Ben Carson: A case study on why intelligent people are often not skeptics

If only he’d seen this picture of the Great Las Vegas Grain Pyramid before his 1998 speech, he might have added space aliens to his hypothesis: http://images.cheapovegas.com/sites/www.cheapovegas.com/files/billboard/luxor-111_C.jpg

With the recent report on CNN that Dr. Carson may have fabricated important aspects of his childhood, I have to wonder what might happen if he actually gets to be president. The thought makes me cringe.

I understand about false memories and that he may not be lying, but, perhaps instead, this may be a form of confabulation, but he is way over the top with everything that is disturbing about human personalities.

I have the same feelings about most of the rest of the republican field and about everyone who has a prayer of getting the Republican nomination.

If you want to know the solution to ALL the worlds problems, spend some time in a hospital doctors dining room. Dunning Kruger indeed.

My wife and I went to listen to Dr. Carson at a college in PA a few years ago. He was fire and brimstone. He talked about institutionalized racism and how minorities were at a continuous disadvantage in many settings no matter how hard they tried to work. Yes, he hit on a lot of conservative ideas that were far-right, but he was also far-left in others.
I have the feeling that he is playing to the crowd, and I probably am not far off given how other presidential candidates behave in the primaries. As a middle-of-the-road voter, that is what turns me off about politics. That they are willing to lie, cheat and steal to win is very telling.
He’s campaigning on not being a politician, but he’s very much getting on-the-job training as such and is basically applying for a job as one. He’s all cool, calm and collected right now because that seems to be what far-right voters want to see in a Black man. Raise his voice and attend a social rally and he’s a “community agitator” like Obama. Stay quiet and with a calm demeanor and he’s a “real Black man” according to Rupert Murdoch.
Finally, in my current adventure of trying to get this doctoral degree, I have met some very brilliant people who have some weird ways of looking at the world and/or say the most dumbfounding things. The ability to earn and hold a degree, and work on a brain, doesn’t mean that your judgment is not subject to all the fallacies of being human.

“It’s also correct that holding conspiracy beliefs and believing in pseudoscience do not mean that a person is stupid.”

Orac, I really appreciate that you made this point in the last few paragraphs. It’s very easy for us, the scientific practitioners who enjoy and learn from this blog, to ridicule the quacks and fearmongers that we are up against. So much better to get inside their thought processes and egos, and explain in a fact-based manner that they are wrong. Thanks for helping me understand this apparent paradox. Maybe

“…the opinion of experts, when unanimous, must be accepted by non-experts as more likely to be right than the opposite opinion” – Bertrand Russell
Unanimity is unlikely in practical terms so I am happy with overwhelming (or even significant) consensus. And real experts by the way, no Google scholarly opinions count.

Chris@1: And they have this handy parking spot for their flying saucers nearby. I’ve never seen that pyramid at night (the only times I have ever been in Las Vegas was to change planes), but it is visible from at least one of the concourses at McCarran International Airport.

I’ve heard a couple of notions as to where Dr. Carson may have gotten the idea that the pyramids were for grain storage. One is that medieval scholars, who didn’t know better (archeology hadn’t been invented yet), thought that was their purpose. The other possibility is that Dr. Carson has spent too much time playing video games: in Civilization II, if you build the Great Pyramids wonder, you get a free granary in all of your cities.

With the recent report on CNN that Dr. Carson may have fabricated important aspects of his childhood

Yes, there is the fact that none of the people who knew the young Ben Carson could corroborate any of the stories he told about his “wild youth.”
There are the numerous things he’s said about evolution, the Big Bang, homosexuality, and history, that are easily shown to be completely false with under ten minutes of checking.
Now we know he made up his story about the offer of a scholarship to West Point.
The answer to his question “Do you think I’m a pathological liar?” would seem to be obvious.

@ Eric and Denise #14/15: I thought all the grain was for when the dead rose and were all really hungry entombed pyramid-dwelling zombies just waiting for Brendan Fraser to free them. That’s a long time and how sad they weren’t left a more paleo diet for the last few thousand years

Carson believes that Barack Obama is part of a Communist conspiracy to bring down America, that gay rights is a Communist plot, and, of course, that the theory of evolution comes from Satan

I am not convinced that Carson believes, in a meaningful way, in anything. He is not concerned with the truth or falsity of statements, only in their operational value — what does the audience want to be told?

I agree withthis thesis and I would direct everyone’s attention – including our author – to the work of Micheal Shermer Who in his book and talks lays bare this phenomenon. And there is a subset of why very smart people can believe very wierd things. It goes along to what I think are the self-imposed limits of intelligence – the amazing ability of very smart people to convince themselves of very wierd and sometimes very dumb things. They are literally smart enough to baffle themselves

Oops, link fail.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/06/carson-west-point-campaign-controversy/?intcmp=hpbt1

I believe Carson stated he was offered a scholarship to West Point. In reality a cadet is not on a scholarship but is appointed to the academy. If you accept the appointment you are then a cadet officer in the army. Carson is old enough that if he had accepted the appointment; he would have had a obligatory term of military service (type on whether he graduated or not). Now days the obligatory service takes place after your second year.

Orac apparently is a surgeon specializing in oncology and also has a PhD in cellular physiology.
Yet he seems to present himself as an expert advocate in OTHER areas – such as evolution, climate change, GMOs.

Make me think of a quote I saw recently:

“I make a distinction between intellectuals and people of intellectual achievement. . . .
An intellectual feeds on indignation and really can’t get by without it. The perfect example is Noam Chomsky. When Chomsky was merely the most exciting and most looked-to and, in many ways, the most profound linguist in this country if not the world, he was never spoken of as an American intellectual. Here was a man of intellectual achievement. He was not considered an intellectual until he denounced the war in Vietnam, which he knew nothing about. Then he became one of America’s leading intellectuals. He remains one until this day, which finally has led to my definition of an intellectual: *An intellectual is a person who is knowledgeable in one field but speaks out only in others.*”
– Tom Wolfe

It’s possible that he met with Westmoreland when he says, but it doesn’t appear likely.

I’m given to understand that the Pentagon records show Westmoreland to be somewhere other than Detroit at the time.

@Orac —

I don’t think he’s wittingly lying about any of it. He probably just sees conversion/redemption myth as a higher form of truth than truth. So that’s the truth he tells.

But exaggerating your military credentials is politically problematic. So while the West Point thing is not fatal, it’s also not great.

In conventional terms, anyway. But these days, who knows.

@hdb —

Well, OK. Fine. But what about the aliens? Why did they build the sphinx?

@#38 —

He said, repeatedly and unambiguously, in print, that he was offered a full scholarship to West Point, as you can see for yourself right here.

No school offers scholarships to students who haven’t applied. Furthermore, West Point does not charge tuition.

Still yet furthermore, no candidate, however ideal, can be certain of acceptance to West Point without applying and being accepted. It has an acceptance rate of 9%. So his confidence in that is a little unseemly, as well as more than a little disrespectful to those who were accepted and did attend, and serve.

Shorter version: Even if he’s never explicitly said that he applied, it wouldn’t help him. What he did say would still be both false and inaccurate.

If what he meant was that he could have gotten a service nomination to West Point via ROTC, but chose not to pursue it because he wanted to be a doctor, he could have said so.

Carson claimed he was told people would arrange for him to “get a scholarship” at West Point. A spokesman for West Point points out there is no such thing as a scholarship to West Point.

Carson and his supporters say that sometime between May 23rd and 26th, 1969, he met with General William Westmoreland.
Army records show that General Westmoreland was not in Detroit during the time the claimed meeting occurred. He was there in February.
This, with his other lies, especially his blatant lies about never having a relationship with Mannatech, should be enough to trash him with his supporters. But, since they are tea baggers, like the resident troll sn, lies don’t matter when they come from their people, only when they imagine others have told them.

You know, I was invited to apply to West Point on the basis of my PSAT scores in such flattering terms that it made admission seem all but guaranteed.

I don’t know if colleges still even send letters like that. However, they did then. And that was the very first one I ever got, so I was thrilled I had someplace to go.

But do you see me going around saying I was offered a full scholarship to West Point? No, you do not.

And you know why? Because I’ve learned something about the world since I was 16.

Yet, the virtuous, wise, responsible and trustworthy Ben Carson is trying to lay all the blame for his blatantly false statement on the media. And his base is eating it up.

Always the victims, it’s never their fault.

Sorry.

/off-topic.

Re: #47 —

I don’t want to misspeak. It might have been an invitation to consider applying, technically. I just remember that it flattered me into thinking I’d get in.

@sadmar —

That he’s got a business rather than a campaign manager is suggestive. But the fundraising is closer to telling. So while it’s not 100% conclusive, I’m inclined to agree with Chait.

It’s not an unprecedented thing. Ron Paul did it repeatedly. I mean, he was definitely building a political organization. But his campaign slogan practically could have been “I turned down the pension, now invest in my retirement.” He wasn’t really running for president.

@JustaTech —

As you say.

For one thing, there’s a reason why West Point has a much higher drop-out rate than Yale. So even if he had been somehow been certain of acceptance, he still shouldn’t be talking about it like it proves he has the right stuff.

Plus his stated reason for not going is somewhat less than rock-solid. Some graduates do go straight from West Point to medical school. So he could have been a doctor. He just avoided having to serve as one.

Enjoyed very much the movie made of Carson’s life a few years back. But seen in light of his political office bid, I see it for the slick propaganda piece that it really is.

The Carson campaign now has a ‘rap’ radio ad…
https://soundcloud.com/abcpolitics/ben-carson-radio-ad

The response on Twitter is pretty good:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/TweetYourReactionToTheBenCarsonRap?src=hash

To ann #43:

“No school offers scholarships to students who haven’t applied.”

Really?
So, when, for instance, multiple college recruiters descend upon the home of a high school football star offering him the “world”, including, of course, a “full ride”, they do so ONLY after the kid has duly completed applications to each of their schools, some of which he may never have heard of?

I’ll ask again, can anyone out there help me with something that’s in the news about Ben Carson – specifically, where it was that he ever stated that he had *actually applied* to West Point?

