Re: Every person must invoke The Overton Window daily.

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Wow, the Overton Window and "fringe atheists" in the same post. I think Ogged would be envious of the trolling your own blog potential.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 9:37 AM
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So did that dude read the thread here the other week, or what?


Posted by: Sifu Tweety | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 9:39 AM
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...and today was no exception.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 9:42 AM
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Listeria makes your kids smarter and big dairy is trying to keep them stupid in order to sell YooHoo.


Posted by: Opinionated Raw Milk Guy | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 9:46 AM
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I stayed out of the Overton Window conversation, but I will say that I absolutely love when there's some more radical water policy person in the room who gives me shelter to say my moderately radical things. Don't know if that person has pulled the Overton Window to the left, but it certainly lets me be (more of the) good cop.


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 9:59 AM
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Where was the Overton Window conversation? I missed a lot of Unfogged last week.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:00 AM
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6: I could tell you where it was, but it has moved to the left since then.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:02 AM
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On a more social science-y point, I think that you can only move the Overton Window if the attempt to move it isn't immediately rejected by the hearer. It isn't that you need a clear policy idea, it's that you need to make it past the initial filter we all have when we learn new information. That is, when we learn something new, we all try to think of a reason to ignore it if it doesn't meet with our preconceptions. You'd never get anything done otherwise. If you say something that directly contradicts a deeply held opinion, the hearer isn't going to shift his or her idea of 'middle of the road.' The hearer will ignore you.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:02 AM
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I feel that this post is trolling not just the blog in general but me personally. I'm going to try the reverse judo move of doing my work efficiently. Take that, Heebster.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:09 AM
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I really need a friend today. Any volunteers? I'll rub sunscreen on your back!


Posted by: Pauly Shore | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:10 AM
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These accusations of trollery are clearly just trying to shift the Overton Window towards more thoughtful blogging. I call shenanigans.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:15 AM
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8:Social science is not very illuminating if you use a two-person model, and discourse analysis has little to do with an art of personal persuasion.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:26 AM
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I stayed out of the Overton Window conversation, but I will say that I absolutely love when there's some more radical water policy person in the room who gives me shelter to say my moderately radical things. Don't know if that person has pulled the Overton Window to the left, but it certainly lets me be (more of the) good cop.

Conversely, I really hate online conversations about, say, rating agencies, because I always end up defending them, or at least seeming to. It's not totally analagous, but in my day-to-day conversations, I'm a pretty harsh critic of the agencies, because I've seen (more or less) first hand what they've got wrong and how. But those criticisms generally get set aside when I'm talking about them in a forum like this, because you guys (broadly read) don't care about SIV capital models or correlation assumptions in ABS CDOs. But you do care about downgrading the USA, on which I think S&P is right (although they did it in a sloppy manner and way too late in my opinion). So I end up being the bad cop, as it were.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:28 AM
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12: Social science is very often not illuminating, but I'm not using a two-person model. I'm using what I learned when studying in public opinion, especially as it relates to the media's input, and trying to simplify it without expending much effort.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:29 AM
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Discourse analysis is about speech-acts in micro- and macro-political multi-dimensionality hegemonies, and the Overton Window is about the performativity of the powerless. The excluded subject does not seek power, does not seek to persuade, but only recognition of her existence. This increase in the range of "subjects" is an attempt to interrogate the "objectivity" of the controlling consensual discourse.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:34 AM
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8: How well tested is the acceptance of extreme messages after years of repetition?


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:35 AM
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Carthago delenda est, and whatnot.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:35 AM
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Was it really that extreme to want to destroy Carthage, for a Roman?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:38 AM
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and the Overton Window is about the performativity of the powerless

You've taken a poorly defined term and made it even more meaningless. Are you sure you're really proletarian?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:39 AM
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||
Pauly Shore is in North Carolina today, wearing tiny pants.
|>


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:53 AM
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20: I've seen smaller.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 10:58 AM
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Proletarian manque

Jest thinking a little 'bout them hegemons.

Seems to me, that if the OW is defined as the limits of (a) discourse, it will not be moved from within, by someone inside the discourse.

This has implications.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:00 AM
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One of my co-workers has a brother who works at the TV station. He sent her this email this morning, which she forwarded to me, completely unaware of my special relationship with Pauly:

"Pauly Shore is in our studio right now, doing an interview. He is wearing shorts that are so tiny, he is having to pull his shirt down over his crotch to avoid showing his junk on air."


