One of the main problems of guys like Moyers is that they truly do not allow for differences in ideology, in their worldview. They are correct... leftist ideology is correct... and anyone who believes differently is just not a legitimate or remotely intelligent individual. That's why they've overrun college campuses... nobody with a brain would be conservative, no? It would be unthinkable to be anything else.

It's why they're so insufferably condescending, and can't wrap their brains around the notion of the Red State majority, except that they are some form of alien, or are in some other way illegitimate (too religious, moral, scared, etc.) and not to be considered among polite academia. It's why there's very little chance that conservatives will make any real inroads into tenured professorships, because conservatives are obviously not intelligent and couldn't possibly merit a faculty position at a respectable university.

They bought into a belief system that can’t be challenged by any evidence to the contrary.

Um, Bill? This is true of all belief systems because all arguments are presuppositional. There is no way to form an argument without settling on unquestioned premises.

Bush had America scared to death.

WTF? Hey, buddy, Bush had you scared to death. Islamic terrorists had me scared to death. Bush isn't going to detonate himself in my church parking lot. Worst he'll do is lower my taxes...oh, wait.

I have many ideologies. I'm Catholic, I support free markets, and believe that our uniquely American form of Democracy is a better than any other form of government ever conceived.

But now Billy Bob Moyers has given me a new ideology. I can't be convinced that Moyers isn't a brain-dead jackass.

But the first three things I posited in the first paragraph aren't ideologies; they're beliefs that I've arrived at through thoughtful analysis. And it took a journey of questioning, learning and living to develop these beliefs that I hold. And faith played a role in this, too (I'm not a cradle Catholic).

But my belief that Moyers is a brain-dead asshole didn't require that kind of discovery. I simply arrived at by contemplating the pig's face, felt ill, then bought the entire Bill-Moyers-Is-An-Asshole ideology through a leap of faith.

Thanks, Bill. This is the first time in my life I ever blindly accepted something as the truth without any ruminating. [That's a lie. Kos is an asshole, too.]

KCTrio

I'm just thankful that since Moyers quit his PBS gig, I'm no longer paying him to tell me how evil I am.

Bill: The grass over by the stream is mighty tasty. Why don't you just mosey on down that away and settle in for some nice cud-chewin'?

I knew a woman who was one of Moyers behind the scenes producers. He puts on a great (relatively) public face - privately the guy is redder than Chairman Mao.

If that was known by the public he'd have gone nowhere.

Ace,

Methinks you gots a 'bold' tag that ain't closed somewhere. Either that, or the Chai tea is f'ing up my eyesight.

Well, John, everything looked okay to me. But I threw in a few extra bold-closing-tags just to be sure there isn't something going on with a particular browser.

There is no way to form an argument without settling on unquestioned premises.

True. The "reality-based community" apparently isn't reality-based -- or logic-based -- enough to realize that all deduction and argument flows from first premises or assumptions which cannot, in fact, be proven, are are taken as true "in the gut" or on faith.

I think someone proved that all of mathematics -- the most rigorous logical system we know -- rests fundamentally on axioms that simply cannot be proved, even in theory.

And others have pointed out that the word "word" has never been adequately defined in any dictionary... because you can't define it without using the idea of "word" in the definition. You just have to know what a "word" is -- in your gut, or intuitively -- to make sense out of the rest of the dictionary.

Ace:

Mathematical axioms can't be proven? The whole point of mathematics and science is to develop proofs that draw out the axioms. These are developed over decades and centuries.

They eventually become fundamental truths. Now, you are right in the singular sense that in some areas (especially philosophy, history, sociology, etc.) that fundamental truths are always evolving. And you can further demonstrate that even fundamental laws of physics and math are overturned or replaced later.

But your description of axioms in mathematics and definitions of the the word "word" doesn't apply. It's a self-sealing argument, and therefore suffers in its validity.

You could apply your argument to prove that there are no realities at all. Many slick logicians have done just that over the centuries, but it really doesn't prove much.

If you took a classes in abstract algebra or calculus, you'd sit through lectures wherein these axioms are developed using scientific rigor. I bet that sounds like a real blast for some people.

I would aver that your statement would apply to many things, especially ideologies, matters of faith, politics, and many other realms. It just doesn't apply to mathematics.

Best regards, man of integrity,

KCTrio

Mathematical axioms can't be proven? The whole point of mathematics and science is to develop proofs that draw out the axioms. These are developed over decades and centuries.

That may be the case, but I'm pretty sure that eventually a math-head will come in here to save my ass and explain to me what the hell I'm talking about.

