A pernicious term used for those who voted for Trump and Brexit is the “low information voter”....The WaPo piece — written by 2 polisci profs — was published the day before the election, so it's kind of funny to read it now that the belief that Trump was about to go down is shattered by reality (speaking of information). The Lehmann article just came out yesterday. It's an interesting article. Worth reading:
In the Washington Post, the low information voter is defined as one who is more likely to respond to emotional appeals about issues such as the economy, immigration, Muslims, race relations and sexism. The Post goes onto [sic] explain:
Low information voters are those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a “need for cognition.” Those with a high need for cognition have a positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are, therefore, more likely to invest the time and resources to do so when evaluating complex issues.In other words, low information people react quickly, trust their intuitions and shirk deliberative thought. High information people take the time to think things through....
This is one reason why charges of wholesale ignorance are so obtuse. “High information” people ignore evidence if it conflicts with their preferred narrative all the time. And while it may be naïve for voters to believe the promises of Trump and the Brexit campaigners — it has also been profoundly naïve for the cosmopolitan classes to believe that years of forced internationalism and forced political correctness were never going to end with a large scale backlash.But what strikes me is that these people are exposing their complete lack of familiarity with Rush Limbaugh's powerfully influential radio show. Rush has been using the term "low-information voters" for years and years to refer to the people who are accepting the view of the world presented in the mainstream media (which he sees as thoroughly biased in the liberal direction). If you're not up on Rush Limbaugh, but you're writing about American politics, then you yourself are low-information.
UPDATE, the next day: Rush Limbaugh talks about this post on his show, and I respond to that here.
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127 comments:
If you're not up on Rush Limbaugh, but you're writing about American politics, then you yourself are low-information.
I think that is unfair. I am not sure that, say, Nate Silver, is all the 'up on Rush Limbaugh'. At least, I have no evidence that he listens to and evaluates Limbaugh's statement, nor incorporates them into his model. Would that make Nate Silver 'low-information'?
There is one narrative that runs the entire gamut of progressive comedy, from Dunham to WaPo:
You know that guy who disagrees with us?
He's an idiot!
PolySci professors are very unlikely to listen to Rush,
Most people who attribute certain beliefs to him are usually those who have never listened. They believe the MSNBC version of Rush.
... the low information voter is defined as one who is more likely to respond to emotional appeals about issues such as ... immigration, Muslims ....
For too long, discussions of these issues have been dominated by shaming arguments that we should feel sorry for immigrants, especially for Moslem immigrants.
People who try to discuss these issues in terms of facts and logic are denounced as racists.
The said Professor's just made Rush's point..........
Wikipedia has a substantial article on the term "need for cognition":
"The need for cognition (NFC), in psychology, is a personality variable reflecting the extent to which individuals are inclined towards effortful cognitive activities.[1][2]
"Need for cognition has been variously defined as "a need to structure relevant situations in meaningful, integrated ways" and "a need to understand and make reasonable the experiential world".[3] Higher NFC is associated with increased appreciation of debate, idea evaluation, and problem solving. Those with a high need for cognition may be inclined towards high elaboration. Those with a lower need for cognition may display opposite tendencies, and may process information more heuristically, often through low elaboration.[4]
"Need for cognition is closely related to the five factor model domain openness to experience, typical intellectual engagement, and epistemic curiosity (see below)...."
I have a friend who holds a PhD in Philosophy. He believes that the New York Times is an impartial reporter of events. Talk about low-information.
Ah but they get to feel so smug! Directly to your point, they get to yell into their echo chamber that it is not us that are wrong or misguided. It is them, those others. They must be "low information", how else to explain their poor choice? If they were smarter, they would have voted "correctly" and we would have Queen Hillary and not that boorish businessman.
The virtual signaling is strong in these ones.
I've got buds who are constantly droning on about "Oh, if we could only teach more people some philosophy & logic, we wouldn't have [insert something lefties despise here]".
I then point out to them that having lots of training in philosophy & logic didn't keep Martin Heidegger from sucking up to the Nazis, nor Gyorgy Lukacs from sucking up to Stalin. My lesson in history never seems to sink in.
An early example of the concept came in the 2000 recount in Florida. A group of blacks were "disenfranchised" because the cheat-sheet they were given caused them to incorrectly select Bush instead of Gore.
Though long departed from the academy I consider myself a high information voter. In that guise I have little respect for those in the social sciences regardless of how much of the alphabet they have behind their names. To most of them, people are just numbers and they have little understanding of how people really are. I have been really enjoying reading Scott Adams during the election. He may not be a social sciences Phd., but he has some wonderful insights into how people make decisions both as individuals and groups.
I think I mentioned here that my first hint that Trump should be taken seriously was when one of the "regular" guys at the skeet club emphatically backed him in the primary -ordinary guy, a machinist in mid size company in MN. I expected the rest of the crew to laugh him off, but they didn't. They took his commitment to heart and you could almost hear the wheels start turning. Rush might call these guys LIV, but I think that, as such, they have a much better sense of what is really happening in the world than any academic. In large numbers they will usually come up with much better solutions to problems than HIVs who tend to get confused and indecisive because they have too much data - or data that conflicts with their preconceived notions!
"I think that is unfair. I am not sure that, say, Nate Silver, is all the 'up on Rush Limbaugh'. At least, I have no evidence that he listens to and evaluates Limbaugh's statement, nor incorporates them into his model. Would that make Nate Silver 'low-information'?"
How can you explain Americans political behavior if you pay no attention to Rush's show and don't know what millions of people have been listening to for many years?
But Silver may only represent himself as writing about polls and doing statistical work. If he doesn't purport to write about why people think what they do about politics, then he's not low-information within his field of endeavor.
Seriously, I thought David Axelrod used this a lot about the 2008 Presidential race. He was talking about reaching and motivating them to vote for his guy. I thought it was at that time that Rush picked up on it and used in a more negative fashion than Axelrod. I freely admit this is just an impression and I might be wrong.
