Liberals, Conservatives and Arguments

This is primarily directed to the rising number of young conservatives that I've met as of late, but it applies to almost anyone who wants to talk economics, politics, or religion.  The post isn't meant to make you run around convincing people your worldview is correct; it's just a few pointers on having a logical conversation.

1.  Know Your Facts
I can't stress this enough.  You can't seriously discuss any of the above-listed topics unless you know what you're talking about and can provide sources to back up your opinions.  You can have any opinion you want; that's your natural right.  But you're not going to convince me that the moon landing didn't happen without some really, really compelling evidence.

2.  Know What Your Facts Mean
I've seen all sorts of amusing arguments blow up because one party or another didn't realize that the information they were providing was incomplete (or because they hadn't thought out the ramifications of said information).  When the opposing party points this out, it tends to lead to a strong anger response from the original speaker.  Oh, and it drives economics-minded folks nuts when someone can't understand the difference between "percentage" and a "percentage point".  Journalists tend to be really, really bad with this.  If you're making a comparison, use statistics that are similar to or from the same source.  Pollsters tend to be pretty bad with this one.

3.  Know How To Argue
This is one of the biggest problems: we don't teach logic and debate very well, if at all, anymore.  Go check Wikipedia for "logical fallacies".  You might be surprised to see how often these crop up in various political interchanges.  Avoid, at all costs, ad hominem attacks and "straw men" (our current president is rather infamous for using this tactic).  These fallacies, once you start spotting them, make the speaker sound like the guy who says, "Well, I can't be racist.  One of my best friends is [race/color/religion X]."  Irrelevant.  Don't go down that road; there be dragons.

4.  Know When To Stop
Look, if you don't know, you don't know.  I can argue that I believe that farm subsidies for sugar and ethanol, in particular, are generally harmful.  I've seen numbers, time and time again, showing that the federal subsidies intended for "Mom and Pop" farmers are actually funneled to the huge conglomerate farming that's commonplace in America.  This is an Occam's Razor issue - Mom and Pop don't have huge lobbying efforts persuading lawmakers to pass legislation in their favor.  Now, if you ask me for specific numbers on how much of what money goes where, I can't tell you.  I'd have to do a significant amount of digging to find out.  Until I can give an intelligent reply, I'll bow out of that particular argument.

5.  Keep An Open Mind
Sorry that this item reads like an elementary school inspirational poster.  That said, you may have beliefs that are wrong, or at best ill-informed.  While I experience plenty of aggravation reading the New York Times or Washington Post (mostly because of their lousy reporting/writing), I still make an effort to do so.  Living in a cocoon, liberal or conservative, is not healthy.  You wind up with a mental echo-chamber effect, where everything you hear confirms every other like-minded thing you hear.

6.  Look For (Plausible) Alternative Explanations
This is kind of a heavyweight.  Not everything can be argued via bumper-sticker slogans.  When the U.S. had a difficult time producing evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged WMD stockpile (not that that said evidence didn't exist), few people took the time to ask the harder questions.  Did those weapons migrate elsewhere?  Syria, perhaps - with a Baathist regime nearby, it would be a natural choice for hiding things that you don't want found.  A few members of the press pursued these lines of inquiry, and faced an uphill battle to get their work published.  The rest of them didn't.

I'm sure I've included some logical fallacies of my own in this publication.  If so, feel free to point them out.  I've also made a particular point of not linking to any other website or publication.  It's your job to figure these things out.  Don't discount the various bloggers doing serious journalism - they provide a nice safety net compared to the mainstream media.  That said, as soon as you start reading an article about how the Jews control the world economy, it's probably time to move on.  Think about your sources critically; find out who funds them, where their authors studied, etc.

High School and National Security Breaches

I'm incredibly glad that I'm not in high school overseas right now (also, glad I'm not in high school at all).  I was living in (and attending an international school in) a different country during Clinton's impeachment for my 9th-11th grade years.  Many of my local national classmates were pretty xenophobic - to the point that it lead to at least one full contact fight.  Now, imagine the rough times you had in 9th-12th grade.  Now, imagine them amplified in the situation I just described; with a President very publicly dodging political shots about cigars in places they don't belong and zippers undone.  Not pleasant.  One or two of my British teachers got in on the action, too.  They seemed to take excessive delight in the fact that an American President was (seemingly) tail-spinning.  Why am I recounting this?  Easy.  That period was particularly difficult because I was assumed to be a quasi-Ambassador in school (kids from other countries were informally expected to represent their homelands, as well, so it wasn't unique to me).  And there was no way I could defend my President's actions other than saying "Well, a whole bunch of our Presidents did similar things.  They just didn't get caught."  That's not a terribly effective argument.

Politics aside, I can sympathize with American students in Poland and Israel.  It looks like someone in the White House couldn't be bothered to do even basic research before the President's speech in Poland ("Polish death camps").  Yes, Auschwitz was located in Poland.  No, it wasn't because the Poles loved killing Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, the disabled, etc.  They were mostly occupied, and the death camp was German.  Way to insult an entire nation, Mr. President - they've been fighting the idea that the camps were "Polish" since the Second World War, rightfully so.  So, that covers the former, what about the latter?

It looks like someone in the White House leaked (not sure if that's the right word; "gushed" might be more accurate) specific details about joint American-Israeli cyber-operations targeting Iran.  I'm thinking that Axelrod might be a player in this, but who knows?  Besides revealing incredibly classified information (a federal crime, by the way) and putting an ally at risk, this is tactically insane.  You don't expose these programs to The New York Times (link h/t Ace).  That's not "transparency".  A big part of warfare is not revealing your capabilities or actions to the enemy.  If Iran had suspicions about where Stuxnet and other cyber-attacks came from, fine.  No proof, not such a big deal.  Blowing the lid on this (and, umm, despite "declin[ing]" to say whether it's us or not, you're pretty much confirming it) - whole different matter; logistically, ethically, legalistic-ally etc.  Beyond that, (whoever) just admitted that we're essentially at war with Iran.  Now, I'm all for acknowledging that American-Iranian engagements, particularly since 1979, are primarily hostile.  We've known for a while that many EFPs (explosively formed penetrators - a form of IED that is/was killing and wounding untold numbers of U.S. servicemen in Iraq/Afghanistan) originated in Iran.  To anyone following the news, that's not a huge revelation.  But this?  Really?  Other than reducing the effectiveness of the cyber-weapons discussed (and Flame appears to be one of the most advanced out there) you've just opened up the entire U.S. to retaliation.  Wonderful.

I spent some time working on the defensive side of the cyber game.  It's not terribly glamorous - I always harbored a fantasy that I was skilled enough to work on the offensive side - but it's necessary.  Here's the issue: I was working in a field that is all over the Internet.  Your web browser uses a less complicated version of what I was working with.  The vulnerabilities are pretty limited and you can find information about them on Wikipedia.  That doesn't hold true on the offensive side.  The code these guys are engineering is groundbreaking, apparently effective, and not suitable for a damn Wikipedia page or news article!  That just seems...elementary.

I really debated posting this.  As far as sensitivity of information goes I haven't mentioned anything that's not on my resume, but I still don't like drawing attention to national security breaches.  In this case, it's been published in the Times.  That makes it, as far as I'm concerned, a cat/bag issue.  I imagine that Iranian intelligence pays far more attention to the NYT than my blog.

Exit question:  Does this give Iran (despite being sanctioned on several levels) grounds to pursue action against the U.S. at the UN?