Day: August 19, 2009

Argumentum ad populum

Do you watch the news?  You know all those Medicare reciepients that are biutching about a government take over of Health care….or all those macho little pricks with their guns worn in public…or maybe elected officials that are spouting fears of socialism or out right lying to stir up the people in opposition to any Dem health care agenda coming out of Washington.

I know….I know all that is old hat….so what is new?

Since most schools have eliminated the teaching of Latin and I do not want my reader to have a brain aneurysm trying to decipher the title of this post….let me help out….”argumentum ad populum”…..In Logic, a proposition to be true because many or all people believe it; it alleges, “If many believe so, it is so.”

Just where am I going with this?  Right?  Good question and hopefully you will get your answer.

The idea has many names:  appeal to the masses, appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people, argument by consensus, authority of the many, and bandwagon fallacy,

See what I am saying?  The GOP is plying this tactic in the health care debate.  That is to use every tactic available to sway a mass amount of people that will make the case for them.  It is a fallacious argument at best…but it is effective if one figures in the rational ignorance effect.  (for definition, go to my page with the same name).

How about a little clarification?

The argumentum ad populum is a red herring and genetic fallacy. It appeals on probabilistic terms; given that 75% of a population answer A to a question where the answer is unknown, the argument states that it is reasonable to assume that the answer is indeed A. In cases where the answer can be known but is not known by a questioned entity, the appeal to majority provides a possible answer with a relatively high probability of correctness.

It is logically fallacious because the mere fact that a belief is widely held is not necessarily a guarantee that the belief is correct; if the belief of any individual can be wrong, then the belief held by multiple persons can also be wrong. The argument that because 75% of people polled think the answer is A implies that the answer is A fails, for if opinion did determine truth, there be no way to deal with the discrepancy between the 75% of the sample population that believe the answer is A and 25% who are of the opinion that the answer is not A. However small the percentage of those polled is distributed among any remaining answers, this discrepancy by definition disproves any guarantee of the correctness of the majority. In addition, this would be true even if the answer given by those polled were unanimous, as the sample size may be insufficient, or some fact may be unknown to those polled that, if known, would result in a different distribution of answers.

Thanx to wiki for the above definition.

Polls are used in this way….i.e. if the prez has 51% approval down from 56% then the people are losing confidence…..,good work, but that is not necessarily the case.  The idea is to make it look as if more people believe in a thing and in doing so, that it is correct and true.  Once again , not necessarily so.

People need to check everything they are told…most times it is either misinformnation, taken out of context or an outright LIE!

What Is The Point?

A Daily Agitation

I read this article in the AP and just had to get some opinions on this.

We have Revolutionary War re-enactments….we have French and Indian War re-enactment….we have Civil War re-enactments……all which are nothing but  macho BS to help people feel more important than they really are……but is this a wise choice?

The dirt paths that lead to Alpha Company’s field headquarters are lined with overgrown grass and weeds. A canvas tent is protected by machine guns, sandbags and Army-green storage boxes. And lurking somewhere outside is the enemy: the Viet Cong.But these aren’t the jungles of southeast Asia, just the woods of small-town Pennsylvania, where more than 30 years after the fall of Saigon, military enthusiasts are beginning to re-enact the Vietnam War.

Vietnam re-enactors have no national organization, but participants say Vietnam War groups are popping up around the country. Events were staged earlier this year in Houston and Jackson, Miss. Fort Harrison State Park in Indiana held a Vietnam-era “tactical demonstration” last month.

The mission: a long-range patrol into the “jungle” path to gather intelligence on the enemy. About 80 onlookers watched from the clearing as the patrol entered the woods. The crowd listened as dispatches from a civilian narrator and Gray were transmitted over speakers.

“Vietnam was a different war, a guerrilla war,” Horvath told them. “Once you entered, everywhere around you was a killing zone.”

The re-enactors ranged in age from their mid-20s to early 60s, including one man who served in Vietnam.