TMI
"which he sees as thoroughly biased in the liberal direction). " Now there is a low information aside
Young Hegelian writes
"I've got buds who are constantly droning on about "Oh, if we could only teach more people some philosophy & logic, we wouldn't have [insert something lefties despise here]".
I then point out to them that having lots of training in philosophy & logic didn't keep Martin Heidegger from sucking up to the Nazis, nor Gyorgy Lukacs from sucking up to Stalin. My lesson in history never seems to sink in."
Another impression of mine is that all of the major deconstructionists either flirted with or had amour a l'outrance with facscism and Naziism.
I always assumed that the LIV that Rush speaks of are the "sound bite" people who get their info from Facebook or similar and rarely delve beyond the initial presentation of a topic.
I consider myself a low-information everything.
The Professor's point is well taken. The critics of Trump's Movement are utterly bankrupt for a winning narrative. Trump has emptied the barn, and it is too late to close that door. So they simply photo shop the Trump's narrative replacing their faces and names with the deplorable people faces and names. At the least they can confuse the world with that trick.
But the do owe Rush royalties.
Yep, Low Information Voters - Alt-Left Dem Progressive. And they still have not read the tea leaves. Case in point is Obama still blaming Fox News for all their woes. Funning he gets no criticism from the Lame Stream Media for his comments but Trump is castigated for his comments on the media.
The "low information voters" are less likely to be confused about how the food at Whole Foods arrives in the cities. The "low information voters" understand that New York City depends on them more than the reverse.
Nothing sharpens the mind and the instincts quite so much as a recognition that there are real threats in the world - both near and far, spatially and temporally.
A life of comfort dulls situational awareness.
Everybody thinks people who disagree with them are "low information" and the fact is we all pick our own information sources. The regular Limbaugh listener isn't likely a regular DailyKos reader, and they all are very well informed with the information they curate to validate their worldview. Sometimes many of them try to break out of their comfort zones and see what the other side has to say, but they'll still approach that with a more critical eye.
True "low information voters" don't follow any of it at all, and give about as much a rats ass about political matters as I do about Pakistani cricket heroes.
Low information means low facts. War is an act of deception by CIA et al. We are lucky if we get the full facts 50 years after they were hidden away.
But like radar in 1940, the Internet has placed a flood of the facts ion screens in our faces. And we can handle them. The truth does set people free and fills us with energy and confidence.
Twitter is too quick to be censored.
I don't listen to Rush, never had and my life is not poorer because of it. His ranting and yelling makes me nauseous. I take that back. I do listen to him periodically when Ann has a link to one of his recordings. I think of him the same way I think of Sean Hannity, a$%holes.
Go ahead, taunt me with the "oh she's a liberal so she's full of it." Yes and yes and i am, don't care what you all think.
Vicki from Paasadena
People on the left have little curiosity about the ideas of conservatives, thinking they know those ideas already,those evil ideas. And so they have certainties about Fox News which they never watch, about Breibart which they never read and about Rush who they never listen to. In the meantime conservatives are marinated in the ideas and propaganda of the left.
"Yes and yes and i am, don't care what you all think."
That sentiment cuts both ways, Patricia.
Low information voters, like those swayed by a Beyonce or Springsteen concert? Or maybe a Joss Whedon get out the vote video?
Here's a test: When Glenn says, "read the whole thing," well... do you?
It is very wrong that "information" is confused with "thinking".
People gather lots of information; some people more than others. That gathering of information doesn't necessarily correlate to lots of thinking.
The intuitive brain is fast, efficient, and transparent. The analytical/contemplative brain is slow, inefficient, and laborious. The extent to which people gather information has nothing to do with their likelihood of analyzing it.
I know many people with brains full of news stories and TV soundbites whose thinking never diverges from the social preconceptions of their circle. Everything they think they think is an echo.
Brando said...
True "low information voters" don't follow any of it at all, and give about as much a rats ass about political matters as I do about Pakistani cricket heroes.
Right, the entire article is an example of how people erroneously and often subconsciously define everything to support their preexisting worldview.
Need for cognition is what I wonder about when NFL linemen in a crucial third down jump off sides because they forgot about that arcane and complex rule.
Decontructing stuff is all well and good. It can be good fun, actually. It's building something better in the place of that which you have destroyed that is always the problem.
I don't listen to Rush, never had and my life is not poorer because of it. His ranting and yelling makes me nauseous.
Two newspapers in one, as Taranto might say. Vicki, you are a perfect example of what we are discussing.
I'm sure you don't agree, which makes it even funnier.
The author thinks LIV is an insult, but it isn't necessarily.
Rational Ignorance
In an environment of rational ignorance broad themes matter most especially when delivered with the aura of authority or expertise. This is why political radicals have spent a century and a half trying to control the media and academia, and why they won't tolerate competing views in institutions they control.
Q: What produces "low information voters"?
A: Government.
If a person is powerless to effect a change, practicality and sanity urge to just accept it and move on.
The less control the voter indiividually has over Government, the less sense it makes for that voter to invest in becoming informed about issues and candidates.
The more choices - take just for example over the purchase of medical care insurance - that Government forcefully removes from the individual - the less sense it makes for the individual to become informed or concerned.
Steven Wilson: Seriously, I thought David Axelrod used this a lot about the 2008 Presidential race. He was talking about reaching and motivating them to vote for his guy. I thought it was at that time that Rush picked up on it and used in a more negative fashion than Axelrod.
Yes, he turned their term around on them. They (Axelrod & company) were so pleased that their agents in the MSM were able to transmit just the right messages to the LIVs who don't pay attention to politics year-round, only absorbing just enough from the culture to cast a vote based on progressive consensus thought.
from the Washington Post article referenced - "We define low-information voters as those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a “need for cognition."
Hhmm. Not knowing basic facts about government....
