The Mythology of Thomas Sowell

[kalm]

A well written and researched piece on CH’s best guy.

Sowell presents himself as a dour realist, a man without illusions who has seen the error of revolutionary ideals (he was once a Marxist) and has come to tragic but, alas, empirically compelled conclusions about the limits on human beings’ abilities to better their societies through policy. He emphasizes over and over that while the intellectuals he disdains are operating from an ideology, he himself is concerned with empirical data and facts. “The one thing that saved me [from remaining on the left] was that I always thought facts mattered,” he has said. Nor is he promoting his specific values, for “a scholar’s moral duty is to faithfully promote the intellectual process among his students and his readers, not lead them to specific conclusions he sincerely believes to be best for society.”

Riley writes:

Sowell’s adherence to empiricism—to using data-driven evidence to test theories and examine social phenomena—is another distinguishing feature of his scholarship that is never out of date. The intellectual fads that so often animate academics and the media carry little weight with Sowell, who’s far more interested in learning the facts and then determining whether they match popular beliefs

.

I have written many times before about how certain thinkers on the right persuasively present themselves as objective and empirical when they are nothing of the kind. We should be wary of the “theater of logic”—guys who spend too much time proclaiming how much more logical and fact-driven they are than the rest of us saps.

In fact, it turns out that Thomas Sowell is not very interested in serious empirical evidence at all. His books rarely engage with the major academic literature on the subject he’s writing about, he cherry-picks the studies that are consistent with the ideological beliefs he already holds, he leaves out crucial pieces of data that would make his position look weaker (and make The Intellectuals looks less absurd), he argues with ludicrous straw men, and he makes totally unsupportable claims about work he has clearly not bothered to read.

Let’s take a few examples…

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/09/ ... opagandist

[houndawg]

A well written and researched piece on CH’s best guy.

Sowell presents himself as a dour realist, a man without illusions who has seen the error of revolutionary ideals (he was once a Marxist) and has come to tragic but, alas, empirically compelled conclusions about the limits on human beings’ abilities to better their societies through policy. He emphasizes over and over that while the intellectuals he disdains are operating from an ideology, he himself is concerned with empirical data and facts. “The one thing that saved me [from remaining on the left] was that I always thought facts mattered,” he has said. Nor is he promoting his specific values, for “a scholar’s moral duty is to faithfully promote the intellectual process among his students and his readers, not lead them to specific conclusions he sincerely believes to be best for society.”

Riley writes:

Sowell’s adherence to empiricism—to using data-driven evidence to test theories and examine social phenomena—is another distinguishing feature of his scholarship that is never out of date. The intellectual fads that so often animate academics and the media carry little weight with Sowell, who’s far more interested in learning the facts and then determining whether they match popular beliefs

.

I have written many times before about how certain thinkers on the right persuasively present themselves as objective and empirical when they are nothing of the kind. We should be wary of the “theater of logic”—guys who spend too much time proclaiming how much more logical and fact-driven they are than the rest of us saps.

In fact, it turns out that Thomas Sowell is not very interested in serious empirical evidence at all. His books rarely engage with the major academic literature on the subject he’s writing about, he cherry-picks the studies that are consistent with the ideological beliefs he already holds, he leaves out crucial pieces of data that would make his position look weaker (and make The Intellectuals looks less absurd), he argues with ludicrous straw men, and he makes totally unsupportable claims about work he has clearly not bothered to read.

Let’s take a few examples…

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/09/ ... opagandist

..when he isn't drooling in his porridge

[Caribbean Hen]

“As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.”
Thomas Sowell

[kalm]

“As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.”
Thomas Sowell

This is exactly the type of statement the article is talking about.

[Caribbean Hen]

“As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.”
Thomas Sowell

This is exactly the type of statement the article is talking about.

How so?

I suspected you wouldn’t like Thomas Sowell because he simply tells you the truth

[kalm]

This is exactly the type of statement the article is talking about.

How so?

I suspected you wouldn’t like Thomas Sowell because he simply tells you the truth

Another statement that highlights exactly what the article is saying. Someone didn’t read it.

[Caribbean Hen]

How so?

I suspected you wouldn’t like Thomas Sowell because he simply tells you the truth

Another statement that highlights exactly what the article is saying. Someone didn’t read it.

And someone didn’t answer the question

[kalm]

Another statement that highlights exactly what the article is saying. Someone didn’t read it.

And someone didn’t answer the question

The answer is a feature of the article you didn’t read. I’m not going to do your homework for you.

[Caribbean Hen]

And someone didn’t answer the question

The answer is a feature of the article you didn’t read. I’m not going to do your homework for you.

Because you know it’s BS

[houndawg]

The answer is a feature of the article you didn’t read. I’m not going to do your homework for you.

Because you know it’s BS

keep on dancin'...

[kalm]

The answer is a feature of the article you didn’t read. I’m not going to do your homework for you.

Because you know it’s BS

Like I’ve tried to explain to you before, Sowell is a hack who simply fits your ideological views of economics.

EG:

(Sowell:)”Anyone seriously interested in facts about the effects of minimum wage laws on employment can find such facts in innumerable examples from countries around the world, and in different periods of history. Most modern, industrial countries have minimum wage laws, but some do not, so their unemployment levels can be compared to the unemployment levels in other countries. It was news in 2003 when The Economist magazine reported that Switzerland’s unemployment rate ‘neared a five-year high of 3.9% in February.’ Switzerland had no minimum wage law. The city-state of Singapore has also been without a minimum wage law, and its unemployment rate has been as low as 2.1 percent in 2013. Back in 1991, when Hong Kong was still a British colony, it too had no minimum wage law, and its unemployment rate was under 2 percent. The last American administration without a national minimum wage law was the Coolidge administration in the 1920s. In President Coolidge’s last four years in office, the annual unemployment rate ranged from a high of 4.2 percent to a low of 1.8 percent.”

