Occupy Wall Street Movement

[denuseri]

1) you either don't give the average american voter enough credit, in which case if he is as uninformed and manipulatable as you think he is, that's depressing

That's not it at all, in fact on average the current American voter is much better educated in some ways than his predecessors were from previous generations. However...the amount of choices he or she has other than a "write in" are limited by a number of factors, chief of which is who got on the ticket and how...the who is very apparent to the voters, its drubbed up sometimes over a year in advance for the big elections...the how (lobbyists actions and super pacs working behind the scenes) not so much. Also the "what exactly will you do about this or that subject" type questions are all neatly sidesteped with sophistry during the elections, or the candidate say they will do X, despite knowing doing X wont be something they can accomplish in that office etc. Though such things are covered extensively in political science, history, and sociology courses. As for not giving what ancient philosophers and other learned men in the past have revered as the "ignorant mob" enough credit....shrugs...the facts don't lie, historically the numbers add up. The corporate oligarchy is limiting the choices of the mob as they see fit to their clear advantage over that of the mob and money is the primary way in which they do it. I too agree that its depressing...at least from the perspective of those who are not super wealthy, but it is understandable, especially when one includes components of mass psychology into the mix along with actual statistical analysis.


2) I get what you're trying to say, but the math doesn't add up.

Actually there are very long historical trends conserning human behavior in this regard that predate the Roman Empire that totally make this all add up. So much so its information thats introduced at the intro level of a number of different courses that deals with issues of political science...its not just called a science to make it sound important.

People calling on behalf of candidate X (hypothetical incumbent) shouldn't matter. If someone lives in district X where representative X is, and district X is an incredibly conservative, catholic district, they wont vote for candidate X if he's pro-life regardless of hwo many signs are on lawns or what have you. Money does not really equal votes, and denu, i've taken my fair share of poli sci classes, (then you should know what I am speaking about) and i dont have much respect for the field. Thats very unfortunate and shortsited, but I would love to hear why not all the same. So to recap: either voters its are so stupid they vote for whoevers name sounds familiar (and if they're that dumb, special interests groups aren't making a difference anyway), or the 99% likes things the way they are. Its more of a mixture...when voters are polled concerning why they voted for some of the lesser offices they do give responses like "I recognized only that guys name" etc or "I didn't have any information on candidate X so I voted party line.

The media has much more to do with it than one may think too...Ron Paul sounds great to some people, they just love him around here...but...almost everyone I know isn't going to vote for him because they "precive" him as not having the same chance or better of ever winning his parties nomination, let alone a Presidential bid and that's totally due to how much media influence Ron Paul has...which is directly proportional to how much money his backers are slinging around. A certian district may be one sided in their views on average...but "collectively" they pretty much act and respond as expected to the certain applications of propaganda..as evidenced historically and starkly by what happened to Germany in the 30"s.


My opinion:
nothing will ever change because the average voter is not stupid per se, just really apathetic.
Oh and Ron Paul usually raises more on individual donations then any other candidate, GOP or Dem. It's not as if he's spending all out, it's that the only people who are polled are the ones who really care, the paul nuts 365 days a year

Herd like complacency and voter apathy also greatly angered the great philosophers of ancient Greece and the Roman Republic. Xenophon even wrote a nice little book about it.

[Punish_her]

Herd like complacency and voter apathy also greatly angered the great philosophers of ancient Greece and the Roman Republic. Xenophon even wrote a nice little book about it.

No, itsl called a science becaye asshole like sounding important. You cant empirically prove anything, therefore, its not a science, and what numbers add up? ou didnt even say anything. you cant empirically show that more money from superpacs equals more votes, and if you can showa basic, relationship, you cant even prove its causual.

[denuseri]

No, itsl called a science becaye asshole like sounding important. You cant empirically prove anything, therefore, its not a science, and what numbers add up? ou didnt even say anything. you cant empirically show that more money from superpacs equals more votes, and if you can showa basic, relationship, you cant even prove its causual.

lol...allrighty then...you go right on thinking its not a science if you want while the people who know it is use what they know to work the system.

Numbers don't lie. Cliometrics and it's uses in Political Science are well known factors that involve a lot of in depth statistical analysis.

If money wasn't a factor Romney wouldn't be pulling back ahead of Newt in the primaries right now.