Like how the electoral college works.
It's the whole "What's the matter with Kansas" mindset. This is a method of othering their opponents. The Left must create the mindset that conservatives are the enemy because if the left were engaged in real debate, it would be exposed that their entire argument boils down to: we must curtail freedoms and confiscate property for the good of the collective, and we decide what "the good" is. Kansas doesn't like that idea. That's what is the matter with them.
What good is high information if that information is fraudulent ?
You want folks to make informed and rational choices in life, to act responsibly?
Well then, allow them to make the choices. Heck, even don't shield them from the consequences of poor decisions.
Ilya Somin of WaPo's Volokh Conspiracy often writes of "low info voters" - one implication is that with a smaller government there's less government stuff to know, so one can spend more time knowing useful things.
The day after the election E. Volokh posted something like "I now realize that I don't know anything about American politics".
The intuitive brain is fast, efficient, and transparent. The analytical/contemplative brain is slow, inefficient, and laborious. The extent to which people gather information has nothing to do with their likelihood of analyzing it.
While I utterly reject the conclusions of the novel "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" it is an interesting discussion of ways of thinking. "Intuition" v "Analysis" Basically the guy thinks the wrong side won in the ancient Greek argument between the Empiricists and the Sophists. He thinks that we should all trust our intuitions the way a motorcycle mechanic does. What he doesn't deal with is the fact that motorcycles are relatively simple, and people have years of experience with them, so mental shortcuts are great. But if he were handed something novel, for instance an alien device of similar complexity, he would have no chance of understanding it intuitively.
Michael Barrone made this point about the election. It was outside the realm of experience of pollsters. They had never seen an election where both candidates were despised by almost 20% of the electorate. They had seen a lot of cases where both sides were liked, and the votes split evenly. But the people who despised both this time broke heavily for Trump. No one expected it. What kind of "intuition" would have predicted that? Trumpian, I guess.
Here's a test: When Glenn says, "read the whole thing," well... do you?
Not always. I have the lazy tendency to read a paragraph or two and then to be all like "I get the gist of this, I don't need to read anymore." It's even worse when I want to comment on something. I'm a chronic FOMO sufferer. Sometimes I think that maybe if there was some sort of comment moratorium that occurred for the first 30 minutes after and initial posting there may be more thoughtful and informed discussion. Probably not though.
Brando: Everybody thinks people who disagree with them are "low information" and the fact is we all pick our own information sources. The regular Limbaugh listener isn't likely a regular DailyKos reader, and they all are very well informed with the information they curate to validate their worldview. Sometimes many of them try to break out of their comfort zones and see what the other side has to say, but they'll still approach that with a more critical eye.
True "low information voters" don't follow any of it at all, and give about as much a rats ass about political matters as I do about Pakistani cricket heroes.
Your last sentence is exactly the description Rush used, as stated by others above. Most people intentionally avoid news and are therefore LIV. It's not a pejorative, as Ms. Lehmann assumes, but the people she thought were using it were using it as an insult. The broader point you appear to make may be valid, but studies have shown that conservatives rely on a wide range of sources from liberal MSM which are everywhere and unavoidable to the news consumer to academic journals, internet and association with other free-thinking types. Progressives tend to coccoon themselves in places like KOS and HuffPo so they do not encounter those rude people who think differently.
"High information” people ignore evidence if it conflicts with their preferred narrative all the time.
A lot of truth in that. But, I think it's more that "high information" people work hard to find information and arguments to discount or dismiss evidence they don't like.
victoria: I don't listen to Rush, never had and my life is not poorer because of it. His ranting and yelling makes me nauseous.
A perfect example of cocooning here. Never listened because she doesn't like what she claims to have heard, which is not what happens on the show she didn't listen too. Vicky is a perfect liberal from Pasadena!
Victoria may be a little old lady from Pasadena, Mike.
Michael K, I think you were too subtle with Vickie, which is even funnier!
I'm have too vs to trouble lately.
I once bought a used Pontiac Firebird from a little old lady in Pasadena and it was fast! (True story.)
I try not to ignore conflicting information, but when I go over to a liberal site to discuss stuff like that, ask honest questions, etc, I get banned within days if not hours. So I am not sure what information it is that I am supposed to be ignoring. For instance I never saw the "conflicting information" to my firm belief that Hillary is a secretive, self-dealing, criminal politician, and that Bill is a serial sexual predator. What passes for "conflicting information" are assurances that what I have come to believe is not true, and I only believe it because I am a sexist and a racist.
Damn. I'm also having have vs having trouble too.
But Vicki, Limbaugh doesn't "rant and yell".
That has to be a judgement filtered through preconceptions and bias because it simply fails objectively.
He has a mellow and sonorous sound, and he makes his points with sarcasm, irony, absurd folkish exaggeration (very Mark Twain btw., if you read and appreciate Twain, all of it, you understand Limbaugh), and every other sort of rhetorical device. He is an extremely talented speaker and probably would be a devastating debater if it came to it, which is probably why his opponents have always avoided debate. The ancient Romans would have appreciated his abilities.
And that would be true regardless of his political positions. I compare him with Garrison Keillor, in his verbal style, though of course Limbaugh is extemporaneous and traditionally rhetorical while Keillor does his narrative parables, or did, at his best. Keillor aside, and as Keillor seems semi-retired and not an extemporaneous or cut-and-thrust combatant anyway, there is no modern public speaker of the old American folk style that can match Limbaugh.
Jesse Jackson and a few others of the old preacher-breed, which is a distinct type, have their own skillset, with their own tricks, especially those of extemporaneous poetry and vocal technique, but not the multilayered irony and sarcasm, nor the logic, and can't properly debate him.
I believe you (most if you) suffer from the gross failure of US education to teach the techniques of argument. Debate and actual "critical thinking" are actively discouraged. The ancient arts of rhetoric, including logic and analysis, are not in the curriculum. This is a sad thing.