“Still yet furthermore, no candidate, however ideal, can be certain of acceptance to West Point without applying and being accepted. It has an acceptance rate of 9%.”

I think the acceptance rate would be a lot higher for the individuals who *West Point approaches*, as opposed to the individuals who approach WP.

“So his confidence in that is a little unseemly, as well as more than a little disrespectful to those who were accepted and did attend, and serve.”

So, Ben Carson now disrespects the military! Well done, ann.

“Shorter version: Even if he’s never explicitly said that he applied, it wouldn’t help him. What he did say would still be both false and inaccurate.”

Highly arguable that it was false and inaccurate. But speaking of false and inaccurate, can you or anyone out there direct me to the scathing ScienceBlog articles attacking Hillary Clinton’s many lies, including, off the top of my head:
– Her explanation for why she was named “Hillary” (hint: Think the guy who mounted Everest six years after Hillary was born.)
– Her brave landing under a hail of sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996 (Seems to be a hard thing to mis-remember, don’t you think?).

I didn’t see that SN had posted before I submitted that.

It’s not a response to him. I’m not reading or replying to his comments.

I actually chose my school based on a phone call.

When it came down to the last two of those which accepted me, I chose based on the conflicting recommendations of two English teachers.

The loser was the one who thought that The Lord of the Flies was really deep. The winner had us reading Antigone.

What a “nuanced” difference a couple hours can make.

Politico’s headline at 11:29 this morning:
“Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship”

Politico’s UPDATED headline at 5:32 this evening:
“Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point ‘scholarship’ but never applied”

He can keep pitching you’re-not-being-fair fits whenever it comes up. But that hardly makes him look more like a responsible grown-up. There is simply no way it’s not a false, misleading and inaccurate statement. He was not offered a full scholarship to West Point.

Correct – especially when a spokesman from West Point has stated they don’t offer scholarships.
Carson is simply used to never being questioned on his lies, because the people to whom he appeals don’t care about them.
It isn’t that this story is the first massive lie he’s told, because 30 seconds of fact checking his other statements shows he’s been telling whoppers for several years. It’s caught attention because it involves the military. In a sane world it would be enough to damage him – but in a sane world his previous behavior would have prevented him from being considered a viable candidate.

Regarding that whole email/private server thing with another candidate…

“… I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in my termination of my access to [Sensitive Compartmented Information or SCI] and removal from a position of special confidence and trust requiring such access, as well as the termination of my employment or other relationships with any Department or Agency that provides me with access to SGI. In addition, I have been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of SGI by me may constitute violations of United States criminal laws, including…”
Signed,
Hillary R. Clinton, 1/22/09

http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/HRC-SCI-NDA1.pdf

Whew! Thank goodness it didn’t say a breach would terminate her dreams of the presidency!

Re #66…

ann, archbishop of Flounce, has spoken.

“You all should stop pointing out how Ben Carson lied because Hillary lied too!” See Noevo shouts at the spectators. “And besides! Where does he say ‘Me, Ben Carson, actually applied to West Point” Nowhere! That’s where! So his admission that he was misspoke means nothing! He’s never lied! Never!”

From the Wall Street Journal:

In his 1990 autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” Mr. Carson writes of a Yale psychology professor who told Mr. Carson, then a junior, and the other students in the class—identified by Mr. Carson as Perceptions 301—that their final exam papers had “inadvertently burned,” requiring all 150 students to retake it. The new exam, Mr. Carson recalled in the book, was much tougher. All the students but Mr. Carson walked out.

“The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture,” Mr. Carson wrote. “ ‘A hoax,’ the teacher said. ‘We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.’ ” Mr. Carson wrote that the professor handed him a $10 bill.

Then she took him to a magical land with tap-dancing penguins where they rode on a merry-go-round and ate ice cream.

She has since passed away and the photographer has been missing at sea for more than thirty years. So you’ll just have to take Carson’s word for that.

No photo identifying Mr. Carson as a student ever ran, according to the Yale Daily News archives, and no stories from that era mention a class called Perceptions 301. Yale Librarian Claryn Spies said Friday there was no psychology course by that name or class number during any of Mr. Carson’s years at Yale.

Yeah, but he just spoke to “Perceptions 301” today, and it was not anxious to be revealed.

Plus, it’s difficult to see how such an incident would demonstrate honesty.to begin with. But never mind.

Motivated reasoning is so attractive — and so easy if you compartmentalize. Acquiring and developing intellectual virtues and applying them to every aspect of your life is quite another thing altogether.

I suspect that early on Carson made a simple error in his approach to learning that has grown into the weirdness we now see playing out on the national stage.

Allow me to put on my Liberal/MSM/MSNBC tin foil hat…

Orac and ann and all these other white people here attacking black Ben Carson.
Obviously, racism is at play.

To Damien #80:

No, I won’t join you.
A “scholarship” is just a word for a college or college sponsor providing a student partial or full tuition coverage.
Prior to this week, if you had asked me whether West Point provided scholarships, I probably would have said ‘I think so. Why not?’ As would the great majority of Americans, I think.

The fact that WP doesn’t actually provide “scholarships”, but rather provides “appointments”, doesn’t take away from the fact that the appointment is a “free ride”, just like a scholarship.

And if you have a perfect memory of the conversations, events, and timing of things that happened nearly 50 years ago, congratulations. Maybe YOU should run for president. Or for God.

Are you preeeeeetty sure that 2-L Hillary wasn’t lying/fabricating about landing under a hail of sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996? Seems to be a hard thing to mis-remember, don’t you think?

That’s wringer not ringer. You might want to change that. God help us, it’ll be tow the line next. 🙂

capnkrunch @78 —

I never knew his autobiography was titled “Gifted Hands”. Talk about pompous.

HIs hands apparently were extraordinarily skillful. His head, eh, maybe not so much.

palindrom@58

HIs hands apparently were extraordinarily skillful. His head, eh, maybe not so much.

I don’t doubt that, I just think it’s rather narcissistic to go around calling yourself gifted. On second thought though, I think it’s possible the editor or someone comes up with the title. But, it does fit it with the whole ‘when everyone tells you you’re this sh!t you start to believe it’ idea.

I don’t know if you can understand this, but this lie about his “scholarship offer” from Gen. Westmoreland, and the other fabrications, aren’t disqualifying on their own. It’s his tenuous-at-best grasp of what qualifies as knowledge vs. what’s delusion.

To me, the really serious problem is that he’s insisting his informal association with West Point isn’t an exaggeration (because media smear) but that his informal association with Mannatech is (because media smear).

It’s also complete lunacy to claim that Obama and/or Hillary and/or anybody running for president isn’t subjected to the same degree of scrutiny. The only difference is that most presidential candidates have a history of running for elected office and have been raked over the coals already.

They also usually have professionals vetting them in advance.

The real anomaly is Donald Trump. He can get away with anything, evidently. But he’s practically never done anything except say whatever completely untrue thing crosses his mind. I think people are probably just overwhelmed.

but Ben Carson’s lies, stupidity and borderline mentally ill pronouncements have nothing whatsoever to do with Hillary Clinton’s lies, whatever they may be.

I’m not thrilled with her, by any stretch, but at least she’s not going to be making policy based off the latest insanity from the voices in her head.

Didn’t we just talk about this kind of thing?

Prior to this week, if you had asked me whether West Point provided scholarships, I probably would have said ‘I think so. Why not?’ As would the great majority of Americans, I think.

I’m not quite seeing how Carson is exonerated by the plausibility of his fabrication, or the number of people it would have fooled.

To Damien #88:

“Did you hear me say anything remotely defensive of HilLary Clinton? She lied about that for no reason, and it was reasonable to hammer her for it….eight friggin years ago. please tell me if I’m wrong, but Ben Carson’s lies, stupidity and borderline mentally ill pronouncements have nothing whatsoever to do with Hillary Clinton’s lies, whatever they may be.”

So, while you acknowledge Hillary lies, and lies while in a position of governmental power, you don’t have a problem with the lying, but rather have a problem with this stupidity and borderline mental illness, which you allege Ben suffers from.

What might be a policy decision of Ben as president which would be impacted by his “stupid/mentally-ill” views on pyramids, evolution, etc.?

It is a little amusing to see the defenders of carson, including the local completely inept troll sn, flail around in their attempts to change the subject to anything else: claims that other candidates haven’t been put to the same scrutiny, or that the fact that a post about Carson’s repeated blatantly false stories doesn’t include equally scathing comments about (fill in the blank) means that the people discussing Carson must support (fill in the blank).

There is a very simple way around having the Republican candidates called on their repeated lies: select candidates who don’t lie, whether it is about science, history, or their own personal history, as Carson has been doing.

As far as the blatantly stupid comment @95 goes: the point, which I will assume you aren’t capable of understanding, isn’t that Carson is so willing to lie about things that are so easily checked (because, in the right wing world, fact-checking is something that shouldn’t be done), it is because on those rare times when he has been asked serious questions, he shows himself to be so out of touch with the topic he can’t even dance around them gracefully. The thought of a person with no knowledge of international relations, or, it seems, the Constitution, having access to the presidency, should be concerning to everyone. (It isn’t to you because you are even less knowledgeable than Carson.)

Questions I have for the WSJ

Perhaps you should pose your questions to them rather than ass-spraying them here.

I’ll ask again, can anyone out there help me with something that’s in the news about Ben Carson – specifically, where it was that he ever stated that he had *actually applied* to West Point?

I’m not sure whether this “reasoning” from S.N. is novel or just trending (emphasis added):

“And the Church does not hold that the earth is NOT 6000 years old.
There are many like me. But among today’s billion or so self-identified Catholics, we’re a relatively rare breed. A hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, we would have been the status quo.”

Ben Carson (and I) thanks all of you, and the media you swallow. It’s been a good week.
Cha-ching.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/259469-carson-thanks-biased-media-for-35m-fundraising-haul

The plausibility of his account is high. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carson, like me and many others, didn’t know, before the last week, that West Point didn’t provided “scholarships”, per se.

Yah. I’m sure everyone will be fascinated in what you learned about career paths in the military during your time as an ROTC star.