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:02 AM
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Was it really that extreme to want to destroy Carthage, for a Roman?

No, but only because of the Catonian Window.


Posted by: Merganser | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:02 AM
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Considering how close we are and our longstanding relationship, I wish Pauly had consulted with the Mineshaft about his wardrobe. We could have given him gentle guidance towards pants, in the manner of the Fug girls.


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:05 AM
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gentle guidance towards pants

The standard Mineshaft position on pants is that there be none. Are you trying to shift the OW, Megan?


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:09 AM
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I assume he is falling on the Overton sword to make 'Shaftian pants more acceptable. I assume he's helping Apo, primarily.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:10 AM
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Stanley is just trying to shift the Overton pwnage window to make it look like I repeated his joke.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:11 AM
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It is easier for a war elephant to pass through the Overton Window than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:13 AM
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Overton windows can be dangerous.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:14 AM
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I love it when Clarissa bob Explains It All.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:21 AM
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When life gives you hegemony, make hegemonade.


Posted by: Merganser | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:41 AM
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13: I care about correlation assumptions. S&P rated tens of thousands of subprime mortgage-backed securities AAA and then had to downgrade 80-90 percent of them, but won't rate the U.S. government AAA because the government isn't paying them so they can posture on this issue cost-free.

S&P has no information on the U.S. political system that is not shared by the whole world, so they add nothing informationally. U.S. debt is not risk free, but neither is anything else you might want to substitute into.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:47 AM
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13, 33: We have to find a formula that allows Ginger Y to stop defending ratings agencies. Here's what I propose:

We acknowledge that it's not unreasonable to rate U.S. debt as AA, but note that S&P lacks the integrity and expertise to be trusted to do this, and that the agency's rationale for the downgrade sucked.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 12:53 PM
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34: The discussions I've read online have convinced me that that it is pointless (or even potentially harmful) for the ratings agencies to even bother to rate the bonds of the G7.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 1:02 PM
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Certainly pointless. Crude national stereotypes work better than the rating agencies. Actually looking at borrowing and interest and tax collection is even more accurate and relatively easy.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 1:16 PM
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Is "safer than US treasuries" really an important category that anyone cares about? Shouldn't the rating system just be pegged to US treasuries at AAA? After all, if people are worried about an investment being unsafe then their reaction is to sell them and buy US treasuries.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 1:31 PM
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36: Nate Silver accuses S&P of rating countries based on crude national stereotypes.

For instance, the S.&P. ratings have an extremely strong relationship with a measure of political risk known as the Corruption Perceptions Index, which is published annually by Transparency International. These ratings have been the subject of much criticism because they are highly subjective, relying on a composite of surveys conducted among "experts" at international organizations who may have spent little time in most of the countries and who may instead base their judgments on cultural stereotypes.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 1:33 PM
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Shouldn't the rating system just be pegged to US treasuries at AAA?

Isn't building self-sealing assumptions into a ratings system a bad idea?


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 1:44 PM
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38: Right, but just using the stereotype without the 'experts' is much cheaper.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 1:55 PM
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33-50, excluding the Moby:Privileged whining. Greece didn't like its ratings either.

Stirling Newberry on the London Riots and the "Left" Stirling is in a very take-no-prisoners mood anymore

Realize that your own heroes are foreign to you. Bob Dylan wrote a song about a man who might, or might not, be a murderer, but was certainly not in a good place. Labor Unions defended people who threw bombs. The very fabric of your myth is that Ghandi and MLK played a set at Woodstock, and the War Ended with the Black People voting. This is now a caricature to the point of dishonesty, and the rioters in the street, they are going to bomb your Church of Capitulation.

You don't even have the technocratic convictions of the people who created your movement. In the 1900-1950 period, a liberal would look at the riots, and not blame the rioters, who are, after all, products of their environment, but instead would have pointed out that this was the inevitable result of cuts, incarceration, and corruption. They would have advised spending a great deal of money to improve the objective conditions of the people who might otherwise riot, and bring them hope.

You shit on them. You don't even have the empathy of a soulless technocrat, but instead think "my apartment! it could be burning!" In this, you believe precisely the same thing, as President Assad of Syria. And so, are headed in the same direction.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 2:03 PM
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And here we go...