Low-information', emotionally-driven voters are mostly those on the left. Anyone who habitually watches only CNN or MSNBC and reads only the NYT and the WaPo is a low-information voter. They are only getting news that has been filtered through the lens of progressive acceptability. If you want to know more about the world we live in, read a variety of news sources, foreign and domestic, including local sources. Better yet, get out into the world and talk to people and see things for yourself.
Agreed, Professor Althouse. Yet another terrific post.
It is shockingly easy, to grade someone's current events IQ based on the diversity of their news sources. I'm a proud NPR/Limbaugh/WSJ/New Yorker/National Review consumer. I used to be a Drudge reader too. Not much anymore.
I thought LIV was a synonym for Obama voter among Republicans. You don't have to listen to Rush to come to this conclusion. Wasn't aware he originated or popularized the term. Seemed in universal usage on the right to me.
Rush, between the ads, the repetition and the riffing has always been too diluted a way to get information or entertainment for me. I reject the idea that any one source for anything is indispesibble. Like Hugh Hewitt's tiresome invocation of Looming Tower for a decade--until we got Trump and Hewitt had to pipe down about low information candidates.
""I've got buds who are constantly droning on about "Oh, if we could only teach more people some philosophy & logic, we wouldn't have [insert something lefties despise here]".
I often ask these people if they can solve a simple differential equation. If they cannot, then I ask them how come people so illiterate in basic Mathematics in the 21st century, math essential to understanding economics, claim to be superior in logic and philosophy?
"The broader point you appear to make may be valid, but studies have shown that conservatives rely on a wide range of sources from liberal MSM which are everywhere and unavoidable to the news consumer to academic journals, internet and association with other free-thinking types."
That may be, I tend to the right on most issues but find when I read left-leaning pieces (e.g., New Yorker or New Republic articles) despite trying to keep an open mind I'm more critical of what they present. My favorite writing though (left or right) tends to be the pieces that demonstrate the writer actually understands the opposition and will address their better arguments, rather than cheap straw men.
"Need for cognition is closely related to the five factor model domain openness to experience, typical intellectual engagement, and epistemic curiosity (see below)...."
They're in trouble already.
They're cogitating about people who have needs, the people we're studying, without noticing the inversion.
I've heard Rush tell it more than once, that he picked up the term "low information voter" from the main stream media. Rush didn't coin the phrase.
Vicki proves the point. Most progressives close their ears to anything that isn't echo chamber.
Keillor had one problem that annoyed me: he hated the people of Lake Woebegon. He and his audience were not enamored of the virtues of his imaginary home town. They did not celebrate the humanity of his creation. The NPR crowd and Keillor himself instead loved being in PC lockstep as they poked fun (from their perspective of their own self-anointed, leftist, progressive, socialist, collectivist righteousness) at the vices, failures, misdeeds, misplaced beliefs and prejudices of his self-created small town. Keillor hated them all, as far as I could tell, and by his intolerant tales of their "otherness" he wanted us all to hate them too.
Rush, on the other hand, wants good things to happen for everyone, loves everyone, even those whose politics he hates with a passion. And if the good things that he wants to happen to leftist statists is their conversion into supporters of individual rights and liberty and American exceptionalism, well, he at least wants them to have good things happen to them.
Somehow I'm reminded of the quote usually attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith: "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."
There's surely plenty of evidence that those with greater cognitive ability use that ability to confirm and support their existing views and not so much to question them.
Although one might use the term "magical thinking voter" or even "larcenous voter" to one who things great bags of free stuff can be had at little or no cost (or at least at someone else's expense).
And, of course, there are utopian voters, ones who believe that all have essentially equal abilities (but differing outcomes due to unequal opportunities), or those who, believing the lion truly will lie down with the lamb (and not eat it), see no truth at all in the maxim "If you want peace then prepare for war."
If you're not up on Rush Limbaugh, but you're writing about American politics, then you yourself are low-information.
heh - nailed it!
These educated professional types are so clueless they don't recognize how clueless they are!
On the merits -- the left is obsessed with "labels." You can't say this, you can't say that, you can't call them this, you can't use this phrase or that phrase, you can't call them "low information voters," blah, blah, blah, blah.
They should be forced to listen to 3 weeks straight of Rush Limbaugh. See if they learn anything. Hey, did you know he calls certain liberal women "Femi-Nazis"?!!?
Hey they don't get out much among the knuckle draggers they believe listen to Rush. Safe in their little cocoon, they are profoundly surprised when the real world intrudes.
mockturtle said...
Better yet, get out into the world and talk to people and see things for yourself.
12/1/16, 10:41 AM
I beg your pardon, do you mean to imply that one could, nay, dare I say, should, venture out into the wildness beyond and mingle with the hoi polloi? If one were to entertain an idea such as that, what is there to prevent one from getting the rancor of such undesirables on ones overcoat? Surely you jest?!?
>>I often ask these people if they can solve a simple differential equation.
My version: When I get lectured about "Global Warming" I ask "If 4 x squared is 36, what's x?"
The inevitable reply is that has nothing to do with saving the planet. I reply that if you can't do 8th grade algebra, how can you possibly have an informed opinion on supercomputer climate models?
Buwaya puti: "The ancient arts of rhetoric, including logic and analysis, are not in the curriculum. This is a sad thing." Word. I think that curriculum is ancient for a reason --it works. It is part of our toolkit as reasoning creatures to survive and thrive --particularly when many of the threats come from other reasoning creatures who want our votes, our money, our bodies.
Many good comments here on a huge and important topic: how we connect with what's outside our heads. Matching the internal model to the external source/target. Doing so efficiently. All that dopamine we give ourselves? Is an adaptive signal: do more of this, less of that.