At the end of the day, SN, Ben Carson is a brilliant surgeon with a well-deserved international reputation in that arena.

But Hillary Clinton actually has helped shape policy, to instigate world-wide betterments, and she has been part of two hugely successful presidencies. She knows the people, the mechanisms, and the processes for getting things done in both congress and the White House. Ben Carson can barely handle the science that drives biology, let alone the complex international relationships that he would have to navigate, and given his clear inability to learn (wet-foot dry-foot, anybody? When you’re speaking to a Cuban-dominant audience?), marks him unworthy of holding the office.

The man can take in a billion dollars from the ignorant, and you can attack Hillary for whatever you want, but at the end of the day, Ben Carson will fail, and you can gnash your teeth and tend your garments as the adults deal with things. I’d pat you on the head to make this even more patronizing, but I think the fact you’re backing a guy who couldn’t tell you the difference between the sixth amendment and the sixth fleet is just adorable enough on its own.

“By Civ IV, it changes to grant knowledge of all forms of government and the ability to swap from one to another without penalty.”

Rich Woods – this was the ability it had in Civ1 as well (and I remember that, which must mean I’m old). The argument made for changing it for Civ II was that it was too powerful that way, and I agree. (Although why anyone would want to switch from monarchy until they have a decently sized empire is beyond me, but that’s another story.)

@ Herr Doktor
The capacity for self-deception is needed for deceiving others. Most leaders have this capacity.
http://researchers.uq.edu.au/research-project/14025

“God, I love bone!” she said
This sounds familiar from a Ray Bradbury story.

weekend’s time consuming festivities, that is.

Poo, I fat-fingered “were”, didn’t I. Keep the extra ‘w’ for whatever use it might have for you.

Orthopod jokes!
What’s the difference between an orthopedic surgeon and a carpenter?
A carpenter knows more than one antibiotic!

The orthopod jokes have convinced me I should continue to delay having knee replacement surgery.

To Damien #107:

“But Hillary Clinton actually has helped shape policy, to instigate world-wide betterments, and she has been part of two hugely successful presidencies. She knows the people, the mechanisms, and the processes for getting things done…”

You forgot ‘she’s flown millions of miles as Sec. of State’.

You should consider joining her campaign, specifically, to help Hill develop some rational, convincing rat-a-tat-tat bullet points of her actual accomplishments.
Because she struggles with this so.
And evuh budy know. It be a runnin’ joke.

“It was a simple question to someone accustomed to much tougher ones: What was her proudest achievement as secretary of state? But for a moment, Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing recently before a friendly audience at a women’s forum in Manhattan, seemed flustered…
But her halting answer suggests a problem that Mrs. Clinton could confront as she recounts her record in Mr. Obama’s cabinet before a possible run for president in 2016: Much of what she labored over so conscientiously is either unfinished business or has gone awry in his second term.

“From Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and the grinding civil war in Syria to the latest impasse in the Middle East peace process, the turbulent world has frustrated Mr. Obama, and is now defying Mrs. Clinton’s attempts to articulate a tangible diplomatic legacy…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/us/politics/unfinished-business-complicates-clintons-diplomatic-legacy.html?_r=0

When looking to her past, all you see is… bad baggage.
(You can start at page 1 and work forward, or page 16 and work backwards.)
http://conservativeamerican.org/the-hillary-clinton-lies-list/

As someone who did apply for an appointment to West Point (but did not attend) I have concluded:
– Is it possible that someone did offer Ben Carson a scholarship to West Point? It seems unlikely.
– Is it possible the people in the army did suggest he should consider attending West Point, pointing out that there would be no tuition and fees as well as other benefits? Absolutely.
– Is it possible that 17 year old would interpret a general recruiting message of that sort as “I was offered a full scholarship to West Point”? Absolutely, though as an adult writing his autobiography I’d like to think he’d have thought through what really happened and worded it more precisely.

IMHO, though, this incident is a performance of Shakespeare in a device used to serve hot liquids.

But Hillary Clinton actually has helped shape policy, to instigate world-wide betterments, and she has been part of two hugely successful presidencies.

Well….I don’t know about the worldwide betterments or two hugely successful presidencies. It’s true that Carson can’t make those claims in a general election and that Hillary can, though.

The thing is that in order to get to the general election, a candidate has to be able to win primaries in blue states as well as red states, which becomes a handicap and not a strength the second they’re nominated.

So maybe Rubio, I guess. But who knows?

Whoever runs, I think the real problem for the GOP vis-a-vis Hillary is that unless they have something truly lethal in reserve, they’re already into the zone where continued attacks will just help her and hurt the attacker. I mean, that Benghazi hearing was a gift.

So they need a strong candidate. And that’s their other real problem.

.

The simple truth about the service academies is the cadets don’t pay for anything – tuition, books, housing, uniforms, meals, you name it. Everyone gets a “free ride” except dropouts, who have to pay back by serving in an enlisted rank for some number of years.
If we did otherwise we’d have a military like 19th Century Britain, divided between officers nearly entirely from wealthy families (and usually a second or later son) and “other ranks”, who were recruited from the poorest, most desperate, or most gullible. Officers, especially engineering officers, who rose on ability alone were always reminded that they were social inferiors to the other officers.

IMHO, though, this incident is a performance of Shakespeare in a device used to serve hot liquids.

Pretty much any one incident is, by itself. It’s more that he can’t take the heat. “Thin-skinned” and “quick to anger” just don’t win elections

Plus, this pattern actually started back with that stick-up-robbery-at-Popeye’s anecdote that police don’t have any record of. Not that you can really convict anybody based on the word of the Baltimore police.*** But even still. After a while, it starts to add up.

***Figuratively speaking.

I am labeled a “science denier” because I think man’s impact on the environment is somewhat trivial due to the sheer amount of “pollution” caused by volcanoes alone every year.

The USGS thinks otherwise. They estimate that fossil fuel use releases 100x the carbon dioxide that volcanoes do annually.

In #127, ann the inveterate re-flouncer writes

“Whoever runs, I think the real problem for the GOP vis-a-vis Hillary is that unless they have something truly lethal in reserve, they’re already into the zone where continued attacks will just help her and hurt the attacker. I mean, that Benghazi hearing was a gift.”

Oh, the Benghazi hearing was a gift to willfully deaf dumb and blind liberals, considering the main stream media’s colorful wrapping and pretty bow (i.e. Hill handled herself so well. So cool, and presidential. Not an awful hairdo, either!’).

It was a gift to ann and the others here who don’t unwrap the gift.
Because if they DID, and looked at what’s inside, at the substance, they would have seen that it was at that Benghazi hearing that proof was given that Hillary had LIED about the youtube video causing the attack. Proof she LIED to the American people and LIED to the families of the fallen. But not to Chelsea on the night of the attack. And not to Prime Minister of Egypt the next day.

Ah, nothing lethal.

This woman shouldn’t be running for president. The bitch should be behind bars. #69 redux:

“… I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in my termination of my access to [Sensitive Compartmented Information or SCI] and removal from a position of special confidence and trust requiring such access, as well as the termination of my employment or other relationships with any Department or Agency that provides me with access to SGI. In addition, I have been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of SGI by me may constitute violations of United States criminal laws, including…”
Signed,
Hillary R. Clinton, 1/22/09
http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/HRC-SCI-NDA1.pdf

ann, the ammo provider, in #131:
“Plus, this PATTERN actually started back with … After a while, it starts to add up.”

Yes, it does add up. How many of the 16 pages did you get through? http://conservativeamerican.org/the-hillary-clinton-lies-list/

Fnally – where is the barometer when compared to Obama?

Compared to not only Obama but also every other successful candidate for president from either party for the last forty-plus years, Carson’s barely been scrutinized or attacked at all.

It just seems worse because he handles it so poorly.

Eleven incredible minutes of video. What a gift.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425933/benghazi-committee-emails-hillary-clinton-lied-video-excuse

Note well time 5:10 (email to Chelsea), and time 5:48 (call to Egyptian prime minister).

But her hair looks OK.

sn, you keep claiming crimes committed by Hilary, but nothing actionable has turned up in the hearings. If the evidence were as overwhelming as you (and your fellow mouthbreathers) claim, do you think there would be the resounding legal silence there actually is? (Of course you do, because of some asinine conspiracy you dream up but which also doesn’t exist in the real world.)
If you would deal with facts you could find many things to be unhappy with about her, as many of us do. Your substanceless accusations, and links to right-wing conspiracy sites, are worthless. Just like everything else you say.

Why is it that me not liking Carson means I automagically support Clinton? Why is the best response to Carson’s lies is “but Hillary’s are worse”? Why is Ben Carson referred to as ‘Carson” and Hillary Clinton as “Hillary”? Inquiring minds want to know.

Ben Carson is a liar and an idiot and whatever Hillary Clinton is has no bearing on that whatsoever.

@Chris Wahl
For an agnostic you sure sound quite churchy. In any other environment calling yourself gifted is an act of arrogance, not humility. Think of it this way. It reads much more like ” I am God’s gift to the Earth” than “thank God for providing me a skill for helping others”.

This is all subjective of course. But since you seem to be unable to evaluate people other than by comparing them to Democrats, consider the title of Obama’s autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. See, it is possible to title an autobiography without praising yourself. Who knew?

Dean… remember, he/she is still waiting for the head of Planned Parenthood to be indicted.

remind me not to go to you as a surgeon – or the other person that posted MD by their name. You clearly do not believe in evidence based research (the westpoint thing) – and I certainly would not want you operating on me.

Secondly, why do you criticize one’s religion? I am not a religious person – but who really cares what he believes about pyramids. All I care about is someone that can add 2 + 2 and get 4. I think he is the only candidate that will be able to do so.

Jill: The problem is that when Ben Carson adds two and two, the result he gives is whatever he thinks will get him elected.

I wonder how much Hillary will try to distinguish herself, even distance herself, from her former boss Barack – one of the greatest presidents in the last 150 years, in his view (ref: #100 above).
[I’d argue he’s by far the worst.]
Barack certainly doesn’t seem so great at least from the standpoint of strengthening his political party.
Under his leadership Democrats have lost about 910 state legislature seats, 12 governorships, 69 House seats, and 13 Senate seats.

