First Came Brexit, Now Comes Texit

[bilby]

And there's that smugness again. Darn those idiots who didn't know how to vote correctly. People should always vote as their betters tell them and not for what they think is right.

Yes, if they were smart, they would - not necessarily always, but certainly the vast majority of the time.

There are a number of ways to make a decision; If it can be made based on facts, evidence and reason, then it should be. If the facts are known and understood to you, then you have a worthwhile opinion - but if not, you don't, and the smartest and best thing you can do is to STFU and let the experts decide.

The only situations where the optimum result is reachable through democracy - by polling the people affected and going with the majority - are those where there is no consensus amongst the experts; Where it is not possible to determine who the 'betters' actually are.

Direct Democracy is the last resort for decision making; it gives poor results, and should be used only when all other options - Reason; Expert advice; and even Representative Democracy - have failed.

In the case of the Brexit vote it is very clear that a) The result was too close to give a clear answer to the question 'what do the majority want' - The winning margin was smaller than the expected error, and despite the high turnout, FAR smaller than the number of eligible voters who cast no ballot; b) The people running the 'Leave' campaign relied on uninformed and misinformed voters to get the result they wanted - They lied. And lied. And lied some more; and c) There was no good reason for a vote at all - it is not binding, and the responsibility for making a decision STILL lies with the government, who are PAID to make those decisions on behalf of the people, and who are, by calling a referendum, simply refusing to do their fucking jobs, for which they are so very handsomely paid.

The actual consequences of this result almost certainly bear little resemblance to what the majority of 'leave' voters wanted; and absolutely certainly bears NO resemblance to what the 'Leave' campaign claimed would happen.

I'm not smug about this - I am FUCKING ENRAGED. These cunts fucked up everyone's lives for personal gain, and have bailed out of all of the stuff they promised before the voters had managed to clean the graphite from the pencils off their fingers.

Stupid people getting defrauded is not something I support - and nor is it something I blame on the gullible. The fraudsters are to blame. And the anti-intellectual fucktardery of people who elevate the opinions of the uninformed and deliberately misinformed above the opinions of experts doesn't help.

Telling dumb people that they are just as good as the experts is fucking evil. The Dunning-Kruger effect is bad enough without lying fucking arseholes telling us that we should ignore the experts when making decisions. We should NOT.

When the hot water service bursts and starts flooding the house, and the stop valve is jammed, so it can't be turned off, I don't take a poll of the family to decide what we do next - I call a fucking plumber.

And I don't tell the plumber he is being 'smug' when he says he knows how to fix the problem. Because I don't expect him to credit my entire family with having a better idea what to do, just on the basis that we outnumber him.

But if I did, I could feel oh so clever, and superior, because I would be standing up for my family's freedom. "Get a load of 'big plumbing', trying to silence democracy", I could sneer. "Oh, there's that smugness again. Damn those idiots who don't know how to fix a burst pipe. People should always let their plumbers tell them what to do, instead of doing what they think is right", I could post with dripping sarcasm.

And I probably wouldn't see the irony or the hypocrisy of my charge of 'smugness' at all.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

And there's that smugness again. Darn those idiots who didn't know how to vote correctly. People should always vote as their betters tell them and not for what they think is right.

Yes, if they were smart, they would - not necessarily always, but certainly the vast majority of the time.

There are a number of ways to make a decision; If it can be made based on facts, evidence and reason, then it should be. If the facts are known and understood to you, then you have a worthwhile opinion - but if not, you don't, and the smartest and best thing you can do is to STFU and let the experts decide.

How do you know the Brexiters weren't using facts, evidence, and reason?

Oh, never mind, the fact that they voted to leave shows that they weren't.

 

[dismal]

Yes, if they were smart, they would - not necessarily always, but certainly the vast majority of the time.

There are a number of ways to make a decision; If it can be made based on facts, evidence and reason, then it should be. If the facts are known and understood to you, then you have a worthwhile opinion - but if not, you don't, and the smartest and best thing you can do is to STFU and let the experts decide.

