Hello I am looking for a service. I've been trying to find a
satisfactory website which does fact finding for political non fiction
books. Now when I mean satisfactory, I mean something in the mold like
what http://www.spinsanity.com/ used to do. Completely fact based, non
biased approach(meaning not Left or Right). Also that they pay
attention to misleading claims that have some truth in them, which
seems all the rage these days in politics. And if they had an emphasis
on analyzing the framing being used in the books it would be a great
plus. For information on what I mean by framing, just check out the
work of George Lakoff, or you can read this:

http://jeffrey-feldman.typepad.com/TheFeldmanDiariesv2.pdf

Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by bobbie7-ga on 13 Jan 2006 13:46 PST

Wryphilospher,

Media Matters 

"Media Matters (  http://mediamatters.org/ ) for America is a
Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and
information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing,
and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

http://mediamatters.org/about_us/

Please let me know via the clarification feature is this is what
you're looking for.

Thanks, 
Bobbie7

---

Clarification of Question by wryphilospher-ga on 14 Jan 2006 11:41 PST

Not quite, I've heard of Media Matters before. They have in the past
gone over the top in critiquing Conservative media, while exonerating
the Liberal side. Again, this is why I've been having trouble finding
something. A watchdog that focuses on politcal books while maintaining
a truly objective and non biased perspective is difficult to find. In
their About Page they specifically announce their bias(Progressive),
and that they only focus on Conservative media. So, no not quite .

You might want to look at FactCheck:

http://factcheck.org/

I've heard of them as well. However they do speeches/appearances of
politicians, while I am looking for something that does political
books.

(The short answer, is Amazon) But IMHO, the question assumes that this
is possible. And I think that it is not, and such a site that
purported to be could not be.

Left means redistribute property, do not capitalize, but consume,
sense is more important than material accumuliation, and that
knowledge is ubiquitous and certain, that we must rely only on our
sense and knoweldge, that tradition is deceit and lies, and as all is
dependent upon sense, it is relative, and therefore social pressure
should be accepting and tolerant. Right means absolute property
rights, capitalize everything, delay consumption, material
accumulation trumps sense satisfaction, and that knowledge is partial,
fallible, uncertain, and we must rely on tradition for things we can't
experience, as inherited experience in the form of myth, and that
since all is material, social pressure should be to conformity, in
persuit of production and capitalization.

These things are polar opposites.  You can measure the ideas in any
political book against these indicies.  But in the end, objectivity
lies in correctly indexing those ideas. It is not possible to compare
the ideas themselves since they are apples and oranges. They assume
that man operates by different physical laws.

This problem extends into economics, which both sides use to support
their ideas. Left economics, when it is any good at all, is about
centralized regulation of production and consumption, measurement and
prediction for the purposes of trading. Right econmics, when it is
good at all, is about accumulation of prosperity and an individual's
ability to perform economic calculation. Again, these things are
different, although, an understanding of them makes political books
seem very easy to evaluate.

Most political statments really mean X leads to Y.  Even if it's only
implied. If I think that there is gravity, and you do not, then X will
lead to something completely different for someone on the left or
right.

Criticisms of these works are usually based upon errors in facts, when
such books are using facts (X) as examples of more general outcomes
(Y).  Criticizing the facts when the issue is the underlying mechanics
is just a futile expenditure of energy most of the time.

If you find some site that does such qualification, it would be
interesting to know, but given the amount of time I spend on this
subject, and my relative position of awareness in the community, I
haven't found any that come close.  The editor of such a site must
pick a position on the propert axis. When he does, he must compare the
books from that position. This is objective from that position. It is
not objective absolutely, by which, I think, you really mean "True".

My opinion is that conservative pontification that appears to be crazy
usually is such, and is obvioiusly wrong. It's because the language of
the right is very myth-structured, even when it contains scientific
knowledge - because the right views tradition as a good source of
knowledge, and the language of the enlightenment still has the feel of
it's spiritual roots.  The pontification from the left on the other
hand, often uses the structure of science, or at least of common
sense, when it is at best religious myth, and is much harder to
identify as crazy.

So, all that being said, I use Amazon, because the commentary on the
books, and the logic and literacy of that commentary, is usually the
best indicator of the book's merit.

(The short answer, is Amazon) 

  Best answer IMHO. However, there is not too much expert analysis on
Amazon. And usually depending on the popularity of the book, there are
plenty of zealot's either for against the book with no real insight
other than Book Y is the best/worst thing they've ever read.

But IMHO, the question assumes that this
is possible. And I think that it is not, and such a site that
purported to be could not be.

  Possible in the extent that does it now exist presently, maybe not.
Possible as in the sense as doable, absolutely.

Left means redistribute property, do not capitalize, but consume,
sense is more important than material accumuliation, and that
knowledge is ubiquitous and certain, that we must rely only on our
sense and knoweldge, that tradition is deceit and lies, and as all is
dependent upon sense, it is relative, and therefore social pressure
should be accepting and tolerant. Right means absolute property
rights, capitalize everything, delay consumption, material
accumulation trumps sense satisfaction, and that knowledge is partial,
fallible, uncertain, and we must rely on tradition for things we can't
experience, as inherited experience in the form of myth, and that
since all is material, social pressure should be to conformity, in
persuit of production and capitalization.

