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Implied:
He is wrong about health = money because he is a doctor.
??
If you are shooting for an ad hominem, you got it.
Were you attempting to make this logical fallacy?
Define "my approach". This is where you either don't understand my position, or are building your own strawman.
Implied:
He is wrong about health = money because he is a doctor.
??
If you are shooting for an ad hominem, you got it.
Were you attempting to make this logical fallacy?
Last edited by RandomGuy; 12-03-2012 at 10:24 AM.
Your approach is that this is not much to worry about. We will 'cope.'
Quoting obvious hyperbole is fun. East Africa has been in a consistent state of turmoil for 25 years. Sudan has been going through an acrimonious divorce in no small part due to resource availability. The Congo and Rwanda have been seeing warlords perform atrocities for what is now going on decades. Somalia has pirates. It is the crown jewel of world infectious disease. There is a regional cycle of drought which has gotten incrementally worse probably due to climate change. Despite all that, does me calling the above situation a cluster prevent the infant mortality rate in Ethiopia improving in 2010? And regionally, relative to the progress made by much else of the world, it is that much more alarming. You say Africa is just like 19th century Europe but given pirate warlords that hearkens politically to more like 17th century.... Africa.
As for your approach, I am only going by what you say. When you speak for others I am assuming you are putting for their argument as your own. I am not going to go argument by author unless the author is relevant. You have routinely said that we will 'cope.' Given the measures that India and China are going to to try and 'cope.' I am getting the 'it's nothing to worry about' approach.
In this case the author is relevant. When it comes to UN health committees and statements they make you have to think big pharma. And I am not just talking about US big pharma I am talking about the worldwide pharmaceutical industry. Thisi s not like the IPCC which is composed of individual nations contributions. These committees are not staffed that way. You end up with a lot of business interests wending their way in there. There has been quite a bit of controversy regarding this and vaccination programs. When companies are using the UN to sell their products that becomes a problem. And no I am not one of the vaccine = autism rubes.
Sure enough your source is from the Gapminder Ins ute speaking through the UN. I assume that is where you are getting this from. What makes me question your source even more is the presence of Hans Wigzell on the same board.
http://www.forbes.com/profile/hans-wigzell/
That's Hans leading the Europeam medical entrepreneurship. Illuminating a conflict of interest in a policy discussion is not ad hominem. That board is continental european big pharma. Now this is not to say that them saying 'health makes you rich' is not true but saying that who and what the guy works for is very much so germane. That it's the same ty argument the Koch Borthers of the world have put out about CO2 lags temperature should not be lost on you.
On a final note, China is at a half percent growth rate. That is a doubling time of 140 years. Prima facia that may not seem significant, it is in my view when you are seeing that India is hoping to be population stable in terms of 50 years. India is at a 1.4% growth rate and that is a doubling time of 50 years. And while you give unquantifiable notions of 'urbanization' to dismiss their social programs, they have sterilization incentive programs and harsh tax structures to curtail reproduction. How would you feel about having to do what here?
Global population is one of the most significant challenges we have to face going forward. Dismissing resource scarcity as commodity trading and China when the price of oil has DOUBLED relative to inflation in the last 15 years is not good enough. 'Coping' with it is not good enough.
No, that is not my approach or opinion.
Things won't get as bad as many think, and are better than some think now.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to make things better, and to deal with known problems. We should.
So you are going for ad hominem. Understood.
If you had actually bothered to listen to what Rosling was saying, he simply noted that increases in health for many countries simply proceeded rises in income. He did not draw a causal link, and rather specifically noted that you have to do just about everything all at once to really improve lives of people in poorer countries.
Koch brothers aren't wrong, because they are funding pseudoscience. They are wrong because the pseudoscience is wrong.
Rosling has taken a lot of data and analyzed it, with an expertise in health matters. Even Dr. Wizgell is an expert and former professor of immunology. I would point out that directorships in corporations often are granted to people for specific areas of expertise. In this case the expertise is fairly obvious, for which the high-wheeling Dr. Wizgell was awarded the princely sum of $75,000 in 2012.
