Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Nuclear1 on April 25, 2011, 03:40:14 am
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8471907/WikiLeaks-Guantanamo-Bay-terrorist-secrets-revealed.html
Al-Qaeda terrorists have threatened to unleash a “nuclear hellstorm” on the West if Osama Bin Laden is caught or assassinated, according to documents to be released by the WikiLeaks website, which contain details the interrogations of more than 700 Guantanamo detainees.
However, the shocking human cost of obtaining this intelligence is also exposed with dozens of innocent people sent to Guantanamo – and hundreds of low-level foot-soldiers being held for years and probably tortured before being assessed as of little significance.
The Daily Telegraph, along with other newspapers including The Washington Post, today exposes America’s own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world’s most dangerous terrorists. This newspaper has been shown thousands of pages of top-secret files obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
The disclosures are set to spark intense debate around the world about the establishment of Guantanamo Bay in the months after 9/11 – which has enabled the US to collect vital intelligence from senior Al Qaeda commanders but sparked fury in the middle east and Europe over the treatment of detainees.
Also, Wikileaks database of all Gitmo detainees. (http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/name.html)
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how do i get a job at gitmo, i think i would be an effective pain technician.
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hmmm.. this is gonna be an interesting one.
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how bad is it that it doesn't bug me that much about whats going on there?
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The whole thing about the Wikileaks is that there's been very little released that shocked me. Now, don't confuse that with not caring about it, but the history of warfare is rife with far worse, so whilst these leaks may contain some information that doesn't make very pleasant reading, it doesn't make very surprising reading either.
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kinda feeling the same. Dont understand why its such a big deal. i highly doubt we are the only gov that does this
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The idea is that America is supposed to stand up for "ideals". It's the grand experiment; to see if doing the doing the right thing really is a good thing.
I, for one, am sorrowful at the fall of the "Old America". It did some truly magnificent things...and I am saddened at the mindset that allows things like this to happen.
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I, for one, am sorrowful at the fall of the "Old America". It did some truly magnificent things...and I am saddened at the mindset that allows things like this to happen.
What a silly thing to say. When, exactly, did this Old America exist? In what naive fantasy?
Was it when we got our start by committing genocide on the previous tenants of the continent?
Was it when we waged brutal media campaigns, shot rival politicians, and bribed voters with alcohol in the early days of the Union?
Was it when we imported thousands upon thousands of slaves, then decided to slaughter each other to resolve the issue?
Was it when we unilaterally invaded and occupied foreign countries like the Philippines to pursue dreams of empire?
Was it when we threw tens of thousands of our own citizens into concentration camps because they were the wrong color?
Was it when we financed dictators and terrorist regimes because we thought they were better than the Soviets?
When, exactly, did this mythical Old America exist? Or are you simply and actually delusional? Read some real history. Learn something about the nation you live in. Snap out of it.
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I think it's a case of 'putting money where you mouth is' there, America has frequently been selling itself as a beacon of Freedom despite the fact it suffered from exactly the same discriminations and censorships as many other Democratic countries of the time, racism, homophobia, sexual inequality etc. Like many other countries those prejudices and problems are still a cause for concern even today, though things are far better than they used to be, but when it comes to personal freedoms and rights, the truth is that America isn't really all that different from Europe, some things they are better at, some things worse, but generally, it's on a level.
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I, for one, am sorrowful at the fall of the "Old America". It did some truly magnificent things...and I am saddened at the mindset that allows things like this to happen.
Old America never existed. We've been doing stuff like this for years, and it's no less hypocritical for us to go around championing human rights in third world countries while holding people in Gitmo than it was to "lead the fight against Nazi death camps" while interning the Japanese, or to "liberate" Cuba from the horrible Spanish while oppressing the Philippines.
I think it's a case of 'putting money where you mouth is' there, America has frequently been selling itself as a beacon of Freedom despite the fact it suffered from exactly the same discriminations and censorships as many other Democratic countries of the time, racism, homophobia, sexual inequality etc. Like many other countries those prejudices and problems are still a cause for concern even today, though things are far better than they used to be, but when it comes to personal freedoms and rights, the truth is that America isn't really all that different from Europe, some things they are better at, some things worse, but generally, it's on a level.
Yeah, you gotta love American Exceptionalism...
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I, for one, am sorrowful at the fall of the "Old America". It did some truly magnificent things...and I am saddened at the mindset that allows things like this to happen.
What a silly thing to say. When, exactly, did this Old America exist? In what naive fantasy?
Why must you always pick a fight and with such gusto, GB? Am I mistaken in feeling that you like to specifically target me?
Yeah, you gotta love American Exceptionalism...
Hey, a long time ago people really accepted this idea.
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I, for one, am sorrowful at the fall of the "Old America". It did some truly magnificent things...and I am saddened at the mindset that allows things like this to happen.
What a silly thing to say. When, exactly, did this Old America exist? In what naive fantasy?
Why must you always pick a fight and with such gusto, GB? Am I mistaken in feeling that you like to specifically target me?
(http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/6206/trolololi.png) (http://img833.imageshack.us/i/trolololi.png/)
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I, for one, am sorrowful at the fall of the "Old America". It did some truly magnificent things...and I am saddened at the mindset that allows things like this to happen.
What a silly thing to say. When, exactly, did this Old America exist? In what naive fantasy?
Why must you always pick a fight and with such gusto, GB? Am I mistaken in feeling that you like to specifically target me?
I'm just saying what everyone's thinking. Your obliviousness was worth bemusement when it got you kicked off Diaspora, but I don't think anyone realized it ran this deep.
Do you have a response to the points at hand? It seems as if a lot of your opinions about how 'everything is changing' are simply repeats of the same complaints people have made for the past couple hundred years. I've read broadsheets from 1800 that say the same things you do almost word-for-word. You lack historical perspective, which makes it difficult for you to identify the real problems our society faces.
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I, for one, am sorrowful at the fall of the "Old America". It did some truly magnificent things...and I am saddened at the mindset that allows things like this to happen.
What a silly thing to say. When, exactly, did this Old America exist? In what naive fantasy?
Why must you always pick a fight and with such gusto, GB? Am I mistaken in feeling that you like to specifically target me?
Because you're flat wrong and need to know it. He's not trolling you (well, it's a handy bonus).
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Old America
Never existed. I don't understand this Delusional Propaganda about a grand old country that everyone keeps buying into. Yeah, we're better than a lot of places. But we're a nation. With our own interests at heart. We do horrible things, just like every other nation often must do to survive. Sure we can talk a pretty talk, but thats about it.
And if you're one of the many who thinks WWII turned America into the world's Superman, let me put things into perspective for you - we and our allies fought an ambitious Dictator with slightly more Media attention that most, his idiot bootlicking lackey in Italy, and an Asian country that simply could not move past traditions that were simply self destructive in the Modern World. It was not a battle against the Ultimate Evil that America won all by its lonesome. Men worse than these are all over the world even today. Open your eyes.
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If everyone's done chastising UT...
I wonder if anything remotely useful has been gained from these detainees. I'm sure there are tons of entertaining, and likely false, "nuke hidden in city X" stories.
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hypocritical ... to "lead the fight against Nazi death camps" while interning the Japanese, or to "liberate" Cuba from the horrible Spanish while oppressing the Philippines.
now hold on jus a sec here, I by no means think that was our finest hour, but interning Japanese immigrants I believe could be described as a FAR cry from Germany systematically executing the Jews. I don't think they even begin to compare.
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now hold on jus a sec here, I by no means think that was our finest hour, but interning Japanese immigrants I believe could be described as a FAR cry from Germany systematically executing the Jews. I don't think they even begin to compare.
Well, imprisoning innocent people in Guantanamo isn't as bad as, say, Iraqis gassing their own people, but, you know, wooden plank in our own eye and all that...
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yeah, but the thing is, that analogy completely fails, in both of those situations we would be the ones with splinters in our eyes when the other party is the one with redwoods growing from there eye sockets.
The interning of the Japanese was not good. it was the incarceration of a segment of the population based soly on ancestry, but the reasoning, was that we were at war with their previous homeland and that some of them would side with there previous country, as flawed as it was it was absolutely incomparable to rounding up and MURDERING a segment of the population because they were "degenerate filth".
I am not defending the Japanese internment I'm just saying its like comparing apples to cyanide.
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Instead of focussing on a title as Old America, or however it's called, I'd like to add that it's about the idea, the feeling, like you're the good guys - Since most people used to believe government propaganda, or grew up in all the government propaganda (Just look at all the TV shows for kids today) that their idea of good America is shattered. It doesn't make Unknown Target bad even though we all know in hindsight about it not being smart to believe in such propaganda.
Also, I can't say I like supporting someone for commiting lesser evils than their opponent - Both are just as bad, and the lesser evil will turn into the greater evil when it gets the chance, often enough.
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yeah, but the thing is, that analogy completely fails, in both of those situations we would be the ones with splinters in our eyes when the other party is the one with redwoods growing from there eye sockets.
Fair enough. I guess my point mostly was that, while Nazi Germany gassed the Jews and Iraq slaughtered the Kurds and Shi'ites, they didn't disguise it with some propaganda of "we're the champion of human rights". In other words, you're worse than the Beast! At least the Beast doesn't pretend to be righteous! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_uY8QKBKEw#t=7m45s)
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In other words, you're worse than the Beast! At least the Beast doesn't pretend to be righteous! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_uY8QKBKEw#t=7m45s)
Epic reference, sir.