@Orac “Yes, exactly so. The reason is because science disagrees with what you think. It’s not even close. You are denying the scientific consensus; so you are a science denier.”

Im ok with that label. Im not ok with specifically pulled data, assumptions made based on favorable subsets, gross extrapolation, ignoring certain cycles in favor of others, etc. The money can be followed on both signs. The same science alarmists were also predicting we would be in a horrendous ice age in the early 2000’s (now) back in the 79’s and 80’s (once can still find the article via Newsweek). It went from an impending free, to global warming, and now just the ubiquitous “climate change.”

When you all get done patting yourselves on the back for how smart you are, please figure out how yoh make the entire world succumb to the same stifling regs on energy as proposed and being enacted in the US. We wail and they laugh.

ignoring certain cycles in favor of others, etc. The money can be followed on both signs. The same science alarmists were also predicting we would be in a horrendous ice age in the early 2000’s (now) back in the 79’s and 80’s (once can still find the article via Newsweek).

You’re really not very good at this, and I strongly suspect that nobody’s interested in yet another AGW crank.

From today’s NBC’s “Meet the Press”:
When asked if the scrutiny of Ben Carson is OK, Dem Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said

“I think it might be a better — idea I know it’s a crazy idea — but maybe we focus on the issues impacting the American people and what candidates are saying rather than just spending so much time exploring their lives 30 or 40 years ago. I think the reason so many people are turned off to the political process has to do with the fact we’re not talking about real issues impacting real people.”

To TBruce #156:

“* BTW, why is Wikipedia often written as W___pedia?”

I don’t know for sure.
Maybe because they feel they’re not allowed to write W_holelotofbiasedliberalbullsh*t_pedia.

I’ve always detected a liberal slant to wiki articles that are on subjects that are even remotely political/philosophical/religious (e.g. evolution “science”, global warming “science”, Planned Parenthood). I see similar slants with Snopes.
Obviously written by liberals.

And I seem to recall seeing more stuff lately about tendentious editing issues at wiki. I’ll be using wiki much less in the future, and certainly wouldn’t rely on it for their “Global_cooling” piece.

ann: “But what was the sphinx for?”

Condiments

Jill wrote: “Secondly, why do you criticize one’s religion? I am not a religious person – but who really cares what he believes about pyramids.”

Because he says this belief is Biblical, but the Bible says nothing about the pyramids being grain stores. And having been inside of the pyramids, we *know* they aren’t grain stores. There’d be no rational reason to build gigantic pyramids with only a tiny amount of storage capacity, when it would be far easier to build many small stone or mud brick huts in which to store smaller quantities, in a more distributed fashion.

If he wants to say that his belief about the pyramids is Biblical, he’d best write his own unique Bible that includes that part. Because the bibles everyone else has access to don’t.

@152

“I am wondering to whom Jill’s question is directed, and where she is seeing the atheistic agenda. Certainly not the original post, which mentions religion approximately nowhere.”

Well, I for one, would prefer a president who doesn’t take direction from imaginary friends but that’s never been an (obvious) option on the ballot.

All this intense Main Stream Media focus on Ben Carson’s personal history, and especially on Ben’s recollection of his pre-college years, reminds me of all the attention the MSM paid to Barack Obama’s personal history when Barack was first running for president.

Who could have foretold S.N.’s bumbling into a defense of Barack Hussein Obongonana?

It isn’t often you see someone state they completely reject reality and prefer their own fever dreams as the one in post 161.

gaist and dean – my biggest fans. Or should I say stalkers?
In either case, obsessed with me.

It isn’t often you see someone state they completely reject reality and prefer their own fever dreams as the one in post 161.

Ditto for #168.

The three stories on that list that aren’t deranged conspiracy theories — Ayers/Dohrn, Rezko and Wright — all received months of coverage; he was questioned about them repeatedly during debates, press conferences, etc.; and all three were broken by mainstream media outlets.

The birther and actually-a-muslim stories also received mainstream coverage in 2008, as did the claims that John McCain had an illegitimate black child and that Sarah Palin’s daughter was an unwed teen mother.

The last proved to be true! The other three were debunked. The degree of scrutiny Carson is getting is routine. For Obama, it was actually much worse. His campaign eventually had to put up a “fight the smears” website to deal with it all. And (as I recall) not all of it originated on the right. Some of it came from the Clinton campaign.

The only thing that distinguishes the scrutiny of Carson from that of any other candidate is how badly he’s handling it. Unless he’s just running for the donor cash. In that case, he’s doing great.

The McCain’s-adopted-daughter-is-actually-his-mongrel-bastard-child story emerged and got media coverage during the 2000 primaries, and came from the Bush camp. (Nobody is better at negative than Karl Rove.)

It came up again in 2008, but on reflection, I’m not sure that it again got mainstream play.

The point still stands, though. This stuff is routine.

Jill:

Secondly, why do you criticize one’s religion? I am not a religious person – but who really cares what he believes about pyramids. All I care about is someone that can add 2 + 2 and get 4. I think he is the only candidate that will be able to do so.

Thing is, his wacky belief about the pyramids makes me seriously doubt his ability to add 2 + 2 and get 4. It’s a classic loony claim on par with the flat Earth and the Moon hoax, so if he think its holds water, he demonstrates himself to be prone to believing anything presented to him in a sufficiently flattering way. Or, in a way which flatters one of his preexisting viewpoints.

Look, I am a Christian myself, and I have no quarrel with any particular religion. Believing that a deity creating the world and wants us to be nice to each other and gave us some guidelines for accomplishing that is not a bad thing. But believing any damn fool thing that comes along demonstrates a lack of judgement. I can’t go test whether Moses really parted the Red Sea, or whether people really do reincarnate after death as part of a long march towards Nirvana. But the pyramids would make pretty pathetic granaries, and there’s quite a lot of contemporary documentation (the Egyptians did keep records of their own) showing their funerary purpose. It’s just stupid. It doesn’t even bolster what he thinks it does (that Joseph convinced Pharoah to store grain against a coming famine, which I’m not sure is anything worth arguing about anyway given famines did happen from time to time in the ancient world and people weren’t idiots and did know that stocking up was a good idea — it’s not like this could even remotely be the One True Piece of Evidence that the Bible Is True).

It’s up there with chemtrails and HAARP as far as I’m concerned. It’s baloney, and that he embraced it is a red flag. I don’t care that there’s a religious connection to this particular bit of balderdash; that’s irrelevant.

Calli Arcale@179

Believing that a deity creating the world and wants us to be nice to each other and gave us some guidelines for accomplishing that is not a bad thing.

Well put. Actually reminded me of a YouTube video I came across the other day and had meant to post as a response to See Neovo.

https://youtu.be/FHKQHL8gkQE

Gaist,

Well I for one greatly enjoy your skits. It makes me think there’s a troll shaped gap in the canon that needs to be plugged up with the panache of a talented humorist. Something dealing with weaponized stupidity and demagogues…

Speaking of Carson, pictures of his house suggest that, as one wag put it, he shares interior decorators with Saddam Hussein. Personally I’m not sure which I like more, the painting of a smiling Jesus presenting his best bud Ben to the world, or the lofty one of Carson positioned to gaze down upon unsuspecting supplicants as they approach an alter-type arrangement.

Holy crap on a cracker, that man is tacky.

by denouncing the video..

I guess that should be “implicitly denouncing.” Calling it “inflammatory” is hardly a denunciation. She was actually making it clear that the protests in Cairo (which were a response to the video) were on the protesters.

/off-topic.