In a complacent life among fellow believers, there is perhaps a steady drip of dopamine from the echoes and mirrored pleasantries. There is NO incentive to look farther. Doing so will almost certainly cause inconvenience or even pain: having to fit new and conflicting data into a perfect or perfectly-satisfactory model. So only the perverse intellect will go there, starting fights and staying up late to worry about competing hypotheses.
So it goes on. Until of course it doesn't.
I would argue that the greater the hubris, the closer to nemesis. One signal of hubris is a refusal to engage challengers on the merits of their ideas; an eagerness to attack them on their putative motives or character. Right now we see a lot of ad hominem dismissal of other viewpoints, much summary condemnation of "fake news" channels. It suggests to me that the Progs have consumed the entire design margin. In the analogy to the O-rings in the Challenger disaster, they have burned all the way through.
/rant
I certainly do not expect leftists to want to listen to Rush, but they sure have a strange perception of him. Rush is a pussy cat.
"I certainly do not expect leftists to want to listen to Rush, but they sure have a strange perception of him. Rush is a pussy cat."
They just regurgitate the lies they are told about him. And everything else.
Leftists are collectivists and as such are herd animals. The need to be in lockstep with the group is an overarching motivation so any reasoning or thinking is oriented to produce whatever conclusion is necessary to remain in solidarity.
Ann's last sentence is very true and applies to the vast majority of pundits, based on the evidence.
Very well stated, Owen @11:13!
Chuck said... [hush][hide comment]
Agreed, Professor Althouse. Yet another terrific post.
It is shockingly easy, to grade someone's current events IQ based on the diversity of their news sources. I'm a proud NPR/Limbaugh/WSJ/New Yorker/National Review consumer. I used to be a Drudge reader too. Not much anymore.
Yeah, me too. I just go to Drudge, who links to all those, and about a hundred more, including Pravda, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Der Spiegel, Islamic Republic Wire Drudge Makes it easy to access a variety of info.
Well, I tell folks that is takes great intelligence and imagination to believe the BS that animates the Left. It is to my advantage that I'm too dumb to participate in that delusion.
Drudge makes it easy to link to all of the sources that Sean Hannity uses later the same day. I don't think that Drudge links to much of anything anymore unless it is shamelessly pro-Trump.
how can you possibly have an informed opinion on supercomputer climate models?
When people try to use supercomputer climate models to prove that man is destroying the climate I ask them if they know anything about the Earth's history.
The Earth is in the middle of an ice age that began 2,38 million years ago. We are currently in the Holocene, which is a warm interval, called an interglacial, in that ice age that began aprox. 12,000 years ago.
Modern humans appeared about 200,000 years ago and spent about 190,000 years of that wandering around in small bands, picking lice off of each other. Then aprox. 10,000 years ago. agriculture began. This allowed the production of surplus, which lead to specialization and civilization.
Global warming is partially responsible for civilization.
Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery
We'll know they've jumped the shark when they refer to fox news as one of the drive by's
And yes, LIV was coined for the Obama voter. This election, as well as 2010 and 14, seem to lend credence to the term.
Chuck said...
Drudge makes it easy to link to all of the sources that Sean Hannity uses later the same day. I don't think that Drudge links to much of anything anymore unless it is shamelessly pro-Trump.
Amusingly, Chuck takes the bait :
Links copied from Drudge five minute ago
AP TOP
AP WORLD
AP NATIONAL
AP WASHINGTON
AP BUSINESS
AP ENTERTAINMENT
AP HEADLINE WALL
AP RAW
AP RADIO
BLOOMBERG
BUSINESS WIRE
DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR
DOW JONES
EFE
INDO-ASIAN NEWS SERVICE
INTERFAX
ISLAMIC REPUBLIC WIRE
ITAR-TASS
KYODO
MCCLATCHY [DC]
PRAVDA
PRESS ASSOCIATION
PRESS TRUST INDIA
PR NEWSWIRE
[SHOWBIZ] PR WIRE
SCRIPPS HOWARD
US INFO WIRE
WENN SHOWBIZ
XINHUA
YONHAP FRONT PAGES UK WORLD MOVIE BOXOFFICE
SHOWBUZZ DAILY
TV RATINGS ABCNEWS
ADWEEK
ANTI-WAR.COM
ATLANTIC
BBC
BILD
BILLBOARD
BLAZE
BOSTON GLOBE
BOSTON HERALD
BREITBART
BROADCASTING & CABLE
BUSINESS INSIDER
BUZZFEED
CBS NEWS
CBS NEWS LOCAL
C-SPAN
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
CHICAGO TRIB
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
CNBC
CNN
CNN POLITICAL TICKER
DAILY BEAST
DAILY CALLER
DAILY VARIETY
DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD
DER SPIEGEL
E!
ECONOMIST
EMIRATES 24/7
ENT WEEKLY
FINANCIAL TIMES
FORBES
FOXNEWS
FRANCE 24
FREE BEACON
FREE REPUBLIC
HOT AIR
HELLO!
HILL
HILL: JUST IN
H'WOOD ELSEWHERE
H'WOOD REPORTER
HUFFINGTON POST
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FullMoon
It is this list that makes Drudge such a powerful source of news and affords conservatives access to opposing views, a concept foreign to the big thinkers like Chuck who knows what he knows.
Then again, the library where Chuck hops on the internet may block Drudge. LOL
"Keillor had one problem that annoyed me: he hated the people of Lake Woebegon."
That shows up in his books. One of his first ones contained a footnote in which the character listed all the ways he hated Woebegonians.
"The inevitable reply is that has nothing to do with saving the planet. I reply that if you can't do 8th grade algebra, how can you possibly have an informed opinion on supercomputer climate models?"
