House of Eratosthenes

Now, to state the obvious: This is not how mature adults argue a point. And by “mature adults” I mean, if you were truly worthy of having graduated from the eighth grade. If you were not worthy but they passed you on anyway, and then you went out in the great big wide world and got some real experience, I would expect you to pick up on what follows well before age thirty…

People with degrees make the wrong call just about as often as people without. Yes, even within the studied subject matter. The question is one notch higher on the relevance scale from a complete red herring, especially if you’re discussing something that doesn’t require a degree. Like, were we headed for a depression and are we headed for one now. You don’t need a degree to sit in judgment of that.

In fact – who would I ask about whether or not we’re headed for a depression at any given time? Someone who doesn’t have a degree. For the same reason, if you want to know if a pot of water is hot, you’re better off asking someone who’s finger is in it. That would be relying on personal anecdotes, which tends to be ill-advised, but for that particular question is there any better metric?

Awesome video. Important point. Contessa Brewer is just the most stark manifestation of a brand of flawed thinking that is actually pretty widespread. Because we’re taught think this way when we’re very young, in crappy schools — here’s a narrative, learn how to parrot it, don’t do any thinking for yourself, if someone ever challenges it then don’t engage the ideas just defend the narrative.

Telling a fact apart from an opinion? Aw, that’s just for anal retentive types. Real “thinkers” just learn to mimic things. Like a baby.

Contessa Brewer syndrome. Or something.

The “fact vs opinion” situation is one of my biggest hurdles as I represent leading-edge, emerging tech or thought and I encounter the “opinion” brigade all the time. It goes like this:
ME: “So, you can see how revolutionary this is. What do you think?”
THEM: “Oh, I don’t think it can work.”
ME: “Really? In spite of all this proof to the contrary, that’s your take on it. OK, then, tell me about your research in this area that leads you to believe that.”
THEM: “Well, I’ve never researched this particular topic. I just don’t think it will work.”
ME: “I see. So, that’s just your OPINION then, right?”

It’s similar to the Criminino vs Galileo argument. Everyone knew that all celestial bodies were perfect spheres until Galileo pointed his telescope at the moon and reported what he saw. Faced with new evidence that repudiated the prevailing paradigm of Aristotle-thought, Criminino punted…finally…because it took some time for the tide to change.

Same thing with the Left and the media. It’s going to take some time and, sadly, it may never happen.
- BillW. | 07/21/2011 @ 08:25
This is exactly why some Atlas Shrugged fans, myself among them, must hold out some reservations against the movie that hit the screen earlier this year. Your script up above aptly captures the spirit of all or most of the dialogues that took place between Dagny Taggart and her brother James…the movie, for the most part, fails to do this. It’s an important point that is not only central to the story, but tends to recur more and more often in real life as well, once you possess the background knowledge and experience to recognize it and go looking for it. Comes as naturally as breathing, to some people.
- mkfreeberg | 07/21/2011 @ 09:00
So Contessa’s criteria for commenting on something is to have a degree on that subject. That’s fair. To a point, mind you.

Setting aside all the other things like…he’s is a elected representative and gets to ah…vote on it…and…he was invited to appear on your show (and for some reason agreed)…presumably to give an answer to a question… let us focus on the person asking the question.

One would think that the person asking such a question would themselves have a degree in economics. But noooooo…Contessa, as you pointed out Morgan, has a degree in journalism, that’s it. She is qualified to…interview people.

By her own standards she’s not even qualified to have a opinion on anything else beyond that most important skill of asking people questions, reading what other people have written – other known as “news”….certainly not economics…the constitutionality of Obamacare…anything regarding war/war making/harsh interrogation techniques…what is a detainee /holding detainees /at Guantanamo Bay…you get my drift, right?

Why do I get the feeling I could go back, pour over all the interwebs/Youtube and find me some Contessa clips of her spouting off about a myriad of things she herself doesn’t think she is qualified to mouth off about?