On another note :

There is a lot of overlap in things the Tea Party and the Occupy movements want and I think they would be better served by combining their independent efforts and dropping or excluding the two primary parties from participation....haven't we seen this before with the Reform and Whig parties back in the day?

[tedteague]

lol...allrighty then...you go right on thinking its not a science if you want while the people who know it is use what they know to work the system.

Numbers don't lie. Cliometrics and it's uses in Political Science are well known factors that involve a lot of in depth statistical analysis.

If money wasn't a factor Romney wouldn't be pulling back ahead of Newt in the primaries right now.

On another note :

There is a lot of overlap in things the Tea Party and the Occupy movements want and I think they would be better served by combining their independent efforts and dropping or excluding the two primary parties from participation....haven't we seen this before with the Reform and Whig parties back in the day?

How can you establish an empirical, causal connection between campaign contributions and candidate electability. One could say that Huntsman receives no money because he is not popular, OR that he is not popular because he receives no money from PACs and special interest groups. This is my problem with the social sciences AS A WHOLE. the only two I can tolerate are econometrics (not micro or macro) and Psychology. The others don't seem to establlish much of a conclusion. And econ is rapdily losing any of the meager credibility it had before

[leo9]

How can you establish an empirical, causal connection between campaign contributions and candidate electability. One could say that Huntsman receives no money because he is not popular, OR that he is not popular because he receives no money from PACs and special interest groups. This is my problem with the social sciences AS A WHOLE. the only two I can tolerate are econometrics (not micro or macro) and Psychology. The others don't seem to establlish much of a conclusion. And econ is rapdily losing any of the meager credibility it had before

Nine tenths of the economists spent the last ten years telling us the world economy was getting better and better and nothing could possibly go wrong. The other tenth who told us we were riding for a fall were starting from exactly the same data and theories, so the fact that they were right just shows that they had better intuition, nothing to do with science.

As for psychology, it fails all the tests of a real science: its propositions cannot be falsified, its predictions do not come right more often than chance, and there is no objective way to test one theory against another. All successful schools of clinical psychology are based on the simple fact that most people can heal their own mental problems if they can talk to someone non-judgemental for long enough. It doesn't make a scrap of difference whether the listener calls hirself Freudian, Jungian, NLP, CBT, Behaviourist or whatever, so long as se has the nous to keep quiet and let the patient talk hirself out of trouble.

[thir]

Nine tenths of the economists spent the last ten years telling us the world economy was getting better and better and nothing could possibly go wrong. The other tenth who told us we were riding for a fall were starting from exactly the same data and theories, so the fact that they were right just shows that they had better intuition, nothing to do with science.

Or maybe the guts to stand up to status quo?

As for psychology, it fails all the tests of a real science: its propositions cannot be falsified, its predictions do not come right more often than chance, and there is no objective way to test one theory against another. All successful schools of clinical psychology are based on the simple fact that most people can heal their own mental problems if they can talk to someone non-judgemental for long enough. It doesn't make a scrap of difference whether the listener calls hirself Freudian, Jungian, NLP, CBT, Behaviourist or whatever, so long as se has the nous to keep quiet and let the patient talk hirself out of trouble.

While I find it horrible the way psychology is taken as an exact science to the extent of determining people's fates in a number of situations, I think this statement it going to far in the other direction.

Originaly psychologists were armchair thinkers and moralists, and there are lots of those still, to be true. But these days at least we have some imperical research as in collecting lots of material and comparing it all.

For example we have the big American and Norwegian investigations showing that people inot BDSM are no different from a vanilla control group. Or to put it in other words: we are normal. Meaning no disrespect to anyone ;-)

As for talk, there are those who have a sublime knack of helping people asking themselves the right questions, and thereby helping them rather better than just letting them talk. Also compiling info about special groups - alchoholics, junkies, terminally ill people, people who have been in wars or terrible accidents and so on have shown useful. For instance we know now why KZ prisoners and some soldiers can have so strange problems and act to weirdly.

But it is not an exact science and should not be treated as such.

[Thorne]

The biggest problem I have with psychology is that it deals in generalizations, but is used by some to make specific claims about individuals. As a group, people tend to behave within certain parameters, but individual variations within that group can vary tremendously. Not everyone who suffers a trauma, be it physical or emotional, will respond in exactly the same way. There may be similarities, but there's no hard and fast rule. So I agree with thir, it's not an exact science, and I'm not sure it should be classified as a science at all. More of an art form than anything else.