I am a physician and absolutely do not believe the Palin account of Trig's delivery story. But I am also a woman, and your shock that if she would lie about this is simply a man's perspective. Women lie about pregnancy/birth/parentage all the time. Women withhold the truth when they get abortions and don't tell the potential father. Women have babies and lie about who the father really is even when they know. So what seems like a terrible lie to you doesn't even come close to lies women tell on this subject. This is why I think you overstep on the Trig issue.
The lie about Trig likely came about to feed her ego that she is a hero; she is a martyr for even having him. But I, and I suspect other women, see this as an intrusion. So even if you prove what is likely true - that she is lying - it is neither unique nor crazy.
30 June 2010
Woman: All Women are Liars
From the Daily Dish:
Legitimacy
Devil's Advocate and I agree on this: the current elite do not really deserve their high status in any meaningful way, as in having extraordinary value, worth or accomplishments relative to others who are not as high status.
There are very good arguments for this position. One issue is, of course, luck. Many extremely successful, rich or famous people are that way, as opposed to merely respectable or well-off, because of luck and not because they are intrinsically better. This can often play out in winner take all contests: 1000 people compete and only 1 or 2 win get all the rewards and glory, while the others get chump change and have wasted their time. If you ain't first, you're last. When this dynamic plays out because someone gets their first by a small margin,
you can't reasonably claim that the many people who were close deserve penury and obscurity while someone else deserves his billions.
Another issue is value transference, which Half Sigma outlines very well. Often times, you possess something extremely valuable and rare, called capital, that you can leverage to bring in tons of dough. The factory owner pays his workers pennies because their labor is worth little without his machines. Similarly for social capital.
And, of course, you can combine them, like when you inherit a factory.
(I pointed him to Half Sigma's blog, particularly his posts on winner take all contests, and I should have pointed out the series on Post Marxist class analysis and Value Transference. But he seemed dismissive of the HS, probably because HS talks about how stupid people are, in fact, stupid.)
We could talk all day about how the main factors affecting extreme success are not the same as how we would like to apportion praise and status.
We disagree, I assume, on whether anyone actually deserves such high status. His point in this Cleverness is not Intelligence series is to destroy the legitimacy of one group of people holding elite status, presumably because he feels there are other more deserving people we should elevate instead. He thinks of himself as the righteous vanguard of progress, an agitator who will bring down the current system so that we can build a new, better one in its place. And most likely, as humans are wont to do, he thinks he will be more respected when this new perfect world arrives. And posts like these are excuses for his commenters to shit on others and feel superior, if only for a moment. Of course, this is just conjecture and I could be wrong about his motives.
Personally, I don't like talking about legitimacy because it is an emotional issue, a feelings issue, that has a counterproductive relationship with truth. Arguments over legitimacy are arguments about who we should defer to, whom we have obligations to, who is above us and who is below us, who we should feel inferior to and who we should feel superior to. If a man has legitimate power, that means (almost) everyone accepts that he is superior to them and will not contest that. When you want to usurp the king, you need to attack his legitimacy just as much as his army and build your own legitimacy as much as your army so that the people won't reject you when you take over.Arguing about legitimacy is an argument about how we should feel about certain things and people. It has a counterproductive relationship with truth seeking.
Which means that you can't really understand the status game when you are worried about legitimacy. And it is a certainly a game. When you realize this, it's like if you thought you were a real estate tycoon, only to wake up and realize you were only playing Monopoly. The status game is just as shallow and silly and pointless as Monopoly. As such, you can learn to play the game to win it. But only if you can restrain your emotional involvement in the game. When you understand that status has nothing to do with deserving, you can play the game well.
Now, we all have emotional needs. We need recognition, human interaction, relationships and a sense of community. So you can't get completely outside of the game. But you can see it more clearly (This is commonly called "being cynical").
So, I think arguing over legitimacy is silly, because it is the same as allocating Monopoly money among the various people playing.