How do you know the Brexiters weren't using facts, evidence, and reason?

Oh, never mind, the fact that they voted to leave shows that they weren't.

Once you have deployed your prejudices to determine the right answer the ignorant and stupid are easy to identify.

 

[laughing dog]

Once you have deployed your prejudices to determine the right answer the ignorant and stupid are easy to identify.

Ah, the voice of the master.

 

[bilby]

Yes, if they were smart, they would - not necessarily always, but certainly the vast majority of the time.

There are a number of ways to make a decision; If it can be made based on facts, evidence and reason, then it should be. If the facts are known and understood to you, then you have a worthwhile opinion - but if not, you don't, and the smartest and best thing you can do is to STFU and let the experts decide.

How do you know the Brexiters weren't using facts, evidence, and reason?

Oh, never mind, the fact that they voted to leave shows that they weren't.

Is it really necessary for me to point out to you that your second sentence here consists of you doing the exact thing that your first sentence falsely accuses me of doing?

I know many Americans seem to be blind to irony, but that really takes the cake.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

It's called sarcasm, not irony.

 

[arkirk]

How do you know the Brexiters weren't using facts, evidence, and reason?

Oh, never mind, the fact that they voted to leave shows that they weren't.

Is it really necessary for me to point out to you that your second sentence here consists of you doing the exact thing that your first sentence falsely accuses me of doing?

I know many Americans seem to be blind to irony, but that really takes the cake.

Bilby believes in the supremacy of industrial domination. He will always gravitate toward the highest profit margin for the richest people. Britain is not so much smart getting out of the EU, as simply doing the best for all parties concerned. Britain is a steaming pile of shit rotten to its very center because of its ignoble empire past. Britain got out of the EU because it was beginning to treat Britain like Britain treated its colonies in the good old days. It was becoming clearer and clearer that the relationship was dysfunctional. Don't worry. The sky is not falling.

The rest of the country should be allowed to vote on whether Texas stays or goes. Texas is going to have to learn to cope with its demographics and stop being ruled by a tiny minority of religious right wing bigots.

 

[bilby]

Is it really necessary for me to point out to you that your second sentence here consists of you doing the exact thing that your first sentence falsely accuses me of doing?

I know many Americans seem to be blind to irony, but that really takes the cake.

Bilby believes in the supremacy of industrial domination. He will always gravitate toward the highest profit margin for the richest people. Britain is not so much smart getting out of the EU, as simply doing the best for all parties concerned. Britain is a steaming pile of shit rotten to its very center because of its ignoble empire past. Britain got out of the EU because it was beginning to treat Britain like Britain treated its colonies in the good old days. It was becoming clearer and clearer that the relationship was dysfunctional. Don't worry. The sky is not falling.

See, this is what I'm talking about.

Here we have a person who clearly has not one fucking clue about the things he is talking about; yet he feels that it is worthwhile to spout off anyway. Despite having direct access to the world's only expert on the subject of 'what bilby believes', he completely ignores that expert, and as a result makes a total fool of himself, and is proud to do it.

This is, in microcosm, the exact same problem that makes referenda such a poor way to reach a decision on any important topic.

The rest of the country should be allowed to vote on whether Texas stays or goes. Texas is going to have to learn to cope with its demographics and stop being ruled by a tiny minority of religious right wing bigots.

Oddly, the rest of the EU didn't get to vote on the Brexit question. Perhaps you could try applying the same standards to others that you apply to your own position. That might reduce the number of people who recognise you as a massive hypocrite.

 

[TV and credit cards]

If people feel they are constantly being treated unfairly, they will act to punish those who have wronged them, even to their own detriment.

My younger brother had, as a child, some eye problems, which limited his peripheral vision.

One day, when he was about four years old, we were walking down the street, and he walked into a lamppost.

He immediately turned in a rage, and punched my sister, who was three years older than him, twice his size, and completely blameless. She gave him a black eye; both of them got in serious trouble with dad, and the lamppost suffered no punishment or discomfort of any kind.

