You responded to Zygote's question with:

That's a pretty bold rejection of Paul's economic platform, the majority of which isn't even non-mainstream/Austrian. You didn't elaborate at all, so I asked you:

You ignored my question for a while, and now criticize me of not being intelligent enough to follow a conversation.

I guess I should have expected this, as it seems standard for you to condescend anyone you assume doesn't have as much interest or ability in math as you do.

Ron Paul interview on Fox News Sunday 11/6/11

lol pretty good until the end there

I haven't posted odds in a while... here's an update courtesy of bodog.

Mitt Romney 4/9
Rick Perry 11/2
Herman Cain 7/1
Newt Gingrich 7/1
Ron Paul 20/1
Jon Hunstman 30/1
Michele Bachmann 40/1

I'd consider betting against Rick Perry because he's unlikeable. he doesn't have a 22% chance, imo. I'm still in the Mittens gonna win, and then lose to Obama camp.

i read your post as basically saying you can't take him seriously because (afayk) he's not great at math. is it that you don't take any politicians seriously?

Somebody asked what my credentials were. I basically answered that the fact that I disagree with Paul does not, in and of itself, worry me or increase my uncertainty wrt to macro policy. You could replace paul with many other politicians.

(and it's not "great at math". Bernake is probably not great at math...it is a minimum level of competence such that a person's opinion (about things that cannot be proven) has more than 0 value. Almost everybody's opinion has 0 value in almost all fields)

i see. forgive me for misunderstanding what your point was. i missed the questioning of your credentials, and i find the idea of it odd anyway, since logic is logic regardless of credentials.

empiricists are so weird. you can come so much closer to "proving" relationships with logic than evidence. why do we need paul's endorsement of an opinion to increase its worth? it either stands on its own or doesn't.

i mean, i get that the context was that you were basically explaining why you shouldn't just take paul's word for it. it's just that i find it really weird that you feel the need to explain that. you shouldn't take einstein's word for it.

or I guess that's a 2/13 chance

It wasn't just that I'm not going to blindly follow Paul. It's how much more likely am I to be wrong given Paul disagrees with me. And the answer is 0. I think you agree with that.

One of the headlines on http://abcnews.go.com/politics

is this article entitled "Foreign Policy Experts Agree With Ron Paul’s Controversial Foreign Policy."

It's great coverage.

i agree with your point. to me, it might be literally untrue because i have too much information. but if i didn't i think it'd probably be true or at least virtually true. (it's actually not- both of you are more likely to be wrong based on the fact that it's not unanimous, but i know that's not what you meant)

anyway, most of your disagreements with paul aren't due to one of you being smarter than the other. they're due to you valuing different things. that is, neither of you is necessarily right or wrong. one important exception i can think of is the issue of government power. paul thinks it's extremely dangerous to pretty much everything he values and you (afaik) do not. one of you is probably wrong about that one.

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 11/7/11: Is Obama President or an Executive Dictator?

Are there any good libertarian news network besides John Stossel on Fox News Network?

Stossel's show is on FOX Business, sometimes they air it on fox news on the weekends.

Judge Andrew Napolitano hosts a show called Freedom Watch on FOX Business.

that's basically it for libertarians on tv news. The rest is all internet or radio based.

I would like to argue that MaxRaker (and many other posters on this forum) are much smarter than Paul. Imo it's clear that Paul is guided by ideology and showed his inability to arrive at reasonable conclusions.
It's obvious in issues like climate change, creationism or federal government role in slavery/segregation issues. If you listen to Paul's attack at Bernanke and Bernanke's responses I think you have to think that Bernanke is much smarter than him.
The ability to arrive at reasonable conclusions as well as being intellectually honest is big part of being smart.
Listen to this for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NJnL10vZ1Y

Doesn't Paul appear to be big idiot on this one to you ?

i didn't watch it and it doesn't matter if max is smarter or not. my point was that they would disagree even if they were of exactly the same intelligence.

It doesn't matter if he's smart - he's asking the best questions and he's actually willing to go after the state. It doesn't matter how smart the rest of the field is if they're going to **** us over. And I don't they they are very intelligent - frankly to be a politician you have to be intellectually dishonest and corrupt and reduce your logic into simplistic soundbytes so I think it's not really an arena that attracts the brightest people - but their intelligence doesn't matter if they're just going to continue government failures like the bubble economy, empire, drug war, etc.

Adam vs the man
Lew Rockwell podcasts

RT ... ish

I mean you could also argue that there are many people who argue against Bernanke that are smarter than him; does this mean Benanke is definitivly wrong? And what if two people of equal intelligence disagreed on an issue, how would you account for this or do people as their intelligence increases converge on the same answers

If i was american i would vote for Ron Paul

Edit: think* they are

I just wanted to make a point that there are compelling reason to think Paul isn't particularly smart. I don't deny he is very honest and act in what he perceive is the best interest of the country and people.
I also don't deny that there are very smart people who agree with him on many things (not all things though, as he believes in some very dumb ones).

Well, from what I gathered so far most economists don't think current system is "bubble economy" and while bubbles happened and some of them could easily be prevented with better regulations or better people in important positions. I think this belief in "bubble economy" and things like federal reserve killing the dollar are examples of being not very smart at least with arguments which are proposed in favor of those propositions.