First, I’d like to thank ORAC for a thoughtful article. I think his point of Dunning-Kruger, and motivated reasoning are spot on.
Two additional points I’d add as possible explanations (or perhaps clarifications) are:
1) Very intelligent people (interestingly males more than females) tend to ‘think outside the box.’ They tend to look for alternative solutions to problems, rather than using traditional methods. This is a twist on Dunning-Kruger. They are more likely to challenge assumptions – even assumptions of the ‘experts’ or just because they are a ‘scientist.’ For example, nobody told Carson how to separate the twins. He had to trust himself to literally ‘make this up’ from internal understanding that he trusted.
2) During residency especially, a physician tends to learn that the textbook doesn’t necessarily contain the answers. This is both because the textbook is incomplete (e.g. it doesn’t answer what is correct for ‘this’ patient in front of you), but also that it is often incorrect (e.g. it was written by someone else with failings, and may not be as smart as you anyway). This later effect is important because it causes the person to come to conclusions by thinking for themselves, rather than relying on others to provide answers.
These points are notably relevant because the tone the article was that Dunning-Kruger is creating ‘incorrect’ beliefs. I would correct this to say ‘beliefs’ that ‘_I_ don’t understand.’ At the risk of losing the audience here – They may or may not be incorrect.
I personally think his assumptions about pyramids, for example, are … well… ‘hard to understand’. At the same time, I am no more an expert on pyramids than he is, and his belief in pyramids is largely independent of issues I care about. For me, debate of such points is just falling into ‘motivated reasoning’ without even thinking ‘do I really care?’ But, even for issues that might have more importance if you discount at the level of ‘That’s just stupid, 97% of … agree – He’s just an idiot’ – please remember that at one time 97% of … once believed the earth was flat. At the time “it was ‘obvious’”.
Also, this is quite relevant to the extensive discussion in the comments because it demonstrates that the same things going on in the participants. On both sides, you all probably fancy yourselves as ‘smart’, try to ‘think for yourself.’ But it’s clear that many all are stuck in the ‘motivated reasoning’ part. You came with an idea that you were right and will use any attempt to belittle the other side to prove your point! It sounds like most of you wouldn’t even _consider_ listening to a reasonable argument from the other side. You all are way too busy attempting to ‘prove your point’, to acknowledge insight or truth.
For example, It’s clear that ‘gaist’ and others have flipped the bozo switch on ‘see noevo’ and vice versa. We tend to believe anyone that thinks differently is a ‘bozo.’ Don’t flip the bozo switch (look this up if you don’t know what that means)!
First, _sometimes_ the bozo has important insights even while they may have difficulty expressing them. If you listened with attempt to understand them, you are likely to learn something, even if they are ‘crazy’. Listening doesn’t have to mean you are persuaded, but you’ll be more likely to learn if you simply ask ‘why do you believe …’ rather than attacking with ‘you’re an idiot if you believe…’ .
Second, if your attempting to hone your arguments, you’ll be more effective at actually persuading someone if understand where they are coming from (e.g. which arguments are weak to them and why, which are strong and why). You will almost certainly put someone else into a ‘motivated reasoning mode’ if you call them names or tell them that they are ‘stupid’ for believing something. When you do this, you are defeating your own cause. We are all familiar with rational for ‘our side’. But we feel uncomfortable reaching out to others and understand ‘their side.’ But, if you are not intent on understanding the other side first, I would suggest you are getting yourself in a tizzy for nothing. You are not convincing anyone but yourself, because you don’t even understand that you don’t understand. If your intent is to convince, you need to clarify where the gap in understanding is, and _lead_ from that gap to your point instead.
For example, I liked ORAC’s point about malpractice. He is correctly pointing out that this is a weak argument – showing that he is at least attempting to listen to alternative points of view.
We are all biased by the backgrounds we come from. For example, it’s relatively easy to predict political positions based on zip code alone, or what channel they watch. This is because of the crowd we talk with and _listen_ to.
So with that soap box intro – I’ll shut up and listen.
For starters, I’ll tell you that I am a physician with an EE background (I tend to understand science and medicine pretty well and, I’m brighter than ‘average’). I am able to understand good arguments, technically an ‘independent’ (I don’t care for either of the political parties) but tend to think conservatively. For example, I’m very much a small government kind of guy, mainly because I believe that government tends to screw up most things it touches. I’ve experience that first hand, and see a lot through that lens. Also, I’m Catholic and believe that life begins at inception. I grew up in Nevada and parts of the Midwest. You get the picture.
So I’ll start with the folks on the left side (I’ll call this voting ‘D’). Carson isn’t my favorite candidate, but he does indicate agreement with some stuff I like (e.g. small gov, balanced budgets, anti-abortion, etc). I believe he currently is being treated unfairly by the press, because IMHO there is little to no evidence that ‘lied’ or ‘fabricated,’ and that ‘to bear false witnesses’ is wrong. I’ve reviewed the facts of the stories.
You might call me an ‘idiot,’ but instead clarify how my thinking unclear, and how you so sure that you know better than I do?
Currently you are losing my vote. Why do you think you are convincing me – e.g. vote ‘D’ (or for that matter anyone else who wasn’t just going to vote ‘D’ because they always vote ‘D’)? Hint, you’ll never sell me based on an argument like ‘97% believe…’ because I don’t ‘just accept’ arguments that are ‘simple appeal to authority.’
But, you might sell me on arguments like ‘evidence xx would support a conclusion of yy‘ because I can break that down into ‘we agree/disagree on xx’ or ‘we agree/disagree on the word supports’. Based on this we can explore if this is a disagreement in facts, or disagreement in interpretation of them. Both are focused on an objective of better understanding each other and finding truth – not necessarily ‘winning.’
By the way – same questions for the folks on the ‘right’ (I’ll call this voting ‘R’). So far you are winning me personally, but that is probably in large part because of my starting bias. Your clearly loosing most other participants here. Why do you think you are convincing to somebody who is currently anticipating to vote ‘D’? Do you even have clarity over what their concerns are?

Larry @187:
I would love to respond to your comment, but the total absence of paragraph breaks makes it impossible to read. In the future, please consider adding some white space to your comments.

I was sorely, sorely tempted to post a comment humorously juxtaposing Larry’s assertion that he is brighter than average with some of the funnier of his mistakes in usage and spelling, but ann has set a better example.

capnkrunch @ 192:
I remember reading the very long article in the Baltimore Sun about the separation of those twins (I was supposed to be using the newspaper to protect the floor from a crafting project and got distracted). While Dr Carson was certainly the lead and a very important part of that surgery, he also had a huge team working with him, and they did a *lot* of planning.

That’s hardly “making it up”.

ann@194

Not even. There is no part of Seventh-Day Adventism that says “We believe that Joseph built the pyramids for grain storage.”

Ah, gotcha. So it’s like young earth creationism; purely rectally sourced but guised as supported by the Bible.

Larry…

1) Very intelligent people (interestingly males more than females) tend to ‘think outside the box.’

I’m curious as to your source. I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I’ve heard pretty much the same thing said about females more than males, gays more than straights, those with X mental condition over neurotypicals and so on and so forth, a statement like that has little value without evaluating the source (if then). But I digress…

They are more likely to challenge assumptions – even assumptions of the ‘experts’ or just because they are a ‘scientist.’

Possibly, but there is no intrinsic worth in challenging assumptions, just for the sake of thinking ‘outside the box’. That is Dunning-Kruger.

e the tone the article was that Dunning-Kruger is creating ‘incorrect’ beliefs. I would correct this to say ‘beliefs’ that ‘_I_ don’t understand.’
I didn’t read it like that, although without a comprehensive discussion on an issue it might be hard to identify those who have arrived at the ‘right’ conclusion due to ‘wrong’ reasoning, so examples are usually about ‘incorrect’ beliefs. Dunning-Kruger isn’t about being right or wrong, in my opinion, but about evaluating your opinion as evidence…

Which brings me to

I personally think his assumptions about pyramids, for example, are … well… ‘hard to understand’. At the same time, I am no more an expert on pyramids than he is, and his belief in pyramids is largely independent of issues I care about.

What with visiting inside two different pyramids, knowing a little of the methods they used to build them and the tools and materials those ancient Egyptians had at their disposal, and actually studying architecture for a bit, I’d say I’m more of an expert than Ben Carson is (while fully admitting that I’m no expert at all), I think his assumption is not based on facts or anything else than motivated reasoning and ignorance or dismissal of easily verifiable facts.

And, like others have said, it doesn’t speak well for his willingness or ability to consider and evaluate evidence, and to familiarize himself with basic facts before making up his mind. This, or his stubbornness to admit being mistaken, regardless of evidence. Neither is a good trait for the President of USA to have.

It sounds like most of you wouldn’t even _consider_ listening to a reasonable argument from the other side.

Based on what? I think most people here actually explain their reasoning when they disagree with someone else’s view.

And if you’re thinking of me, I still disagree. My only ‘expertise’ is in a very narrow niche of the art world, and I assume on any other subject, I’m in the presence of people who know more than I do about the subject. I listen to what information they provide, and try to form checkable assumptions. Then I check them. I’ve changed my mind even here on RI, several times, when presented with new evidence, and I’m willing to do it again, if a persuasive enough argument or point of view is presented.

It’s clear that ‘gaist’ and others have flipped the bozo switch on ‘see noevo’ and vice versa. We tend to believe anyone that thinks differently is a ‘bozo.’ Don’t flip the bozo switch

I don’t think I have ‘switched the bozo bit’ on See Noevo, at least on principle. I might be biased against him, based on his past performance here, but like I said – I make fun of him when I think his posts deserve it. I evaluate. If I ever find him making a coherent and persuasive point, I’ll consider it as thoroughly as I’d consider the same point coming from anybody.

And for what it’s worth, I actually believe my skits are getting through to him more than any post I wrote where I tried reasoning with him. If you’re interested further, search Respectful Insolence for antiabortion and see the comments for yourself. I personally think he’s not interested in exchange of ideas.

And coming back to the ‘bozo bit’, I’d like to take the wordplay a little further. Rather than the colloquial usage, I’d like to pretend you used it in the original meaning. Think of my satire (such as it is) as the weakest level of protection against See Noevo’s posts infecting spreading outwards.

Also, and claiming at least a modicum of expertise on visual arts – jumping Jesus on a bogo-stick, Ben Carson sure likes looking at himself.

Is Ben Carson intelligent? He’s good at memorizing facts and cutting. That’s what people who graduate medical school are good at. (At this point I’m starting to wonder if he actually did graduate med school) But is the ability to memorize lumps of info actually intelligence? It requires no reasoning or logic. Personally, I’ve got some serious doubts about Dr Carson. At the very least he’s willfully ignorant. Personally, I think he’s a habitual liar who isn’t used to getting called on his BS.

The idea of seperating craniopagus conjoined twins has existed for a long time, and the theory is simple enough, but the potential for blood loss has been so great that it was only first attempted in 1951. Even now most times it’s been done one twin has died or suffered brain damage. (This does include at least one of Carson’s cases, but it’s such a difficult operation that I have respect for anyone who can complete it.)

I’m curious as to your source.

I am too.

I’m aware of research suggesting that men are likelier to be perceived as outside-the-box thinkers than women.

But that’s due to inside-the-box thinking on gender by both men and women. I’ve never heard that either is categorically less box-bound than the other.

Do you (or anyone out there) recall any of the smears coming from the Main Stream Media or liberal websites?

I don’t.

Does Fox count?

You didn’t convince me of much, however.

I wasn’t trying to convince you of anything; where do you get this idea that anybody here is? I can’t help it if I find the notion that “life begins at inception” to be interpretable in some pretty entertaining ways. I generally aim to entertain. Just ask my students.

And, your comment speaks volumes about your general attitude toward others. You appear more interested in making someone else feel small, than in engaging, attempting to understand, or helping. You are all about making yourself look ‘smart,’ because god forbid they see the real you. … I care more about caring and compassionate.

Your seeming belief that a single comment can tell you much of anything about somebody’s general level of compassion or comfort with letting other people see the “real them” speaks volumes about your general attitude toward people.

Your smart – OK.

Yes. I am.

life begins at inception
It was a good film, but let’s not go overboard.

See, you know where the Bible says: “Do not give false witness.”? Does it also say “unless your political rivals do so as well.”? Is there some exception to one of God’s highest commands that I am aware of?

The idea of seperating craniopagus conjoined twins has existed for a long time, and the theory is simple enough, but the potential for blood loss has been so great that it was only first attempted in 1951

I was under the impression that one aspect of Carson’s multiple contributions was his confidence that techniques in body cooling and hypothermic arrest had advanced enough that the surgery had real prospects of arrest. Is that a fair comment?
I have also gained the impression that a key requirement for a successful neurosurgeon is the confidence and willingness to take chances with someone else’s brain.

