Unguided Blog

Stephen J. Dubner of New York Times points to an article dubbed Muslim Land Joins Ranks of Tigers in The Wall Street Journal, and finds it fascinating in his short post You Don’t Have to Be Freewheeling to Love Free Markets. Since the Journal article required a paid subscription, I was short of finding it fascinating, but the first three free paragraphs gave me a good idea:

When an Islamist-leaning political party took charge of Turkey six years ago, this vibrant Mediterranean resort town [Antalya] feared a bumpy ride for a local economy driven in part by booze and bikinis.

Today, says Ahmet Barut, a hotel magnate here, the only real question is whether the town can sustain an unprecedented economic boom. He’s not keen on the teetotaling habits of the governing party’s leaders, nor the headscarves worn by their wives, but he applauds a key part of their record: “They are good at economics.”

From tourism and tomato growing to car making, Turkey has prospered far more under an Islam-tinged government than it did under some previous, ardently secular administrations more in tune with the often decidedly un-Islamic ways of many Turkish businesspeople.

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Newsweek has an amusing article. Titled Lies, Damned Lies and Inflation Statistics, it gently criticizes the unreliability of official inflation data. The sub-title is even catchier: “Developing countries like China are infamous for fudging economic stats, but in reality, lying about inflation is as American as baseball.” Apparently, the belief that things are worse than governments are willing to admit is trickling down from the ivory tower.

I have not been to China except Hong Kong and that was before its accession, and baseball closely followed by cricket is one of the few games I have had difficulty to understand what really is going on. But I do know that Chinese officials do not deserve that title. None can beat our beautiful government (Turkish government for the non-followers of this web log) when it comes to fudging (I love this word, I can not help but think it is some kind of dessert) inflation data.

Now, let us have a closer look at the figures of 2008, first half, to see how much the prices have increased:

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Sometimes it is really getting difficult to hold on to reality. I wonder if I’m the only one to take notice of this masquerade. If it was not for Fravia’s [fravia.com] and +ORC’s (no link available, but once upon a time some claimed to have found the mysterious +ORC site) [aone.net.au] past lessons, I would probably go and see a psychiatrist. Maybe I still should.

You must have heard Pippa Bacca’s story that ended tragically in Gebze, Turkey. She was a good soul who decided to tour the world on foot, to draw attention to peace and humanity’s intrinsic good qualities. She decided to hike all the way up to Israel in a wedding dress.

Not being a big fan of TV or mainstream newspapers I only became aware of the event when it showed up in my rss feed. Intrigued by the sad story, I decided to read everything that was written in the Turkish media before her arrival and after her death. It was then when my sorrow first turned to anger, then to resentment; I wish I had read the news before her murder.

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The trouble with the group of acquired perception is they are extremely vocal, and they are often cited as experts by numerous sources. Not only they pump, via media, a variety of interesting but useless b.s. that does not make sense, they also alter or adversely affect the natural perception group, because the latter think the former as locals.

First things first, I consider any information, idea, observation made naturally from outside, by a non-local an invaluable contribution. See, as locals we are inside our little box, have never had the opportunity to look from outside or above. The constraints that stop us are not only geographical. The biases, habits and all follow us wherever we go. So, we will never have the opportunity to have that different angle, the angle of the outsider, fresh, unprecedented, free of all that in a way poison us, yet at the same time make us who we are.

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Before we begin our debunking journey, let me complete the theoretical framework to a certain extent. In Days of Disinformation I pinpointed three groups disseminating disinformation, namely, those who are paid to do so, foreigners with a naturally different perception and locals with different acquired perception; and we added that subjects of the third group, locals educated a la Western style have a disadvantage to form associations between concepts which is vital to critical thinking.

The problem is two-fold and both are related to language. In this article we shall only investigate critical thinking deficiency resulting from lack of concept association.

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