Posts by HORansome
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He does dance about architecture. He also chants "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" whilst he does it, which is fooling nobody.
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See, I wasn't going to suggest that Wishart was alluding to a Zionist banking conspiracy theory because, well, I had enough trouble with the Truthers late last year and don't really want a round, at the moment, with Wishart and Howling at the Moon.
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Remember daddy knows best
I now have a vision of Wishart producing an audiobook version of one of his many tomes, specially read out for children.
(Actually, I met someone the other day who works for the Foundation for the Blind and performs the audio recordings of 'Investigate.' I really want to know what kind of voice he uses, say, to record Wishart's editorials.)
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If I had a joke about 'long cons' and 'pizza,' I would be making it now. Someone make it for me, please.
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Actually, if we're going to allow Wishart his fantasy that financiers run the world, if Mickey Mouse(/Disney) backed legalisation, I think it would happen.
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Ben: As I once said to a Truther, I'd love it if some of the secret masters starting paying me for all of this. I could really do with an iPhone.
Or even just takeways once a week.
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Oh, the article is ripe with emotive flourishes to push the 'drugs are bad, m'kay' message, but the best bit is Wishart trying to assert both that the Dutch Ambassador is a cannabis user and that it doesn't lead to reduced aggression ("The same line was run 10 years ago by an angry Joris Vos, Dutch ambassador to the US..." p. 32).
Throughout the piece he assumes that positive correlation means causation because he wants cannabis to be linked to aggressive behaviour. Given that he really only cites reports that show that drug use and crime (in general, mind, not necessarily crimes of aggreesion) are correlated to some third factor (which, as predicted, is socio-economic) he has to pull out the big guns, to whit, anecdotal evidence. For example, because the police associate crime with drugs, then it must be the case that drugs cause crime. Even though this goes against the studies, because the police say it, it must be true.
(There's also some wonderful contradictions in the piece; Wishart praises the Reagan-era 'Just say no' campaign, but similar recent (read: Labour-initiated) attempts in Aotearoa/Te Wai Pounamu are taken to be ineffectual due to their liberal nature.)
He loves to cite newspaper summaries of reports, quite often from newspapers which have a history of perverting the reports to get a good story. For example, the doyen of the crazy-right, Melanie Phillips (she who 'broke' the Birther conspiracy theory in the UK) makes an appearance as if she is some kind of relevant authority.
The best bit of the article, though, is the almost completely non-sequiter of 'So how, then, does this tie in with billionaire George Soros?' Now, at the time this wasn't a question on my lip but, thanks to Wishart's exemplary prose style and knack for a plot twist, I found myself needing to know.
And what an answer it turned out to be. Soro's stated aim of minimising harm when it comes to drug use is really a cover for his want to control the drug supply itself. Nowhere is there evidence for this claim; Wishart just asserts that a financier like Soros wants to control the drug supply.
That, my friends, is the tip of the 'Secret Bankers ruling the world' conspiracy theory. It's a classic for a reason, although the reason has been lost to history.
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Damn you, Russell; I need to be working on this paper about the relationship between Rumours and conspiracy theories, not reading Wishart...
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Well, Russell, this government is hard on crime, remember...
It's also 'Soft on Details' and only moderately 'Firm on Principles.'
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Now, I don't want to get all philosophic on your collective arses, but the whole cause and correlation thing is fairly tricky. Correlation can weakly suggest a causal influence, but unless you have an account of the mechanism that is all you really have; weak suggestion.
Correlation can be perfect (we have correlation if and only if an event of the first type occurs when and only when an event of the second type occurs) or it can be high (we have correlation if and only if, for the most part, an event of the first type occurs when and only when an event of the second type occurs), and it's the former most people want to talk about when they say correlation suggests causation. Working out the direction of causation is, of course, somewhat difficult. For example:
1. Events of the first type cause events of the second type.
E.g. Pressing the light switch happens just before the light comes on.
2. Events of the second type cause events of the first.
E.g. When the street lights come on, the sun goes down.
3. Sometimes events of the first type cause events of the second type and sometimes it is the other way round.
E.g. When my partner gets angry, I get angry.
4. Events of both types are among the causal results of some third type of event.
E.g. People in Wellington start getting out of bed at the same time that people in Auckland start getting out of bed.
5. Coincidence
E.g. You get superstitious causal claims, especially when the probability of an interesting event is low or the event happens infrequently.
Then , if you can work out that you have a cause and effect pattern, and the order of causation, you need to work out what version of 'the cause' you are working with. Is it:
1. The special condition which, given the laws of nature and standard background circumstances, brings about a type of event.
2. The condition whose presence enables a suitably placed, suitably resourced person to bring about an event of a particular type.
3. The condition which a normal observer could remove from a situation in order to prevent an event of a certain type.
4. The condition in virtue of which we hold somebody responsible for the occurrence of an event.
Long story short: media reportage of 'causes' should be taken with a grain of salt unless the writer explains what kind of causal relationship they think holds and can also provide a good argument for that being the state of affairs.