  Have you even heard of George Lakoff?

These things are polar opposites.  You can measure the ideas in any
political book against these indicies.  But in the end, objectivity
lies in correctly indexing those ideas. It is not possible to compare
the ideas themselves since they are apples and oranges. They assume
that man operates by different physical laws.

  In their most extreme forms, of course their positions can not be
reconciled with each other, but I'm not interested in extremist
ideology. Which is why I'm looking for something that evaluates the
facts for authenticity. Facts are facts and these books have plenty of
them, all of which have usually been skewed to help their argument. I
don't have time to fact check them all, but I don't believe that they
also don't have any good points either.

This problem extends into economics, which both sides use to support
their ideas. Left economics, when it is any good at all, is about
centralized regulation of production and consumption, measurement and
prediction for the purposes of trading. Right econmics, when it is
good at all, is about accumulation of prosperity and an individual's
ability to perform economic calculation. Again, these things are
different, although, an understanding of them makes political books
seem very easy to evaluate.

  Left follows the general Golden Rule, and Nurture beats Nature.
Right follows the Average of Self Interest will help everybody(ala
Adam West), and Nature beats Nurture or a Might is Right attitude. I
believe that all of these ideas about our world are correct to a
degree, with the crux of the question being how do they fit together
vice which one is wrong. The I'm Right Your Wrong argument has
pervasively taken over the debate across our country.

Most political statments really mean X leads to Y.  Even if it's only
implied. If I think that there is gravity, and you do not, then X will
lead to something completely different for someone on the left or
right.

  Granted, but I still want all points of view, and the
facts(verified) to support them.

Criticisms of these works are usually based upon errors in facts, when
such books are using facts (X) as examples of more general outcomes
(Y).  Criticizing the facts when the issue is the underlying mechanics
is just a futile expenditure of energy most of the time.

  Many times both the criticism of these works, and the works
themselves have skewed the data in favor of the I'm Right Your Wrong
debate.

If you find some site that does such qualification, it would be
interesting to know, but given the amount of time I spend on this
subject, and my relative position of awareness in the community, I
haven't found any that come close.

  I agree it's hard to find.

The editor of such a site must pick a position on the propert axis.
When he does, he must compare the books from that position. This is
objective from that position. It is not objective absolutely, by
which, I think, you really mean "True".

  The Truth is there for everyone to see, however we all interpret it
to suit our own world view. The average of these interpretations is
closer to the Truth than any world view ever will be. The Truth is
reality, but our understanding of it will always be hostage to our
reservoir of education and experience and our ability to digest the
two.

My opinion is that conservative pontification that appears to be crazy
usually is such, and is obvioiusly wrong. It's because the language of
the right is very myth-structured, even when it contains scientific
knowledge - because the right views tradition as a good source of
knowledge, and the language of the enlightenment still has the feel of
it's spiritual roots.  The pontification from the left on the other
hand, often uses the structure of science, or at least of common
sense, when it is at best religious myth, and is much harder to
identify as crazy.

So, all that being said, I use Amazon, because the commentary on the
books, and the logic and literacy of that commentary, is usually the
best indicator of the book's merit.

  You sound like you write comments for political books on Amazon;)

Actually, I write economic philosophy, not reviews. :)

There is a methodological problem with what you view as facts, and
their support of theories. Facts or data, are irrelevant without
theory. Something may be true or false, but it may not be generalized
to support a theory. I tried to answer it in the previous post, but,
it is not a topic suited to brevity. It leads to the problem of
induction.

In effect, doing so, artificially reduces the problem to what is
certain, so that it can be more easily understood. Of course, humans
are not molecules, and certainty when explaining their future actions
is an illusion. This is simply an error in methodology.  Limiting
something to what you or I can understand, is to measure all things by
our ignorance.

But again, that would lead to the difference between truth and
experience or objective long term measurement, and short term
subjective sense perception. Again, which is an epistemological error
in confusing the temporal radius of different theoretical structures.

This discontinuity is not so simple as you think, by labelling such
things important only at extremes. I will repeat my insistence that
this is not possible. If you think that there is gravity and your
friend thinks that there isn't, then physics works by different
mechanics, and you pretty much can't talk about anything to do with
the trajectory of a cannon ball.

I think this is far too deep a topic for this forum.  I'm up for it.
But you'd have to be also.  But it's always interesting to see how
others think.

Cheers

Oh, and I dont understand why you brought up Lakoff. 

And as for Amazon, the books without strong commentary are that way
for a reason.  It is quite easy to see through the weak reviews.  In
depth rational arguments are pretty common.  Where they are not, then
the book does not warrant it.  I think this is an example of the
evidence created by social review that you allude to above.

I will also suggest that you simply count and weigh the number of
intellectually deep and analytical reviews and log it with the book
title. If you do this for 100 books that are evenly distributed along
the political spectrum, you will find something that will suprise you.
 And I doubt that you will like it. :)

As for me I dislike all politics with equal vehemence.  I just weight
the economic outcome of the arguments. This is the only means by which
I think one can judge these arguments.