Posts Tagged ‘New Zealand’

Fallacies

I have to confess that I learnt nothing about logic during my school and university years because there's no education on this topic (well unless you do philosophy in University). You can sort of argue "critical thinking" encouraged in universities share some similarities with logical thinking, but I think they are still two different subject.

However, thanks to Wikipedia and university library, people like me can get a chance to browse through the subject.

I personally think logic is an extremely useful subject as it can be applied to nearly every aspect of real life. If you can keep yourself as a rational and clear thinker, which means to know at least the most common type of fallacies,  the world is suddenly a totally different place through your eyes - you realise that fallacies that are designed to trick you to buy products or vote for a party are just everywhere. Now you sort of understand the lack of education on logic among the general public, otherwise nobody can sell anything.

I was discussing about common logic fallacies with my friend. We were discussing fallacies in the last election, below is just a summary of our ideas in the conversations, they are quite interesting, but may not be necessarily right - and I just sort of copy and pasted from the chat, changed a bit, but this entry my not look like a blog, I apologise for that.

Appeal to fear is the most common type of fallacy politicians like to use. Fear, for us mankind, is a very natural instinct, any fear card played by politicians are usually quite useful, especially for the minor parties.

A classic example of this is Winston Peters - fear of immigration, particularly appealing to mid-aged and senior voters. Proven to be successful in last few elections - not so well to neutralise the bad publicity as the result of his corruption scandals in the last election.

Another not so well known fear card player is Rodney Hide - I'm not sure whether I judged him right or not, but he has a tendency of manipulate public's fear of crime.

But Helen Clark is the worst player of fear I've ever seen - her attack on the credibility of John Key has proven to be disastrous. She just got no skills on how to logically trick the general public - still remember the "two national party guy" ad? It basically means, "John Key is untrustworthy, so Helen Clark must be trustworthy" - a classic example of play on a combination of fear and false dilemma.

So how about National Party? They just didn't need to do anything as they were already on the road to victory. However, you can still trace some of their plays ...

• "a change for a brighter future" - does a change really necessarily mean a "brighter future"? This statement looked more real after Obama's victory, apart from people like to follow the majority in America for a "change" , why?
• "communism by stealth" - not a election slogan, but good a mention as it is a classic example of name calling -  how much you know about communism, apart from USSR? Is it necessarily bad?

Green party is quite clever compare to others. Instead of manipulate your fear, they appeal to your emotion. Still remember their ad? A cute kid looks like she's about to cry, because you didn't vote for Green.

"Good for our children" is a fairly common type fallacy used widely by politicians,even the Wikipedia got an article on it. If you are a The Simpsons fan, Remember Helen Lovejoy's gag? "Won't somebody please think of the children!"

Googling Google

Google today released the fastest rising and highest volume search terms recorded in New Zealand in 2008. I don't want to repeat the whole list, you can see it here.

However, I have found the list somewhat strange, first it's in the news, but you cannot find anything in Google Zeitgeist, where Google usually publish these stuffs.

The other one is, Google itself is placed sixth of the list. after "Trademe", but before "TV".

Here's my interpretation. There's a trend that, especially among the young people, when you want to visit facebook, very few people actually type facebook.com: what they do is type google.com, then search  facebook. They also tend to ignore the "I'm feeling lucky" button, which may save them 5 seconds.

I also understand some people don't even bother to type google.com, instead, they just ask "google" in the address bar. Most of modern browser will take all apparently non-URL form queries to a designated search engine.

Well, it just shows that search engines are becoming more like a doorway to the Internet, a kind of replacement of your browser's address bar.

Google Street View for New Zealand

Finally, it's New Zealand's turn. I don't know whether Google didn't say they'll do New Zealand soon or I didn't notice the news, but if I knew Google was coming, I would definitely erect a huge board, asking Google to do "no index, no follow, no cache" for my property.

Well, I checked my home, not bad, you cannot see anything apart from my fence.

If you live in centres like Auckland or Wellington, I urge you to check your home here to see whether your privacy is at any kind of risk, like this one ... you can make a complaint to google.

Actually the coverage is quite good, except some west coast roads down south and Stewart Island, rest of the New Zealand is pretty much covered.

About MMP...

Now I understand how the left in New Zealand survived over the last century.

National was the ‘natural party of government’, and Labour's time in power was usually short. But there's something unique for the left in New Zealand, a tradition of strong grassroots movement that keeps the spirit alive.

