Sunday, March 6, 2016
What Low Turnout?
I just got back from my town's Democratic caucus and can report that it was our heaviest turnout in the history of our town Democratic committee. It topped our previous record in 2008 by about 25%. There was general agreement that no matter who the nominee is that it's essential to elect a Democrat to the presidency and to have a Democratic congress. There were a few of the Bernie Sanders dead-enders but they were not more than a few in the large crowd. I have to say that the people who spoke for both candidates said that they would work for whichever one wins the nomination.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Turnout in the Texas Dem primary was a record high, too. In one Houston precinct they stayed open until 10 so voters could vote, because there weren't enough machines available. Allocation was based on expectations, and the turnout blew the records away.
ReplyDeleteAnd it was high across the state. Which I find kind of interesting.....
Totally off topic, but you probably want to read this: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/03/ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html
ReplyDeleteIt is not itself either a result of scientific reasoning nor even of the philosophy of science, but it is interesting, nonetheless.
That is an interesting article, devastating and, as the article points out, it is about an effect that was claimed to be so massively demonstrated over so many studies, that it can't but be extremely damaging to soc-sci.
DeleteThe huge irony in this is that that kind of review has been done systematically in only one area of human behavior, an area which has been rigorously critiqued and reviewed for methodological and analytical techniques, the file drawer effect, etc. and that area is the controlled research into parapsychology. And it is the area which has been most summarily rejected, a lot of that rejection done by conventional psychologists. I concluded, after looking at the opposition of that rigorous research by Ray Hyman. the most competent of the psychologist debunkers and concluded that if psychology were ever subjected to the methods he used to reject that research that psychology would evaporate. I think I first said something like that about fifteen years ago. I'll look to see when I first said it in a post but I'm pretty sure it was about ten years back.
Makes me think this kind of thing would collapse under the same analysis.
Deletehttp://www.salon.com/2016/03/06/altruism_may_be_an_illusion_the_neuroscience_that_explains_our_good_deeds_partner/
My first suspicion is that the data is being over-read, and conclusions are being leapt to like squirrels traveling rapidly between trees. It's also interesting that philosophy has examined this question for centuries, and is as solid in its conclusions, and on no firmer ground (or, conversely, just as firm) as this "science."
i mean, a model that has a predictive accuracy of "nearly 80 percent" is an impressive model; but it may also be completely wrong. Especially since the basis of the experiment, where it is argued that motive is eliminated so that only altruism or selfishness stand revealed, is subject to severe critique.
I'm always more than dubious whenever science thinks it can reduce human behavior to two sides of one coin, and then call those two sides distinct and opposite. What about the coin that joins them?