There are apparently some key assumptions that mathematics rely upon that can't be proven.

Fixed now - I'm running Firefox BTW. Maybe the tea just wore off.

Worldviews can be proven or disproven in the same way that scientific models can be.

The Marxist worldview, for example, is based on expectations of human behavior, and paradigms for understanding the dynamics of history and economics. For the true believer, it is a powerfully addictive, self-flattering belief system.

Unfortunately for Moyers and the Democratic Party, they embraced the Marxist worldview at just the moment in history when it was revealed as delusional rubbish. No large-scale prediction based on the Marxist model turned out to be true; and not a single economy based on Marxist principles actually worked at all, in whole or in part.

Based on that worldview, Moyers and his ilk fulminated that Ronald Reagan would destroy the US economy and provoke World War Three. The opposite happened. Leftists are always predicting things wrong because their assumptions are always dependably wrong.

Condescending fools like Moyers cling to those delusions because their egos cannot face the fact that they have misspent their lives as accomplices to slaughter and misery while their enemies have spread liberty and prosperity around the globe.

No wonder the man is a bitter, irrelevant crackpot.

...I'm pretty sure that eventually a math-head will come in here to save my ass and explain to me what the hell I'm talking about.

Did somebody call for...John Derbyshire?

On the money, everybody. As an aside, I'd like to mention that the very logic that people like Moyers disdain is the very logic they use to dispute gun rights and other such conservative issues.

For instance, Moyers, Moore, and other Marxist morons (ooh, alliteration) say that we shouldn't be afraid of terrorist attacks because of the extremely small statistical chance that you'll be a victim of terror.

Wow, communists thinking of "the masses" as merely numbers, who would have ever guessed?

However, when preaching gun control, they don't want to hear that car accidents or heart attacks take lives in numbers far greater than all firearm incidents.

Same thing with second hand tobacco smoke and a myriad of other statistically insignificant things they like to use in their foisting of a nanny state upon us.

Godel's incompleteness theorem or related things I suspect.

God it hurts my brain to remember this sort of stuff from grad school 20+ years ago. I worked so hard at forgetting it all....

LLL/Marxists types are FOR anything that increases control over the masses. Also, there are some math concepts are accepted as a priori true, but unfortunately, I can't remember what they are called.. They were usually step one in an algebraic proof.

Mr. Moyers doesn't understand the history of his own profession, it seems. Throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s that's all there was in the U.S.-- partisan press. Here in Chicago, for example, in the 1890s, there were, by most estimates, over 80 daily and bi-weekly newspapers in nearly a dozen languages with political views ranging from anarchism to early communist leanings. You read what you wanted. The papers were not shy in their pronuncements. The consolidation of news venues by Luce, Hearst and a few other powers brought about a more homogenized brand of paper, still with some leanings, but the appetite for a spectrum of opinion began to dry up after WWI. But even so, as late as the mid-forties, many papers retained an unapologetic bias in their reporting.

The Internet and blogs have returned us to the profusion of opinions and ideas.

Ace, of course you are right that certain axioms will be overthrown. The history of mathematics is littered with great minds building on the past of others, but then there are gaps in their analysis, which yield, sometimes, entirely new fields of research. But that wasn't my point.

I described your argument as self-sealing and therefore invalid in-and-of-itself. I'll provide an example that Greek skeptics used to prove you could never move from point A to point B using this type of reasoning.

1) You can never measure with perfect precision the distance between two points.
2) You can divide that distance into ever-decreasing sub-segments.
3) So, what if you could divide the distance between each sub-segment into spaces still visible to the naked eye? You could still divide the distance between any of those two sub-segments into even smaller ones.
4) Therefore, there are an infinite number of sub-segments that can be drawn.
5) Therefore, to traverse from A to B, you'd have to traverse along the way through these infinite sub-segments between A and B.
6) It's impossible to travel across an infinite number of sub-segments, therefore...
7) It's impossible to travel from A to B.

QED

Get it? As I said, you could apply your reasoning that there are no realities of any kind in this world, simply by positing that the POSSIBILITY of some overturning of that axiom in the future, however distant, is inevitable, so therefore your current axiom cannot be the truth, and therefore, there are no axioms.

This is loose shit in the guise of steel logic. It gets to the brightest of minds, but serious scientists and mathematicians don't buy it. They operate under the assumption that their current axioms are the laws of the land until they are overturned.

