Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

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You're pretending that if something good happens after a government action it was all planned

I'll admit that I'm walking a dangerous line with the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. I stand by my judgment of the examples cited, but agree there is some room for debate.

I think the NASA example fails not because I'm being too narrow, but because the initial stated objectives were so fuzzy and broad. More importantly, these stated objectives were probably just secondary, a rationalization to enable the true objective - the nationalistic desire to win the "space race" against the Soviets. JFK, who initially got the whole ball rolling, actually wanted nothing to do with space exploration. His backing of it was really just a political ploy. (of course, in pointing this out, I'm making your point to a certain degree: JFK set out to score political points, and in the end he wound up bringing us velcro and ICBMs - yes, I'm being snarky there)

That said, you've also given me the best reply to my question: ARPAnet. While it wasn't large at the time, it was certainly complex (beyond my ability to understand all of its technology, anyway). And since it was developed for defense purposes, the end positive consequences are in a whole different ballpark than what was originally planned.

Anyway, what really drives my questioning here is a Megan McArdle post from yesterday [1] about a political science class at John Hopkins about policy failures. She quotes the prof. as talking about opening minds to critical thinking about the endless ways in which the best-laid plans can go awry.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-04/learning-from-iraq-...

"nationalistic desire" implies an inward looking reason, right?

As I read it, it was part of the fight for the hearts and minds of the 3rd world, the "Western" 1st World's approach to things vs. the Communist's 2nd World approach. Eisenhower let the Soviets orbit the first satellite to de facto establish his Open Skies policy, which the Soviets were mightily objecting to (the principle that outer space overflights were beyond territorial claims like those for airspace) ... but that the usual internal infighting led to our being visibly behind the Soviets in the most visible form of high technology. Which severely weakened our sales proposition to the 3rd World....

One explicit objective that developed, especially after LBJ took over, was uplifting the South with high tech. The opportunity of spending an extra billion in Texas is why we didn't build any infrastructure in space....

If you're going to stand by your judgment, you should do so on both sides.

Actors within government are generally aware that their actions have some negative consequences. They have a lot of smart people who tell them about problems that can (and will) occur, along with some likelihoods of the magnitude and frequencies of those problems. So under your classification scheme, there really aren't many unintended downsides of governmental action.

You seem to be conflating the public marketing of a policy (it will be sunshine and rainbows) with the internal understanding of a policy (it will solve a few problems, create a few different problems, and hopefully net positive).

You seem to be conflating the public marketing of a policy with the internal understanding of a policy

Yes. I'm doing that consciously, because I think it's appropriate. The very nature of the question is that when it's presented to the public, only the public marketing is on display. At the time we're debating a policy, we can guess at the internal agenda but we never really know for sure until later (if at all).

So if we're trying to learn from history and apply it to today's policy debate, of what use is a history that separates the hidden agenda - a factor that we are unable to know and make use of at the time the decision is being made?

It's in no way appropriate. You're purposefully conflating completely different arguments to try to score cheap political points.

And it's almost comic that you're essentially pretending that nobody talked about potential problems and failure modes for various healthcare reforms prior to the passing of Obamacare.

It saddens me that you seem to be an otherwise intelligent person, but you're so blinded by your ideology that you don't realize what intellectually dishonest nonsense you're spewing.

I respond poorly to people accusing me of intellectual dishonesty without demonstrating in what way I'm being dishonest. In my defense, if you look back through this thread, when specifically confronted about the arguments, I directly addressed the "no true Scotsman" issue, for example.

It's true that I'm not impartial here, but there's every indication that you're not either, yet you're trying to pin it all on me.

Of course problems and potential failure modes were debated; that was part of the public marketing. But there clearly was a hidden agenda that we still don't know. Why else would they have worked so hard to pass something overnight -- as if it were an emergency -- and including language making it so far from what anyone wanted and containing provisions contradicting what had been promised (and with every indication that (at the outset, anyway) those promises were sincere?

But where in the debate do you see any discourse about the hidden agendas of either side? How in the world can we include this in today's discussion when even now it can only be speculation? And how can I be intellectually dishonest with it, then, if we can't know what it is?

Sidebar: The debate we had included raging dishonesty on both sides. On the pro side we had misdirection about the problems the bill was putatively intended to solve (preexisting conditions were already significantly addressed by HIPAA; uninsured could already get catastrophic care at hospitals, financed by the government) and funding (expenditure estimates were cooked by showing a runtime starting years before actual outlays began, in order to minimize the deficit impact). On the anti side we had hyperbole about "death panels" and about the government taking over the industry, etc.

I directly addressed the "no true Scotsman" issue, for example.

No, you didn't. You simply asserted that you weren't committing that fallacy.

Similarly, you simply asserted that when evaluating unexpected positive and negative consequences of an action, it is acceptable to dismiss nearly all of the positive ones while including nearly all of the negative ones. This is obvious nonsense, but you couldn't see the problem because you're blinded by your ideology.

And after that you engaged in the always fun sport of moving the goalposts. You switched your argument from 'there are no unintended positive consequences' to a completely unrelated set of complaints about public discourse.

You were intellectually dishonest. If you can't see this, it is only because you do not wish to see it. Your cognitive dissonance will not change reality.

I respond poorly to people accusing me of intellectual dishonesty without demonstrating in what way I'm being dishonest.

Grow up.

* You simply asserted that you weren't committing that fallacy.*

I acknowledged that there was room for debate, yet you offered none. I explained why I thought that I was on the correct side of the line (because the NASA case had objectives too fuzzy to judge), despite it being a close call.

I also acknowledged that a further example you gave (ARPAnet) was, in fact, a pretty good response to my initial question. You didn't pursue this point, yet I think it demonstrates that I'm not dishonestly throwing out all counterarguments.

You accuse me of "purposefully conflating completely different arguments to try to score cheap political points." Yet in my remarks about JFK and the space race, which in the sequence of the conversation seems to be what you're referring to, I was quite explicit in admitting "in pointing this out, I'm making your point to a certain degree".

I don't believe that your claim that I'm moving the goalpost has merit. I was pretty explicit in that I was looking for positive results that were qualitatively unexpected. The examples cited to me (with the exception of ARPAnet) were positive ones, but they were quantitatively unexpected. Saying "that worked better than we thought" is very different from saying "that had benefits that we didn't foresee".

Turning this around, now, and looking back on your own claims... your initial statement was "One other thing we can be very sure about this law: there's going to be a bunch of 'unintended consequences'", i.e., with certainty there will be positive consequences that weren't intended. Based on the context (that we're discussing employment effects of a sort that I don't recall ever seeing discussed in the PPACA debating), and the connotations of the word "intended" (as contrasted to the word "expected"; to me, the latter might have referred to quantitative differences but this doesn't work so well for the former), I interpret this to mean that there is a certainty of positive consequences that were qualitatively unintended.

You were intellectually dishonest.

It seems to me that -- as you're accusing me -- you're making brash and unfounded ideological pronouncements. That's what I intended to challenge, because it sounds preposterous to me. If the outcome you promise is certain, then there must be such a laundry list of them from past endeavors that you'll be able to rattle off a list in no time. I couldn't think of a single one (although, as noted above, ARPAnet is one example). So I challenged for examples.

And only one of the examples met the conditions that I believe were implied by your original statement (or how I interpreted it, anyway), that is, positive qualitatively unintended consequences to a large, complex governmental program.

You may disagree with me, but I think the fact that we've only come up with a single example (in between the name-calling) pretty well shows that such outcomes are far from a certainty.

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