Ahem.

The three stories on that list that aren’t deranged conspiracy theories — Ayers/Dohrn, Rezko and Wright — all received months of coverage; he was questioned about them repeatedly during debates, press conferences, etc.; and all three were broken by mainstream media outlets.

The birther and actually-a-muslim stories also received mainstream coverage in 2008,

And speaking of inside-the-box thinking.

If the mainstream media really was part of a secular progressive plot, the last thing it would effing want to do is discredit Ben Carson.

In order to get enough delegates to win the nomination, he would have to beat Cruz and Trump in at least some states where race is an issue and also Bush and Rubio in at least some states where most Republican voters are moderate and non-evangelical.

Pretty much the only way a Carson candidacy could happen would be a brokered convention.

But (1) secular progressives would be delighted by that; and (2) either way, it would still be in their best interest for him to stay in, drawing as much money, support and attention away from others and causing as much division and strife in the party as possible.

The stories in the WSJ and Politico were almost certainly planted there by oppo researchers for one of the other Republican candidates. And the CNN story probably was.

Why?

(a) Because the other Republican candidates are the only people who’d benefit by getting him out of the way now.

(b) The West Point story probably wasn’t all that labor-or-work intensive, but flacking for the right is Politico’s bread-and-butter. That’s where they get all their good stories. It’s what they do.

(c) It’s not like the WSJ has a Detroit bureau, or can afford to send shoe-leather reporters to Michigan looking for people who survived high-school race riots with Ben Carson and were willing to talk about it on a whim. That kind of work is time-consuming and expensive. They are also a conservative publication.

(d) CNN would be very unlikely to make that kind of investment in a story with no natural TV-friendly values, especially far enough in advance and without knowing what kind of answers they’d get. They also virtually never do that kind of reporting and probably don’t know how.

(e) Jeb can fix it! (This is how the Bush family campaigns. Has been for decades.)

(f) Conspiracy theories work much better and reach more people on the internet anyway. So quit whining.

and finally:

(g) Just because you don’t remember it doesn’t mean it never happens.

John Kerry lost an election because of attacks on the things he said and did forty years earlier, all of which received extensive mainstream media coverage.

Al Gore got branded as the guy who boasted about inventing the internet, when that was not actually any more accurate than branding Ben Carson as a guy who boasted about getting into West Point would be.

Hillary Clinton had a scholarly article she wrote about children’s rights under the law in 1973 minutely examined by media outlets all across the country, and she wasn’t even running. She was just married to someone who was.

Every one of those is more closely equivalent to what Carson’s enduring than some demented rumor about how Frank Marshall Davis is Obama’s true father, or how sis grandmother was a socialist/bank vice president and his grandfather a socialist/WWII vet/furniture salesman.

It’s routine. Get over it.

Re Gaist # 197
Source was an anecdotal reference I have overheard generally by a couple of teachers I have known – I wasn’t trying to be specific, but for instance there is something out there to support this: https://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-1992-2-sex-differences-problem-solving-strategies-sat-math.pdf

I think you’ll see that I’m quite interested in exchange of ideas. See for example the exchanging on this 2,100+ comment thread

I think that’s the second attempt I’ve seen by S.N. at this specifc and wretched form of attention-whoring.

JP #210 reprimanding Larry:
“Who is this “you all” that you think you’re talking to? Do you think that everybody who posts here is a liberal or a leftist or whatever? I can assure you that this is not the case.”

Well, I think it’s *virtually* the case.
Like “97%”, colloquially speaking.

Okey-dokey.

1) Very intelligent people (interestingly males more than females) tend to ‘think outside the box.’

I’m curious as to your source.

Source was an anecdotal reference I have overheard generally by a couple of teachers I have known – I wasn’t trying to be specific, but for instance there is something out there to support this: htp[]s://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-1992-2-sex-differences-problem-solving-strategies-sat-math.pdf

So, basically 14.5 pages (N = 58) that are 23 years old about people who scored above 650 on a specific mathematical-skills testing instrument, and this is what you use to defend your sweeping generalization?

“High-scoring females, as a group, seem to be somewhat
more conservative in their strategies, sticking to methods
they were taught in school. This may be caused by a lack of
confidence or interest, or because of the way they learned
and think about mathematics.”

I forgot:

To me these seem like pure ‘Hit’ pieces.

If the press makes a diligent effort to consider and report both sides of a disputed story fairly and it’s newsworthy by a generally accepted standard — ie, legitimately in the public interest in some way — it’s not a hit piece.

By those parameters, the West Point story as it appeared in Politico was a hit piece, imo.

However, the West Point story as it appeared in most of the outlets that picked it up once it broke was, in most cases, simply a story that was unfavorable to Ben Carson primarily because his response was angry, disorganized, and heavy on the fingerpointing and complaint.

If he had just said, “Believe me, to a kid living in poverty in Detroit, there’s not a lot of difference between a full scholarship and free tuition. West Point calls it that in its promotional materials. And I made it perfectly clear that I only applied to Yale. I’m not going to dignify it with further comment,” it would not have outlived the 24-hour news cycle.

The other stories are a little harder to address, but they’re not impossible. What made them seem like ‘hit pieces” was his failure to respond in a way that gave him the last word and closed the door on the subject. Or at least appeared to do so.

But that’s not the media’s fault. They gave him the opportunity. He decided to get outraged and storm off. That’s on him.

There is simply _nothing_ here other than slander. And to me it doesn’t matter that he was/wasn’t ‘prepared’ for slander (I suspect he was expecting something), or that he could answered (IMHO he did answer). Slander is just wrong.

It would actually be libel, not slander. But it can’t be either one unless (at a minimum) they knew that what they were saying was false and defamatory and/or they recklessly disregarded the possibility that it was.

And that was not the case. He said stuff. They accurately reported that he said it and raised questions about its veracity. He didn’t answer them well or — in most instances — at all.

Again, that’s not the media’s fault. He should have been prepared for it.

To ann who never addresses anyone MEEEEEEEEEEEE

FTFY

The “do not call list” certainly seems to need more frequent updating.

Re Narad #228
Again, this was intended to be a completely unsupported statement. I’m in no way trying to defend a ‘sweeping generalization’ by making a comment in a blog. Thus, my comment ‘I overheard…’, and ‘this is anecdotal’

Take it for what its worth. For absolute clarity – some folks (non-specifically, and without any actual experimentation) have independently noticed this and made offhand comments to me as in ‘humm isn’t it interesting that …’. Without much effort I was able to google and find that there is at least some evidence that the observations are not completely without merit. I didn’t do exhaustive research on this topic, and I don’t know if there is other evidence to support it or not. I suspect that there may be other weak studies, but that there is probably no RCT trial that would satisfy your desire to show this is a ‘proven fact’ with extensive footnotes. On the other hand, there isn’t evidence for parachutes, and all sorts of other things. The fact that there isn’t a large RCT or met-analysis for something does not indicate that something is false – it indicates unknown. And, in the absence of established high quality studies, weak data is generally better than no data.

It’s an ‘interesting’ potentially explaining observation. That is ALL. Weak data, but better than no data.

But, if the OP or you are speculating on what makes Ben Carson or anyone else tick, I doubt that we’ll ever get much beyond completely unsupported ‘sweeping generalizations’ anyway.

Stupid html tags. I meant:

But do you believe the mainstream media does NOT lean secular progressive?

Well. The press is a secular institution. For a reason. And this is it:

If they want to stay in business, any news outlet that has a big enough audience/readership to be called “mainstream” can’t lean a lot further to the left or right than most Americans who get their news from whatever part of the media marketplace that outlet is in. And they also can’t offend their advertisers.

In practice, that means (a) secular/ecumenical; (b) most of the demo is always unhappy with something but rarely so disgusted that they quit reading/watching; and (c) except for very, very infrequently, neither of is going to see our political views being embraced by the mainstream print and broadcast media.

The main way that they’re liberal is that to reach a lot of people they have to be inclusive wrt diversity of belief and lifestyle. But that’s not really motivated by politics. It’s just show business.

The exceptions on the right (eg, Fox News, the WSJ, the New York Post) tend to be more uncompromisingly on the right because Rupert Murdoch is willing to plow money into them even when it’s unpopular.

MSNBC has to keep it within limits that advertisers and viewers will accept. And the news pages of the New York Times are not all that liberal. They just hew definitively left for opinion/editorial and the “[whatever] of the Times” sections.

(^^I mean “by the standards of most people.” I realize that you don’t see it that way. And I’m not arguing with that. I’m just using the terms “left,” “right,” “liberal,” and “conservative” as they’re conventionally understood by most people on both sides.)

And do you believe the mainstream media does NOT try to protect secular progressives?

I believe that all institutions try to protect themselves. And institutional self-interest isn’t usually as straightforward as that. George W. Bush just about crushed the mainstream media and then ran back and forth over its flattened corpse for his entire first term. And the NYT was at the head of the pack saying, “Please, sir, may I have another?”

Because that was the mood of the country. C’est la vie.

But (to be fair), they’re almost always generally respectful of authority once someone’s in office.

“The three stories on that list that aren’t deranged conspiracy theories — Ayers/Dohrn, Rezko and Wright — all received months of coverage; he was questioned about them repeatedly during debates, press conferences, etc.; and all three were broken by mainstream media outlets.”

Two points on that:

1) There can be a very big difference between a) breaking a story and “coverage” of it, and b) objective, in-depth, unbiased reporting (i.e. *truthful* coverage).

SN, I know you hate Obama. But “objective” and “unbiased” means you can’t say he’s in the thrall of radical left-wing terrorists unless there’s objective unbiased proof that he is.

It also means you have to acknowledge that they haven’t committed any acts of radical left-wing terrorism since he was eleven years old, and that all charges against them were dropped, and so forth and so on.

Because whether you like it or not, all those things are objectively true. Same for whether you personally think they’re pertinent truths or not. And there’s no amount of in-depth that can change that. The only way to change it is to persuade the majority of the American people that you’re right to see it the way you do and they’re wrong.