KCTrio

Ace:

Actually, I gave some loose shit by not adding a bit more depth. Self-sealing arguments are invalid because the all have one trait in common, and it is this:

Built into the argument is a defense mechanism that nullifies all counter-argument. This is what makes ideologies so lethal.

Pretend you are Michael Moore, and you posit the following statement: "All corporations are greedy, evil." Someone says to Moore, "Well, I exercise choice at the store, and can purchase whatever the hell I want, from whomever I want, fat-fuck, so I don't see your logic." Moore responds, "Well, your mind is simply under the control of your corporate slave-masters, and you simply aren't aware that you're being controlled, but the control is still taking place."

You see this type of reasoning in all of the failed ideologies in history, especially the dangerous ones (Jonestown, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.). It's the hook that keeps argument out and minds controlled. Some even say that Scientology suffers from this, but I won't go there at the risk of offending people.

Sorry about my own loose shit.

KCTrio

Rabidfox:

Brilliant. I'd go a step further to round out your description.

1) Papers in this country actually were named after their party of support, with names like the "Whig" or the "Globe Democrat." They made no bones about their editor's support for one party or the other, and the news and editorial pages all had that particular slant.

The travesty in all of this is that the UPI, AP, BBC and others invented this idea that we'll have walls-of-separation between news and editorial sides of the paper. The front page will be reserved for unbiased reporting, the op-ed page will show the paper's center of gravity, politically speaking.

This worked quite well, as long as you had real diversity in the news operations. Even as recently as the '50s, all reporters could be considered to be of diversity of opinion. You'd never read anti-American write-ups in American news, because everyone was an American first and a political being second. You could, of course, get politically slanted bias from cover to cover, but you'd have to pay for it; you'd not find it in the popular, major newspapers in a given town.

Then, the walls came crashing down in the '60s (though the seeds for were sown for decades earlier) when these newsrooms suffered groupthink. That's the flaw with the idea that one can be an unbiased reporter. Groupthink led to the ghettoization of the conservative reporter; you don't think like us, you don't get a job. If you are a conservative reporter (or educator), why in the fuck would you want to be surrounded by robots from the other side?

The boys over at Powerline made this point to lethal effect, when they said that they, as lawyers, have to remove as much bias as they can out of their work when convincing a judge the merits of their argument. Judges and successful lawyers have a much higher road to climb in proving their case on the merits of their logic. Reporters don't. All you need is a degree (BA) in some journalism-related field, serve in some low-wage job at a small, community rag for a few years, then if you are good, you can climb the ladder where the real power centers are--a cushy job writing front-page articles for leading news organizations. The power trip must be really stunning, almost narcotic.

Think of the power these cocksuckers wield. They can change people's minds by spinning a story and reach mass audiences. And the standard of proof is gone, because everyone in the newsroom to the editor's room is like-minded.

That's the joke.

So the Blogosphere has put the opinion back into the media, as has talk radio and other new media, and we're all the better because of it.

KCTrio

" First, Bush had America scared to death. "

I love this America-in-fear bullshit the left trots out. An analogy: a bully has been messing with you really bad, what action do you take? If you submit or run away, you're afraid. If you sock him in the mouth, you're not. Bush promised a fight with the jihadis. So how the fuck does a scared America end up choosing to fight? A scared America would have chosen Frenchy Kerry and his magic bag of diplomacy.

What a crock of shit coming from the left. Oops, sorry... what another, in a multitude, of pieces of shit coming from the left that make up their wonderful crock of bullshit stew.

Squatch: There's also the irony in someone claiming Bush ran his campaign on fear when their side was making various claims like There's Going to Be a Draft and Your Kids Will Die in Bush's War, and such.

...and this was a continuing theme in the Democrat platform, along with The World Hates Us, etc.

This is absolutely delicious! Obviously, Mr. Moyers is incapable (as he accuses the right of being) of forming a cogent and coherent thought about any aspect of the universe.

The mathematicians are fast at work, displaying skills learned and forgot long ago, but still close enough to make some sense.

And the left's fear of knuckle-dragging, slobbering forest monsters incapable of anything but blind allegiance to any leader willing to fight for what's right is astounding.

Unfortunately for the leftists, Maoist, etc., a surprising number of us are capable of more than simple thought, and fortunately, more than a few of us recognize that, in a world where really bad people do exist, really bad people must be confronted and defeated.

As Ace noted in a later piece, Euroweenies don't have either the will or the means to stand up and be counted because they're worthless discards from the barnyard of history. They may at some time realize how evil men can be, and become able to protect themselves again. But I fear that by then, the rest of us will be exploring other galaxies.