If you think you can fault Dr. Rosling's science or analysis, feel free to do so. Logically, your ad hominem is now dismissed as fallacious. I will move on to making other points, and ignore anything based on this flawed logic going forward.
LOL trying to equate the Koch brothers to Hans Wizgell. That was genuinely funny.
Last edited by RandomGuy; 12-03-2012 at 10:44 AM.
"increases in health for many countries simply proceeded rises in income"
corresponds with the recent finding that USA poor people die some years earlier than rich people.
China's population is not going to double in 140 years. It is going to start shrinking, mostly likely within then next decade or so. That will make their population less of a problem from a resource standpoint. Of more concern, as Rosling noted, if you had bothered listening and understanding is that they will be moving up the income scale and able apply a fair amount of money to demanding the same resources we do.
We in the West will need to change a lot more, in terms of our inefficient use of resources/energy since we will be joined at our income bracket by all these other countries.
--------------------------------------------------------------
As for "unquantifiable notions of 'urbanization'"
When I start talking about "urbanization" trends and how this will add to trends of downward pressure on population growth rates it is rather well illustrated by this rather representative sniglet:
Cities always, always, always, have lower overall fertility rates than the countryside.
Do you know why?
Last edited by RandomGuy; 12-03-2012 at 10:46 AM.
cherry picker. Gross dismissalist. I would really think you would not stoop to such lazy tactics.
Call it ad hominem and call it day, huh? This is a political board not the Forum of Ancient Greece and the guy in question is representing the WHO and in my view should be be objective to be making statements about world health policy. Epistemology is not physics. It comes to a certain point where belief is arbitrary because we are what we are and at the end of the day, he works for a European pharmaceutical consortium. Does it mean that he inherently is wrong? No but given that you like to talk about trends let's talk about trends in people that are promoting a product:
Are they more likely to overstate the benefits of their product?
And if he doesn't out right say the causal link then all he is doing is an old sales trick. You set up the table and allow the audience to draw its conclusion because it makes them emotionally invested in the decision. It's a central theme that you have espoused to me several times so far in this discussion, health proceeds income, and if there is no causal link why the need to repeat it ad nauseum? You have even made statements as to world health improving and what that portends. You drew the line yourself and find yourself defending it. It's quite effective obviously.
That is the reason why I drew the connection between Wizgell and Koch. They use the same exact persuasive methodology. CO2 lags temperature at least had a causal link in water solubility and they were simply trying to obfuscate the feedback mechanism. This one is not nearly that well thought out. Both Koch and this pharma interest use the same salesman methodology. Any connection the two events is completely fallacious yet they repeat as do you. Why is that?
Speaking in certainties regarding population projections seems to be a favorite past time of yours. India was wrong as I oultined earlier and pushed their plans back 25 years. China for all of its forced migrations has been publicly backing off those types of social programs with recent reforms in the country. You don't know, RG, what is going to happen and what seemed to be a trend a couple of years ago has been shown not to be as rosy as once thought. They have not been able to get it under control and they said they could.
You are also using an argument that you denounced earlier. You said always bad never better was just wrong while I counter that with always down never up as being just as wrong.
On a final note, I would like to say that I am enjoying this discussion. I know that I can be adversarial and biting in the way that I argue, I do respect your opinion and your arguments have been informative and I find my knowledge base unquestionably better off than what it was before we started this. If I am irritating you then I am sorry but in arguments, I push and am more than willing to belabor a point. I am not trying to disrespect you. Hope all is well mang.
That would have a lot more weight to it, were you to actually provide some evidence of your claims of biased science.
Do you have any?
You didn't really answer my question either.
Call it ad hominem and call it day, huh? This is a political board not the Forum of Ancient Greece and the guy in question is representing the WHO and in my view should be be objective to be making statements about world health policy. Epistemology is not physics. It comes to a certain point where belief is arbitrary because we are what we are and at the end of the day, he works for a European pharmaceutical consortium. Does it mean that he inherently is wrong? No but given that you like to talk about trends let's talk about trends in people that are promoting a product:
Are they more likely to overstate the benefits of their product?