I understand why he acted as he did; but you can't honestly say it was a rational, rather than an emotional, response.

Well sister isn't playing fair. She has a lasting advantage over her younger brother. Younger brother's options are what? To tolerate it or stay home? You seem to be indicating that younger brother should have taken his lumps and left it at that. That this would have been the rational thing to do. When someone is at a disadvantage to another and the advantaged person give options, all of which are unfair, rational or not, people tend to kick back.
And where is big brother in all this? Why isn't he regulating sister's behavior?

I've got nothing for the lamppost. Maybe just a bad pun.

 

[bilby]

It's called sarcasm, not irony.

What you said was sarcasm. That you didn't seem to notice that you were doing what you were falsely accusing me of is ironic.

That you are, yet again, making a claim of superiority that contains the evidence of its own falsehood is doubly ironic.

I always recommend that a person who is in a hole should stop digging. They rarely take my advice.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

It's called sarcasm, not irony.

What you said was sarcasm. That you didn't seem to notice that you were doing what you were falsely accusing me of is ironic.

That you are, yet again, making a claim of superiority that contains the evidence of its own falsehood is doubly ironic.

I always recommend that a person who is in a hole should stop digging. They rarely take my advice.

Yes, stop digging, you are in quite a hole.

I didn't say that either side had superior knowledge, I was pointing out that you were holding the position that the other side MUST have inferior knowledge simply on the basis of them having disagreed with you.

 

[bilby]

What you said was sarcasm. That you didn't seem to notice that you were doing what you were falsely accusing me of is ironic.

That you are, yet again, making a claim of superiority that contains the evidence of its own falsehood is doubly ironic.

I always recommend that a person who is in a hole should stop digging. They rarely take my advice.

Yes, stop digging, you are in quite a hole.

I didn't say that either side had superior knowledge, I was pointing out that you were holding the position that the other side MUST have inferior knowledge simply on the basis of them having disagreed with you.

And I was pointing out that you have no basis for that claim, as you have yet to do me the courtesy of asking what my basis for determining the inferiority of their knowledge actually is.

You are WRONG in your belief that I am holding the position that the other side MUST have inferior knowledge simply on the basis of them having disagreed with me; And you are, ironically, basing that belief on exactly the kind of uninformed guess that it implies you think I am making.

You are fractally wrong here; you are not just wrong, you reasoning that lead you to think that I was wrong is also wrong - and wrong in the same way that you are falsely claiming my reasoning to be wrong.

You are being both a fool, AND an arrogant fool; And it is your arrogant assumption of arrogance by others that is the most obvious foolishness you are displaying.



By the way, I KNOW that the other side has inferior knowledge, because when they explain why the believe as they do, they rely on information that is testable, and that is demonstrably false. I therefore need not make the assumption that their knowledge is inferior; it is instead an observation.

Not all opinions are equal. That is why democracy is a poor method for decision making on matters of fact; and it is why we don't determine facts by taking polls of the general public. If you want to know the Relative Atomic Mass of Thorium, do you ask a physicist or a chemist; Or do you take a vote of the population to find out what they think the answer is?

It is a fact that most of the important claims made by the Brexit campaign, and given as reasons for their vote by 'Leave' voters, were false. They claimed positive results for a Brexit that were not just implausible, but demonstrably impossible. They also claimed that the negative consequences that actually happened - a run on the pound, massive turmoil in the financial markets, falls in the FTSE - would not happen. We KNOW that these things DID happen, so clearly they were wrong. That's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact.

 

[Will Wiley]

I'm not smug about this - I am FUCKING ENRAGED.

Yes, you are far too emotional to be rational

The actual consequences of this result almost certainly bear little resemblance to what the majority of 'leave' voters wanted;

You don't know what all the consequences will be and you don't know what people wanted.

 

[bilby]

Yes, you are far too emotional to be rational

The actual consequences of this result almost certainly bear little resemblance to what the majority of 'leave' voters wanted;

You don't know what all the consequences will be and you don't know what people wanted.