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yeah, but the thing is, that analogy completely fails, in both of those situations we would be the ones with splinters in our eyes when the other party is the one with redwoods growing from there eye sockets.
The interning of the Japanese was not good. it was the incarceration of a segment of the population based soly on ancestry, but the reasoning, was that we were at war with their previous homeland and that some of them would side with there previous country, as flawed as it was it was absolutely incomparable to rounding up and MURDERING a segment of the population because they were "degenerate filth".
I am not defending the Japanese internment I'm just saying its like comparing apples to cyanide.
Hmm. Didn't that interment also protect the japanese from hate mobs?
Incedently...
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well, it might have, I'm not aware of if that was one of the stated goals at the time or something someone came up with afterwards to try to sugar coat it.
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well, it might have, I'm not aware of if that was one of the stated goals at the time or something someone came up with afterwards to try to sugar coat it.
I came up with it afterwards after reading snow falling on cedars.
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Because you're flat wrong and need to know it.
Why? :)
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Based on the context, I'd say for the same reasons Battuta thinks so.
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<Redacted for chillness>
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Because you're flat wrong and need to know it.
Why? :)
Can you read?
If the answer is no, why are you posting?
If the answer is yes, why have you not read the several posts already explaining why you're wrong?
If so, why are you willfully disregarding them and refusing to engage in a dialogue?
If you are wilfully disregarding them, why are you not banned?
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Woah Woah Woah. . .
Haven't we banned enough people just lately?
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I don't think we've banned anyone recently.
General Battuta, I was talking to Scotty, that's why I quoted him and directed the question towards him.
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I don't think we've banned anyone recently.
General Battuta, I was talking to Scotty, that's why I quoted him and directed the question towards him.
You did indeed quote him and direct the question towards him, and his question was in reference to my post, supporting it. And you asked why he thought you were wrong, which is something that has already been answered for you, multiple times, in this thread.
Are you reading the thread before replying to it? If not, why are you bothering to participate in it? Many hundreds of words have been written by several people to illustrate this point to you, yet you appear unable or unwilling to read them. Why should anyone bother paying attention to you if you cannot perform this basic task?
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Let's have a little less line-dancing with the rules please?
Batt, I'm not quite sure when you turned into a better informed version of Kazaan, but I think I preferred you when you treated people you disagreed with with a bit more respect. I'm not quite sure when this board started handed out badges for acting like a troll, but it's not a direction I personally favour.
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Don't be ridiculous. I've asked him perfectly reasonable questions regarding an issue the administration itself has stated is grounds for a ban.
Kosh got himself monkeyed for failing to engage with arguments repeatedly presented to him. UT is headed down the same road. If you want me to just let that happen, I think that's pretty amoral. He deserves to be warned.
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I disagree, UT's first comment was something I'd hear in the street any day of the week, "Whatever happened to the England I used to know?". Now, obviously, the correct answer is 'You are living in it', but it's not like it is a particularly un-educated or stupid comment, merely a 'rose tinted spectacles' one. Had you simply replied that the America now is the same America of 50 years ago, that would have been fine, instead you made a whole load of confrontational statements and implied that UT was naive for making the comment.
There are ways of disagreeing that don't involve semi-attacking those you disagree with, for example.
1: "Are you naive?" - "It's not as simple as that"
2 "Can you read?" - "I think you've misinterpreted what I said".
They may seem like simple platitudes, because that's what they are, but it's not just a question of what you say, it's how you say it, that's why I compared you to Kazan, because he also used to attack any point of view that either did not match his own or that he was better informed in by berating the person that said it. It wasn't about whether he was right or wrong, it was about the way he chose to communicate his thoughts.
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And if he'd responded to those statements when they were originally and politely presented to him, several threads ago, maybe they would be appropriate responses.
But he hasn't in the past. He needs to be pressed. If you haven't followed the whole metadiscussion as it's developed, why get involved?
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To put it civilly: You are not being civil. Far from it. You are now being corrected for it.
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I've been perfectly civil with him in the past. When he returns the favor he'll earn the right to be treated civilly again. In the meantime, turnabout is fair play, and as long he continues shockingly rude behavior he'll receive rude treatment.
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In the case of this topic, I'm not even sure if UT meant the internal situation of US or the external policy of US. If you ask me, within 60 years the other has indeed become worse in my eyes, while the other has remained the same.
If "Old America" refers to the everyday life for an average person or not is not clear to me from the context and I would suggest UT at least tells what he means with "Old America". Since it seems even Americans themselves disagree with the term, don't expect us foreginers to know what is meant by that then.
My personal opinion is indeed that from 60s to today, some internal things in US have became worse, but how it seems to the layman is another thing.
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But he hasn't in the past. He needs to be pressed. If you haven't followed the whole metadiscussion as it's developed, why get involved?
Because I'm working on the way people behaved, not about their opinions, that's my responsibility as a Moderator, I may not catch everything, but I will deal with what I see. Thing is about meta-discussions is the fact that they are far more important to the people having them than the people who are merely reading them, if I tried to follow every little meta-discussion or ongoing argument on these boards I'd have no time to do anything else.
The rules ask for restraint, in part, because of the fact that not every variable can be taken into account, and therefore the general rule is 'just try to do it politely'.
I can understand how frustrating it is to keep trying to get a message across and not have it understood, but please stop letting it make you angry, or you are just going to end up having a heart attack at a very early stage of life, because I can assure you it's an ongoing theme that will go on for the rest of your life.
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Flipside: Two thumbs up!
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Regardless of the usability of the "IQ" concept, I think there are good uses for comparative scores. Now could you be more specific to what you mean about "societal questions" that aren't being addressed?
Well for instance, when you say:
"If these studies are correct, one would actually expect men to outnumber women in top research academia."
the fact that that's not true indicates that there may be some questions about or society that we are not discussing or we might not be focusing on finding the right questions to ask or answers to say.
Actually I agree with UT here, I suspect that IQ is a pretty ****ty measure of intelligence and that the well-known variance changes between men and women are probably in part social. Also I think it's a little strange to believe that very high intelligence is required for presence in top research academia; it's not really about being smart.
UT's still dodging all the previous points raised against him though, that's pretty disappointing.
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Original topic cleaned and unlocked as requested. Please try to keep it civil.
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It's missing most of the actual discussion recently.
To repost, picking up where we left off before that little interruption:
Actually I agree with UT here, I suspect that IQ is a pretty ****ty measure of intelligence and that the well-known variance changes between men and women are probably in part social. Also I think it's a little strange to believe that very high intelligence is required for presence in top research academia; it's not really about being smart.
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It's missing most of the actual discussion recently.
To repost, picking up where we left off before that little interruption:
Actually I agree with UT here, I suspect that IQ is a pretty ****ty measure of intelligence and that the well-known variance changes between men and women are probably in part social. Also I think it's a little strange to believe that very high intelligence is required for presence in top research academia; it's not really about being smart.
It's been triple split, that convo exists here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=75800.0)
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It's missing most of the actual discussion recently.
To repost, picking up where we left off before that little interruption:
Actually I agree with UT here, I suspect that IQ is a pretty ****ty measure of intelligence and that the well-known variance changes between men and women are probably in part social. Also I think it's a little strange to believe that very high intelligence is required for presence in top research academia; it's not really about being smart.
It's been triple split, that convo exists here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=75800.0)
NOT ANY MORE D:
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I think I've got it sorted now, merging topics took me a minute to figure out. I've split out Battutas first post to the second thread and merged it into this thread so Battuta did not double post, he simply posted his response before I could merge the topics, but there should be at least a moderate level of consistency now.
I'm now going to take some Nurofen.
Edit: I suppose I could add Kosh's post to this thread as well and that would cover it, but right now, after having to clean up that mess, it can wait.
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For my part I think IQ is a generally accurate measure of potential. A high IQ doesn't guarantee ability but someone with an average IQ is going to have a really hard time winning a Nobel Prize.
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For my part I think IQ is a generally accurate measure of potential. A high IQ doesn't guarantee ability but someone with an average IQ is going to have a really hard time winning a Nobel Prize.
You don't have to be very smart to help people and promote peace...and I believe that recognizing that is the real intent of the Nobel Prize.
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Actually I agree with UT here, I suspect that IQ is a pretty ****ty measure of intelligence and that the well-known variance changes between men and women are probably in part social. Also I think it's a little strange to believe that very high intelligence is required for presence in top research academia; it's not really about being smart.
For my part I think IQ is a generally accurate measure of potential. A high IQ doesn't guarantee ability but someone with an average IQ is going to have a really hard time winning a Nobel Prize.
Trying to trace back through this conundrum of threadlocksplits has proven difficult, but this seems to be the most logical point of entry. Thus,
IQ is a meaningless measure of intelligence, though less so now than in the past. However, modern IQ tests are still cross-culturally useless and the true characteristics of intelligence, which haven't been adequately defined in the testing, may not even be measured. Considering a lot of psychology and biology has a great deal of difficulty determining even what intelligence IS, I have a lot of trouble with the notion that we can measure it objectively with a written (or oral) test.
