…

Posted in Aspergers, debate, human nature, language, philosophy, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »
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