Exactly. So when "Scientific American" banned Bjorn Lomborg from its pages, I wondered what's up with that. So I looked through "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and read "Cool It." Far from being a fruitcake, he accepts the global warming theory. He questions how much should be done about it. Yet he was a threat to "Scientific American." Hmmmmm
When the East Anglican emails were released, I read through them and saw the programmer, assigned to gather and correlate the global temperature records repeatedly telling his superiors that they were a mess, that you correlate them, and I asked, "And they're making global warming policy based on these records?" Hmmmmm
Then I read about how many of the U.S. temperature stations stayed in place while development grew up around them, creating heat-sinks, and asked, "Do they account for that?" and I'm told I should shut up. Hmmmmm
Then I read "The whole story of climate : what science reveals about the nature of endless change" by E. Kirsten Peters, and learned how close we are to the end of the 10,000-year warming period and the possibility that global warming can be beneficial. Hmmmmm
Then I look at how the scientific community has treated the moon-landing hoax and 9/11 truthers, by breaking down their arguments and stressing the facts, versus how they treat those who question global warming by threatening to put them into prison. Hmmmmm
Then I recall all the predictions of the global warmists, about how we have five years to save the planet, how we have 10 years to save the planet. How we won't have snowfalls in our lifetime, etc. Only to see the time pass and nothing to show for it. Hmmmmm
There's more, but you get the jist.
So, no, I can't do math. But I do recognize handwaving, buck-passing, suppression of debate, and a lack of good faith in debate. Hmmmmm?
I noticed the other day that Drudge no longer links to Daily Kos. That's a very recent change as I went there from Drudge maybe 10 days ago.
Of course, I left out the "can't" in "you can't correlate them" in my argument. Apologies.
Bill Peschel: Very nice summary of how someone could come in from accepting the standard warmist view of the planet to seeing the dishonesty and changing sides. I have almost never seen anyone who is educated and widely read change his or her view of politics (including environmental politics) except for the time I gave a liberal friend a copy of The Skeptical Environmentalist. It changed his mind about a number of things and he now cites the book regularly. Seems like the most effective way to bring someone around is by having leftist credentials and then describing your own journey to a changed view.
The Pauline Kael set has never changed. Always in their ivory towers, unreality bubbles.
"Keillor hated them all, as far as I could tell, and by his intolerant tales of their "otherness" he wanted us all to hate them too."
Well, of course he did, and still does. Its more overt these days, not in his old disingenuous style. His was always a political message packed in layers. Its the cruelty of the intellectual to his stolid volk, compensation, maybe, for status anxiety about his inadequate roots. Mark Twain did a whole lot of this too - though he hid it better, it shines through in too many spots. Humorists can be cruel people.
"Keillor had one problem that annoyed me: he hated the people of Lake Woebegon."
Friendly, folksy old Garrison Keillor was a fictional character he played on the radio, not much like the man himself. Ask his neighbors in St. Paul.
"If you're not up on Rush Limbaugh, but you're writing about American politics, then you yourself are low-information." But prog psychology, like prog ethics and prog linguistics, is situational. If you have the right amount of the right information to confirm prog biases, you are not low-info; if you fail to acknowledge or absorb the facts that support a prog narrative, you are low-info.
Chuck,
You have, once again, beclowned yourself.
Why not give it up and move to a site where people like Victoria live in ignorant leftie bliss?
You are not even a tiny bit amusing like some trolls. You are truly sad.
In First Things, R.R. Reno writes "Technocracy is based on the idea that all social problems are, at root, technical and require expertise rather than political deliberation" (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/11/the-enduring-allure-of-fidel). Hillary would say, I believe, that both expertise and political deliberation are necessary to dress social problems. The problem is with where she would rank them. A technocrat would say that we use expertise to determine society's problems, and that political dialog is necessary to address the problems that expertise has revealed.
A non-technocrat would work the issue from the other way: political dialog is used to determine what society's problems are, and expertise is used to address them.
"In the Washington Post, the low information voter is defined as one who is more likely to respond to emotional appeals about issues such as the economy, immigration, Muslims, race relations and sexism."
Emotional appeals are a legitimate part of political deliberation.
You would think that a pair of poli-sci profs would recognize that.
"I don't listen to Rush, never had and my life is not poorer because of it. His ranting and yelling makes me nauseous."
My observation is that people who disrespect and/or criticize Rush Limbaugh, generally havn't listened to him, otherwise they might notice that he is a very good analyst and original thinker. And funny.
I never listen to Limbaugh, although I am favorably predisposed to him having heard "liberals" say things like: "He's not a true conservative--he's a radical libertarian." (Oh, horrors!) But I started using the term "low information voter" (not knowing it was his) after I heard uneducated Obama enthusiasts from the ghetto; then listened to some educated, white, middle class "liberals" who might have been more articulate, but really didn't know all that much about history or economics either.
"If 4 x squared is 36, what's x?"
Actually threw me, despite having a degree in mathematics. It all depends on operator precedence. My first cut was 1.5, assuming that 4x had been squared (square root of 36 is 6, divided by 4 is 1.5), but then realized that, without parentheses, exponentiation typically has priority over multiplication, at least in most computer languages (not sure about COBOL, which tries hard to spare its practitioners the need for Algebra), so the answer should be 3 (36/4 = 9, and square root of 9 is 3). And, yes, in Algebra, if you were supposed to square 4x, it would have been put in parentheses - except how do you do that in English? Which is why I probably would have accepted either answer.
I do agree though that most of the people I meet who demand action on AGW (or AGCC, after AGW predictions failed so miserably), likely couldn't come up with either answer (think Obama or Crooked Hillary). My personal problem though is that that isn't always true - notably my kid, who has a BS in Physics and Math, MS in engineering, and working on a PhD, responds to my questions in this area that one of us has had (graduate level) atmospheric chemistry classes, and that one is not I. Then things get messy, because I have the graduate classes in CS and modeling....
“High information” people ignore evidence if it conflicts with their preferred narrative all the time."
My nephew in law is really really smart and a big time lib. When confronted with info that conflicts with his worldview, you can almost see him, in his face and brow, that he is fighting against his own knowledge and experience in order to parrot the librul talking points.