As it is, IQ tests (generally speaking) can measure fairly accurately where (geographically) you were raised, what social "class" you belong to, some aspects of your morality, and the combined effects of how good your education was, your engagement was, and your memory is. It also depends on the quality of the test - I've scored anywhere from 116 to 140ish, with the "most reliable" score at 126, but in all cases it was fairly evident that the test incorporates the biases of the test designer. It's an utterly worthless number.
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Agreed. It's tempting to draw correlations between IQ and success, but if IQ is actually tapping social concepts which contribute to success as much as intelligence does (and if you measure successful people and find high IQ), you're just weaving a knot of confounds that renders your conclusion pretty meaningless.
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Trying to trace back through this conundrum of threadlocksplits has proven difficult, but this seems to be the most logical point of entry. Thus,
IQ is a meaningless measure of intelligence, though less so now than in the past. However, modern IQ tests are still cross-culturally useless and the true characteristics of intelligence, which haven't been adequately defined in the testing, may not even be measured. Considering a lot of psychology and biology has a great deal of difficulty determining even what intelligence IS, I have a lot of trouble with the notion that we can measure it objectively with a written (or oral) test.
As it is, IQ tests (generally speaking) can measure fairly accurately where (geographically) you were raised, what social "class" you belong to, some aspects of your morality, and the combined effects of how good your education was, your engagement was, and your memory is. It also depends on the quality of the test - I've scored anywhere from 116 to 140ish, with the "most reliable" score at 126, but in all cases it was fairly evident that the test incorporates the biases of the test designer. It's an utterly worthless number.
The precise number isn't that important for higher IQs. Even your lowest result puts you a standard deviation above average. What is worth noting is that virtually no doctors for instance are in the below average range of IQ (80-89). IQ may not matter much above a certain point, but for low or borderline IQ you can definitely tell the difference. IQ is also helpful for showing the Flynn Effect and the benefit of improving nutrition and literacy rates.
Agreed. It's tempting to draw correlations between IQ and success, but if IQ is actually tapping social concepts which contribute to success as much as intelligence does (and if you measure successful people and find high IQ), you're just weaving a knot of confounds that renders your conclusion pretty meaningless.
Then that gets into the whole genetic component of IQ debate. But even if IQ is just a number to indicate social predispositions to success it's handy until a better number comes along, even if in practice there are other numbers like GPA that are better correlates for performance in specific endeavors.
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What is worth noting is that virtually no doctors for instance are in the below average range of IQ (80-89). IQ may not matter much above a certain point, but for low or borderline IQ you can definitely tell the difference. IQ is also helpful for showing the Flynn Effect and the benefit of improving nutrition and literacy rates.
That's not worth noting because there's a directionality problem. If IQ is in fact measuring social factors which make it easy to become a doctor, all that's saying is 'people who are likely to become doctors (and therefore score high on our test of likeliness to become doctors) are likely to become doctors.'
Then that gets into the whole genetic component of IQ debate. But even if IQ is just a number to indicate social predispositions to success it's handy until a better number comes along, even if in practice there are other numbers like GPA that are better correlates for performance in specific endeavors.
Well maybe but if you're feeding your predictor of success into your determinants of success that's a real social justice issue.
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That's not worth noting because there's a directionality problem. If IQ is in fact measuring social factors which make it easy to become a doctor, all that's saying is 'people who are likely to become doctors (and therefore score high on our test of likeliness to become doctors) are likely to become doctors.'
That would make sense if mentally retarded doctors were just rare, not practically nonexistent. But someone who has trouble learning how to read let alone pass medical school probably isn't going to make it as a doctor for reasons other than their social class. Of course I have no numbers to back this up so whatever.
Well maybe but if you're feeding your predictor of success into your determinants of success that's a real social justice issue.
Definitely, I'll get back to work on writing my bomb threats to Charles Murray. In all seriousness though no one puts their IQ on their resume or college application and in practice it's more of an ego thing for people who happen to be good at taking tests. I don't really see IQ being used as a predictor of success in our society when that information is rarely even provided to employers.
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Your last paragraph is true, also you are the best poster (http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-allears.gif)
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Thank you. I appreciate your company as well Battuta, you are my favorite person on the internet. But enough e-dickrubbery. :hammer:
I'm sure there is such a thing as g and genetics influences it, if nothing else having sweet mitochondrial DNA is like menergy for your neuronal ATP production.
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There's definitely a genetic influence, I'm pretty sure twin studies have borne that out. But it's gonna be hard to pin down until we have a better metric. And there's all sorts of weird **** that could complicate it - it could work like schizophrenia where maybe you could have the markers to be really dumb or really smart but you need an environmental kick to play in.
And it's probably a bit like building a computer too - you could have amazing working memory but a bottleneck somewhere else, so you still end up daft. (for example i am a pretty bright dude but holy **** i lack any common sense)
ed: badduda spull gud
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There's definitely a genetic influence, I'm pretty sure twin studies have borne that out. But it's gonna be hard to pin down until we have a better metric. And there's all sorts of weird **** that could complicate it - it could work like schizophrenia where maybe you could have the markers to be really dumb or really smart but you need an environmental kick to play in.
None of this contradicts the current understanding of g really for the people who advocate it I don't think. Even the 50-80% genetic contribution111 camp people acknowledge a 50-20% environmental influence, and that more stimulating environments and spread of literacy probably upped IQ over 20th century - while having cravings for lead and thalidomide during pregnancy may provide an environmental kick in the other direction. Now an interesting question is if the recent (past 2-3 decades) decline in measured intelligence and reversal of the Flynn effect is due to natural selection or environmental factors, or if it's just a problem with test validity and means nothing. In any case I decree the dumbing down of the world to be the Mustang effect since no one has jumped on the opportunity to name it after themselves yet.
But sitting down taking a test is a reasonably ****ty measure of g and we may not be able to get accurate measurements until we have the technology to do things like actually map all the brain's dendrites, find differing patterns in these connections, and relate this to intelligence differences. All we can do know is measure the quantity, not quality, of whatever is going on in the brain and this doesn't appear to be useful in predicting intelligence. Until neuroscience advances beyond its current primitive state I will feel qualified making broad statements about something I have no formal education in.
And intelligence and performance are different things. Obviously there are autistics who can play some mean sodoku but aren't the best at conversation. I think of g more as raw processing and memorization capability.
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Guantanamo -> IQ tests? :wtf:
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Point. Should we change the title of this thread to IQ test debates and create a do over thread for Guantanamo?
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No, please let threads go where they will unless they bifurcate.
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Or just split everything about IQ into a separate thread and leave this one.
because dammit you damn kids are ruining my threads
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Well Batutta didn't respond to
Now an interesting question is if the recent (past 2-3 decades) decline in measured intelligence and reversal of the Flynn effect is due to natural selection or environmental factors, or if it's just a problem with test validity and means nothing. In any case I decree the dumbing down of the world to be the Mustang effect since no one has jumped on the opportunity to name it after themselves yet.
so I guess that's dead.
Back on about Gitmo I guess we can pick up from the thread I got banned for. In the absence of a single example of someone who joined Al Qaeda to fight for human rights solely because something in the US constitution (habeas corpus) wasn't applied to foreign captives, I bet that a Gitmo type fiasco would never have happened if the US outsourced detention to other countries from the start to clear itself of blame. Gitmo is in the news all the time but you almost never hear news about the probably even greater number of people shipped to Saudi Arabia or Egypt instead for worse treatment.
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I didn't think the possible Flynn decline had kicked in until more recently than that.
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Gitmo is in the news all the time but you almost never hear news about the probably even greater number of people shipped to Saudi Arabia or Egypt instead for worse treatment.
It's not an either-or situation. Detain insurgents if you want, but detain them as you would detain, you know, a human being charged with a crime. I don't disagree with holding people that are dangerous, but Gitmo was such a horrible thing.
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I guess it depends on who you ask and what locality. But it was measured by 1999 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4N5KY0G-1&_user=10&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1732054699&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=31c411dbe99152637ae618479f5f6d76&searchtype=a) in Denmark.
If pollution levels are falling- dioxins among other things at least have been- I wouldn't blame pollution for this reversal. Lifestyle changes might be a factor considering things like the effect of the American diet on development (not just obesity). Another explanation is the weak but measured negative correlation between IQ and number of children. This guy (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4YDR2H2-2&_user=10&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4d1620aec6a2aae813939d94cb098da1&searchtype=a) thinks genotypic IQ will fall by .8 every generation. It's interesting to consider if IQ reaches equilibrium over time and genotypic intelligence will fall back to the same point every time it finishes going up. People will be just as dumb in 2900 as they were in 1900 if evolution takes it's course.
It's not an either-or situation. Detain insurgents if you want, but detain them as you would detain, you know, a human being charged with a crime. I don't disagree with holding people that are dangerous, but Gitmo was such a horrible thing.
It's not just that; the abuse scandals created a lot of unrest when they were found out. But what we were talking about in the previous thread (before it got locked) was mainly whether terror suspects should be put on trial.
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It's not just that; the abuse scandals created a lot of unrest when they were found out. But what we were talking about in the previous thread (before it got locked) was mainly whether terror suspects should be put on trial.
As they should have. If we were detaining Americans in prisons and abusing them without giving them a trial, they're be a huge stink about that as well. Most of the controversy could have been avoided if the people detained there were at least given civilian trials.