And if he doesn't out right say the causal link then all he is doing is an old sales trick. You set up the table and allow the audience to draw its conclusion because it makes them emotionally invested in the decision. It's a central theme that you have espoused to me several times so far in this discussion, health proceeds income, and if there is no causal link why the need to repeat it ad nauseum? You have even made statements as to world health improving and what that portends. You drew the line yourself and find yourself defending it. It's quite effective obviously.
That is the reason why I drew the connection between Wizgell and Koch. They use the same exact persuasive methodology. CO2 lags temperature at least had a causal link in water solubility and they were simply trying to obfuscate the feedback mechanism. This one is not nearly that well thought out. Both Koch and this pharma interest use the same salesman methodology. Any connection the two events is completely fallacious yet they repeat as do you. Why is that?
Speaking in certainties regarding population projections seems to be a favorite past time of yours. India was wrong as I oultined earlier and pushed their plans back 25 years. China for all of its forced migrations has been publicly backing off those types of social programs with recent reforms in the country. You don't know, RG, what is going to happen and what seemed to be a trend a couple of years ago has been shown not to be as rosy as once thought. They have not been able to get it under control and they said they could.
You are also using an argument that you denounced earlier. You said always bad never better was just wrong while I counter that with always down never up as being just as wrong.
On a final note, I would like to say that I am enjoying this discussion. I know that I can be adversarial and biting in the way that I argue, I do respect your opinion and your arguments have been informative and I find my knowledge base unquestionably better off than what it was before we started this. If I am irritating you then I am sorry but in arguments, I push and am more than willing to belabor a point. I am not trying to disrespect you. Hope all is well mang.
Why do cities always have lower fertility/birth rates than rural areas?
I was talking about what you are doing with the arguments. You bolded the gross dismissalist part and the cherry picking is from you ignoring plenty of my arguments and trying to grandstand on others. For example you have pretty much granted that third world population growth is still high at over 2% and with no tailing is sight or that you cannot use 19th century as an empirical example because of socioeconomic factors. It's not entirely fair because we have a lot of arguments out there but I firmly believe that third world population growth should be a high national security priority.
I am not going to outline your premise for you or answer questions that you obviously know the answer to. It's a lame tactic. You are not trying to educate yourself. You are trying to show me making your argument for you. Just as the last time you tried to get me to do it, I'm not going to. Make your own argument.
Asking for some reasonable evidence of one of your arguments isn't cherry picking. Focusing on the parts of your posts where some disagreement exists is more than valid, it is the only way to move a conversation forward.
You have, as part of your, case about how concerned we should be, asserted that Roslings methods and/or analysis are skewed because of some nebulous profit motive.
You have presented, as evidence, one mildly compensated director on the board of his charity, whose academic expertise more than adequately explains his position on that board.
Are you going to answer my question, or not?
Do you have any evidence that his analysis or data are skewed or flawed because of this ad hominem?
You are being hostile, and I am trying to get to some agreed on principles and ideas.
Either you aren't interested or don't know.
I guess we are done.
you, by the way.
I found this deeply insulting.
Look man you use lame argument tactics that I myself do not appreciate. If you want to get feelings about my aggressive approach then fine but I have a hard time sympathizing.
Look man you use lame argument tactics that I myself do not appreciate. If you want to get feelings about my aggressive approach then fine but I have a hard time sympathizing.http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...-ridicule.htmlFallacy: Appeal to Ridicule
Also Known as: Appeal to Mockery, The Horse Laugh.
Description of Appeal to Ridicule
The Appeal to Ridicule is a fallacy in which ridicule or mockery is subs uted for evidence in an "argument." This line of "reasoning" has the following form:
X, which is some form of ridicule is presented (typically directed at the claim).
