Monthly Archives: May 2016

The Dunning–Kruger effect meets the Kates effect

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Honestly, what can one do with a story like this: Obama: World Leaders ‘Rattled’ by Trump’s ‘Ignorance’ and ‘Cavalier Attitude’. The following, please note, is in quotation marks and the person quoted is Obama!

“They’re rattled by him — and for good reason — because a lot of the proposals that he’s made display either ignorance of world affairs, or a cavalier attitude, or an interest in getting tweets and headlines instead of actually thinking through what it is that is required to keep America safe and secure and prosperous, and what’s required to keep the world on an even keel.”

I found this quote at Instaundit where I also discovered the “Dunning–Kruger effect” which is new to me as a named psychological syndrome but very straightforward as a frequent picture of reality.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.”

Someone must also make a study of the related effect – call it the Kates effect – which I describe as follows. We are here discussing a syndrome that often affects the media and academics studying in the social sciences and humanities:

The Kates effect is cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons are believed to have superiority abilities, where the minimal abilities they do have are mistakenly assessed to be much higher than they really are. Kates attributes this bias to a metacognitive inability of the similarly unskilled to recognize ineptitude in others because of a deep desire to escape reality and live in a fantasy world of their own construction.

Obama is delusional but he really is the president. The more remarkable form of insanity – the Kates effect discussed above – is found among those who feed these delusions with affirmations that permit those delusions to persist, sometimes for as long as eight years.

Legal bills estimated to be nearing a million!

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This really is beyond all sense: Gillian Triggs hires top silk in 18C university case. Wherein we find:

The total legal bills for the university and other parties are estim­ated to be nearing $1 million.

You can read the details at the link, but this seems absolutely right:

In a letter to Professor Triggs yesterday, the lawyer for Mr Wood, Michael Henry, stated: “Examining complaints against the commission is your responsib­ility and your responsibility alone. We had sincerely hoped that some leadership would be shown by you on this issue and that the commission would have investigated this deeply regrettable incident of its own initiative.” . . .

“The entire matter could have been easily ­resolved during the process the commission was duty bound by statute to undertake.”

There is something very very wrong here that needs to be fixed. And as usual, the best part of the story at the link is in the comments.

He’s over the top

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trumpmcdonalds

UPDATE: Adding the picture above which comes with this: To Celebrate Winning 1,237, Trump Eats McDonald’s, Has Diet Coke. Been there myself. I’ve often said the worst thing about my children growing up is that I no longer have an excuse to go to McDonald’s. It is still an incongruous picture which must have some intended meaning but one that eludes me for the moment.

In the news today: Trump reaches 1237. And so now he begins to say what he really thinks:

Trump, whose support from North Dakota national convention delegates put him over the top for securing the party’s nomination earlier in the day, told the crowd he’d eliminate regulation he says is killing the fossil fuel industry as well as be favorable to additional pipeline projects and exports of American oil.

Thunderous applause greeted Trump’s declaration that in his administration there’d be an “America-first energy plan.”

“We will accomplish a complete American energy independence,” Trump said. “We’re going to turn everything around. We are going to make it right.”

And in a related story from The Japan Times: Trump sends shivers down spines of nations trying to solidify global warming pact. Here I agree there is reason to worry, or there is if you think global warming is a genuine problem. Future generations are going to look back at us in amazement. So more of the Trump effect on policy:

The talks in Germany to flesh out December’s historic global climate deal are probably not at the top of Donald Trump’s agenda this week.

But the diplomats from 196 nations huddled in Bonn are keenly aware of the fact that the “The Donald” is now within spitting distance of the White House — and it is making a lot of them nervous.

It is not hard to see why.

The last Republican standing in the U.S. presidential race has described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China to gain competitive advantage in manufacturing over the US, an eccentric theory even among climate skeptics.

More recently, he said he was “not a big fan” of the Paris Agreement, the fruit of two decades of stop-and-go (but mostly stop) wrangling between rich and developing nations.

“I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum,” Trump told Reuters in an exclusive interview last week, betraying an unfamiliarity with the U.N.’s consensus-based process.