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Most of the controversy could have been avoided if the people detained there were at least given civilian trials.
Virtually all of the attention in the Arab world at least centered around the humiliation of prisoners and the abuse of the Koran. Sure, westerners cared a lot about the legality of the detentions but it wasn't something people were shooting each other over.
Well you've got your wish and Obama is putting the inmates on trial, but even if one or two of the acquitted end up returning to terrorism they'll do a lot of damage.
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Well you've got your wish and Obama is putting the inmates on trial, but even if one or two of the acquitted end up returning to terrorism they'll do a lot of damage.
Since when have terrorists ever managed to do a lot of damage in the grand scheme of things?
It's somewhat poetic that our spasmic responses have done so much more. You put in so little and you get out so much!
Being a terrorist is such a deal.
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Virtually all of the attention in the Arab world at least centered around the humiliation of prisoners and the abuse of the Koran. Sure, westerners cared a lot about the legality of the detentions but it wasn't something people were shooting each other over.
True, I won't argue that.
Well you've got your wish and Obama is putting the inmates on trial, but even if one or two of the acquitted end up returning to terrorism they'll do a lot of damage.
Did I miss something? I don't recall him doing any such thing.
Like Battuta said, one or two individual foot soldiers don't really mean anything in the long run. Excluding all of the innocent people held at Gitmo, the majority of prisoners are just that--foot soldiers. There are very few high-level people detained there.
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Obama restarts gitmo trials (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110307/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_guantanamo)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama reversed course Monday and ordered a resumption of military trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, making his once ironclad promise to close the isolated prison look even more distant.
Actually most of the people at Gitmo are innocent, at least before the recent releases. That doesn't mean it's possible to tell the difference with certainty.
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I meant civilian trials. Military commissions are sham trials at best.
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Well, that doesn't look like it's going to happen. Presenting classified evidence would probably burn a lot of CIA contacts and wrongly acquitting a few people before interrogation will deny the military some intel. Even if every detainee received a civilian trial it wouldn't prevent the military from "outsourcing" detention.
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Since when have terrorists ever managed to do a lot of damage in the grand scheme of things?
It's somewhat poetic that our spasmic responses have done so much more. You put in so little and you get out so much!
Being a terrorist is such a deal.
Um, every time a suicide bomb blows up a marketplace or police station. The political effects are bigger than the immediate ones. Yes, terrorism is a pinprick on the whole but it does get kind of annoying when you're trying to prevent civil war or maintain confidence in institutions.
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We get more and better intel through plenty of other methods. We don't need to result to torture and abuse to get our information.
Even if every detainee received a civilian trial it wouldn't prevent the military from "outsourcing" detention.
Yeah, but putting certain members of the previous administration and the military leadership on trial for war crimes would help in deterring it.
There are so many assholes that need to be rotting in prison that aren't alleged Islamic extremists...
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Yeah, but putting certain members of the previous administration and the military leadership on trial for war crimes would help in deterring it.
I'm really surprised that this isn't talked about more; the Hague could easily send out warrants. That would put Obama in an interesting position.
edit: why not lol the us doesnt give the icc a cent
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/International_Criminal_Court_contributions%2C_2008.png)
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As it stands, neither Bush nor Cheney can set foot in any country that's a signatory to the ICC.
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We get more and better intel through plenty of other methods. We don't need to result to torture and abuse to get our information.
Even if every detainee received a civilian trial it wouldn't prevent the military from "outsourcing" detention.
Yeah, but putting certain members of the previous administration and the military leadership on trial for war crimes would help in deterring it.
There are so many assholes that need to be rotting in prison that aren't alleged Islamic extremists...
As I recall there was a push by a couple of democrats to investigate the bush administration's various wrong doings but the rest of the party and obama deep sixed it.
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Since when have terrorists ever managed to do a lot of damage in the grand scheme of things?
well if it weren't for 9/11 the Iraq war would never have happened.
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Um, every time a suicide bomb blows up a marketplace or police station. The political effects are bigger than the immediate ones. Yes, terrorism is a pinprick on the whole but it does get kind of annoying when you're trying to prevent civil war or maintain confidence in institutions.
I doubt the consequences of one measly car bomb killing a few dozen people will ever be more harmful than the consequences of the whole world seeing those pictures from Abu Ghraib or hearing stories from Gitmo.
ed: Actually, it strikes me that Gitmo is a good example of the famous pregnancy detector principle. If we have a terrorist detector which is 95% accurate, but only some small portion (<1%) of the population is a terrorist, most of the people we incarcerate will still be false positives. Throw in a further coefficient for rate of terrorist generation per false positive and if you had any kind of good data you could figure out whether Gitmo generates more terrorists than it incarcerates.
Since when have terrorists ever managed to do a lot of damage in the grand scheme of things?
well if it weren't for 9/11 the Iraq war would never have happened.
That was kind of the point of the rest of my post, yeah.
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I doubt the consequences of one measly car bomb killing a few dozen people will ever be more harmful than the consequences of the whole world seeing those pictures from Abu Ghraib or hearing stories from Gitmo.
ed: Actually, it strikes me that Gitmo is a good example of the famous pregnancy detector principle. If we have a terrorist detector which is 95% accurate, but only some small portion (<1%) of the population is a terrorist, most of the people we incarcerate will still be false positives. Throw in a further coefficient for rate of terrorist generation per false positive and if you had any kind of good data you could figure out whether Gitmo generates more terrorists than it incarcerates.
Whether or not some are false positives is nearly irrelevant. The abuse scandals would have happened whether or not the US arrested innocent people. Very few if any terrorists joined Al Qaeda to fight for the right to a fair trial; defiling a single Koran alone was much more of a big deal to them than any concern about false positives.
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Um, every time a suicide bomb blows up a marketplace or police station. The political effects are bigger than the immediate ones. Yes, terrorism is a pinprick on the whole but it does get kind of annoying when you're trying to prevent civil war or maintain confidence in institutions.
I doubt the consequences of one measly car bomb killing a few dozen people will ever be more harmful than the consequences of the whole world seeing those pictures from Abu Ghraib or hearing stories from Gitmo.
The consequences of that car bomb are the consequences of people seeing those pictures and of hearing those stories from Gitmo, GB.
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Um, every time a suicide bomb blows up a marketplace or police station. The political effects are bigger than the immediate ones. Yes, terrorism is a pinprick on the whole but it does get kind of annoying when you're trying to prevent civil war or maintain confidence in institutions.
I doubt the consequences of one measly car bomb killing a few dozen people will ever be more harmful than the consequences of the whole world seeing those pictures from Abu Ghraib or hearing stories from Gitmo.
The consequences of that car bomb are the consequences of people seeing those pictures and of hearing those stories from Gitmo, GB.
Wow, thanks for that point I made a dozen times already in threads like these. It's wonderful having my own arguments repeated to me.
I doubt the consequences of one measly car bomb killing a few dozen people will ever be more harmful than the consequences of the whole world seeing those pictures from Abu Ghraib or hearing stories from Gitmo.
ed: Actually, it strikes me that Gitmo is a good example of the famous pregnancy detector principle. If we have a terrorist detector which is 95% accurate, but only some small portion (<1%) of the population is a terrorist, most of the people we incarcerate will still be false positives. Throw in a further coefficient for rate of terrorist generation per false positive and if you had any kind of good data you could figure out whether Gitmo generates more terrorists than it incarcerates.
Whether or not some are false positives is nearly irrelevant. The abuse scandals would have happened whether or not the US arrested innocent people. Very few if any terrorists joined Al Qaeda to fight for the right to a fair trial; defiling a single Koran alone was much more of a big deal to them than any concern about false positives.
I'm not sure I believe that. I think the arrest of innocents is a much less sexy and media-friendly but still powerful source of outrage. When someone goes home after years in Gitmo they're inevitably going to have bad things to say about the US, and that's going to make the appeal of groups like Al Qaeda - whose arguments are sociopolitical dressed up in religion - more persuasive.
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Um, every time a suicide bomb blows up a marketplace or police station. The political effects are bigger than the immediate ones. Yes, terrorism is a pinprick on the whole but it does get kind of annoying when you're trying to prevent civil war or maintain confidence in institutions.
I doubt the consequences of one measly car bomb killing a few dozen people will ever be more harmful than the consequences of the whole world seeing those pictures from Abu Ghraib or hearing stories from Gitmo.
The consequences of that car bomb are the consequences of people seeing those pictures and of hearing those stories from Gitmo, GB.
Wow, thanks for that point I made a dozen times already in threads like these. It's wonderful having my own arguments repeated to me.
You don't get what those consequences are, GB. The consequences are the people who are killed in those blasts - on both sides. The lives and communities they take with them, the hopes and dreams that die with them. The endless cycle that seems to go on forever these days.
When people say "eh screw it, I wish we could just lock them up there and let them blow each other up" - that's exactly what we do.
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What the **** are you talking about 'I don't get what the consequences are'. My argument is that the whole problem with Gitmo is it creates more terrorists than it detains by embittering and angering people, who go on to cause attacks, perpetuating the cycle of violence.
Isn't that exactly what you just said? How can you think I don't get what the consequences are if I'm saying exactly what you're saying? Except that you have this bizarre belief that somehow this cycle of violence is a recent thing rather than a constant of human existence for centuries.