Or overwhelming force. That would also work.

In any event. That aside, I agree. There can be a big difference.

To the best of my recollection, Rezko/Obama got in-depth coverage in the major dailies but not on TV, because it’s kind of a weedy story.

But Wright and Ayers both got deep wide coverage everywhere. That’s why he had to throw Wright overboard. Just saying “I condemn this, I strongly disagree with that” and changing the subject didn’t do it.

2) Which mainstream media outlets broke which stories?

Ayers/Dohrn — ABC News; Rezko — the Chicago Sun-Times; Wright — ABC News.

Rezko actually went national because Hillary brought it up during a debate.

__________

I noticed after posting that every single person I listed on the smear list at the end of #216 — ie, Kerry, Gore, Hillary in ’92, and Carson — was running against a member of the Bush family.

Man, is it gonna be ugly if we end up with Bush v. /Clinton 2.0 (1.6.)

To ann who still doesn’t address anyone #231:

“The exceptions on the right (eg, Fox News, the WSJ, the New York Post) tend to be more uncompromisingly on the right because Rupert Murdoch is willing to plow money into them even when it’s unpopular.”

So, I guess Fox News and the WSJ are unpopular, losing business ventures kept afloat only by madman Murdoch.

“MSNBC has to keep it within limits that advertisers and viewers will accept.”

Now THAT is one that seems to be kept afloat regardless of its dismal ratings.

“And the news pages of the New York Times are not all that liberal.”

Not all that liberal? Yea. Just kind of liberal.
Why should they be liberal AT ALL? How about NEUTRAL? You know, objective/unbiased/truthful/just-the-facts-ma’am?

“George W. Bush just about crushed the mainstream media and then ran back and forth over its flattened corpse for his entire first term. And the NYT was at the head of the pack saying, “Please, sir, may I have another?””

I mustn’t have heard that right. Could you repeat?

“George W. Bush just about crushed the mainstream media and then ran back and forth over its flattened corpse for his entire first term. And the NYT was at the head of the pack saying, “Please, sir, may I have another?””

I guess I DID hear that right.
???????????????????????????

“SN, I know you hate Obama. But “objective” and “unbiased” means you can’t say he’s in the thrall of radical left-wing terrorists unless there’s objective unbiased proof that he is.”

Correct, you wouldn’t report in the *straight news* pages that he’s *in the thrall of* radical left-wing terrorists.
However, you MIGHT report his upbringing by, and frequent association with, radical left-wing, er, “socialist” types like his mother, grandparents, his father (FROM whom he got his dreams), his father figure Frank Marshall Davis, John Drew, Charles Ogletree, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn. Or with felon Tony Rezko.
You MIGHT report how his upbringing, and frequent associations, are consistent with his “transformative” statements like “spread the wealth around” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoqI5PSRcXM

Why should they be liberal AT ALL? How about NEUTRAL? You know, objective/unbiased/truthful/just-the-facts-ma’am?

Says the man who uses Breitbart as a news source.

Why should they be liberal AT ALL?

The media industry seek to attract and retain customers. Some will cater to a specific base, but those who seek a larger audience will try to appeal to common emotions.
Plus, there is something known as “don’t shot the ambulance”. Most news anchors/editorial boards don’t want to appear as insensitive assh0les.

So they will run their story trying to factor as much sensationalism and human factor as possible. So they will talk about unfairness, poverty, loss of a social situation (jobs, fame…), people helping one another (or not), the brutality of society in general, little dogs and cats ran over by cars…
For some, these are all “liberal” topics or point-of-views.

In reality, mainstream media are not so much liberal as they are a mix of distorted romanticism and black-and-white humanism. And as ann pointed above, media who want to address a large base have to be as much all-encompassing as possible. Which means talking about all forms of religions, sexual orientations and so on in a non-negative way (except in cases of extremism/belief-guided crimes).
Which again, for some people, is a “liberal” point-of-view.

These people ask for neutrality but nothing short of a judgemental report.will be neutral enough. Because they regard any accepting/sympathetic point-of-view as already a biased point-of-view.
They are not completely wrong. True neutrality doesn’t exist. As Frank Herbert said, there is no way to transmit information without judging it. Just by reporting it, you give it value.

So, I guess Fox News and the WSJ are unpopular, losing business ventures kept afloat only by madman Murdoch.

No, they’re both profitable. Fox has also been innovative and influential. And the WSJ has actually done better since the Newscorp acquisition, although that’s not because of politics, it’s because they dragged themselves into the 21rst century and built the brand online.

That’s not what I meant. The key words were “even when it’s unpopular.”

That’s always been the case for the New York Post. It’s not profitable. But they just keep doing what they’re doing anyway. Same for Fox News. For the first eight years or so, it was not a success. Now it is. But whether their numbers are declining or increasing, they just keep doing what they’re doing.

That’s unusual in the United States; less so in the UK. But the whole picture is different there, because they have state-sponsored media. So everybody who’s not that is frankly partisan.

In short: That wasn’t an insult.

What I was trying to say is that the media outlets you regard as “liberal” aren’t the way they are because they have a political agenda. They’re that way because they have to cleave more or less to the political middle of their audience/readership, which shifts over time.

Murdoch, on the other hand, sticks with Murdoch’s politics no matter what. So does Mort Zuckerman with Mort Zuckerman’s politics. But US News and the Daily News aren’t much of a media empire. And neither they nor he is very left-wing. There isn’t really an equivalent to Murdoch on the left.

Why should they be liberal AT ALL? How about NEUTRAL? You know, objective/unbiased/truthful/just-the-facts-ma’am?

As most people understand those words, they are.

However, you MIGHT report his upbringing by, and frequent association with, radical left-wing, er, “socialist” types like his mother, grandparents, his father (FROM whom he got his dreams), his father figure Frank Marshall Davis, John Drew, Charles Ogletree, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn. Or with felon Tony Rezko.

As I noted earlier, the three of those that aren’t deranged conspiracy theories did get reported. In an objective, unbiased and factual manner, as those words are understood by just about everybody who uses them.

What you want is something else. An objective, unbiased report on Tony Rezko’s association with Obama would have to note that he hosted a multi-million-dollar fundraiser for George W. Bush, which is — by an objective, unbiased standard — more than he did for Obama. For example.

Why? Because it says something that’s objectively important about Tony Rezko. That’s why. Just saying “Obama! Felons! Corruption! Burn him!” as if he were the only one would be biased.

Ummmm, Ann, we do not have state sponsored media here…

Huh? What about the BBC?

These people ask for neutrality but nothing short of a judgemental report.will be neutral enough. Because they regard any accepting/sympathetic point-of-view as already a biased point-of-view.
They are not completely wrong. True neutrality doesn’t exist. As Frank Herbert said, there is no way to transmit information without judging it. Just by reporting it, you give it value.

I have heard of a few places have judged if they are getting reasonably close to neutral when each side lodges nearly equally passionate complaints about how biased the report is for the other side.

The if you get equal but opposite letters to the editor you are doing your job appropriately thing.

The BBC is supposed to be neutral, and generally achieves this IMO. It isn’t state mouthpiece in that sense. We have other TV companies, of course, but I can’t think of any TV station that I think of as having a particular political bent as Fox does in the US – even Sky tries to offer political bias. Newspapers are different, with clear political affiliations.

Incidentally, I wonder what overlap there is between the various understandings people here have of what “liberal” means.

Sheesh – “even Sky tries to avoid political bias” – I can’t even blame autocorrect, just my brain.

Part of the problem is that many accusations of bias are about someone reporting facts that are inconvenient for one’s side. For example, our local newspaper got a scathing letter for daring to report the number of casualties from the second Iraq war.

The BBC is supposed to be neutral, and generally achieves this IMO. It isn’t state mouthpiece in that sense.

I (and I think ann) hadn’t meant to imply that it was a “state mouthpiece,” only that it is “state sponsored” in the sense that it is publicly funded. In fact, I think ann was saying that that makes it more likely to be more-or-less neutral than privately funded media.

The US has a similar thing, if much smaller and worse funded, in PBS and NPR. These are in fact believed to be strongly “liberally biased” by many – I’m curious, do right-wingers in the UK feel the same way about the Beeb?

I’m a great fan of the BBC World Service, incidentally. It plays on the local public radio station at night.

It is amazing sn how few of those “items of conservatism” you have shown yourself to possess (as we reflect on the racism, bigotry, misogyny, hatred of other religions, and your lack of education).

It is also amusing how you try to paint President Obama as a communist terrorist when it was the previous president’s policies that destroyed the economy in the early 2000s with his foolish tax cuts and refusal to pay for 2 wars (and inability to execute either of them in any meaningful way).

Your ignorance and personal lack of being tied to reality are both boundless.

Sure, neurosurgeons can believe dumb stuff, just like anyone else. But I have one question… how many neurosurgeons continually recall their lives in ‘parables’, ans have giant paintings of THEMSELVES hanging in their hallway… one of which features them standing next to Christ, in matching beards, clothes and even matching complexions (just in case you didn’t get the ‘inference’)?!

I’ve had enough of SN for this round. He’s gone back into the Do Not See bin.

And the WSJ has actually done better since the Newscorp acquisition, although that’s not because of politics, it’s because they dragged themselves into the 21rst century and built the brand online.

The WSJ just did a rather scathing examination of some of Ben Carson’s stories.

^ BTW, Cynthia Parker is also a resident of Columbia, MO. And I have a friend who’s trapped in that hole as a result of a custody agreement with her philandering ex-husband.

I declare this derail over.

(Meaning: I’m sorry I made an exception.)

I (and I think ann) hadn’t meant to imply that it was a “state mouthpiece,” only that it is “state sponsored” in the sense that it is publicly funded. In fact, I think ann was saying that that makes it more likely to be more-or-less neutral than privately funded media.

Yes. Exactly. Well said.

(Missed it before.)

He just hit it out of the park on his first question.

Could not have been better.

JP,

I (and I think ann) hadn’t meant to imply that it was a “state mouthpiece,” only that it is “state sponsored” in the sense that it is publicly funded. In fact, I think ann was saying that that makes it more likely to be more-or-less neutral than privately funded media.

