Votare PDL Perché: l’Argumentum ad Excludenda

Votare PDL perché? Eppure non è molto difficile.

In due parole, perché non ha senso votare chi non vuole il tuo voto.

Quali sono le alternative disponibili:

  • Non voto: questo è un modo di dire che non importa chi vinca. Quindi, è un voto per chi vince. E non parliamo per favore della bislacca idea della “Dichiarazione del Non Voto“. Scelta illogica.
  • Grillo e Cinque Stelle: seguaci delle idee strampalate di Casaleggio. Andranno in Parlamento determinati a non fare accordi con nessuno, e quindi costretti a stare zitti. Chiusi al mondo esterno, si ritengono settariamente superiori. Impossibili da votare per chi è stato nel PDL.
  • Ingroia: un gruppo di ex-Giudici così interessati alla legalità e alla Costituzione da non pensarci due volte a trasferirsi dalle aule processuali al dibattito televisivo. Determinati a portare avanti le loro battaglie in altro consesso. Ciechi e sordi ai problemi della Giustizia al di là di quelli di categoria. Impossibili da votare per chi è stato nel PDL.
  • Bersani e il PD: reduci cattocomunisdemocratdisinistadessosolodemocratici che hanno cestinato l’idea di Renzi di aprire al voto già PDL, voto che quindi NON vogliono. Basterebbe questo a renderli impossibili da votare per chi è stato nel PDL. Poi aggiungiamo la patrimoniale e la morte collettiva per tasse, e stiamo a posto.
  • Monti: dopo aver tenuto l’indice di produzione industriale in un trend negativo per quindici-mesi-quindici, alleato a Casini e Fini. Descrive gli elettori PDL come topi. Davvero e assolutamente impossibile da votare per chi è stato nel PDL.
  • Giannino e FARE: conosce tutte le soluzioni e le applicherebbe anche, ma passa il suo tempo a spiegare a tutti perché non sia d’accordo con ciascuno dei tutti. Spreca inutilmente energie per unirsi all’antiberlusconismo. Magari un’altra volta: impossibile da votare per chi è stato nel PDL.

Silvio B avrà i suoi difetti, ma le elezioni non sono mai un concorso per scoprire la persona più adatta a governare fra tutti i cittadini della nazione. Sono un modo per scegliere il meglio che c’è.

Al cospetto dei concorrenti, e indipendentemente dal suo programma elettorale, Berlusconi rimane l’unica scelta.

The only thing to worry about is worry itself (and densely networked self-selecting intellectuals…)

or so tweeted on Jan 14 Mark Lynas of various fame including a Six Degrees” book I analyzed numerically a few years back, and recent GMO repentance.

One should be forgiven for finding the juxtaposition peculiar to say the least. Shouldn’t Mark be wary of scares, having just discovered years of activism were not based on science?

Or perhaps he belongs to the category of people that really need to find a worry to be scared about, if only to be activists about something. I suggested

It is actually the right time for making such a guess. Edge.org has chosen angst for its 2013 theme

2013 : WHAT *SHOULD* WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?

(Twitter hashtag: #edgeq13)

There are 152 contributions at that site, too many to mention and probably too many to make a wager about too. Here’s an initial list:

  • Chinese eugenics
  • Black swans
  • Ingenuous viruses
  • Rejection of Darwinism applied to humans
  • Misplaced worries
  • Catastrophic risks
  • Misinformation about science
  • Planetary catastrophes
  • Collective delusions
  • Internet drivel
  • Abandoning politics
  • Debt implosion
  • Search engines as arbiters of truth
  • Shortage of valuable mates
  • Tech fascism
  • Censorship
  • Data-controlling power
  • Loss of patience
  • Underpopulation
  • End of big experiments
  • Tools too strong for our own good
  • Infectious diseases
  • Search for ecstatic experiences
  • Pessimism that makes us accept human destruction as inevitable
  • Cultural homogenisation
  • Misunderstanding free will
  • Prolonged lifespans
  • Limits in science
  • Anti-intellectualism
  • Criminal-controlled states
  • Misunderstanding of probability
  • Missing out on non-human sentience
  • Myths about men
  • Science by social media
  • Public lying and cheating
  • The Singularity
  • Nuclear war
  • Squandered opportunities
  • Wrong incentives
  • Misunderstanding of quantum mechanics
  • Enforced global psychiatric standards
  • Too much focus on novel findings in science

On the positive side, it’s not just a collection of miserabilism. I particularly liked this one:

Unfriendly Physics, Monsters From The Id, And Self-Organizing Collective Delusions
John Tooby
Founder of field of Evolutionary Psychology; Co-director, Center for Evolutionary Psychology, Professor of Anthropology, UC Santa Barbara

[...]Because intellectuals are densely networked in self-selecting groups whose members’ prestige is linked (for example, in disciplines, departments, theoretical schools, universities, foundations, media, political/moral movements, and other guilds), we incubate endless, self-serving elite superstitions, with baleful effects: Biofuel initiatives starve millions of the planet’s poorest. Economies around the world still apply epically costly Keynesian remedies despite the decisive falsification of Keynesian theory by the post-war boom (government spending was cut by 2/3, 10 million veterans dumped into the labor force, while Samuelson predicted “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced”). I personally have been astonished over the last four decades by the fierce resistance of the social sciences to abandoning the blank slate model in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is false. As Feynman pithily put it, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” [...]

 

Insanity in the media (Australian temperature colours, and beyond…)

Much ado about new colours added to the Australian coloured temperature maps.

Then one reads (in a Revkin DotEarth post maddeningly relying on Joe Romm and Jeff Masters) “For the moment, while extreme and widespread heat is predicted to persist, the country looks to be avoiding the new purple zone“. So they could have added 15 colours for all we should care.

Then one reads (in a cursory NYT archive search on “australia heat”) the following piece from January 3, 1960:

Australia has a heat wave – SYDNEY, Australia, Jan, 2 (AP) – A heat wave gripped large areas of eastern and central Australia today. The highest official reading was 123 degrees at Codnadatta, in central Australia.

(123F=50.56C)

Who knows how many more examples of heat wave in early January in Australia one could find. But who cares.

What matters is that Global Warming has transmogrified into “it’s hot in summertime”.