There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.
– Robert Peel
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Samizdata quote of the dayDecember 21st, 2010 |
 25 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
I don’t get.
…it.
Alisa, it is a statement of the bleeding obvious, as Basil Fawlty would say. After all, if he’d said ‘All politicians deal only in facts, 24/7/365+1/4.’, who’d have believed him?
Sorry Nuke, but even now that I am much more awake, I still don’t get it. Maybe I need more context – I’ll try to google the quote and see what comes up.
It’s about power. Whatever floats the boat is deemed ‘fact’.
But that is the human condition, I guess. More or less.
Found nothing.
I think it alludes to how mutually exclusive worldviews are equally popular among equally acclaimed experts. If 5000 Keynesians and 5000 Austrians (both camps full of Nobel laureates) yell at you what is “fact”, it’s not very ascertainable who is right.
But Peel is talking about politicians, not experts – is he not? Politics is not about facts, it is about power to influence and control.
Context would be useful with this quote.
John, it sounds like you are on the right track, but if so, Peel failed to express himself clearly – which is also part of the human condition, I guess:-)
Well, add to the choir of experts that each camp is spinning past events in their favor, there is massive misinformation on all sides.
Politics is applied social science, in that policies try to make people do stuff to make certain desired things happen. But social science is subject to the garbage in garbage out problem. So is proper science of course, but at least we can tell garbage out when we see it. Exploding space shuttles and what have you. Politics use ‘facts’ as input. The problem is that it is not ‘fact’ but often faulty assumptions based on dodgy or irrelevant data.
I think basically what the quote is saying is that there are no facts in politics, just bullshit.
I disagree, Peter. Politics have existed long before social “sciences” – in fact, they have existed as long as the human race have. Politics is a competition for power. Are there facts in a competition? That question doesn’t make sense.
Cold, hard, objective facts … “fact” is of course much less robust conceptually than at first glance.
Political facts are usually judgements, selections and interpretations of complex situations.
The only true political facts are the contents of official records, which are factually the content of official records.
When politicians wish to change their stance, they will generally choose to change the facts rather than their principles.
But politics is just one area where facts are so highly contested for ulterior motives. Ask your ex-partners about the facts of your relationships!
In politics, nobody says what they mean. And when what they meant becomes inconvenient they retroactively change the meaning later. So promises are broken, and no prediction ever turns out to be wrong. What anybody does say is entirely rhetorical and free from principle. And as much as possible. free from meaning: a vague statement is more easily explained away. Where possible, even actions are hidden behind layers of institutions so that later, when it all goes wrong, no-one knows who to blame. Information is cherry-picked to server a purpose: facts are slaves to expedience.
More concisely, PeterT’s last sentence.
He speaks truthiness.
Alisa, most leaders will seek to justify their actions whether or not they are elected. Of course they might be able to use brute force to have their way, but I am not sure this is politics in any meaningful way.
Any justification will require an argument of the sort: these are the facts, it is a fact that pursuing this line of action will have this consequence, ergo if we want this consequence we should pursue this action.
All I mean by saying that politics is applied social science is that reasons are usually given by politicians for their actions. The reasoning can be faulty, it could be based on shaky facts, or it could be based on the best facts available analysed in the most rational way possible, but still prove woefully inadequate for dealing with the wonderful intricacy of the world. This of course is the tragedy of social science.
Peter: simply put, you are saying that politicians/leaders/elites use facts to manipulate the populace to serve their goals – right? If so, the problem is not with facts, but with the fact that they are used to manipulate the populace. Most politicians are not stupid enough to make up facts out of thin air (which is what the quote seems to be implying), it the way the facts are presented and used that’s the problem.
The problem is with both the politicians and the facts, or rather the actions that are justified by them. Or put another way, government doesn’t work, especially if politicians are running it, even if they are honest, but especially if they are not, which quite often they aren’t. I’m not sure this is what Peel meant anymore but its what I mean. Its about the nature of knowledge and its general uselessness outside of the hard sciences.
Yes, my problem is not with you, it is with Peel and his phrasing…Anyway, that horse seems to be dead by now:-)
I repeat – context would be useful (indeed essential) with this quote.
Was Peel talking about POLICY (in which case he was talking nonsense).
Or was he talking about how one gets to (and stays at) the top in politics, and how one gets one’s favoured policies put into practice – where the ally of one minute may be the enemy of the next minute, where all is shifting sand, and there are indeed no objective facts.
Alsila-
Social “science” existed long before the social sciences, it is as old as mankind. We all have theories about how other people behave and use them in our daily lives. Most of us are more accurate than institutional social scientists of course, largely because social science is mostly marxist bollocks.
Surely everyone knows that a ‘fact’ is any assertion that supports a Higher Truth?
“D’ye ken Rob Peel with his quote so gay?”
Sorry.
Would this be the same Rob Peel that invented the Police Force, without which we would all now be out in the streets raping and murdering old ladies (as, indeed, most people did right up to the eve of the appearance of the Peelers on the streets of London)? Remarkable man, if so. It must feel good to have single-handedly brought about Civilization.
Seems just an application of the Hume dichotomy between is and ought. To the degree to which a fact is just a fact it might be used in politics but is not a “political” fact – it’s just a fact. In politics there is typically a “therefore we should do x” rather than the mere trotting out of a series of facts. That is, the appeal to a view of what should be the case, of what the role of the state should be, of what ought to be done about something (or that nothing should be done). It could also be taken to reject the idea that there is a realm of the exclusively political – something which would make facts of a particular sort political.