Please can someone explain? Will we pay if we leave EU without a deal?

[HappydaysArehere]

With all this talk of billions of pounds which we are supposed to owe if we leave and talk of continuing to pay after we leave, I am in the dark. If we walk away with no deal will we pay anything like the amounts talked about? If we are able to do that surely the EU will be big losers as well as us! I am at a loss. Grateful for your input as I am bewildered. I voted to remain but must say the shenanigans being played by the EU are showing them as more like the Mafia than a democratic institution.

@mummmy2017

It's not a list of whatabouts but a daunting list of issues to be addressed with ONLY downsides in terms of their POSSIBLE OUTCOMES.

This is based on analysis not some randomised HOPE FUNCTION.

It is a FACT that TRADE BARRIERS WILL GO UP AFTER BREXIT. THIS WILL NOT BE GOOD FOR TRADE. Not matter what you may hope for.

And the REASONS WHY THIS IS NOT GOOD HAVE BEEN EXPLAINED. THEY WILL NOT GO AWAY BECAUSE MUMMMY2017 SAYS SO BECAUSE IT'S HOW THE WORLD WORKS!!

WE HAVE GIVEN ANSWERS. YOU REFUSE TO LISTEN.

THE OUTCOMES ARE ALL BAD EXCEPT IF WE REMAIN IN THE SM/CU.

GET IT?

ha ha

So, if the outlook for Brexit was so positive, why did the Leave campaign need to resort to lies to persuade people. Because nothing truthful was sufficiently palatable?

You have not give answers, yours are maybe's and perhaps .

Melassa why don't you understand , we are willing to cut off a foot to stop the pain long term.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/matthew-ellery/leave-lies-remainers-need_b_12191462.html

So - self-hobbling?

Yet another metaphor that doesn’t mean quite what you hoped it would.

@AgnesSkinner

Yeah I cut off healthy limbs all the time...

Or maybe she means Monty Python?

I've been reading this thread with mounting amusement.

Olivia, what do you hope to achieve? You've spent 22 pages posting evidence, explaining the complexities of frictionless trade, the single market, customs unions, tariffs, how to calculate liabilities in our EU transactions, the principles behind the production and movement of goods across borders, the technicalities behind an open skies agreement.

I doubt even 1% of what you've posted has been read let alone understood by the illiterate idiots you've been debating with. What's difficult to understand? They made a choice that they're convinced it the right one having tossed a coin and talked to a few mates of theirs and read their favourite columnist on the subject in the daily mail and seen the logo on the side of the bus; who are you to tell them any different, with your fancy graphs and linked papers?

I believe the Americans call it 'doubling down on stupid'. Or as the greatest American sage of them all (Mencken) called it, ''democracy is the theory that common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard'.

Explain, not giving answers..
They are different things,,,

Well @Jeanvaljean27 you make a good point.

I think it's four things:

1. In part it is seeing if I have missed something. I don't think I have but I don't want to conclude then backfill with justifications of my own beliefs. I think I'm getting close to finished looking for the Holy Grail.

2. It is also testing my my own knowledge and arguments to make sure the evidence backs up my beliefs.

3. Learning new things. There are viewpoints on here I had not thought of and aspects which are new to me.

For example, I had always rejected the notion that we would regain sovereignty when leaving. I never thought we had lost it in the first place; this forced me to get the answer.

4. Perhaps naively: change a mind or two.

At some point, I'll get bored or pissed off and just stop.

Don't know if this makes sense. But thanks for stopping me to think about it.

Don't forget your head in the sand about that we ARE leaving

@Jeanvaljean27

Doubling down on stupid. Had not heard that before.It's appropriate.

Ah, self-hobbling. That's nearly as good as the Black Death one...

It's OK Faith, really. It's just that you seem to have trouble understanding things.

Oops, wrong thread!

olivia

Listen, I'm a doctor. Everything I do since I left medical school, every decision I've made in my career, has to be backed by iron-clad evidence. Rarely the evidence is either scanty or anecdotal, but you caveat that into your decision making. For every other decision, I need to document why I've done x rather than y and be able to justify my decision making under professional scrutiny through pointing out an evidence base, whether that be in a morbidity & mortality meeting or to a coroner.

Do my patients care? The hell they do. They ask 'why x?' So I sit down, gird my loins, and start gently and in as much idiot-proof language as I can muster to explain what the evidence base is, how the trials worked, what the conclusions were, how that has led to various guidelines being laid down on managing their condition.

Before 5 seconds are out, the eyes glaze over - they've lost interest. It's pointless. They don't respond to, nor are they interested in he evidence base. They respond to anecdote, emotion, personal experience, what they perceive to be empathy.

And trying to reason with people who have what we in our profession term 'fixed ideas' is well-nigh impossible. You won't win by pointing out an evidence base, because their point of view isn't rational - it's based on emotion rather than reason. They're two entirely different paradigms. It's a fruitless pursuit.

@Jeanvaljean27

You are right. Yes I know. Even with people that are usually intelligent ...

If you have not already, you should read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

It's all about human decision making.

We reach a conclusion as a first step and justify it after. We are typically lazy thinkers and soliciting the analytical part of the brain is painful and consumes energy so we revert to the instinctive part as much as we can. System 1 vs System 2 he calls it. A great read.

And I feel that people who THINK they know everything, and refuse to move postions, even when the world is changing in a very fast way around them, are stupid... as in have a brain and won't use it.

Yes we all have worries about Brexit, however I have accepted we are leaving, that yes there will be winners and losers, that as I don't work in any govenment department there is no point in worrying , as all it will do is make me ill.

As a Doctor, your pretending there is a cure rather than accepting it's something that will happen.... strange as in my book that makes you the fool not me.

Olivia

Yes, I've read kahneman - very worthwhile. There's plenty of very clever cognitive science work since the 60s actively demonstrating the mishmash of confirmation/cognitive bias and logical fallacy that underpins the decision making of your average human being.

Take a look at the asch conformity experiments, the Stanford capital punishment experiment, dunning/Kruger's work, Van Yperen/buunk's work on 'illusory superiority'.

It's only recently we've actually started quantifying it via trial data - actual observation of these phenomena goes back to Greece and Rome. Plato spent a great amount of time decrying the evils of democracy where sophists and demagogos would gather in the main square to whip the mob into a frenzy and make them do what they wanted. I imagine Plato would smile wryly and recognise a common caricature of his if he observed redwood, Rees-mogg or Jenkins in action today. Juvenal dedicates large chunks of his satires explaining how to manipulate the mob and use its lack of self-awareness against it, as did Thucydides. Spengler, Ortega y gasset, Mencken, plenty of others have written vast tracts on it.

Bottom line here is, someone like mummmy2017 or the countless other numpties posting incoherent ill-spelt rubbish masquerading as arguments in favour of brexit don't know what they don't know; it's therefore largely worthless even trying to have a rational debate where you try and fill in the gaps in their knowledge with referenced links. All it leads to is frustration. Which is why I never tend to engage.

@Jeanvaljean27

Thanks for these references. Good Christmas reading.

Another really good 'layperson' read on how we make decisions, and the in-built biases that influence them, is 'blink' by Malcolm Gladwell.

As a Doctor, your pretending there is a cure rather than accepting it's something that will happen.... strange as in my book that makes you the fool not me.
Very interesting image of Brexit as an illness that can’t be cured and remainers as doctors trying to find a cure....

I’m wondering why the illness can’t be cured seeing that we have an antidote - just stopping the A50.

To stretch the metaphor, the patient is refusing to accept the antidote, having read many "holistic" websites and reports that they can be cured by leeches or some such...