I wrote such good material on the problems of cyclic violence that the United States Institute of Peace brought me in to chill with ambassadors. I talked over solutions to these problems with seasoned specialists. Don't talk to me like I haven't examined the issue.
Here I'll give you a little pointer: violence is actually way down in the world. Way down. We live in the most peaceful time in history. Read this in full before you make another post. (http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2007_03_19_New%20Republic.pdf)
I've had friends killed in that very violence you're talking about. Don't pretend I don't understand the consequences on a personal level. You are a privileged white man living in the most pampered society on Earth; you have no right to claim you get it better than someone else. As well as, maybe, but not better.
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I just can't, in the absence of evidence, support the proposition that if the US handed off detainees to a foreign country without trial this would create more terrorists than it detained. There are many, many Taliban fighters being held in Afghan jails after shoddy trials and this is almost never mentioned.
I've had friends killed in that very violence you're talking about. Don't pretend I don't understand the consequences on a personal level. You are a privileged white man living in the most pampered society on Earth; you have no right to claim you get it better than someone else.
Are you playing the underprivileged black man card? How do you know UT is even white?
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I just can't, in the absence of evidence, support the proposition that if the US handed off detainees to a foreign country without trial this would create more terrorists than it detained. There are many, many Taliban fighters being held in Afghan jails after shoddy trials and this is almost never mentioned.
No you're probably right about that. From a realpolitik rather than moral standpoint it's a much safer alternative. I'm talking Gitmo vs. no Gitmo, because Gitmo is clearly a symbol of America.
I've had friends killed in that very violence you're talking about. Don't pretend I don't understand the consequences on a personal level. You are a privileged white man living in the most pampered society on Earth; you have no right to claim you get it better than someone else.
Are you playing the underprivileged black man card? How do you know UT is even white?
He posted pictures! Also I'm a privileged white man living in the most pampered society on Earth too, I just had the misfortune to have a few friends de-limbed and de-capitated in various Middle Eastern detonations. (They were in the American pigdog imperialist lackey army though, they obviously deserved it)
Also there are more races than black and white man
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It's pretty clear that Gitmo needs to be closed to prevent more terrorism. However knowing the CIA this wouldn't change anything as far as human rights; if a suspect is arrested in weak evidence military intelligence won't bother to put them through a trial- they'll find something else to do with them.
Also there are more races than black and white man
No man the whole world is either black or white
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I'm Teal!
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Also I'm a privileged white man living in the most pampered society on Earth too.
Also there are more races than black and white man
At least about these two you are correct.
Just because my skin color is of a particular tint (which as you said yourself, is similar to yours), you make a lot of assumptions about my character, where I'm from.
To you, you basically know everything about me, because you have all of these assumptions about other people...but I think more importantly, it's because you've made all these assumptions about yourself.
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Respond to my last post addressed to you.
ed: For the sake of more general argument to help elucidate why so many people on HLP think you aren't worth listening to. You correctly believe there are problems in the world, and you correctly want to fix them. Imagine, then, that you've realized something is wrong with your computer and you want to repair it.
Why do you insist on
1) not bothering to figure out when the problem began
2) not bothering to figure out what the problem actually is
3) not bothering to learn anything about how your computer actually works
4) proposing solutions like 'we should put it in better light, it will work nicer then' instead of diagnosing the issue
How can you treat the patient without understanding the disease, its time of onset, and, hell, the identity of the patient? Why are you not interested in learning that information?
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Respond to my last post addressed to you.
Here:
I just can't, in the absence of evidence, support the proposition that if the US handed off detainees to a foreign country without trial this would create more terrorists than it detained. There are many, many Taliban fighters being held in Afghan jails after shoddy trials and this is almost never mentioned.
No you're probably right about that. From a realpolitik rather than moral standpoint it's a much safer alternative. I'm talking Gitmo vs. no Gitmo, because Gitmo is clearly a symbol of America.
What is a "realpolitik"?
I would also like to respond to Mustang19:
There are many, many Taliban fighters being held in Afghan jails after shoddy trials and this is almost never mentioned.
And there are many, many free people residing in the jails of the free.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2494/does-the-united-states-lead-the-world-in-prison-population
From the article:
According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College London, the U.S. currently has the largest documented prison population in the world, both in absolute and proportional terms. We've got roughly 2.03 million people behind bars, or 701 per 100,000 population. China has the second-largest number of prisoners (1.51 million, for a rate of 117 per 100,000), and Russia has the
I just can't, in the absence of evidence, support the proposition that if the US handed off detainees to a foreign country without trial this would create more terrorists than it detained.
Why not? Why do you automatically assume that other countries would not want to have an equal interest in having a fair justice system? Why is our justice system "the best"?
Now please respond to my last post, General Battuta.
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That isn't the last post addressed to you. That post is clearly addressed to Mustang. Try again.
I'll quote it for you.
What the **** are you talking about 'I don't get what the consequences are'. My argument is that the whole problem with Gitmo is it creates more terrorists than it detains by embittering and angering people, who go on to cause attacks, perpetuating the cycle of violence.
Isn't that exactly what you just said? How can you think I don't get what the consequences are if I'm saying exactly what you're saying? Except that you have this bizarre belief that somehow this cycle of violence is a recent thing rather than a constant of human existence for centuries.
I wrote such good material on the problems of cyclic violence that the United States Institute of Peace brought me in to chill with ambassadors. I talked over solutions to these problems with seasoned specialists. Don't talk to me like I haven't examined the issue.
Here I'll give you a little pointer: violence is actually way down in the world. Way down. We live in the most peaceful time in history. Read this in full before you make another post.
I've had friends killed in that very violence you're talking about. Don't pretend I don't understand the consequences on a personal level. You are a privileged white man living in the most pampered society on Earth; you have no right to claim you get it better than someone else. As well as, maybe, but not better.
Here's another one you missed
ed: For the sake of more general argument to help elucidate why so many people on HLP think you aren't worth listening to. You correctly believe there are problems in the world, and you correctly want to fix them. Imagine, then, that you've realized something is wrong with your computer and you want to repair it.
Why do you insist on
1) not bothering to figure out when the problem began
2) not bothering to figure out what the problem actually is
3) not bothering to learn anything about how your computer actually works
4) proposing solutions like 'we should put it in better light, it will work nicer then' instead of diagnosing the issue
How can you treat the patient without understanding the disease, its time of onset, and, hell, the identity of the patient? Why are you not interested in learning that information?
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Here's the link you're supposed to read: click me (http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2007_03_19_New%20Republic.pdf)
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That isn't the last post addressed to you. That post is clearly addressed to Mustang. Try again.
I'll quote it for you.
What the **** are you talking about 'I don't get what the consequences are'. My argument is that the whole problem with Gitmo is it creates more terrorists than it detains by embittering and angering people, who go on to cause attacks, perpetuating the cycle of violence.
Isn't that exactly what you just said? How can you think I don't get what the consequences are if I'm saying exactly what you're saying? Except that you have this bizarre belief that somehow this cycle of violence is a recent thing rather than a constant of human existence for centuries.
I wrote such good material on the problems of cyclic violence that the United States Institute of Peace brought me in to chill with ambassadors. I talked over solutions to these problems with seasoned specialists. Don't talk to me like I haven't examined the issue.
Here I'll give you a little pointer: violence is actually way down in the world. Way down. We live in the most peaceful time in history. Read this in full before you make another post.
I've had friends killed in that very violence you're talking about. Don't pretend I don't understand the consequences on a personal level. You are a privileged white man living in the most pampered society on Earth; you have no right to claim you get it better than someone else. As well as, maybe, but not better.
Here's another one you missed
ed: For the sake of more general argument to help elucidate why so many people on HLP think you aren't worth listening to. You correctly believe there are problems in the world, and you correctly want to fix them. Imagine, then, that you've realized something is wrong with your computer and you want to repair it.
Why do you insist on
1) not bothering to figure out when the problem began
2) not bothering to figure out what the problem actually is
3) not bothering to learn anything about how your computer actually works
4) proposing solutions like 'we should put it in better light, it will work nicer then' instead of diagnosing the issue
How can you treat the patient without understanding the disease, its time of onset, and, hell, the identity of the patient? Why are you not interested in learning that information?
I chose not to respond to those posts because you started them off with;
What the **** are you talking about
EDIT: Also, I don't really want to read an article from Harvard, to be honest with you.
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Also there are more races than black and white man
I'm surprised you are taking the position that there are races, 'it's all a social construct' is the buzz these days.
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Here you go
What are you talking about 'I don't get what the consequences are'. My argument is that the whole problem with Gitmo is it creates more terrorists than it detains by embittering and angering people, who go on to cause attacks, perpetuating the cycle of violence.
Isn't that exactly what you just said? How can you think I don't get what the consequences are if I'm saying exactly what you're saying? Except that you have this bizarre belief that somehow this cycle of violence is a recent thing rather than a constant of human existence for centuries.
I wrote such good material on the problems of cyclic violence that the United States Institute of Peace brought me in to chill with ambassadors. I talked over solutions to these problems with seasoned specialists. Don't talk to me like I haven't examined the issue.