Bruce Hayden: your conversations with your kid sound like great fun and an education in themselves.
I think the order of operators in the Climate Panic Equation is: Grift, then Obfuscation, followed by Pal Review, and finally Cronyism.
Those I know who believe most passionately that climate change is due to human intervention are those who did NOT study science in college.
Another example of knowing Algebra and still drinking the AGW Kool Aid. Awhile back I was on the govt relations committee (GRC) (as the IP committee chair) of the engineering society that (credibly) bills itself as the premier technological society in the world. Proposed formal positions had to go through the GRC before being submitted to the board for formal adoption by the US organization. And, almost inevitably, I would be the one questioning the inclusion of an AGW rationale for the proposed position. Most of the other GRC members (all trained engineers, many with PhDs, heading more technical committees), just assumed AGW to have been proven, and mentioning it in the justification for the proposed positions just an easy hook for the board to justify adoption. Never actually needed, but nice justification. They never were actually willing to debate the subject, after the first time I mentioned ClimateGate. This would come up at least once per meeting, and I would refuse to agree to the justification until the AGW justification was toned down. After my term as IPC chair expired, a good friend, who was chairing the GRC as VP and board member, had to do the dirty work himself.
Global warming was also one of the first things that came to mind. Just because it is a scientific fact that CO2 molecules delay the escape of infrared radiation to space doesn't mean the planet is going to get unlivably hot any more than the "laws of gravity" prove an airplane can't fly. In both cases it turns out to be a bit more complicated.
It's not just low information about candidates and issues, it's low information and general ignorance about things like the difference between a democracy and a democratic republic, federalism, separation of powers and, most important, the Constitution itself. It's frightening how much people don't know.
I'm a semi-regular Rush listener. He very rarely misstates actual facts. When it comes to philosophy, viewpoint and opinions we're more often in sync than not but, of course, YMMV.
Whoa, Victoria, defensive much?
Rush mangles global warming, however, whenever he gets into any level of detail. I agree with his conclusions somewhat, but I wish he would just shut up. He ain't helping.
Mark Twain did a whole lot of this too - though he hid it better, it shines through in too many spots. Humorists can be cruel people.
Americans Abroad is pretty cutting and condescending. But then you turn around and read Roughing It and the self deprecation offsets it. Talk about a complex guy...
I once bought a used Pontiac Firebird from a little old lady in Pasadena and it was fast! (True story.)
Caution!...you won't come back from Dead Man's Curve.
For the record: it is not a fact that CO2 molecules prevent or slow the escape of infrared radiation into space. That simply does not happen. And every real scientist knows that hypothesis is disproved by now. It is a HOAX. All a hoax, and not even partly true.
Would you say this was... #FakeNews?
Shatner interviews Limbaugh in 2009:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjZy-jI6vZ8
It is the only interview I have seen of Limbaugh that was not overtly partisan.
Limbaugh comes off as a political operator more than a political theorist.
I listen to Limbaugh occasionally. It always gets me a little angry when he says that there is no problem with health care in the US because you can go into any emergency room in the country and get care.
You would think that a person who was able to avoid deafness by paying for very expensive ear operations would know better.
AJ Lynch said...
My nephew in law is really really smart and a big time lib. When confronted with info that conflicts with his worldview, you can almost see him, in his face and brow, that he is fighting against his own knowledge and experience in order to parrot the liberal talking points.
12/1/16, 2:08 PM
And yet he still manages to get the words out? That right there is text-book double-think. Give him a copy of 1984 for Christmas this year.
Oh, Full Moon; you asshole. You think I didn't know about all of the standard links on Drudge? Those are there, all the time. You don't need Drudge for any of those links. Of course, those links are really "curated" at all. It is the Drudge headlines, the Drudge curation that matters. How many actual stories is Drudge linking to, from anyone critical of Trump? Drudge links to the New Yorker, or Slate, or Salon, or New York magazine, whenever they write something outrageously stupid. Which they've been known to do. Just like O'Reilly regularly does and says stupid stuff.
I used to like Drudge, when Drudge wasn't jamming pro-Trump agitprop down everybody's throat. Drudge was actually smarter then.
"those links are NOT really 'curated' at all..."
"Seriously, I thought David Axelrod used this a lot about the 2008 Presidential race. He was talking about reaching and motivating them to vote for his guy."
-- This is a firm misunderstanding of the Rove/Axelrod playbooks, which were primarily about depressing voters from voting for the opponent, hence the harsh, ridiculous criticisms of McCain/Romney. Yes, both made token gestures to increase their vote totals, but primarily, the goal was to disqualify the other guy.
Chuck said...
Drudge makes it easy to link to all of the sources that Sean Hannity uses later the same day. I don't think that Drudge links to much of anything anymore unless it is shamelessly pro-Trump.
Oh, Full Moon; you asshole. You think I didn't know about all of the standard links on Drudge?
Ah, yeah, I copied what you said and easily refuted your lie..
Your marvelously mundane retort and unimaginative insult is as refreshing and useful as a yeast infected vaginal discharge.
BTW, Greta coming back to USA, you still planning on giving her arm the big squeeze to "show her what it feels like?"
BTW, Greta coming back to USA, you still planning on giving her arm the big squeeze to "show her what it feels like?"
If I were ever in the same room with her, yes.
Good riddance to her. Go, please, to a cable outlet I never watch. There are a number of ongoing mistakes on FNC. Hannity; Bolling; Greta was one of the most glaring of the mistakes.
Matthew Sablan:
The absolute key to the Obama victories WAS turnout. Black voter turnout. It set records. For the first time in American history, black voter turnout equaled the percentage of white voter turnout in 2008. And then in 2012, it exceeded white voter turnout. Another first. In 2010 and 2012, with no Obama on the ballot, Democrats were crushed. No black voter turnout (where black voters are 90%+ Democrat).