I wasn’t really disagreeing with you or ann, I’m just never quite sure how people see the UK and a “state-sponsored media” has a faint Orwellian ring to it 🙂 Since the BBC is at the mercy of government to some extent, I imagine there must be some motivation not to bite the hand…, but it isn’t as obvious, to me anyway, as something like Fox News’ biases. I don’t think you would find the BBC biased towards AGW denial for example.

The US has a similar thing, if much smaller and worse funded, in PBS and NPR.

Thank FSM for NPR and PBS; the paucity of an liberal/independent US (and global) media is troubling. I haven’t spent much time in the US, but find the TV fascinating when I’m there. A foreign culture that speaks a language I am more or less fluent in – what’s not to like for an amateur anthropologist like myself? That said, much mainstream USian culture is hardly foreign to Brits (or anyone else but North Koreans, I guess).

These are in fact believed to be strongly “liberally biased” by many – I’m curious, do right-wingers in the UK feel the same way about the Beeb?

Probably, though I don’t know too many right-wingers. I hear more complaints that the BBC is too right-wing and pro-government, with perhaps some justification. The BBC is generally uncontroversial, which inevitably p!sses some people off.

I’m a great fan of the BBC World Service, incidentally. It plays on the local public radio station at night.

And I’m very happy to pay for part of it with my license fee 🙂 (though I think overseas sales of Doctor Who funds most of it). I think it’s still true that the BBC radio (but not TV) archive is open to anyone (works using a Canadian VPN anyway) – beware, it’s a serious time sink but there’s some really good stuff there.

Years ago, I found myself stranded in the Sahara for a few days with some nomads (a long story I have related here before), one of them told me he listened to the BBC World Service, which I assume broadcasts in Arabic (I doubt it does Berber). The only English words he knew were “hello, how are you? very pleased to meet you” (or words to that effect), but his accent was impeccable, which was amusing, coming from a guy who looked like he had stepped out of the Arabian Nights.

I don’t think Dunning-Kruger (which I remember by thinking of convicted pseudoskeptic Brian Dunning and Freddy Kruger) is the only explanatory factor. I think that there’s a related issue.

It’s the fallacy of false appeal to authority, but looking at that fallacy through the other end of the telescope, the false authority thinking he’s an authority outside his field, rather than the actual appeal.

Thank you for contributing to the body of works which examine current political issues without insult, name-calling, or bombast. And even your comment train doesn’t descend into the mud; remarkable.

One tiny tip from a person old enough to remember my mother’s hand-cranked washing machine: you went through the wringer, not ringer, of internship. (4th paragraph from the end). A more vivid image that way, isn’t it?!

herr doktor:

Remember that one of the most frequent causes of degloving injuries is a finger ring being forcibly removed by getting caught on a fence or in heavy machinery. “Ringer” might not be so incorrect after all.

Descriptions of de-gloving by vivid imagery-conjurer Stephen King, gave me a case of the horrors for weeks.

At any rate speaking of horrors, I had the dubious pleasure of listening to Mike Adams’s 12 minute diatribe
( @Natural News) in which he narrates why his town would be immune to events such as those which have just transpired in Paris.
It so typifies his methods- opportunistically using tragedy to further his own despicable aims.

Right, guns are the solution. Ignorant fool.

I ran through a floor-to-ceiling glass window when I was eight. I went right through it and fell flat on my face. The top half of the window then came down like a guillotine blade. Fortunately I was out of the way. The weirdest thing was I ended up with only a few superficial cuts on my hands.
I have no idea why I am still alive.

JP: “… have some little pictures of pears and birds affixed to them.”

These doors had decorative stencils already affixed. It did not matter to that little girl who seemed to like to do things at lightening speeds. As it turns out she did run track later in life, when she had also gained a bit of safety sense.

Sheesh, all I did was get up in the middle of the night and consume MSG straight from the canister of Accent.

I was known to shake the “steak seasoning” salt stuff out into my hand and eat it. And also munch on dry spaghetti. Actually, one of the favorite snacks of my brother and I was crushed-up dry ramen with the season packet sprinkled on it. (We were often more-or-less unsupervised, especially in the summer.)

In fact, as a toddler, I apparently had quite a taste for dry cat food. I am tempted to say that I was like a little stoned person, just wandering around and enjoying any sort of sensual experiences I came upon, but it may well just be that I inherited my father’s enthusiastic enjoyment of pretty much anything edible.*

Speaking of lawn mowers, there is a story about how I was none-too-bright operating one one time, and could have lost some fingers if I wasn’t lucky. (I don’t remember it altogether, but something about a grass block in the blades, and not turning it off beforehand or something.) “Awful smart about some thing and awful dumb about others,” as they used to say.

*I have heard stores about “food” that he prepared at logging camps.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t reaching to where the blades were or anything; there was a rubber grass-trap type thing that I was emptying.

From the brain of Ben Carson, word salad stylist:

http://commondreams.org/further/2015/11/17/if-we-get-out-there-and-really-lead-create-enthusiasm-and-arabs-and-take-back

Ah, the politics of news. This is stuff I know, as it was a core topic of my PhD studies, and a case study therein was my original plan for a dissertation topic. (I changed it, but still had a couple chapters that dealt with news.)

DB: ‘Balance’ is always a crock, as is the notion of ‘objectivity’ that governs it. Obedience to these principles has done more to obscure truth in news than any overt partisan bias. In practice, both principles are fundamentally conservative, in that they inevitably function in favor of the reigning powers-that-be. The most we can ask of journalism is ‘fairness’ in its subjectivity.

The whole ‘liberal media’ thing is also a crock, based on nonsensical definitions and the worst sort of cherry picking of evidence. The definitional issue is a crude false dichotomy: if a news source does not fit the pundit’s definition of ‘conservative’, it is considered to be ‘liberal’. The cherry-picking is a focus on the reporters of the high-circulation ‘prestige’ publications and networks. If you look at ALL of the ‘MSM’ – including the regional newspapers and local broadcast stations (especially radio, which is filled with syndicated far-right talk shows)– and ALL of the decision-makers, including editors and publishers, factoring for relative power – to the extent news has any ideological tilt, it lands on the right-hand side of the political divide.

But the larger flaw in this thinking, in critiques of news mounted from both left and right, is the assumption that news has some hidden partisan content, that it’s fundamentally ideological in nature. Over all, news is more anti-ideological, subverting any political agendas in favor of empty spectacle and sensationalism. It destroys sense more than it creates sense one way or the other.

ann: The good thing about state-sponsored media is that it’s LESS likely to be ‘neutral’ than advertising-supported news. That is, to the extent publicly funded media IS ‘neutral’ this is typically achieved by including different perspectives over the range of programming as a whole. There is much less demand that each individual program, journalist or story must be ‘neutral’ in the sense of framing within ‘objectivity’.

‘Objectivity’ in news is a late 19th-century innovation, that only became a norm in the early 20th century. It’s origins were all about sustainable profit – ‘objective’ coverage pisses off the fewest advertisers, generating higher ad revenue for a mass-circulation publication directed at an audience with some diversity of viewpoints. (See Michael Schudson, Discovering The News.)

What has happened over the last 3-4 decades is a decline of all forms of mass-circulation media as cable TV and the internet have enabled advertisers to target fragmented segments of the buying public with messages that fit whatever political or a-political bubble they may inhabit. There’s no longer as compelling a need for a content environment congruent with ‘appealing to everybody’.

In general, the wider the audience-base, the more ‘inoffensive’ the content. Murdoch’s NewsCorp has massive holdings, and plays the game well at every level. While he’s best known for his Tory tabloids and Fox News, the majority of his profit still comes from international news services that largely avoid controversy, and suck at the teats of whoever is in power in the markets at hand, regardless of what Rupert may think of their ideology…

Many starting points for medicines (and other uses) have been based on natural sources, so on a viewpoint that X has A, and A is biologically active, these things can have therapeutic value.

Which is of course why there’s an entire field of evidence based medical research dedicated to identifying the active ingredient A natural source X might produce–it’s called pharmacognosy, and there’s nothing alternative about it. It allows us to produce drug products that are free of contaminants and contain a known dosage of the active ingredient that’s beneficial. There’s a reason, after all, we’ve moved to taking aspirin tablets for headaches and no longer rely on willow bark tree.

Just because you cant find an active small molecule doesn’t mean there isn’t activity in some component that is difficult to find.

The problem isn’t that it’s difficult to detect and isolate an active components from natural product remedies, but that with rare exception ( e.g. willow bark tea again) those remedies themselves do exhibit the activity claimed.

I disagree with pretense of this statement, ” Indeed, many of the people most invested in ‘integrating’ alternative medicine (i.e., quackery) into medicine are incredibly intelligent physicians.” I’m not trained in alternative medicine, but I don’t think you can dismiss it all as quackery.

… I think you meant “premise”, possibly? Rather than “pretense”?

I think Orac is engaging in a bit of hyperbole through simplification with the phrase “alternative medicine (i.e., quackery)”. The literal meaning of “i.e.” would translate this statement to “all alternative medicine is quackery”. Even if we employ the principle of charity and allow quackery to simply mean “medicine without actual value”, and not require the implication of anyone’s conscious fraud, we still can’t state definitively that there is no value anywhere in alternative medicine.

Here’s the thing, though: we also cannot state that there is value anywhere in alternative medicine. Some people think that because there have been some cases where a substance or practice recommended by “ancient wisdom” turned out to have value (not always the value that was claimed for it, or anything near) that means that there must be other such cases just waiting to be discovered. This logical-seeming premise is wrong. If you reach into a jar and draw a large number of white pebbles and one black pebble, is there any guarantee that there are more black pebbles in the jar, waiting to be withdrawn on future turns? No, there isn’t. For all we know, we’ve already drawn the last.

Considering that no one has a crystal ball capable of giving us absolutely accurate answers from the future, I think Orac’s assessment must be taken as a hyperbolic expression of a true fact: very little real actual medicine has come out of “alternative medicine”, and the amounts only get smaller the more dubious alternative practices you allow under the “alternative medicine” banner.