I’d still do her. What!?! I’m qualified to say that, even she would have to agree.
- tim | 07/21/2011 @ 09:42
The inability to distinguish facts from opinions is perhaps THE defining characteristic of the modern muddleheaded liberal. Their “facts” almost invariably turn out to be of the “everyone knows” variety — everyone knows there were no WMDs in Iraq, everyone knows global warming is happening, everyone knows there was no link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, everyone knows Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house. Not only do they not have evidence for this, they don’t even have a clue about getting the evidence — these are the people who call Jon Stewart a “news source” and actually BRAG about getting their info from The Daily Show.

It’s so weird. If you asked them their opinion on, say, particle physics, they’d be happy to admit they don’t know. If you gave them a thought experiment — “gun to your head, how would you find out about the Third Law of Thermodynamics?” — they can come up with all kinds of plausible research strategies. But when it comes to issues like who sucks at Presidentin’ and who’s awesome at it, or what’s best for black people, or the US’s national security posture, or climate science… well, somehow they’re already bona fide experts in that shit. Who needs think tank white papers when you’ve got Daily Kos?
- Severian | 07/21/2011 @ 10:08
Never mind that Paul Krugman has a degree in Economics, and Thomas Sowell also has a degree in Economics, and there is little the two would agree on when it comes to .. economics.

Sowell talks about Economics as it is observed by looking at facts.

Krugman talks about economic theory, surmising things to be true and presenting them as facts. Both have degrees. Both would therefore fit Contessa’s definition of “expert”.

Which just goes to show you you can have a degree in economics and never deal in facts.

Why do I get the feeling I could go back, pour over all the interwebs/Youtube and find me some Contessa clips of her spouting off about a myriad of things she herself doesn’t think she is qualified to mouth off about?

Well see, she’s an expert by proxy. She talks to “experts” all the time.

And as I pointed out here,

They’re not open minded, they merely repeat and mimic the language and positions of people they think are open minded, right down to the recursive point of identifying those they should think are open minded — hoping to pass themselves off as thoughtful people in the know.

She must really think quite highly of herself. Well tim’s right. She is pretty hot. That probably doesn’t help her in the humility department, either.
- philmon | 07/21/2011 @ 13:00
The other point; the terms recession and recovery are specific economic terms. We may well be in a recovery but that does not mean everything is coming up roses and we’re all doing well. It doesn’t. If the economy was contracting by .02% and is now growing by .00002% we are in a recovery but that doesn’t tell the complete story.

The other thing about liberals and economics. They assume taxes will not affect behavior. That is; Maryland raised taxes on millionaires and were shocked to find that they then had fewer millionaires.
- Duffy | 07/21/2011 @ 13:16
I’d say she’s a NALF, but if that ever happened, Patti Ann Browne would never have me 😉
- philmon | 07/21/2011 @ 13:20
I saw her on the old Imus show when he was on msnbc. I guess it was some sort of official “introduction”, like a “coming out”. They destroyed here right there for all of us to see. It took maybe 10 minutes. I was more than surprised when she appeared as a “host” on some msnbc show later. She’s a complete airhead.
I followed Imus to Fox and have not been an msnbe viewer since then. Well, not completely true; I do surf by in the mornings when Fox is in commercial. I do this to further my education. Let’s see, what’s the Lie-of-the-day today sort of education. You gotta know the enemy.
- Pixelkiller | 07/22/2011 @ 15:37
Not only do they not have evidence for this, they don’t even have a clue about getting the evidence —
– Severian | 07/21/2011 @ 10:08

NR-Ah HA! This is why I (eventually) learned to apple-polish up to reference librarians, and the lost dark art of not bothering to learn EVERYTHING, when figuring out HOW to find stuff out made MOST “higher ed” educators (and tuition), “talking heads”, and professional politicians superfluous. Well, except for the unintentional amusement factor as, like Mr. Stuart, Mr.Maher, the entire cast of MSNBC, et. al., that PUNCTUATE their mal/ mis-information with AUTHORITATIVE tones.
This adoration for librarians is also why “Eratosthenes” caught my eye, apparently from my first Insta-lanche pursuit.
- CaptDMO | 07/26/2011 @ 20:05

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Does Contessa Brewer Have a Degree in Economics?Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Does Contessa Brewer Have a Degree in Economics?
Thursday, July 21st, 2011