Axelrod didn't need to depress anything. Although I still don't understand how Mitt Romney -- the best president we never had -- didn't get more votes.
2016 -- no Obama on the ballot -- no black voter turnout. It was THE DIFFERENCE in Michigan. By probably 100,000 votes.
She shoulda put Cory Booker on the ticket.
The turnout was a thing that happened; but the strategy was mainly aggressive negative, bare knuckled campaigning, as it has been for a long, long time.
Trump won, Chuck. Deal with it.
Chuck:"Drudge links to the New Yorker, or Slate, or Salon, or New York magazine, whenever they write something outrageously stupid."
Actually, Chuck, he links to the New Yorker, Slate, Salon and New York magazine every single day of the year regardless of content.
I think she should indeed have put someone like Cory Booker on the ticket, out of pure strategic considerations. It seemed like a natural choice six months ago, and I brought that up myself. If not Booker, some other black man. There are several plausible ones around.
I was surprised she went with Keene.
"I was surprised she went with Keene."
-- Should've been the first clue the blue wall was in danger that she felt she needed to shore up VA.
this is great fun. the press attacking their customers who have the gall to not believe them so "they are the low information people" Well, the party is over, unless they get some legislative help or start delivering at least a few more facts that a party's broadsheet. The public has tuned out to those that say I'd rather believe my lying eyes than what your fact checker tells me what must be true, vice what I can see for myself. "do you expect me to believe your lies over so-and-so-s? Only time will tell and you've not been doing so well. See you on the dung heap of history suckers Probably have lost in competition to rt.com an al-Jazeera, Limbaugh and briebart, again, this is judgment that can only be made a year after the claim which leaves the god-heads drowning because they as establishment can find no handhold on the electorate. Good fun. Time marches on, and the people have a long mmory, which is why they voted for an Andrew Jackson to burn it all down and the lower information voter said "I don't, can't believe any of you, so I choose not to care, and will only react and absorb in the Scott Adam sense, those that have the ring of truth and hit me in my (irrational) gut. Good Fun. Since it really doesn't mattera if leadership can read the wind and run in front of it. Policy, who needs, it? Since it blocks the tiller. The yellow press just uses it as their lever to claim their god head when their microscope says you said X and did Y, which turns out to be what the people wanted to begin with. Someone who believes in them and knows they work for the people vice the other way around. Good fun.
Well, if all I knew of Rush is what the NYT, WaPo, and Alphabets said about him, everything except his name would be a lie.
"People who try to discuss these issues in terms of facts and logic are denounced as racists." Donald Trump is the first politician in the last several decades to speak of massive immigration from the third world in terms of its impact on the people already in the country. He had the temerity to raise ugly facts. They tried all of their tools - tools that caused so many before him to fold - to get him to shut up. Their tools do not work on him. He is tough as shit.
As an aside, I, for one, am looking forward to the day that the NY and Washington press no longer monetize their cartelized access to the POTUS.
"Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric" was my first Audible purchase. Rush is from Cape Girardeau Missouri. Mark Twain was from Hannibal Missouri. Both are river towns. Relevant? I wonder.
For the record: it is not a fact that CO2 molecules prevent or slow the escape of infrared radiation into space. That simply does not happen. And every real scientist knows that hypothesis is disproved by now. It is a HOAX. All a hoax, and not even partly true.
It's simple quantum electrodynamics. Proven by experiment well before it was understood. In a glass tube, with no air currents, convection, or any other perturbation. Which, of course, is no reasonable model for the atmosphere.
If you would like me to explain it to you in simple terms, I will. Then you can tell me in simple terms what is wrong with my explanation. But please remember that Quantum Mechanics is probably the most successful theory in the history of science in terms of predictive power. Every time we manage to move the measurements another decimal place, and we are to a lot of decimal places, it still holds up.
Ann, you're a celebrity. Just was listening to Rush in my car, and you got, two to three minutes of airtime on this. Congrats! I've read you for years (a decade maybe?), and although we disagree about, say, 30% of time, I have always appreciated that you are as sharp as a razor, and I love reading your commentary. Thank you so much.
Heard it too - Ann is (now?) famous. Rush gave her a shout out for this bog post. And someone there seems to have read the comments too. Congrats to her, and all around.
For the record: it is not a fact that CO2 molecules prevent or slow the escape of infrared radiation into space. That simply does not happen. And every real scientist knows that hypothesis is disproved by now. It is a HOAX. All a hoax, and not even partly true.
As noted, the problem isn't with the physics of the primary effects, but rather that the primary effects of CO2 retaining solar energy is insufficient to generate sufficient global warming. So, the models try to model the secondary effects, esp on how an increase in CO2 I the atmosphere causes more heating through water vapor, which is far more prevalent and important as a greenhouse gas. And that is where the models go into the weeds, and why they do such a miserable job at predicting the future. The worldwide climate is just too complex and interrelated to model (yet?). Instead of the heightened positive feedback predicted by these models, empirical results suggest that much of the feedback is negative - for example, increased CO2 and heat results in increased plant growth, that changes the planet's albedo, as well as its cloud cover. Which also effects the albedo. Etc.
The other thing that is routinely ignored is that maybe global warming is good. Turns out that the history of human existence is essentially constrained by ice ages, and we were only able to develop farming, and, with that, modern civilization with the ending of the last major ice age. And, there are indications that another one may be on the horizon. Even without another ice age, the reality seems to be that AGW could possibly be good for the economy, or, at a minimum, likely far less of a negative economic impact that he projected costs of fighting it.
So, yes, it is all statist BS, being used to justify more government control over resources and people, and justifying environmental grifters like AlGore and Tom Steyer getting filthy rich at our expense.
The shout out to Ann nice recognition.
There have been more than a few afternoons listening to Rush when I've though "ah, Rush has been reading the same blogs I have" - mostly this one.
It was at about 30:50 into Rush's first hour. Well done.
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