I care about correlation assumptions. S&P rated tens of thousands of subprime mortgage-backed securities AAA and then had to downgrade 80-90 percent of them, but won't rate the U.S. government AAA because the government isn't paying them so they can posture on this issue cost-free.

This is precisely what I'm talking about. I've got no interest in defending their ratings of US subprime related stuff, but that doesn't mean they're posturing when they downgrade a country which just had a massive political crisis over a procedural vote to let it pay its debts, and which has shown zero ability to get its fiscal (or economic) situation under control. And, as I always have to point out, AA+ does not mean they think the US is going to default. It means they think it's extremely unlikely the US is going to default. Just ever so slightly more likely than when it was AAA.

S&P has no information on the U.S. political system that is not shared by the whole world, so they add nothing informationally.

Quite. So I don't understand why people get so worked up about it.

The discussions I've read online have convinced me that that it is pointless (or even potentially harmful) for the ratings agencies to even bother to rate the bonds of the G7.

I wouldn't disagree with that. But people want them to, and they do. And once you start rating them, you've got to downgrade them if they become riskier or you call into question the whole point of what you're doing. Again, I realise their performance in structured finance does that too, but that doesn't mean they're going to throw their hands in the air and say fuck it. They're deeply flawed, but it still seems bizarre to criticise them for actually doing their jobs this time, regardless of the new informational content.

Is "safer than US treasuries" really an important category that anyone cares about? Shouldn't the rating system just be pegged to US treasuries at AAA? After all, if people are worried about an investment being unsafe then their reaction is to sell them and buy US treasuries.

This isn't necessarily a bad argument, but it's a contingent one. It's predicated on Treasuries always being the ultimate risk free benchmark/flight to quality asset. That's certainly true now, but it wasn't always so and may not be future. In theory, if not actually in practice, ratings are supposed to be comparable over time.

More importantly, it's not how they're used in practice, which is (at least partly) as a relative measure of credit risk. It creates an absurdity to give a country a higher rating than another entity which you say is less likely to default. What happens if the US does default? Suddenly every rated entity in the world has an assessed default probability of 1.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 2:05 PM
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S & P are not "wrong" in their ratings methods and practices.

They are the Enemy.

At least, my enemy, in a very long list.

They don't need to be refuted, they need to be destroyed.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 2:06 PM
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When I clicked through to read the post, in was a lot less annoyed by it than in the excerpts in the OP, fwiw.

And I know everybody is extremely bored of this by now, but I will say again that the spheres of consensus/legitimate debate/deviance paradigm for viewing public debate on an issues has been extremely useful for me.

It is absolutely, indisputably true in several fields that I work in that extremist rhetoric has moved certain topics from the sphere of deviance in the sphere of legitimate debate.

Heck, forget the fields I work in, it happened with torture. If you'd asked the 20-something me whether the US would ever openly admit to and endorse torture I wouldn't have believed it.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 3:47 PM
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in s/b I


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 3:48 PM
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42:
S&P has no information on the U.S. political system that is not shared by the whole world, so they add nothing informationally.

Quite. So I don't understand why people get so worked up about it.

Because the fuckwits who actually run the economy are worked up about it and are actively plunging the world into a doubledip recession?

It shouldn't matter, but the people who decide what does and doesn't matter have decided that this is a big deal and therefore it is.


Posted by: Martin Wisse | Link to this comment | 08- 9-11 11:35 PM
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Quite. So I don't understand why people get so worked up about it.

Yeah, wow. It's almost as though the ratings agencies have some sort of influence over investor behaviour.

Of course if everybody was working "informationally" the logical thing to do would be to take one look at the shitshow of the US political system and head for the hills. Purely rational investor behaviour is something we probably shouldn't be wishing for.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 08-10-11 12:02 AM
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which has shown zero ability to get its fiscal (or economic) situation under control.

The U.S. does not have a fiscal problem. We do have an economic problem and a political problem.


Posted by: PGD | Link to this comment | 08-10-11 10:40 AM
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And, as I always have to point out, AA+ does not mean they think the US is going to default. It means they think it's extremely unlikely the US is going to default. Just ever so slightly more likely than when it was AAA.

Quite. Another point: imagine yourself back in 1999, when the US economy was healthy and the federal budget was heading further into surplus. If you'd been told everything that has just happened, don't you think that'd change your opinion a bit?


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 08-10-11 10:52 AM
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