Here's the first one I'm aware of since the election night:

The Campaign to Save MMP

We respect National's desire to hold a public referendum on the issue. A second referendum on the issue is not something to fear, but an opportunity for New Zealanders to show they believe in fairness in their electoral system. The Campaign to Save MMP will be an independent, non-partisan effort to inform voters of the benefits of MMP and show them the downside of other electoral systems.

Well, good luck.

However, I'm also aware of the weakness of MMP demonstrated in the last election, the case of NZ First and ACT:

• ACT: 3.72% of the vote, 5 MPs
• NZ First: 4.21% of the vote ...  no MPs.

That's all because Rodney had won the Epsom seat.

I acknowledge the fact that 5% threshold is needed to keep extremists and idiots out of the parliament, and I think that kind of threshold should be in place because there are really idiots out there.

But ACT's (and United Future, Progressive ... ) case just exposed an if scenario -  lets assume that 1% of eligible voters are idiots(Sure I don't mean people who voted ACT are idiots), and 50%+ of them live in one electorate?

Well I mean, if the local idiots want one of their kind to represent them in the Parliament, I have no problem with that, that's what local representation is all about.

But does that mean other 50% of the idiots who live in other parts of country should also be represented, given the fact that they only make up 1% of total voters?

Well, your call.

It can happen. The case I can think of (just for fun) is if I'm an extremely rich cult leader and I call half of my idiot followers to move to the same electorate, it won't require a lot of money from me as those idiots will pay for themselves.

I think we should make the current 5% threshold a concrete one. Village idiots can still be represented as the electorate seats still count, but winning an electorate seat should not release any party from that rule.

To compensate minor parties the threshold can be reduced to 4 or 3 per cent. Or it can be like, for every one electorate seat a party had won, remove 0.5% or 1% of the threshold requirement.

I don't quite understand why some people found MMP 'confusing'.  What part of "Everyone has two votes, one for party and one for local representation" they don't understand so they want to dump it?

The system does need a bit of change, but I failed see the need to dump it, well unless there are real alternatives that are both simpler for some ... well ... to understand and yet still fair to everyone else. I don't know what that alternatives can be, but clearly FPP is not one of them.

Last comments

Although I did not give my party vote to Labour yesterday, I still consider the party the lesser of two evils- in last years New Zealand enjoyed a continuous stability and economic growth. And most importantly, the growth was enjoyed by all New Zealanders regardless of their gender, ethnicity or social statues, it was a sustainable growth, not the kind of growth achieved at the expense of part of our society.

It's also because I can never forget and forgive the massive incompetence of the last National Government and how that was ended nearly in tragedy.

Helen Clark and the Labour Party have done a good job in last nine years. There were downsides and unpopular movements, but if you look back, most of them were from Green politics.

I personally admired Helen Clark's strong leadership, a courage to do what's best to the country, not what electorates want. History will prove this.

She was also a great ambassador of New Zealand, she won respect for herself and New Zealand when she said no to invasion in Iraq. In China, many of my friends admired New Zealand's dignity, impartiality and selflessness as Clark first tipped the milk scandal in China.

And I'm glad to have her as my local MP for the last 27 years. She fought tirelessly for the benefit of the local community, and helped me during my hard time.

There was no doubt that National is on the road to form next government, but as I marked in my twitter, no matter who wins, it will sure be a sad turning point of New Zealand politics. As New Zealand First gradually fades away, New Zealand departed from centrist route, becoming vulnerable to irresponsible acts done by either extreme right wing like ACT or extreme left represented by Greens.

I consider myself pretty centred so it was a hard choice for me.  But when I looked at the current economic crisis, I had to come to the conclusion that John Key might be a better choice - there's no doubt that bankers and capitalists like John Key are responsible for the current world economic crisis, so he should know how to manage New Zealand through it. Why? Arsonists are usually the best fire-fighters, because only they know where the fire started.

It must be warned that John Key needs to be strong enough to resist temptations from old guards inside the National Party. I don't know much about John Key, but most of us know fairly well about old faces like Bill English, a guy like him should never be left in charge of anything alone.

John Key was also given a mandate to keep National as a centrist party and not influenced by 5 ACT MPs especially Roger Douglas otherwise he risks to become a one term PM.

Finally, just a condolence to Labour party and last nine years, it has been good nine years. Brooke Fraser, arithmetics(although it is actually a Christian song):

Election day live on Bear's Blog Chinese

I wanted to do an English version, well but I'm on my own and My Chinese blog has a larger readership so ...

Bear's Blog Chinese will be offering latest results, web digests and analysis from me and other members of the internet community after 7pm.

Some of those items will be published on my Twitter, it will be in Chinese, well, but you can click on links, most of them will be in English.

Latest from my Twitter: