Yup. Definitely America
Not that stupid theories are wholly limited to an American convention, but we do have some of the best practitioners. Nimbly denying that evidence defies their ideas, and fails to support even the new and flimsy conventions instead. For example, I'm guessing Chrysler and GM basically used some sort of algorithm to decide which dealers got shut down. If somebody figured out what the basis for that algorithm was, then that's where the actual bias lies (presumably the less movement of product by percentage or raw value, and thus the more local competition, the less likely to stay open a dealer was). But even that might certainly correlate with some totally irrelevant thing, such as donations to Hillary Clinton or people who report being abducted by Martians and probed while they dismembered some cattle together. Or some such.
I often think of stuff like this whenever the history channel does its end of the world week or has a special on Illuminati/Knights Templar/Freemasons/Pyramid numerology. I just don't need to go through the statistical jargon and mental exercises to arrive at the conclusion that it's amusing and pointless conclusions being put forth by these people. The distressing part is the amount of people, including more mainstream media types than the sort that Faux employs, who buy into and purvey such bullshit assessments or distortions of reality to fit their worldview.
02 June 2009
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Yep. That kind of geek is certainly not chic. That's a lot of math to go through to prove some random correlation or lack thereof. Oooohhh. Mesmerized by mathematics, will believe anything!
You can ultimately use statistics to say just about anything. The question is whether what you're saying actually means anything to the real world or not. Scientifically it may or may not, regardless of whether you followed a scientific process to discover it.
There's also something of question as to whether ascribing a certain meaning to a thing which doesn't actually have any (or at least not any of the particular type of value being ascribed) is of any value to people. There are times where it might be for purposes of debate and policy resolution. This is not one of them, simply because one would first have to subscribe to the idea that the government had already taken a controlling stake in the automobile companies and hence forced them to close particular dealerships at their whim rather than using something like an impartial market analysis. The causation chain is backwards when you look it through that lens.
It's also sort of funny that basically the government is being made out to be the bogeyman herein by forcing these companies to downsize when that's precisely what most right-wing economics and economists predicted should happen WITHOUT any government interference. It's basically like they're trying to say the magic of the free market that they so effortlessly intone about over debates on environmental regulation is somehow absolved when companies that screw up their management of market forces must fail (in part because of long-standing government policies, including the previous administrations). Even ideological consistency is lacking from these sorts of people.
Malkin for example has been busy ignoring the Tiller assassination and the accompanying history of Christianist terrorism toward him and his business in favor of the Islamist one. Of course all while ignoring the cognitive dissonance that proclaims killing an abortion provider is somehow okay for religious reasons but following those exact same religious proscriptions within another faith and killing Americans is not. Consistency isn't too much to ask for I hope.
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