“And at a maximum I may do something else.”

Let ’em worry

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From The Japan Times: Trump sends shivers down spines of nations trying to solidify global warming pact. Here I agree there is reason to worry, or there is reason to worry if you think global warming isn’t the greatest con job in human history, which it is. Future generations are going to look back at us in amazement. Meantime:

The talks in Germany to flesh out December’s historic global climate deal are probably not at the top of Donald Trump’s agenda this week.

But the diplomats from 196 nations huddled in Bonn are keenly aware of the fact that the “The Donald” is now within spitting distance of the White House — and it is making a lot of them nervous.

It is not hard to see why.

The last Republican standing in the U.S. presidential race has described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China to gain competitive advantage in manufacturing over the US, an eccentric theory even among climate skeptics.

More recently, he said he was “not a big fan” of the Paris Agreement, the fruit of two decades of stop-and-go (but mostly stop) wrangling between rich and developing nations.

“I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum,” Trump told Reuters in an exclusive interview last week, betraying an unfamiliarity with the U.N.’s consensus-based process.

“And at a maximum I may do something else.”

Go for the max, I say, aim for the absolute full wreckage. So one more round from the report, just to cheer us up:

The prospect of a Trump presidency precisely at the moment when nations are inching toward ratification of the delicately balanced deal sends shivers down the spines of negotiators here.

When asked what worried him most at this stage, Seyni Nafo, climate ambassador for Mali and president of the Africa Group, snapped: “Trump winning the election.”

Ah, the global begging bowl will be taken away, or at least this one.

Communications advice to the Great Communicator

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I thought Malcolm’s strongest feature was as the Great Communicator. So why this now from Robert Gottliebsen: How Malcolm Turnbull can lift his media game. This is the message he wishes to convey:

Turnbull’s failure to sell his message is hurting his campaign, he’ll need to sharpen the script if he wants to cut through.

The problem is that it’s not “his message” but Tony’s. Nevertheless, Gottliebsen seeks to offer advice:

Given Bill Shorten knows the electronic media game backwards and forwards, there is an uneven contest. It’s no surprise that Shorten is winning in the opinion polls.

I realised that Turnbull does not know the secret of communicating on radio as I replayed yesterday’s interview with Alan Jones.

I have been around the radio game for many decades, so, with respect Mr. Prime Minister, let me give you a few hints.

I’m afraid, at this stage, it is all instinct. All you can do is let Malcolm be Malcolm in getting Tony’s message out and hope for the best.

Practical politics and political opinion

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It is a fact that both Charles Murray and Jonah Goldberg have left me frigidly cold in almost everything they have written. I stopped reading both years ago and am not surprised to find that Goldberg had invented the #NeverTrump tag. Now Murray has lined up in the same way. And here in a single sentence he captures everything that is wrong with #NeverTrump:

While I am already on record with my sympathy for the grievances that energize many of Trump’s supporters, I am thinking about writing a book that is even more explicitly sympathetic with those grievances.

He has sympathy for such grievances and what does he intend to do: write a book. For some of us – me included – that is the best we can do. But for some of us, but not the #NeverTrump bozos, we are grateful that ever so often someone comes along who can turn our concerns into a practical political outcome. That Donald Trump is somewhat more risky than some others because he has never actually held office so has no record in dealing with political situations is a valid concern. But after that, you just have to look at what he says he wants to do, which are congruent with what he has said all his adult life. Meanwhile Murray writes:

In my view, Donald Trump is unfit to be president in ways that apply to no other candidate of the two major political parties throughout American history.

So therefore Hillary. Let us therefore go to the specifics as outlined:

But it’s worse than that. It’s not that Trump makes strategic decisions about what useful untruths he will tell on any given day — it looks as if he just makes up stuff as he goes along. Many of his off-the-cuff fictions are substantively unimportant: He says Rex Ryan won championships when he coached the New York Jets, when he didn’t.

You know, that being the first example of an untruth that came to mind portrays such a trivial mind that he ought to be embarrassed to the final degree by even bringing it up. But let them all reveal themselves and let their names be recorded. The list of political commentators we can forever ignore just keeps getting longer.