Congratulations, you managed to be wrong on almost every count.

Sadly, you miss out on the prize, because while you are correct that I "don't know what all the consequences will be", that is a misrepresentation of my position - the word "all" there is your insertion, and means that you are no longer addressing my actual stated position.

There are no prizes for victories over strawmen; you need to beat your opponent in order to win a debate.

Thanks for playing. Better luck next time.

 

[Will Wiley]

Yes, you are far too emotional to be rational


You don't know what all the consequences will be and you don't know what people wanted.

Congratulations, you managed to be wrong on almost every count.

Sadly, you miss out on the prize, because while you are correct that I "don't know what all the consequences will be", that is a misrepresentation of my position - the word "all" there is your insertion, and means that you are no longer addressing my actual stated position.

There are no prizes for victories over strawmen; you need to beat your opponent in order to win a debate.

Thanks for playing. Better luck next time.

Fail. You fail. You said the actual consequences of this result. If you only meant some of the consequences then you needed to say so. But it's amusing watching you trying to be right. :laughing-smiley-014

 

[bilby]

Congratulations, you managed to be wrong on almost every count.

Sadly, you miss out on the prize, because while you are correct that I "don't know what all the consequences will be", that is a misrepresentation of my position - the word "all" there is your insertion, and means that you are no longer addressing my actual stated position.

There are no prizes for victories over strawmen; you need to beat your opponent in order to win a debate.

Thanks for playing. Better luck next time.

Fail. You fail. You said the actual consequences of this result. If you only meant some of the consequences then you needed to say so. But it's amusing watching you trying to be right. :laughing-smiley-014

I fail to see how your lack of reading comprehension skills is either my fault or my problem.

If you didn't understand what I wrote, you were free to ask.

 

[RavenSky]

The second Texans would do this relationships with the US government end.

No SS or Medicare benefits for citizens of Texas.

US citizenship of Texans revoked.

You come in here without our permission you are an illegal.

That would be the best irony

But I do think we would need to arrange for those who vote no to "Texit" should be allowed to leave with their US citizenship intact.

 

[bilby]

The second Texans would do this relationships with the US government end.

No SS or Medicare benefits for citizens of Texas.

US citizenship of Texans revoked.

You come in here without our permission you are an illegal.

That would be the best irony

But I do think we would need to arrange for those who vote no to "Texit" should be allowed to leave with their US citizenship in tact.

Tact - Diplomacy; Advising someone of something in such a way as to allow them to save face. "Pointing out her error shows a lack of tact".

Intact - Whole; Not broken or split apart. "Those who vote no should be allowed to leave with their US citizenship intact".

In tact - (poss. archaic) Tactfully; With a modicum of tact. "He could have let her error pass without comment, and, in tact, he should have".

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Letting Texas go would create yet another failed state with religious fundamentalists in charge and nukes. No, thank you.

 

[RavenSky]

Leaving aside for the moment that the federal government would not simply let Texas or any other state simply walk away from the United States, a "Texit" would crater the Lone Star Republic's economy. The billions in benefits from the military bases would be gone, and also the billions of dollars that pour into defense contractors like Raytheon who would no doubt relocate to America.

Then there's taxes. One of the reasons companies relocate to Texas is because the tax structure is favorable for the business, and there's no personal income tax. The newly minted Republic would have to raise taxes in order to supplant all the federal money that would go bye-bye, and that would mean taxing businesses and individuals. A lot of businesses would pack up and leave simply because they want to be based in the United States, but a lot more would leave because their taxes would go up.

Then with Texas being a foreign country and all, there would have to be trade agreements and tariffs for allowing these foreign goods into the USA. Not good for business.

Then we'll have a border problem with Texans trying to sneak into the U.S. We'll have to build a big, beautiful wall.

And make Texas President Trump pay for it.

Although, Trump is a New Yorker. I can't imagine him moving to Texas, nor can I imagine him living somewhere that makes his enormously inflated opinion of himself seem normal