Therefore claim C is false.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because mocking a claim does not show that it is false.
FWIW. LOL smiley's are pretty much the definition of lame debate tactics.
So you have so far:
Two logical fallacies, a failure to support your thesis with anything remotely approaching reasonable data, and a few factual mistakes.
You don't seem to like the way I am doing this, so suggest something better. I am doing a bit better than painfully obvious logical fallacies.
I don't think we are going to see as much famine and war as you seem to think, and I am pretty sure that I can support that with good data. For your part I have seen very little to back up whatever it is you are trying to say. Quite frankly it is a bit less than clear.
Since you aren't intellectually honest or smart enough to answer simple questions, I will do it for you.
Cities have lower fertility rates than rural areas, because the economics of having children changes when you move populations from rural to city areas. Farms and rural areas have higher fertility and babies per woman than poorer areas, for the simple reason that more children equal more hands to help out with on the family plot of land. Once you are in a city, children become a net expense.
Therefore, if you want to make some meaningful statements about future population growth, you should pay close attention to city/rural trends.
Globally, the trend is for people to move from countrysides to cities to find better paying jobs.
This effect is not nebulous, but well measured, as I pointed out with the Chinese statistics.
Cities, again globally, not just in the west, tend to offer higher wages and better standards of living. The effect of this is about a 15% rise for each doubling of the population. This effect is remarkably constant in every country that has been studied.
This means that the attraction of cities will still be there in 100 years or 200 years, and should make the trends of lower and lower fertility rates pretty sticky.
If you can point out something that contradicts this beyond a lame LOL smiley, by all means, do so.
Last edited by RandomGuy; 12-06-2012 at 02:44 PM.
What if ...monkeys fly out of my ass? Would I be wrong then?
Sure.
Thing is, we have little reason to think these trends are statisical flukes. One or two years, might make for a fluke, but if you have trends that go back for 30+ years, not so much.
Indochina penninsula:
Vietnam fertility rate, 2011: 1.89,
--down from 2.18 in 2000 88M pop
Laos fertility rate, 2011: 3.01,
--down from 4.81 in 2000 6.2M pop
Cambodia fertility rate, 2011: 2.87,
--down from 4.82 in 2000 14.7M pop
Trends in all countries here are very steadily downward with increasing urbanization.
Largest country urbanization:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/viet...l-wb-data.html
Statistics can be useful even if somewhat inaccurate, as one can still determine trends with some fair certainty.
We have no reason to think that ubanization trends will reverse globally, you have presented neither data, nor any plausible scenario that would reverse this.
You can about "cheap sales techniques", but I have yet to see you attempt to show any contravening data.
Last edited by RandomGuy; 12-06-2012 at 11:52 AM.
We can and most likely will.
People have been predicting Malthusian death spirals for hundreds of years, and quite frankly, I find it tiresome.
That doesn't mean we should not be aware of resource scarcity, or worry about population growth. We should do both.
Our ability to discover new technology and our ac ulation of knowledge has more than kept pace with population growth. Throughout the 20th century, the inflation adjusted price for just about every commodity we have data for FELL.
This means that supply was increasing faster than overall demand. For everything. QED.
The implication is that our methods of farming, mining, manufacturing, etc., got better at a faster rate than our population grew.
Now our population is not growing as fast as it used to, but there is no indication that human ingenuity, discovery, or the pace of scientific discovery is going to fall to go with it.
If you want to talk about fertilizers and how fuel will be scarce so we will have a problem feeding people...
Natgas prices are lower now than they were in 1980. Best data I can find shows that, adjusted for inflation US natgas prices are far lower.Nitrogen fertilizers are often made using the Haber-Bosch process (invented about 1915) which uses natural gas (CH4+) for the hydrogen and nitrogen gas (N2) from the air at an elevated temperature and pressure in the presence of a catalyst to form ammonia (NH3) as the end product.
More outdated, mistaken thinking.