Donald Trump and Ali G

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I find this astonishing in a number of ways, all of which seem to the credit of Donald Trump. One has to assume Trump had never heard of Ali G before they met. So before you watch, answer this: “What is the most popular thing in the world?” Try to get a sensible answer from that off the top of your head.

Second, Ali G names a problem he thinks needs to be solved. Trump gives him the perfect solution on the spot. If you watch, you will see how Ali G does a double take at the profound sense of the answer to his stupid question.

Lastly, Trump sizes Ali G up, sees he’s a weightless buffoon, and has the perfect response. And it’s only the first minute you have to bother with.

You can’t be serious

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I’m used to Australian commentary on the American election to be one-sided and Democrat, but the AFR piece this morning – These times call for a serious president, not a childish one like Donald Trump – reaches a new low in stupidity and ignorance. You would at least think that after eight years of Obama, he might be just a touch reticent about his own judgment in such things, but instead he can still write about the difference between outsiders entering the race when Obama did in comparison to now when the outsider is Trump:

In 2008, the challenger was The One. In 2016, it’s The Donald. Then, the themes of the day were hope and change. Now, the themes are anger and retreat.

If he can still write “The One” and the words “hope and change” without feeling the irony and disappointment, then this is one commentator who can with the greatest safety be ignored. I wonder why he thinks all this is taking place after eight years of Obama:

Every day, the liberal international order that has existed for 70 years seems less liberal, less international and less orderly. The United States has inched back from the world and challengers have stepped into it. The West is drooping. The historic project to unite the European continent seems shaky. The Middle East is a bloody mess. There are more refugees, asylum seekers and displaced people than at any time since the end of the Second World War.

So his solution: more of the same. So let us have a look at who will be president if it is not Donald Trump. This is from Instapundit:

CLINTON FOUNDATION GOT $100 MILLION FROM “BLOOD MINERALS” FIRM: Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unaccountably delayed implementation in 2009 of a congressionally mandated certification process designed to bar human rights abuses by mining companies in Africa.

The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock found a hundred million reasons for Clinton’s dallying. Two years before, the Clinton Foundation got a $100 million pledge from the Vancouver, Canada-based Lundin Group.

Lundin is one of the giants of the global mining industry, with huge operations in the Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia. Those operations were repeatedly condemned by human rights groups claiming native populations were being forced to flee their homelands and even being killed because they stood in the way of Lundin projects.

“’Blood minerals’ are related to ‘blood diamonds,’ which are allegedly mined in war zones or sold as commodities to help finance political insurgencies or despotic warlords,” according to Pollock. Lundin has a long history of “cutting deals with warlords, Marxist rebels, military strongmen and dictatorships” in war-torn Africa.

The least surprising aspect of this story? Spokesmen for the Clinton Foundation and Lundin refused to comment.

Not the Nine O’Clock News, or the news anywhere. And this is one that comes to our attention. How many others just like it are there?

Which really does make this article more than odd which is A Response to My Conservative #NeverTrump Friends on why he won’t vote for Hillary. Why is such an article even necessary? How can anyone who is even remotely Republican think of voting for her?

Here, then, are nine reasons (there are more) why a conservative should prefer a Trump presidency to a Democrat presidency:

• Prevent a left-wing Supreme Court.

• Increase the defense budget.

• Repeal, or at least modify, the Dodd-Frank act.

• Prevent Washington, D.C. from becoming a state and giving the Democrats another two permanent senators.

• Repeal Obamacare.

• Curtail illegal immigration, a goal that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with xenophobia or nativism (just look at Western Europe).

• Reduce job-killing regulations on large and small businesses.

• Lower the corporate income tax and bring back hundreds of billions of offshore dollars to the United States.

• Continue fracking, which the left, in its science-rejecting hysteria, opposes.

For these reasons, I, unlike my friends, could not live with my conscience if I voted to help the America-destroying left win the presidency in any way.

I just don’t understand how anyone who understands the threat the left and the Democrats pose on America will refuse to vote for the only person who can stop them.