Here I'll give you a little pointer: violence is actually way down in the world. Way down. We live in the most peaceful time in history. Read this in full before you make another post.
I've had friends killed in that very violence you're talking about. Don't pretend I don't understand the consequences on a personal level. You are a privileged white man living in the most pampered society on Earth; you have no right to claim you get it better than someone else. As well as, maybe, but not better.
Here's another one you missed
ed: For the sake of more general argument to help elucidate why so many people on HLP think you aren't worth listening to. You correctly believe there are problems in the world, and you correctly want to fix them. Imagine, then, that you've realized something is wrong with your computer and you want to repair it.
Why do you insist on
1) not bothering to figure out when the problem began
2) not bothering to figure out what the problem actually is
3) not bothering to learn anything about how your computer actually works
4) proposing solutions like 'we should put it in better light, it will work nicer then' instead of diagnosing the issue
How can you treat the patient without understanding the disease, its time of onset, and, hell, the identity of the patient? Why are you not interested in learning that information?
Also there are more races than black and white man
I'm surprised you are taking the position that there are races, 'it's all a social construct' is the buzz these days.
Biologically there are no races, they don't exist.
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I'm also not treating you like you haven't examined the issue - that's how you're treating me. I'm treating you like an equal, instead of an "expert" like everyone seems to be these days.
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Then why would you claim that I 'don't get it' when I'm making precisely the same argument you did, only with more empirical evidence, more visceral reasons to understand the cycle of violence, and more apparently a better grasp of the actual situation?
What basis did you have for that claim?
Do you believe that violence is increasing or decreasing in the historical scheme of things?
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Then why would you claim that I 'don't get it'
Because "it" is what I'm saying.
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Then why would you claim that I 'don't get it'
Because "it" is what I'm saying.
How can I not get it when I'm making the same argument you are? When I'm saying the SAME THING you did?
What basis did you have for that claim?
Do you believe that violence is increasing or decreasing in the historical scheme of things?
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Then why would you claim that I 'don't get it'
Because "it" is what I'm saying.
How can I not get it when I'm making the same argument you are? When I'm saying the SAME THING you did?
If that's true then why are you so angry? I imagine you should be happy that we agree and want to talk about other things that you think we might agree on?
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I don't get angry in arguments on the Internet. They're arguments on the Internet, they're an opportunity to pit wits and knowledge against each other. In fact I rather enjoy this bit of them.
So you now admit you were in agreement with me. Why did you make a claim that we disagreed and that I didn't grasp something? What basis did you have for that claim?
Do you believe that violence is increasing or decreasing in the historical scheme of things?
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So you now admit you were in agreement with me.
You said that to me. To be honest I don't even know what we're discussing anymore. Perhaps you could please restate your position and we can go from there? :)
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GUYS!
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Sure, that's a reasonable request.
My argument is that Guantanamo Bay is harmful even if it successfully detains some terrorists because the injustices perpetrated there drive more people to terrorism. They kill, which in turn allows those in power to justify further injustice, creating a cycle of violence similar to those seen in many other conflict zones.
Do you agree or disagree with this?
Do you believe that violence is increasing or decreasing in the historical scheme of things?
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GUYS!
Hey I'm cross-examining the witness.
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GUYS!
We were having a debate, relax, it's cool. :)
Sure, that's a reasonable request.
My argument is that Guantanamo Bay is harmful even if it successfully detains some terrorists because the injustices perpetrated there drive more people to terrorism. They kill, which in turn allows those in power to justify further injustice, creating a cycle of violence similar to those seen in many other conflict zones.
Do you agree or disagree with this?
Do you believe that violence is increasing or decreasing in the historical scheme of things?
Yes I agree that Guantanamo Bay is harmful.
I honestly don't care if it's increasing or decreasing historically though, because I know that it's increasing now, and we should take steps to alter course - such as closing Guantanamo Bay.
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I honestly don't care if it's increasing or decreasing historically though, because I know that it's increasing now, and we should take steps to alter course - such as closing Guantanamo Bay..
How do you know that?
If you agree with this argument, why did you make the following statement:
The consequences of that car bomb are the consequences of people seeing those pictures and of hearing those stories from Gitmo, GB.
and then, when I asserted that this was my argument as well, go on to state
You don't get what those consequences are, GB. The consequences are the people who are killed in those blasts - on both sides. The lives and communities they take with them, the hopes and dreams that die with them. The endless cycle that seems to go on forever these days.
What grounds did you have to believe that I did not understand this?
May I remind you that we're operating by your rules? This is the Socratic method of debate you have repeatedly advocated.
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Why not? Why do you automatically assume that other countries would not want to have an equal interest in having a fair justice system? Why is our justice system "the best"?
Um, no. The rule of law is not high on the agenda in countries I mentioned, like Afghanistan.
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GUYS!
We were having a debate, relax, it's cool. :)
Sorry! reacting a bit too fast there.
Why not? Why do you automatically assume that other countries would not want to have an equal interest in having a fair justice system? Why is our justice system "the best"?
Um, no. The rule of law is not high on the agenda in countries I mentioned, like Afghanistan.
The rule of law is a requirement of a country to function in the first place, how would it not be high?
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Indeed, Mustang is correct. Rule of law and civil society are big predictors of successful transitions to democracy. Nations that lack these traits (Togo, for example) often have trouble getting past the usual pitfalls of modernization. I did a paper on it once! (http://fi.somethingawful.com/images/smilies/emot-eng101.gif)
Why not? Why do you automatically assume that other countries would not want to have an equal interest in having a fair justice system? Why is our justice system "the best"?
Um, no. The rule of law is not high on the agenda in countries I mentioned, like Afghanistan.
The rule of law is a requirement of a country to function in the first place, how would it not be high?
It's not a rule - you can have rule by fiat, rule by force, many dictatorial or junta-based systems roll that way.
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Hmmm. I geuss you are right. But how is it not high on the agenda of Afghanistan? I thought our very presence there and us training the police force etc. was all towards achieving that goal.
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Biologically there are no races, they don't exist.
False. Sure, the differences aren't what your average racist redneck pretends they are, but the genetic differences, while small, are enough to make significant differences in certain specific areas, most prominently in medicine. If there are no races, then we should ignore the greater propensity for, for example, diabetes in aboriginal Australians, or the weaker immunity to Malaria in caucasians.
As for Gitmo, while I definitiely don't support it, I can see the argument for detaining the leadership of Al Quaeda there. The reality is, that while it probably does radicalize a certain number of people, and probably a greater number than are detained, you do have to consider quantity vs quality. I'd personally trade a few hundred extra JI foot soldiers if it meant putting Abu Bakar Bashir away forever and ever, for example.
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Biologically there are no races, they don't exist.
False. Sure, the differences aren't what your average racist redneck pretends they are, but the genetic differences, while small, are enough to make significant differences in certain specific areas, most prominently in medicine. If there are no races, then we should ignore the greater propensity for, for example, diabetes in aboriginal Australians, or the weaker immunity to Malaria in caucasians.
You're confusing concepts. What you're talking about are populations. They don't match to any of the traditional social markers of race.
Populations are statistical tendencies, groupings based on shared alleles. But the appeal of marking these tendencies hides the fact that variation is within the groups is enormous, far larger than variation between the groups.
Race used scientifically speaks to fuzzy sets of traits (I literally mean the mathematical term fuzzy sets). When I say race doesn't exist I mean the strong, naive sense used popularly.
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Hmmm. I geuss you are right. But how is it not high on the agenda of Afghanistan? I thought our very presence there and us training the police force etc. was all towards achieving that goal.
The last Afghan election was blatantly rigged. Also there's not nearly as much of a fuss about things like access to legal counsel or corporal punishment.
You really think America only supports democracies, don't you?
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Human populations separated by geography and time are called races. The term's picked up a lot of baggage, ys, but you can't just say it's describing something that doesn;t exist.
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Human populations separated by geography and time are called races. The term's picked up a lot of baggage, ys, but you can't just say it's describing something that doesn;t exist.
No they're not. That's a population (source: Chicago evolutionary biologists, **** I'm too lazy but I bet Wikipedia has it too), and that term is important because it doesn't mean anything like the old use of 'race' did. Races are social constructs that are at best weakly coupled with the actual genetic populations.
ed: Here's an example. The African population is paraphyletic to all other human populations. In common parlance we refer to Africans as 'a race'. Yet the African population contains significantly more genetic diversity than all other populations - meaning that there's far less of a wall around them than there is around everyone else on Earth.
Similarly, the genetic markers used to identify ancestral population don't map to a race like 'Asian'. Instead you'd get markers for ancestral populations that are quite diverse and differentiated.
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So you admit that they exist, and that all you're doing is rebranding it?
Thanks.
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Nope, reread the above post by me.
'Race', the term, was never used to refer to what the word 'population' means. It has always referred to something socially constructed. In the past it was also believed to refer to something biological. That turned out to be false; ergo, race does not exist biologically.
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(if edits aren't working double posts ftw)
Think of it as working like the obsolete medical term 'humors'. In the past one might speak about 'humors' and how to alter them to treat disease. In some cases this theory of humors did seem to match symptoms and treatments. Eventually, it was discovered that a far more complicated system actually explained disease, and eventually 'humors' was phased out. Imagine, though, that 'humors' had remained in common use as parlance to describe the superficial symptoms of disease.
