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lol, no they don't. Why on earth would you think this?

John McCain.

In which case, "radical liberal" is redundant and meaningless. Makes sense!

Do you not understand why that is false, by definition?

HAHAHA you kill me. The train of thought that would require varrus to go though..

Edited, Feb 10th 2011 7:57pm by Xsarus

Shh, I wanted to hear him say it.



Hm, kinda makes you wonder why more conservatives don't become professors. Maybe they're not smart enough to make the grade :x Or maybe smart people who are conservative tend to become more liberal as they learn facts about the world and reality and stuff.

Varrus said they were the same, which makes sense seeing as that was who Joph was responding to, he also only spent two lines on it, so clearly that's leaping. It is amusing though that you spend two paragraphs trying to counter an argument or distinction that was never really made. It's also amusing that you have absolutely no problem completely dismissing what happens to be the majority opinion because you don't like it.

Nope. Read back a page. Joph used the same argument against me. He then repeated it (with a reference to me) again when arguing with Varus. He seems to think that the argument we're making rests on needing both people to be the exact same people. But it doesn't. It's about the same flawed economic theories leading both groups to the same flawed results.




Joph wasn't trying to dismiss an opposing argument purely on the grounds that the people who were on Obama's economic team in 2009 are not the same as those who are writing papers today saying that it worked? Because it looked to me like he used exactly that argument against both myself and Varus, with apparently no explanation as to why that matters. All he did was insist that we'd claimed that they were the same exact people, and so since they weren't, we must be wrong about them being wrong.

Isn't that an insane argument? It's a step less silly than the Chebacca defense, but not by much.





When the majority opinion is wrong, I will disagree with it.

Are you kidding? The professors in a field select their graduate students. The screening process is that you simply only pick those who agree with you about your demand side theories. It's not hard to figure out which students rabidly agree with everything you say and which ones disagree. The only way a student gets past the numerous points along the graduate program path at which he will be weeded out is if he keeps his mouth shut and goes along with what his professors want to hear.



That and teaching, right? Who teaches the kids who become the next PhDs in a field? Who decides which kids are qualified to join a graduate program? Who decides whether their chosen topic for their thesis is adequate proof of their knowledge and understanding of the field itself? Think about it. If you believe that a particular method of monetary control is absolutely true and you teach that it's absolutely true, any student who attempts to write a thesis even hinting or resting on the possibility that it might not be true would appear (in your eyes) to not have a complete grasp of the field and thus can't be accepted. You'd gently "suggest" to him that he write a more appropriate and defensible thesis.

This happens all the time in graduate programs. Especially in the arts, humanities, and softer sciences.



But you can't get the grant money for the research unless someone is willing to pay, right? And you can't get published unless you are already a PhD, right? And you can't get your PhD unless you've passed a thesis exam. And guess what? When the bulk of the people who have to approve your thesis believe dogmatically in specific demand side assumptions, you can't write anything that contradicts that and still get your degree.

That process weeds out most of those who might otherwise have written research papers on supply-side economics. It's why that 6-30 ratio Joph listed doesn't really mean anything at all.



Fired? Interviewed? What are you talking about? I'm saying you wont get a doctorate degree in economics at 90% of the schools that offer such things in this country unless you espouse a demand-side economic viewpoint in your graduate work. The biases of the professors will influence who ends out advancing in those programs.



You really don't know anything about how the graduate education system works in this country, do you? Granted, in most fields, it isn't this horrible. But that's because in most fields, the schools of thought aren't so completely divided. In economics, they are.




Not "conservatives" per se. We're talking about the field of economics, and we're talking about a disagreement on fundamental economic concepts. You're over simplifying things.



Of course you do! Or at least you have to say you agree with it. If your test asks a question, the answer for which assumes a particular result from a demand-side spending action, you'd darn well better write the answer that assumes the professors demand-side assumptions are correct, of you'll get that answer wrong. Get enough wrong, and you get a bad grade. Get a bad grade, and you don't get accepted into the graduate program.

Get it? Over time, anyone who continues to disagree with the assumptions themselves will either have to change to at least appear to agree, or drop out and pursue a different subject.