"No large-scale prediction based on the Marxist model turned out to be true; and not a single economy based on Marxist principles actually worked at all, in whole or in part."

Their standard work-around for this distressing reality is to say, "Communism never failed, because it has never actually existed."

When my (former) lefty friend pulled that one on me, it was the first time I had heard it and I did a spit-take.

You see, the Soviets, Mao (add Fidel to this list in the future)- none of those guys were practicing REAL communism.
Can you do anything but laugh when someone tells you that?

Marx never elaborated on how his paradise would actually work on a day-to-day level. He just gave us the aerial view of a happy successful termite mound.

What happens when some termites want to leave? What happens when some termites choose not to work but still want bread? What happens when some termites decide they can do better for themselves when they keep the proceeds from their own labor?

Tyranny is the first answer to those questions, and utter bankruptcy and failure of the system is the second.
Why is that so hard for them to observe and understand?

I guess the obvious response would be, "Well, you can't criticize free market capitilism then, because we're not doing REAL free-market capitalism. It's never existed."

Childish.

There's a reason "real" communism never existed, and it's similar to the reason "real" unicorns and pegasi never existed.

Want to see a marxist lose his damn mind? Characterize communism as what it actually is, universal slavery.
That is why Castro punishes those who try to flee Cuba; leaving a communist country is 'theft' of labor.

If your labor does not belong to you, you are a slave. Period.
Get a load of these people, trying to cover the Earth with one vast plantation.

I could not even wade through Moyers' shreiking toxic chemical waste. It's only Monday and already I need break from Liberals' Ugly Horseshit.

Mathematical axioms can't be proven? The whole point of mathematics and science is to develop proofs that draw out the axioms.

I'm not sure what "draw out" is supposed to mean here. Mathematics (or any branch thereof) rests on axioms; if one can prove one of them (using the others), it stops being an axiom and becomes a theorem.

(The most famous example -- or, rather, non-example -- of this was in geometry, with Euclid's Fifth Postulate concerning parallel lines. For centuries, mathematicians tried to prove it using the other axioms; finally, Lobachevsky et al. proved that this was impossible, by constructing alternate geometries in which the other axioms held but that one didn't.

What Gödel proved, much later, was that no matter what finite set of axioms one takes, there will always exist true statements that cannot be proved using those axioms.)

/OT

Stumbo:

Which Gödel theory are you talking about?

Gödel came up with the completeness theorem, the incompleteness theorem and his constructible sets (as well as many other ideas, including relativity); this latter work he used to show that the generalized continuum hypothesis (GCH) and the axiom of choice (AC) to demonstrate that a model of all of the axioms of a given theory (set theory in this case) yield no inconsistencies, then one may safely assume that the axioms are true.

He went even further. He proved that set theory together with the generalized continuum hypothesis can prove the axiom of choice. He went as far as declaring that it will never lead to a contradiction.

In 1963, Paul Cohen did just the opposite as Gödel and developed a model that NEGATED both the generalized continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice, but still supported the axioms of set theory.

All of this shit is METAMATHEMATICS. Many respected mathematicians regard this shit as MEANINGLESS navel gazing.

Theorems or axioms or whatever you like, you can do this circuitous shit all day, but the question still recurs: What good does it do to say that fundamental axioms are provable or not? Nothing in my book. But there are respected mathematicians that would disagree with me on this. I just don't count myself among them.

KCTrio

I'd also add that this regarding Euclid's parallel lines postulate:

If you choose that it's true, you have Euclidean geometry; choose that it's false, and you'll have non-Euclidean geometry.

Loose shit (not you Stumpo, just this whole metamathematics loose shit).

KCTrio

I'd also add that Gödel was quite the nut-job, especially in his later years. I know that this is even more off-topic than the other two posts, but I feel compelled to add that Gödel was a paranoid man who began devoloping the fear that he was being poisoned. He died in Princeton Hospital in 1978 of malnutrition, because he refused to eat.

Sad story of a twisted mind. A mam whom befriended Einstein but was constantly in fear of those around him. I am not making fun of the man, I feel quite sorry for his soul.

KCTrio

BAD PUN AHEAD WARNING!

"He died in Princeton Hospital in 1978 of malnutrition, because he refused to eat."

Hence the dietician penned "Waiting for Godel"

GROANNNNN

"Stumpo"

I like that--and you would too, if you'd ever tried to solve some of Stumbo's puzzles.

great site and great information.

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