It is hard to understand, almost as hard as to understand why people on the left also want to vote for Hillary.

Just how corrupt is she?

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I’m used to Australian commentary on the American election to be one-sided and Democrat, but the AFR piece this morning – These times call for a serious president, not a childish one like Donald Trump – reaches a new low in stupidity and ignorance. You would at least think that after eight years of Obama, he might be just a touch reticent about his own judgment in such things, but instead he writes about the difference between outsiders entering the race when Obama did in comparison to now when it is Trump:

In 2008, the challenger was The One. In 2016, it’s The Donald. Then, the themes of the day were hope and change. Now, the themes are anger and retreat.

If he can still write “The One” without feeling the irony and disappointment, then this is one commentator who can with the greatest safety be ignored. I wonder why he thinks all this is taking place after eight years of Obama:

Every day, the liberal international order that has existed for 70 years seems less liberal, less international and less orderly. The United States has inched back from the world and challengers have stepped into it. The West is drooping. The historic project to unite the European continent seems shaky. The Middle East is a bloody mess. There are more refugees, asylum seekers and displaced people than at any time since the end of the Second World War.

So his solution: more of the same. So let us have a look at who will be president if it is not Donald Trump. This is from Instapundit:

CLINTON FOUNDATION GOT $100 MILLION FROM “BLOOD MINERALS” FIRM: Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unaccountably delayed implementation in 2009 of a congressionally mandated certification process designed to bar human rights abuses by mining companies in Africa.

The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock found a hundred million reasons for Clinton’s dallying. Two years before, the Clinton Foundation got a $100 million pledge from the Vancouver, Canada-based Lundin Group.

Lundin is one of the giants of the global mining industry, with huge operations in the Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia. Those operations were repeatedly condemned by human rights groups claiming native populations were being forced to flee their homelands and even being killed because they stood in the way of Lundin projects.

“’Blood minerals’ are related to ‘blood diamonds,’ which are allegedly mined in war zones or sold as commodities to help finance political insurgencies or despotic warlords,” according to Pollock. Lundin has a long history of “cutting deals with warlords, Marxist rebels, military strongmen and dictatorships” in war-torn Africa.

The least surprising aspect of this story? Spokesmen for the Clinton Foundation and Lundin refused to comment.

Not the Nine O’Clock News, or the news anywhere. And this is one that comes to our attention. How many others just like it are there?And that wasn’t even what I thought was the worst of it. So let me add this from the Daily Caller link:

It wasn’t the first time Clinton consorted with mining moguls. In the waning hours of his presidency in 2001, Clinton pardoned Glencore International mining and oil magnate Marc Rich after his wife, Denise, made generous donations to the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign and his Clinton Library.

Clinton’s pardon erased a 65-count indictment against Rich for trading with Iran against the oil embargo. Rich did the Iranian oil sales while Americans were held captive in the country by the Mullahs.

Just how deep and far does it go? Which really does make this article more than odd which is A Response to My Conservative #NeverTrump Friends on why he won’t vote for Hillary. Why is such an article even necessary? How can anyone who is even remotely Republican think of voting for her?

Here, then, are nine reasons (there are more) why a conservative should prefer a Trump presidency to a Democrat presidency:

• Prevent a left-wing Supreme Court.

• Increase the defense budget.

• Repeal, or at least modify, the Dodd-Frank act.

• Prevent Washington, D.C. from becoming a state and giving the Democrats another two permanent senators.

• Repeal Obamacare.

• Curtail illegal immigration, a goal that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with xenophobia or nativism (just look at Western Europe).

• Reduce job-killing regulations on large and small businesses.

• Lower the corporate income tax and bring back hundreds of billions of offshore dollars to the United States.

• Continue fracking, which the left, in its science-rejecting hysteria, opposes.

For these reasons, I, unlike my friends, could not live with my conscience if I voted to help the America-destroying left win the presidency in any way.

I just don’t understand how anyone who understands the threat the left and the Democrats pose on America will refuse to vote for the only person who can stop them.

It is hard to understand, almost as hard as to understand why people on the left also want to vote for Hillary.