Notices by HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social), page 4

@juergen_hubert @malwaretech @freemo @GossiTheDog

“Only that the overwhelming data seemed obvious and hard to deny.”

Hand waving.

@GossiTheDog @juergen_hubert @freemo @malwaretech

> “Again no.. The burden of proof is on the author to ensure they have accounted for these possible confounding variables, pointing out they did not account for them does not mean I have to prove they would change the results, only showing that the original chart is bad-science and doesnt do any sense of normalization for confounding (a requirement to pass peer-review in data science).”

I’m not asking about the chart, I’m asking about your claim that lower US life expectancy despite higher healthcare spending is likely the product of allegedly different lifestyle choices. That was your claim, above.

> “No it isnt, but it also isnt a claim to science. It is showing that something which is self-evident wasnt accounted for by the person doing science, they not only assumed it wasnt true by not normalizing for it, it shows they didnt account for things which are highly reasonable to speculate could be an factor.”

While Max Roser doesn’t explicitly explain his methodology behind the chart—I don’t know that he didn’t normalize the data—he shares your neoliberal faith in blaming systemic effects on individual lifestyle choices.

> “You are right, making those assumptions isnt science, which is exactly why the chart is bad science, it makes an assumption on that, and the onus is on the author not me.”

I asked you to explain your assertion and it seems that it’s based on unfounded assumptions.

> “And I answered you, my claim is not meant to say “this is true” it is meant to show a reasonable explanation for the data that was not accounted for and thus showing bad science. My claim being true or not is not what makes it bad science, the fact my claim wasnt accounted for does.”

Again, you made a positive and probabilistic assertion about a causal relationship between the chart’s results and lifestyle that you have consistently resisted trying to demonstrate.

> “While yes, my explanation does seem to be a reasonable intepritation of the data ive seen throughout my life it is not an assertion of scientific fact, it is an assertion as to why this chart is not scientific fact, and int hat regard it is accurate.”

That’s not at all what you said.

> “the fact that your sitting here arguing with a published professional research scientist about what is good science and not and you are defneding obvbious bad science tooth and nail says a lot about who is making assumptions here.”

Research science is not assuming data and then assigning those assumptions a causal role.

@freemo @GossiTheDog @juergen_hubert @malwaretech

> “You need a citation to tell you that Chile is a different culture than the USA? What?”

You would need a citation to demonstrate that the Chilean public has a substantively different lifestyle from the American public that could causally generate such a lower life expectancy in the US, rather than just making it up.

> “I mean some things seem obvious to me. So are you arguing I’m wrong and Chile people have lifestyles that are as healthy as people in the USA? I mean I think thats obvious but atleast this seems like a reasonable thing to want to object to. I would have no problem exploring the data here.”

Assuming something as self-evidently true without evidence isn’t how science is done, buddy.

> “Doesnt work that way buddy. When a chart explicitly abandons known best practices, and therefore would fail a peer-review, it is not on the peer reviewers to prove why a possible/likely scenario is true or not. The fact that a reasonable scenario is not normalized is itself a failure of the original assertation. It is the job of a person posting data to show they reasonably accounted for counter-explanations. It is not on me to prove something they didnt account for is true or not.”

I didn’t ask you about the chart, I asked you to defend your own claim, which you evidently can’t or won’t do, because the neoliberal explanation just *fees* right to you.

@GossiTheDog @malwaretech @freemo @juergen_hubert

> “Not sure why OECD would be particularly specied here, they all have wildly different cultures and lifestyles.”

Citation?

“There is nothing about OECD that would suggest they have similar lifestyle characteristics as the USA. So any expectation that they would be similar seems like an absurd comparison. Chile for example doesnt have the unhealthy lifestyle of Americans.”

It’s fun to make things up.

“Thats how science works, the burden of proof is not on me, it’s on the author of the chart. Posting bad science that fails to prove X does not put the buden on me to prove “not X”, all I have to do is show why it was bad science (lack of normalization), the onus is on the author .”

You made a positive claim about the likely cause of the chart’s results that you have only asserted, not demonstrated. The onus would seem to be on you to prove your claim.

@malwaretech @GossiTheDog @freemo @juergen_hubert

> “People will generally pay anything to live a little longer.”

If that were true, you’d expect to see the rest of the OECD countries spending closer to US levels and getting even higher life expectancy gains than they already have, unless you assume they’ve maxed out what money can buy.

> “Combine that with the fact that when you have an unhealthy lifestyle money might buy you a bit of time, but its diminishing returns and all the money in the world wont buy the sort of full life a healthy lifestyle will.”

You haven’t done anything but assume there are lifestyle differences between the US and the rest of the OECD that causally produce lower life expectancy.

> “So with the diminishing returns on spending on health combined with the unhealthy lifestyle this is exactly the way I'd expect a chart to display when it is done using bad scientific practices like not normalizing the data for lifestyle and cultural choices.”

Earlier, you told me you hadn’t made any assumptions, but you’re assuming both different lifestyles and a causal relationship that you haven’t demonstrated either.

This chart is also what we’d expect to see if the US healthcare industry existed to extract revenue from Americans rather than to provide health outcomes.

@GossiTheDog @freemo @juergen_hubert @malwaretech

Why is it likely?

@malwaretech @GossiTheDog @freemo

Sure, if you just assume lifestyle differences (that wouldn’t themselves be the product of the same structural forces) that are significant enough to have a causal effect, it’s easy to blame those lifestyle differences rather than confronting those structural forces!