You honestly believe that? They are forced to comply with the "liberal" assumptions because if they don't, they get bad grades. The weeding out process is incredibly simple and straightforward. You look at the result (high percentage of economists hold liberal assumptions), and assume that it's because at some point along the line they "saw the light of truth". That's ridiculous. Everyone who didn't was weeded out.

I'll repeat my seminary analogy. Your argument is like saying that God must exist because of the high percentage of priests who say that God exists. You're ignoring the fact that anyone who doesn't believe that God exists doesn't make it through the seminary process and become a priest.

This isn't quite as 100%, but it's the same concept.




Do you assume this because you have some kind of factual evidence? Or do you assume it because these things must be true for your argument to hold water? I suspect you're engaging in a bit of cart-before-horse logic here.

And let's be clear. We're not talking about "graduation". People with bachelors degrees don't tend to get their papers published in economic journals. We're talking about graduate school, and obtaining a doctorate in economics. That's not the same as just getting a basic degree in the field. I suspect there are a ton of conservatives with bachelor and even masters in economics. Most of them are likely working in the private sector making oodles of money.

But Joph's argument was specific to a ratio of economists writing papers in a journal. That's not the same thing, is it?



OMG! Funny.

So, the idea that if you take money from one person and give it to another person, as long as that second person spends the money buying stuff, you will create more money than you started with is an "indisputable fact"? It's lunacy! The problem is that you are assuming that the process you describe must work in all cases, and so you ignore the fact that in this case it's not. What is actually going on is that there is no indisputable fact. Just theory. And a bad one at that. But because so many people have placed their reputations on it, the theory continues to be taught. They don't want to admit they were wrong. And so they teach their students to believe the same wrong thing. And those students don't want to be wrong, so they implement it. And when it doesn't work, they can't admit they were wrong, so yet other adherents jump in to write papers about how it really did work, but we're measuring the effects wrong or something. And the whole ridiculous process just goes on and on and on.


How about we step back and look at what is being claimed? It's ridiculous.




Almost made me spit my coffee on the screen. Wow. That's just amazingly naive.

Edited, Feb 10th 2011 7:27pm by gbaji

So just saying "wrong" constitutes an argument now?

Ok: You're wrong! Lol...


I'll also point out that we're still basically arguing about what is already a fallacious argument (since a majority of economists who responded to a journal survey hold a given position, it must be the right one). Those whole side-track is merely about how it's possible to have such bias in a field.


Ultimately none of this changes the absolutely absurdity and completely non-supportability of the theory that's actually at issue.

Edited, Feb 10th 2011 7:42pm by gbaji

No, you keep pretending this is the argument at play. What's actually happening is that you're claiming that expert opinions carry no weight because anybody can find an expert to support their position, and everyone else is pointing out that a majority of experts support one position, to which you responded with your usual delusional crap about how liberals control every aspect of academia.


For such a "non-supportable" theory it sure has an awful lot of support.

When one person knows something about the subject and the other is just conjecturing? Yes.

"Mommy, 2+3=23, right?"
"Wrong."

It's sad to me how much time you spent trying to offer a rebuttal to my post, and in doing so only demonstrated how you not only have NO idea what you're talking about (based on what you said, I wouldn't be surprised if you don't even know anyone in a graduate program), but are desperately trying to invent a system under which your suppositions work. You're not just wrong, but probably well aware of how ignorant you are of the subject. Your willingness to argue subjects on which you know literally next to nothing astounds.

And I'll give you the same lecture I have before-- this could have been an opportunity for you to learn from people who know something you don't, but instead you choose to be argumentative. You don't ask questions, just leap to an argument, no matter how absurd.



Actually, most people don't make it through seminary school because they DO seriously begin to doubt the existence of God as they learn more about their religion (this is something frequently pointed out to first-year seminary students by their instructors, in fact). Somewhat ironically drawing an analogy to my argument: as people become more educated, they abandon their initial beliefs. That aside, very shoddy analogy for reasons not deserving further exploration.

But yes, it is a fact that conservatives graduate and attend college at a rate similar to liberals.

Long story short, your belief that there are any significant barriers to conservatives acquiring doctorate degrees and getting tenured positions are hysterically unfounded, and when you've got enough humility to ask a question to something you don't know rather than invent an answer, I'll be happy to explain the process to you in greater detail.