Hydrocarbon prices WILL rise, though, as demand outstrips supply, even so over the next 20-40 years. This will affect developed countries a great deal. We will be forced to cut back and change the inefficient way we use energy.
Money and capital will flow into alternatives over time, and those alternatives will get cheaper.
Not quite a Malthusian death spiral.
The trends we know of, and have data for, all point to increasing sustainability. We will have problems with poverty for as long as I am alive. I don't doubt or dispute that. We should work and make efforts to alleviate that.
"make efforts to alleviate that."
The War on Poverty is just another war the USA has lost. The 1% piling up the wealth without limit while the 99% loses means the number of people in poverty and in SEVERE poverty will only increase. Govt is not even talking about doing anything, nevermined actually doing anything.
That may be the case. Water will certainly be an issue.
As it gets more dear though, more money will be directed at solving even that problem.
Since most human population leaves fairly close to coastlines, the obvious desalinization solution would seem to be most logical. This will drive demand for energy though, unless some better, less energy intensive means presents itself.
Big problem to be sure, but not insurmountable. Simple efficiency would go a long way to mitigating such problems, and efficiency would be yet another solution driven by rather simple economics.
desalinated sea water driven by solar/wind/wave energy would be sustainable supply of fresh water, but VERY expensive to build and maintain.
http://www.water.vic.gov.au/initiatives/desalination
Conflict on interest especially when the person in question works for an 'ins ute' endowed by european big pharma is significant in a policy debate. Or do you think that placing Citibank types on Dodd-Frank regulation committees is to be dismissed as ad hominem and immune from scrutiny?
And yes i will ridicule you when you use the same arguments and pseudoscience that the climate types use. Name dropping and implying causation by correlation, a cheap salesman tricks, only serve to reinforce this notion. The thing is that is not all that I do. Not even by a longshot.
You have pretty much ignored the cultural and colonial differences and a slew of other arguments like health = wealth = nonsequitor fallacy. Just like you completely ignore the social strata argument and ignore the doubling time. What you call 'moving the discussion forward' I call you trying to frame the argument without the parts you lack a rejoinder.
Instead, you show me a few cherry picked countries and each one is set to double inbetween 23 and 36 years. The rates of change regarding population growth are in decades because of how census are done. I realize that your youtubes from 2009 have top notch dataset but whatever projections they had back then have been wrong. China was supposed to be going backwards and India below 1%. That is from 2011 census data that they compiled earlier this year.
You've been ridiculing my arguments as outdated but come the on. Just a hint: don't come with 2009 youtubes when you want to make the 'your take is outdated' argument.
I can cherry pick stats from 2011 too, its a wikipedia special but at least it's up to date. These are countries from what i will 'call regions of concern':
Countries over 3% growth or doubling in less that 23 years:
Uganda
UAE
Gaza
Ethiopia
Countries at over 2% growth or doubling between 23 and 35 years:
Congo
Rwanda
Kenya
Sudan
Iraq
Afghanistan
Sierra Leone
West Bank
Oman
and mind you those are only the one that have had major instability in recent history from off the top of my head. There are well over 100 countries at over a 1% growth rate. Now while it may seem fun to say that they will all be under .5% in 35 years, but I am not buying it especially with the last decades deviation from projection. You know with the 2011 dataset.
As for the price of oil. This was the same argument from the 1980s from oilcos. This was from after finding the northern oil reserves in alaska and canada. That's when the 'technology will find a way' argument came about. This was after the OPEC trust fixed prices muchhigher but after the discoveries it rose/remained steady for a portion of the 80s. From the later half of the eighties up 20 years to 2008 supplies went down down down and prices went up, up, up. We saw gas go from under $2 to upwards of $4. Crude prices are still high today.
Natural gas is cheap domestically and has seen prices drop to what they were a decade ago. That is significant. Europe and our other allies such as Japan did not see nearly as much of a drop and we did and well we can both guess how much we gave to the likes of Rwanda. Since 2008 though prices have started to inch back up. Mind you in the interval of 'technology will finding a way' from the 80s to recent gas prices tripled. Technology better start looking again cause I imagine the next 25 year interval is not going to be as pleasant.