That's kind of what race is. It never meant anything biologically meaningful, but it's still used socially.
**** I could've thought of a better example than that.
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Fine, counter example. Australian aboriginals separated from the rest of the human poulation 40000 odd years ago. There are common genetic, physiological and physical markers that link them together as a population. They are also considered a race. Ergo, the term exists and maps to the science at least once.
The problem with saying "Races don't exist" is that it's the wrong message to put out. It's an interpretation of data coloured by modern political correctness which results in a position that is not only counterintuitive, but in at least one case (see above) incorrect. Plus, it does nothing to advance racial equality - the message we should be pushing is that race doesn't matter, not that t doesn't exist.
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Yes, in that case I think that'd be a good place to argue for a homology between the social construct and the biological population. It's a good matchup. However...the aborigines are still almost impossibly homogeneous with the rest of the species. Variance between the Aborigines and white Australians is smaller than variance within the race of 'Africans'. If the Africans are one race, then, surely you and the Aborigines are one race!
It's an interpretation of data coloured by modern political correctness which results in a position that is not only counterintuitive, but in at least one case (see above) incorrect
I have no interest whatsoever in political correctness, in fact I've never been sure what it means or says. Race, the term that has existed for God knows how many centuries, does not exist. It is not a biological fact. It has little if any validity in predicting anything biologically.
The fact that something works once is no evidence whatsoever for its value. The race-population coupling doesn't work far more than it does work; it is therefore useless.
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Fine, counter example. Australian aboriginals separated from the rest of the human poulation 40000 odd years ago. There are common genetic, physiological and physical markers that link them together as a population. They are also considered a race. Ergo, the term exists and maps to the science at least once.
The problem with saying "Races don't exist" is that it's the wrong message to put out. It's an interpretation of data coloured by modern political correctness which results in a position that is not only counterintuitive, but in at least one case (see above) incorrect. Plus, it does nothing to advance racial equality - the message we should be pushing is that race doesn't matter, not that t doesn't exist.
Wrong on all counts.
Australian aborigines are indistinguishable from the general human population except by a very select set of genetic markers which exist due to reproductive isolation. The same is equally true of the Amish, Ashkenaze Jews, and numerous other reproductively-isolated populations.
HOWEVER:
Taking a person from any member of these identifiable "races" (or any other, African, Slav, Celt, Hispanic, Mongol, Han Chinese, etc) and comparing them genetically to any other yields no significant genetic difference. Indeed, there is more genetic variation among individuals in a single "race" than there is between "races." SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) markers do not equate with identifiable differences between races. Even full-on allelic differences do not equate. Biologically, races do not exist. There is, generally speaking, a greater genetic difference between aborigines that do not share immediate common ancestry than there is between any aborigine and any other "race."
Race is entirely a social construct. It is biologically meaningless, and to put it any other way is to give credence to the failed and simply wrong ideas of a bunch of racist sociologists and psychologists dating back well beyond the 19th century.
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To avoid editing a post potentially being replied to, reproductively-isolated and pedigree groups DO exist in human biology, but they do not equate with visible characteristics that would allow you to define a biological race (because it implies distinctness to a level that is historically associated with that of a subspecies). The visible markers that people associate with races are utterly meaningless, biologically, and do not provide an indicator of any key biological difference between individuals.
Skin colour, the most commonly abused "indication" is controlled by only a few genes and depends at least partially on dosage mediation. It's typically selected for due to the climate of a reproductively-isolated population. It can be altered in a single generation of breeding due to dosage variation. Real reliable indicator /sarcasm.
This is a dead horse I've beaten many times in front of many people, and it is appalling that fully 10 years after the completion of the HGP people STILL think race is something other than a classification system developed entirely socially based on meaningless cues of arbitrary "difference."
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it is a classification system based on differences in physical heritable characteristics found within reproductively isolated populations. it may be useless but that does not mean that it does not exist.
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it is a classification system based on differences in physical heritable characteristics found within reproductively isolated populations. it may be useless but that does not mean that it does not exist.
It exists socially. It doesn't exist biologically.
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I had a long post, but frankly, there's a simpler way.
The genetic basis for the concept of race as it was understood is pissweak, I agree.
My problem with the statement "Race does not exist" is more social than scientific - there are groups with specific needs, both medical and social, which correspond to the old ideas of race, here if nowhere else in the world. Deny the difference and you take just a little more wind out of the sails of the people making positive changes, while those who're on the opposite side aren't going to believe you anyway.
Maybe this sort of thinking doesn't apply where you guys are, since the social/racial dynamics are different across the world. Unfortunately, I haven't the time to go through the issues that racial oversensitivity has caused and is causing here, especially in the north and isolated communities in the outback, but I'm not willing to concede the non-existence of race, as long as there is any genetic backing at all, when to do so would hinder social progress.
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My problem with the statement "Race does not exist" is more social than scientific
Well that makes sense, race is more social than scientific; but the statement was that race does not exist biologically.
there are groups with specific needs, both medical
Populations, yes
and social
Of course.
which correspond to the old ideas of race, here if nowhere else in the world. Deny the difference and you take just a little more wind out of the sails of the people making positive changes, while those who're on the opposite side aren't going to believe you anyway.
Why do you need to talk about race at all if you can just talk about populations?
Maybe this sort of thinking doesn't apply where you guys are, since the social/racial dynamics are different across the world. Unfortunately, I haven't the time to go through the issues that racial oversensitivity has caused and is causing here, especially in the north and isolated communities in the outback, but I'm not willing to concede the non-existence of race, as long as there is any genetic backing at all, when to do so would hinder social progress.
Ah, so it's a local politics thing. Well that makes a lot more sense (not in a negative or positive way, just more sense) out of your objections past and present.
Fortunately you can concede the non-existence of race, since there is pretty much no genetic backing at all, and it won't hinder social progress!
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Fortunately you can concede the non-existence of race, since there is pretty much no genetic backing at all, and it won't hinder social progress!
No, I don't think I can. You have to frame things correctly, even science, for it to have a positive impact on things. I see no benefit to the statement "Race does not exist", since it has the potential, however slight, to diminish positive change, and therefore I will not concede while there is biological difference (evidence being both genetic similarities and group based differences in medical needs, which can and has been filtered for social factors like lifestyle).
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Durant: Six-One, this is Six-Four, go to UHF secure. I've got some bad news.
Cliff Wolcott: Race is a word, Durant. I don't want to hear about it.
Durant: It is not a word. It's an obsolete social concept of a word.
Cliff Wolcott: Race is a word in common usage. That is the key phrase in scrabble, my friend, common usage.
Durant: No! If it's not in the dictionary, it doesn't count.
Cliff Wolcott: It doesn't have to be in the dictionary!
Durant: It does have to be in the dictionary! Listen, when we get back to base, it's coming off the board.
Cliff Wolcott: You touch my race and I'll spank you, Night Stalker. You hear me?
Durant: Yeah. Promises.
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No, I don't think I can. You have to frame things correctly, even science, for it to have a positive impact on things
Indeed. Why, then, would you frame them incorrectly, as you're arguing for?
Let's take as a given that your argument about biological differences is correct (I'll leave that to MP-Ryan). What positive change can you achieve by using the incorrect term race when you could be using the correct term population, which drops the baggage attached to the incorrect term race?
Please don't go off about political correctness, that's a meaningless and unscientific digression and nobody knows what it means. But from a social standpoint, this
I see no benefit to the statement "Race does not exist"
is privilege at its finest. I'm not sure I've ever seen a better single statement encapsulating the notion of privilege.
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I didn't mean that to come off as uncivil.
The way I see it is, we're both now arguing about the social framing of the illusion of race, and you think it's beneficial to retain it and I think it's beneficial to discard it.
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I had a long post, but frankly, there's a simpler way.
The genetic basis for the concept of race as it was understood is pissweak, I agree.
My problem with the statement "Race does not exist" is more social than scientific - there are groups with specific needs, both medical and social, which correspond to the old ideas of race, here if nowhere else in the world. Deny the difference and you take just a little more wind out of the sails of the people making positive changes, while those who're on the opposite side aren't going to believe you anyway.
Maybe this sort of thinking doesn't apply where you guys are, since the social/racial dynamics are different across the world. Unfortunately, I haven't the time to go through the issues that racial oversensitivity has caused and is causing here, especially in the north and isolated communities in the outback, but I'm not willing to concede the non-existence of race, as long as there is any genetic backing at all, when to do so would hinder social progress.
What you're missing is that the term "race" implies a readily-identifiable biological difference between human population groups based on gross physical characteristics. That doesn't exist. The aborigine's are no different than any other "race" in that regard.
What you are confounding with race is populations, which ARE heavily biologically-tied to particular traits and are ABSOLUTELY useful in identifying and treating certain medical ailments (screening for Tay-Sachs is a perfect example). But populations are defined genetically, based on quantifiable differences while races are not. Medical screening is based on population analysis and not overt characteristics of race because appearance belies population traits, and race is completely bound up in superficial appearances.
Human reproduction is such that it is possible for individuals to easily fit a "race" definition without the matching population markers in a single generation of reproduction. Now, the aborigine population is confounded with the social construct of race because in their case there is little interbreeding with persons of different "racial" characteristics, so population roughly conforms with the "racial" definition - but that is not to say that all or even of the majority of members which conform with the racial definition also match the population characteristics and vice-versa. Using racial characteristics as a marker for any sort of biomedical program will cause one to miss the true population mark in almost every circumstance, including that of the aborigine's in Australia.