@malwaretech @freemo @GossiTheDog

“It’s because they make bad personal choices”

Qoto.org never misses this bullshit neoliberalism

It seems like a lot of liberal fears about a second Trump presidency revolve around the expectation that he will do to the white majority what US presidents have been doing to brown people for centuries.

“The low expected turnout in the upcoming elections reflects a popular rejection of the…political system, which is suffering from a legitimacy crisis and the absence of real opposition forces to vie with the parties in power…”

We have no problem identifying low voter turnout as a consequence of political illegitimacy. People decline to vote because they recognize that voting will not produce meaningful change, because it’s not worth it and because they don’t want to participate in a corrupt system…

…as long as we’re talking about countries other than the US. When US voters withhold their participation, they’re almost certainly going to hear about how they personally want fascism to win. Haven’t you heard that this is The Most Important Election in Our Lifetime? All systemic analysis goes out the window and all we can talk about is personal failure.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/iraqi-political-systems-legitimacy-problem-low-expected-turnout-provincial

@srijit

Sure!

Since we had neoliberalism slapped down on us, starting in the 1970s, we’ve seen a declining rate of technological advancement, and especially in those areas that might have promised liberation from drudgery. David Graeber famously asked “what happened to the flying cars we were promised?” A lot of effort has been poured into technologies of monitoring, control, and financialization, but very little into the gee-wiz stuff we were promised for decades as our due.

We got very good at special effects; we can very readily conjure the *illusion* of a more advanced future. We just don’t actually deliver on it.

@mcv @504DR @AlexanderKingsbury @dung_eater @breadandcircuses @hugh @peteriskrisjanis

The more intensely capitalist we become, the less revolutionary our scientists are able to be:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x

@RD4Anarchy @ThatWeltschmerz @gnutelephony @violetmadder @FrenchPanda @neonsnake @glitzersachen @AdrianRiskin @magitweeter @ciggysmokebringer @johnbrowntypebeats @passenger @whatzaname

I had a big fight with this guy on twitter because I told him his video on Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything misportrayed their argument as being purely idealist. He ended up yelling at me about how little I understood and how much he understood and how society is purely downstream of materialist systems (in a real Just So sort of way). Very unpleasant!

@passenger @whatzaname @FrenchPanda @magitweeter @RD4Anarchy @ThatWeltschmerz @gnutelephony @neonsnake @violetmadder @johnbrowntypebeats @AdrianRiskin @ciggysmokebringer @glitzersachen

It was really disappointing, and I think he felt like he had backed himself into a corner that he had to defend or lose face. He insisted that every single example of either social flexibility (ie seasonal variation of social forms) or counterintuitive social forms (ie hierarchical state-like foragers or egalitarian farmers) was actually the exclusive, mechanical product of specific material conditions.

@glitzersachen @neonsnake @ThatWeltschmerz @passenger @violetmadder @whatzaname @AdrianRiskin @RD4Anarchy @FrenchPanda @magitweeter @gnutelephony @ciggysmokebringer @johnbrowntypebeats

Were you raised by boomers too or what

Made a trip back to the US for the first time in a couple of years. A few things that stand out:

- there are so many fucking ads everywhere

- infrastructure is crumbling everywhere I look

- cops cops cops cops cops. I saw more cops within a few hours of getting back to the states than I’ve seen in a few years of living abroad. Americans generally have no idea how hyper-policed they are.

@MediaActivist

There are still people who claim that things are obviously going catastrophically wrong but all we need to fix things is one more policy nudge, one more think tank study, one more electoral victory, and we’ll finally get back on the right track.

@whatzaname @neonsnake @Radical_EgoCom @AlexanderKingsbury @RD4Anarchy @ciggysmokebringer @gerrymcgovern @gnutelephony

Capitalism can never fail; it can only *be failed.* We apply the simple rules of capitalism and discover all sorts of bad effects. We don’t conclude there’s something wrong with those rules or our assumptions about them. No, we must infer some *extraneous* problem intruding on capitalism’s perfection.

The reality remains that private property is incompatible with economic freedom, and that capitalism tolerates some limited and deeply constrained economic exchange as long as it does not threaten the privilege and power of private property owners.

@neonsnake @gerrymcgovern @RD4Anarchy @gnutelephony @AlexanderKingsbury @whatzaname

> “Capitalists love competition and the risk of failure; those breed excellence.”

Capitalists hate competition and the risk of failure because these are costly and injurious. This is why capitalists go to such incredible lengths to block competition. They form cartels; they communicate surreptitiously with each other to set prices; they lobby the state to subsidize them and create barriers to market entry; etc etc etc.

> “Capitalism doesn't preclude voluntary exchange; indeed, that's the ONLY form of exchange allowed under capitalism.”

Ideologically, sure. Practically, no.

> “You can ONLY have free markets with private property.”

Again, no. You have it precisely backwards: all extant private property originated in violent (state) expropriation and, once in place, precludes voluntary agreement by non-owners who must gain permission from property owners to be alive, as you agreed with our island thought experiment.

This Christmas, let’s all dedicate ourselves to Jesus’ example of:

- beating up finance bros

- shaming bigots and moralizing scolds

- having at least twelve friends as an adult

- feeding hungry people

- demanding the abolition of debts and redistribution of wealth to the poor