Developing countries require more consumption too. Rosling and his 'twoofer-esque' Galileo-special storage container theory is going to take some serious fossil fuel consumption to go from the toy bicycle to the model car. Remember the guy with the cardboard cutouts representing tiers from the WTC? At least Rosling went to the Container Store and Toy R Us for his presentation. I can't believe you took that seriously. Updated thinking, huh? The latest trends in shuffling boxes.
Then there is everything else from rare earths to water. Water is a huge concern. That the Colorado River hasn't reached the ocean in decades is one thing but the regional droughts in Africa are just brutal. The middle East is so arid that they already have to use power intensive reverse osmosis. Boutox is spot on in that regard. When Ethiopia and Palestine have some of the highest growth rates that should be a concern.
And then of course there is climate change which makes it a nice triangle of scarcity, population and climate shifts. Feedback is a .
Population growth needs to be more in the public focus. We as a people need to start giving a about what things are going to be like 25 or 50 years from now and stop repeating the mistakes of our forebearers. Climate change and population growth who go hand in hand need more priority. A lot more priority than our current focus on finding more fossil fuels.
You have a long way to go to prove any conflict of interest. The proof you have provided is insufficient to show such conflict of interest, even given a very generous interpretation of what you think you have presented.
Further, even granting that assertion you have yet to show how this might have affected either the data or the conclusions drawn from that data.
You have done the same thing that conspiracy asshats do, which is show something "su ious" then wave away something you don't like.
Until you can show something other than chest-thumping, it is safe to dismiss your assertion as a logical fallacy.
Despite being asked to repeatedly show some alternate data sets or some mildly convincing arguments, you have innuendo.
Fallacy: Cir stantial Ad Hominem
________________________________________
Description of Cir stantial Ad Hominem
A Cir stantial ad Hominem is a fallacy in which one attempts to attack a claim by asserting that the person making the claim is making it simply out of self interest. In some cases, this fallacy involves subs uting an attack on a person's cir stances (such as the person's religion, political affiliation, ethnic background, etc.). The fallacy has the following forms:
1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B asserts that A makes claim X because it is in A's interest to claim X.
3. Therefore claim X is false.
Person A: Hans Rosling
Claim X: Health improvements tend to precede and may be required for improvements of income for many countries not in the industrialized West.
Person B: FuzzyLumpkins
1. Hans Rosling (Person A) makes the claim that Health improvements tend to precede improvements of income for many countries not in the industrialized West. (claim X)
2. Fuzzy Lumpkins (Person B) asserts Hans Rosling’s (person A) non-profit organization takes money from Big Pharma, it is in his interest to play up links between improvements in health and improvements of income. (claim X)
3. Therefore Hans Rosling’s (Person A) claim of health improvements proceeding or being required for improvements of income (claim X) is false.
I know you aren't intellectually honest enough to answer my questions, but you should at least be asking yourself why putting your statements into the format of this logical fallacy was so easy, and what that implies about your arguments.
Last edited by RandomGuy; 12-07-2012 at 12:34 PM. Reason: Toning it down a bit, readability
The easy response rejoinder is:
Quantify that, and outline why they matter, then show how I have ignored them.
You are saying I am ignoring those, and that they matter, but unless you can quantify what you are talking about, then you don't have science, you have pseudoscience.
I don't ignore the problems and challenges faced by post colonial countries, nor ones that have had long-standing ethnic wars. I understand them quite well.
Nor do I ever, ever say that there will not be poor people in the future, or misery. We are far, far, from eliminating war, poverty, or human misery.
I will say that for the first time in human history, we are on the verge of really moving the majority of the human population into at least a modest standard of living, and the data trends show this happening.
Sure there are problems, such as corruption in India, and a brewing African war that is in grave danger of escalating into one that envelops most of the continent.
You are confusing guarded optimism with blind optimism.
I will get to doubling time shortly.
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