However, I think Hillary Clinton is capable of more directed change than Obama. But I suppose we’ll see. I’m just convinced that, even if elected, Obama will never measure up to the expectations he has set for himself.

Maybe Obama would pursue a more sensible diplomacy but I believe Hillary would, too. But a “less confrontational politics, and a more compassionate society here at home?” I don’t know that either candidate is capable of that–or anyone, for that matter. How do you legislate that, exactly? Well, it obviously shouldn’t be legislated–but that’s my point. How do you get people to be more compassionate or less confrontational? And how does that make more jobs, provide for the poor and elderly, or solve the immigration controversy? Moms and Dads should teach compassion and how to handle confrontation. I have parents, and I want something different in our next president.

Since Sean has conclusively debunked the idea that low-entropy states can ever arise from high-entropy states by means of a fluctuation, the present government can only have evolved from better governments in the past. Ergo, Sean believes that Reagan was better than Bush senior, who in turn was better than Clinton, etc. All that remains is to explain the utter perfection of George Washington.

This is the argument that creationist use against evolution. You aren’t a closet creationist are you Required?

The point is the life and human societies use available free energy to locally reduce entropy at the cost of increasing it overall. Hence global warming.

but I think we should be careful when changing the fundamental structure of how our economy runs, because there are far more ways it could get worse than get better.

We rapidly change the ‘fundamental structure’ of how our whole world runs. If we fail to adjust our economical and political systems to it, the outcome is worsening through doing nothing. The alternative is to slow down change. Best,

B.

The reason I side with liberals, even on economic issues, is because I see conservatives as those advocating for this kind of dangerous change. Our country was most prosperous under a better-funded government with higher taxes and greater regulatory power. The changes during the Bush administration take us away from that, and Republicans are pushing for more. This is happening at a time when we should be pushing in the other direction, because the ‘experiment’ of the 50s-60s showed that overall well-being was increasing as we moved in that direction. On the other hand, Democrats seem pushing for policies that aren’t even “centrist” in that they don’t even fully restore taxation levels of the recent past. The most dangerous proposal on the table is public health care, which most of us support because we believe the social value to be worth any possibility for economic damage.

upshot is that crying for change is nothing but a tautology. so actually putting change into the rhetoric can be a sign of contact with reality and therefore rather positive as such. or can you imagine kim yong il crying out for change?

I think a better comparison with politics are Nash equilibrium points and a system that is driven/damped into some sort of strange attractor basin around these Nash points. The two main Nash equilibrium points are Democraps and Republithugs. The driving force that drives the ball around the basin of attraction is money, and the Fourier expansion of frequencies of this driving force look a lot like WallStreet.

Though seriously we need a serious change of the guard, and Obama looks like the best bet at this point. I was originally for Kucinich, but so much for that.

There has been one remarkable thing about GW Bush. I dislike hearing him, and I dislike seeing images of him. The two together is simply too horrible, and as a result I never watch the TV new programs — and that is a blessing. Thank you GW Bush for that small favor, but it fails to make up for the rest of your horrors.

Lawrence B. Crowell

“If you cry ‘Forward!’ you must make it absolutely plain which direction to go. Don’t you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?”

Anton Chekhov

However, we observe that policy changes are generally not entropy (or work) neutral. Historically, government workload increases, and entropy decreases in democratic societies. So a pessimist would say that the difference in political flavors merely changes whether you spiral towards the (bad) low entropy state in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.

I don’t support this policy but I think she is saying that, once they’ve been convicted of a crime, there will be no recourse for the criminal to not get deported. The crime will have the usual legal process.

Given the current administration (regime) almost any change would be good as IMHO they are much closer to “bad” in your diagram as can be tolerated in a democratic society. Just look at the proposed budget. Increase defense spending and cutbacks on health and education and ever widening deficits to protect the tax cuts on the rich. I think that’s what “change” is really code for. Moving in the opposite direction. The cost of the war alone is likely to exceed one trillion dollars.

I also think that the political process is more about personality than substance on the issues. We should (I think this is a topic of an SF novel) vote for algorithms (not to be confused with Al Gore Rhythms) which define policy positions and execute them without personalities involved (or insurance/pharmaceutical lobbyists either)

I voted for Obama. But I think Clinton would be a fine president as well. I actually like her position on health care a touch more than Obama’s. But her refusal to admit a “mistake” on the vote to authorize the war is a sticking point for me.

e.

“I cannot say whether things will get better if they change.
But this much I can say: things must change if they are to get better.”

– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

IMO we should be most critical of anyone who is making things just a little bit worse so they can be spectacularly better eventually. Much more so then we are at the moment.