Coming Up
-More on status
-Why you should be idealistic when it comes to absolute goods and a sociopath when it comes to relative goods
There are very good arguments for this position. One issue is, of course, luck. Many extremely successful, rich or famous people are that way, as opposed to merely respectable or well-off, because of luck and not because they are intrinsically better. This can often play out in winner take all contests: 1000 people compete and only 1 or 2 win get all the rewards and glory, while the others get chump change and have wasted their time. If you ain't first, you're last. When this dynamic plays out because someone gets their first by a small margin,
you can't reasonably claim that the many people who were close deserve penury and obscurity while someone else deserves his billions.
Another issue is value transference, which Half Sigma outlines very well. Often times, you possess something extremely valuable and rare, called capital, that you can leverage to bring in tons of dough. The factory owner pays his workers pennies because their labor is worth little without his machines. Similarly for social capital.
And, of course, you can combine them, like when you inherit a factory.
(I pointed him to Half Sigma's blog, particularly his posts on winner take all contests, and I should have pointed out the series on Post Marxist class analysis and Value Transference. But he seemed dismissive of the HS, probably because HS talks about how stupid people are, in fact, stupid.)
We could talk all day about how the main factors affecting extreme success are not the same as how we would like to apportion praise and status.
We disagree, I assume, on whether anyone actually deserves such high status. His point in this Cleverness is not Intelligence series is to destroy the legitimacy of one group of people holding elite status, presumably because he feels there are other more deserving people we should elevate instead. He thinks of himself as the righteous vanguard of progress, an agitator who will bring down the current system so that we can build a new, better one in its place. And most likely, as humans are wont to do, he thinks he will be more respected when this new perfect world arrives. And posts like these are excuses for his commenters to shit on others and feel superior, if only for a moment. Of course, this is just conjecture and I could be wrong about his motives.
Personally, I don't like talking about legitimacy because it is an emotional issue, a feelings issue, that has a counterproductive relationship with truth. Arguments over legitimacy are arguments about who we should defer to, whom we have obligations to, who is above us and who is below us, who we should feel inferior to and who we should feel superior to. If a man has legitimate power, that means (almost) everyone accepts that he is superior to them and will not contest that. When you want to usurp the king, you need to attack his legitimacy just as much as his army and build your own legitimacy as much as your army so that the people won't reject you when you take over.Arguing about legitimacy is an argument about how we should feel about certain things and people. It has a counterproductive relationship with truth seeking.
Which means that you can't really understand the status game when you are worried about legitimacy. And it is a certainly a game. When you realize this, it's like if you thought you were a real estate tycoon, only to wake up and realize you were only playing Monopoly. The status game is just as shallow and silly and pointless as Monopoly. As such, you can learn to play the game to win it. But only if you can restrain your emotional involvement in the game. When you understand that status has nothing to do with deserving, you can play the game well.
Now, we all have emotional needs. We need recognition, human interaction, relationships and a sense of community. So you can't get completely outside of the game. But you can see it more clearly (This is commonly called "being cynical").
So, I think arguing over legitimacy is silly, because it is the same as allocating Monopoly money among the various people playing.
Coming Up
-More on status
-Why you should be idealistic when it comes to absolute goods and a sociopath when it comes to relative goods
27 June 2010
Don't Be Embarrassed
In a comment over at the Devil's Advocate, I wrote
This is from the beginning of the movie, when Michael is hearing requests from family and friends during his son's first communion party. Watch from 3:00 to about 5:00
His niece, Sonny's daughter, and her boyfriend come to get his blessing before they get married. When Michael asks how he will support his new wife, the boyfriend replies,
And convincing the plebes that status is unimportant/unjust/evil is one way the high status maintain their position, because then no one is thinking about how to unseat them.I just realized that I stole this nugget of wisdom from the Godfather. I know that there is a Godfather quote for anything a man could need and you've probably heard them all, but I hope this is new ground since the quote comes from a deleted scene in Godfather II so hopefully you've never seen it.
This is from the beginning of the movie, when Michael is hearing requests from family and friends during his son's first communion party. Watch from 3:00 to about 5:00
His niece, Sonny's daughter, and her boyfriend come to get his blessing before they get married. When Michael asks how he will support his new wife, the boyfriend replies,
"I'm embarrassed to say it, but I'm a major stockholder in the family corporation."Michael then says,
"Don't be embarrassed. This contempt for money is just another trick of the rich to keep the poor without it."And he grants his blessing to the joyous couple.
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