The re-enactments can “help people forget the pain even. To hide it, it stays in here,” Smith said, pointing a finger to his chest. “That’s hard. I think this is good.”

Do I have an opinion?  Bet your sweet ass I do….I spent 2 and half years in SE Asia and none of it was anything romantic or something I wsould want to re-live for spectators.  If people want to play war then join a military unit and learn first hand what it is to be facing death regularly.

I spent over two years wet and covered with mud suffering foot rot and 3 seperate holes one made with and PPS, one from a mortar and one from a Valmet sniper rifle and not once did I feel like it was something romantic or something I would ever want to relive.  But if pretending makes you feel like a man then by all means play your stupid little game.

If I have offended anyone…then I have succeeded in my intention……Glorifying Vietnam is sick, pathetic and moronic….

Is It Laffer Or Laughable?

The father of the Laffer Curve, the discredited theory that giving the rich a tax break will stimulate the economy, has weighed in on the health care debate.  Through the Texas Public Policy Foundation he has issued a plan for the health crisis.

Dr. Laffer’s research concluded that the current proposals being discussed in Washington would:

  • raise total federal government expenditures by 5.6 percent more than otherwise, adding $285.6 billion to the federal deficit in 2019;
  • increase national health care expenditures by an additional 8.9 percent;
  • raise medical price inflation 5.2 percent above what it would have been otherwise;
  • slow U.S. economic growth in 2019 by 4.9 percent less than the baseline scenario of doing nothing;
  • increase the current net present value of funding health care reform based on President Obama’s priorities by $1.3 trillion (due to higher medical inflation and expenditures), or $ 4,354 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.; and
  • still only insure about one-third of those currently without insurance – at a cost of approximately $62,500 per new person insured.

Dr. Laffer says there are many solutions available to better the health care system without destroying what already is good in the system. The path to true health care reform is through patient-centered solutions, which emphasize the patient-doctor relationship and work to shrink the wedge by allowing patients and doctors to make more effective and economical health care choices. These solutions include:

  • Provide for individual ownership of insurance policies – the tax deduction that allows employers to own your insurance should instead be given to the individual;
  • Better leverage Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) – HSAs empower individuals to monitor their health care costs and create incentives for individuals to use only those services that are necessary;
  • Allow interstate purchasing of insurance – policies in some states are more affordable because they include fewer bells and whistles; consumers should be empowered to decide which benefits they need and what prices they are willing to pay;
  • Reduce the number of mandated benefits insurers are required to cover – empowering consumers to choose which benefits they need is only effective if insurers are able to fill these needs;
  • Reallocate the majority of Medicaid spending into simple vouchers for low-income individuals to purchase their own insurance – an income-based sliding scale voucher program would eliminate much of the massive bureaucracy that is needed to implement today’s complex and burdensome Medicaid system and produce considerable cost savings;
  • Eliminate unnecessary scope-of-practice laws and allow non-physician health care professionals to practice to the extent of their education and training – retail clinics have shown that increasing the provider pool safely increases competition and access to care and empowers the patient to decide from whom they receive their care; and
  • Reform tort liability laws – defensive medicine needlessly drives up medical costs and creates an adversarial relationship between doctors and patients.

This is what he envisions as the cure to the crisis.  Amazingly it sounds a lot like the “new” GOP health plan.  (check out my post, “Finally, A GOP Health Plan”)   I see that he apparently won the favor of Ronald Reagan and has been the go to guy every since when the GOP needs some way to attack the Dems on economic issues.

All the criticism aside, Laffer has a new phrase from which to use the bully pulpit, the Health Care Wedge:

health care wedge – a separation of effort and reward by which a patient understands the true costs of their health care and is therefore driven to be more efficient in his or her spending. This separation is actually the reason health care costs are skyrocketing, according to Dr. Laffer.

Now did you understand what he is saying? …. (Pause for contemplation)….(zzzzzzz)…..oh my bad I dosed off there for a moment….there is nothing in his words that would lead the average person into a lather….he is a typical phD…….talks with words that NO one understandsa not even him.