I don’t know if you realize quite how atrocious this paragraph is. Does Sowell give any criteria for why he chose these particular countries? Has he taken a random sample, or just a few anecdotes? How has he controlled for other factors that might affect unemployment rates? How does he know that unemployment was under 2 percent in Hong Kong in 1991 because of its lack of a minimum wage law, and not for other reasons? (Also, as far as I can tell, his statement about when America was last without a “national minimum wage law” is just flat wrong. Minimum wages were introduced under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. After Coolidge left office and Hoover took over, the Great Depression happened, and unemployment rose to about 25 percent, before minimum wages were introduced.1

[Caribbean Hen]

“Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them — instead of answering their arguments.
In a sense, the political left’s attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.”

[kalm]

“Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them — instead of answering their arguments.
In a sense, the political left’s attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.”

Quite literally what he does. Projection verified without the data an economist uses.

And if you had read the article, Nathan Robinson precisely answers the questions with facts.

[Caribbean Hen]

“The greatest moral claim of the political left is that they are for the masses in general and the poor in particular. That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many leftists themselves”

[kalm]

“The greatest moral claim of the political left is that they are for the masses in general and the poor in particular. That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many leftists themselves”

So again…more social commentary (which you agree with) but with zero economic support. Exactly as the article suggests.

[houndawg]

“Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them — instead of answering their arguments.
In a sense, the political left’s attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.”

note to CH: "Denigrate" means to look down on

[UNI88]

“Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them — instead of answering their arguments.
In a sense, the political left’s attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.”

“The greatest moral claim of the political left is that they are for the masses in general and the poor in particular. That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many leftists themselves”

Both of these statements apply to either extreme. To paraphrase.

“Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political right, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them — instead of answering their arguments.
In a sense, the political right's attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.”

“The greatest moral claim of the MAQA right is that they are for the masses in general and the working class in particular. That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many rightists themselves”

Just look at the fallacious arguments that the US is a Christian nation, book bannings, the treatment of LGBTQ+, attacks on free speech, etc.

You and Sowell are projecting again.

[Caribbean Hen]

“What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people—like themselves—need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.”

Sowell is carving you Turkeys up like the Lions are playing on TV …. He knows you guys

[UNI88]

“What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people—like themselves—need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.”

Sowell is carving you Turkeys up like the Lions are playing on TV …. He knows you guys

Ganny already shot kalm down on his argument that fascism was only a right-wing ideology his points also eviscerate your and Sowell's idea that fascism is an ideology of the left.

Fascism knows no political ideology or leaning. Doesn't matter if it's left or right, fascism is about power and control.

[kalm]

“What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people—like themselves—need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.”

Sowell is carving you Turkeys up like the Lions are playing on TV …. He knows you guys

The threat from the left is indeed regulation … people’s lives , the economy, the environment. So there can be overreach and good intentions built with bad solutions

What Sowell describes as taking decisions wary from people are often just agreed upon rules for a community decided through democracy and/or representative government. The GIGANTIC blind spot for people Sowell is the roll bad human natures like greed, low levels of education, and propaganda/manipulation.

Once again you and Sowell lose. I thought he was an economist? Yet you post little to nothing regarding facts.

I may rename this thread “The education of Thomas Sowell Fanbois”

[Caribbean Hen]

“Although the big word on the left is ‘compassion,’ the big agenda on the left is dependency. The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.”

Wow another truth bomb from Sowell

[SeattleGriz]

A well written and researched piece on CH’s best guy.

Sowell presents himself as a dour realist, a man without illusions who has seen the error of revolutionary ideals (he was once a Marxist) and has come to tragic but, alas, empirically compelled conclusions about the limits on human beings’ abilities to better their societies through policy. He emphasizes over and over that while the intellectuals he disdains are operating from an ideology, he himself is concerned with empirical data and facts. “The one thing that saved me [from remaining on the left] was that I always thought facts mattered,” he has said. Nor is he promoting his specific values, for “a scholar’s moral duty is to faithfully promote the intellectual process among his students and his readers, not lead them to specific conclusions he sincerely believes to be best for society.”

Riley writes:

Sowell’s adherence to empiricism—to using data-driven evidence to test theories and examine social phenomena—is another distinguishing feature of his scholarship that is never out of date. The intellectual fads that so often animate academics and the media carry little weight with Sowell, who’s far more interested in learning the facts and then determining whether they match popular beliefs

.

I have written many times before about how certain thinkers on the right persuasively present themselves as objective and empirical when they are nothing of the kind. We should be wary of the “theater of logic”—guys who spend too much time proclaiming how much more logical and fact-driven they are than the rest of us saps.

In fact, it turns out that Thomas Sowell is not very interested in serious empirical evidence at all. His books rarely engage with the major academic literature on the subject he’s writing about, he cherry-picks the studies that are consistent with the ideological beliefs he already holds, he leaves out crucial pieces of data that would make his position look weaker (and make The Intellectuals looks less absurd), he argues with ludicrous straw men, and he makes totally unsupportable claims about work he has clearly not bothered to read.

Let’s take a few examples…

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/09/ ... opagandist

Captain Klam gotta get his black whale.

Piece of shit racist.

[kalm]

A well written and researched piece on CH’s best guy.

.



https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/09/ ... opagandist

Captain Klam gotta get his black whale.

Piece of shit racist.

Don’t tell anyone I’m not a fan of hip hop either.

[SeattleGriz]

Captain Klam gotta get his black whale.

Piece of shit racist.

Don’t tell anyone I’m not a fan of hip hop either.

Exactly. See?!?

[Caribbean Hen]

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.

Thomas Sowell