Using race in any sort of meaningful way is a huge hindrance on social and medical progress because it confounds understanding of population principles, and promotes cause-effect misunderstanding. Not all people that one could identify as members of a race belong to the same population, nor do all the members of a population belong to a single race - under ANY circumstances, aborigine's included.
Race is a social term used by the confused, the uninformed, and the ignorant. In sociology, one is better to speak of cultural groups, and in biology, one should always speak of populations. Hernstein may be dead, but if I ever get my hands on Charles Murray I have a thing or two I'd like to explain to his apparently mediocre intellect (Wikipedia makes some useful background reading here). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve) J. Phillipe Rushton is another one in the same club, and he's geographically located in the same country as me. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race,_Evolution_and_Behavior)
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Please don't go off about political correctness, that's a meaningless and unscientific digression and nobody knows what it means.
This is academia at it's finest. :wakka: Wikipedia knows. Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, religious belief, disability, and age-related contexts, and doing so to an excessive extent.
The main problem with the use of "race" is it's nineteenth century connotations of white supremacy. So there are more inoffensive terms that accomplish the same thing.
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That's just pushing back the definition, though, then you've got to work on 'offense' and you've got to define 'excessive extent'.
In any case the use of the term is more interesting than the book definition and judging by the use it is very clear nobody has any idea what it means. It's been reduced to 'things I disagree with'.
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I will not concede while there is biological difference
Then concede. There is no statistical biological difference between one race and any other. There is also no statistical biological difference between one population and any other. There are differences in allelic frequencies between populations, although those differences also exist (on other alleles) within populations, but these are not statistically significant biological differences (one consistent allelic variation among hundreds of thousands of genes does not a statistically-significant difference make).
Aborigine's have different ancestral SNPs than people from different populations, but those genetic markers are tied to their population and not their race. It is perfectly possible for someone to be "racially" aborigine and match few or none of the associated population markers.
Like I said, when speaking about social issues replace race with culture, and when speaking biologically replaced it with population. Not only will you be factually correct, you won't sound like an uneducated bumpkin to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. The only people who actually use race anymore are the general public which really fails at the concept anyway, uneducated sociologists who simply don't know better, and sociologists who try to fashion themselves as serious scientists by spouting ridiculous silliness that any serious biologist can debunk in about 30 seconds flat (see references above). I say this as someone with a degree in sociology as well as a degree in molecular genetics, so I've met a number of these sadly misguided individuals.
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That's just pushing back the definition, though, then you've got to work on 'offense' and you've got to define 'excessive extent'.
In any case the use of the term is more interesting than the book definition and judging by the use it is very clear nobody has any idea what it means. It's been reduced to 'things I disagree with'.
Boy what a sheltered privileged ivory tower etc etc existence you live. If you don't even know why words like "African American" or "mentally challenged" were invented then you will make one good women's studies professor some day.
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I get why they were invented and I certainly think they have been overused in some places, but I don't think I necessarily agree with 'offense' or 'excessive extent' to describe them. Even if those are appropriate phrases to talk about political correctness, that doesn't mean the term hasn't now been prostituted to a billion different agendas.
Also women's studies is cool
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Well that's right up your alley, you'll be a regular Zizek some day.
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I want to be a Voltron formed out of Derrida, Judith Butler, and some other people I'm too lazy to look up.
fake edit because i looked some up: Gayle Rubin
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My problem is that what I want is social change from people - generally non-scientifically educated people at that. The easiest way to get that change from those people is to work through existing social constructs that they already understand. If, instead, we ignore the whole concept of race, we lose what can potentially be an advantage. It's about presentation to the masses.
MP Ryan - I'm not arguing the genetic evidence - obviously the old ideas of race don't apply in the biological sense. I would ask though, how would you practically separate a group into populations without using racial characteristics? Is it not OK, therefore, to use racial characteristics to target health care if there's an increased risk of one disease or another in a particular racial group (my above reference to diabetes, for example)? Incidentally, if there are medical differences that can be determined even after screening for lifestyle and social factors, those are biological distinctions, yes or no?
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MP Ryan - I'm not arguing the genetic evidence - obviously the old ideas of race don't apply in the biological sense. I would ask though, how would you practically separate a group into populations without using racial characteristics?
How would you?
Take sub-Sarahan Africans, that's totally a racial group. How would you split that group up into populations using phenotypic characteristics?
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My problem is that what I want is social change from people - generally non-scientifically educated people at that.
I'm trying to do the same thing, though I don't see it as a problem.
The easiest way to get that change from those people is to work through existing social constructs that they already understand. If, instead, we ignore the whole concept of race, we lose what can potentially be an advantage. It's about presentation to the masses.
I disagree with all of these statements.
MP Ryan - I'm not arguing the genetic evidence - obviously the old ideas of race don't apply in the biological sense. I would ask though, how would you practically separate a group into populations without using racial characteristics?
Why must a population be separated or strung together through any other system other than what an individual chooses for themself? That seems the most "practical" to me.
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I'm not talking about segregation or anything UT. I'm thinking about from the government's perspective, for the provision of (mostly medical) services.
It might make more sense if you understand the geographic districution issues in Australia - i.e. far higher densities of aboriginal people in parts of the country.
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I'm not talking about segregation or anything UT. I'm thinking about from the government's perspective, for the provision of (mostly medical) services.
I know - why do it at all? If race doesn't matter, why put it on a government form? Just give aid to people who need it, rather than trying to pre-allocate aide to groups by virtue of what group they're in.
It might make more sense if you understand the geographic districution issues in Australia - i.e. far higher densities of aboriginal people in parts of the country.
I'm sure there's a similar issue here in the US somewhere, just given the way mixed demographics and environments we have all over the country.
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It's not a matter of forms or anything... OK, I'll give a specific example. 1/4 of the populatiion of the Northern Territory here are aboriginal. Previous studies have suggested that aboriginals have a higher risk of diabetes. If there's no biological basis for race, then those studies, almost certainly performed in another part of the country, probably on the east coast, are not applicable. So, should the federal government increase funding for diabetes prevention in the Northern Territory relative to other states and territories, with smaller aboriginal poulations, or not?
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If there's no biological basis for race, then those studies, almost certainly performed in another part of the country, probably on the east coast, are not applicable.
I don't think that follows.
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UT - please try to stay on topic with respect to the thread and make an effort to follow the course of discussions. If you can't participate in debate, you don't belong here.
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It's not a matter of forms or anything... OK, I'll give a specific example. 1/4 of the populatiion of the Northern Territory here are aboriginal. Previous studies have suggested that aboriginals have a higher risk of diabetes. If there's no biological basis for race, then those studies, almost certainly performed in another part of the country, probably on the east coast, are not applicable. So, should the federal government increase funding for diabetes prevention in the Northern Territory relative to other states and territories, with smaller aboriginal poulations, or not?
I think they should increase funding for diabetes prevention in the Northern Territory, but not because there are more aboriginal people there. I think they should increase it because there is a higher likelihood for diabetes in that area.
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That I agree with, but it doesn't answer BlackWolf's question in other hypothetical scenarios. If you know a population is prone to a particular issue, do you base your decisions on that knowledge?
Say you know an area has a lot of undiagnosed diabetes sufferers. Do you send more tests to the doors of those who belong to a diabetes-prone population?
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It's not a matter of forms or anything... OK, I'll give a specific example. 1/4 of the populatiion of the Northern Territory here are aboriginal. Previous studies have suggested that aboriginals have a higher risk of diabetes. If there's no biological basis for race, then those studies, almost certainly performed in another part of the country, probably on the east coast, are not applicable. So, should the federal government increase funding for diabetes prevention in the Northern Territory relative to other states and territories, with smaller aboriginal poulations, or not?
I think they should increase funding for diabetes prevention in the Northern Territory, but not because there are more aboriginal people there. I think they should increase it because there is a higher likelihood for diabetes in that area.
If its not due to environmental factors, assigning aid to a general region then your failing to address the reason the aid is needed.
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That I agree with, but it doesn't answer BlackWolf's question in other hypothetical scenarios. If you know a population is prone to a particular issue, do you base your decisions on that knowledge?
Say you know an area has a lot of undiagnosed diabetes sufferers. Do you send more tests to the doors of those who belong to a diabetes-prone population?
If they're undiagnosed, how do you know that the area has a lot of diabetes sufferers?
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It's not a matter of forms or anything... OK, I'll give a specific example. 1/4 of the populatiion of the Northern Territory here are aboriginal. Previous studies have suggested that aboriginals have a higher risk of diabetes. If there's no biological basis for race, then those studies, almost certainly performed in another part of the country, probably on the east coast, are not applicable. So, should the federal government increase funding for diabetes prevention in the Northern Territory relative to other states and territories, with smaller aboriginal poulations, or not?
I think they should increase funding for diabetes prevention in the Northern Territory, but not because there are more aboriginal people there. I think they should increase it because there is a higher likelihood for diabetes in that area.
If its not due to environmental factors, assigning aid to a general region then your failing to address the reason the aid is needed.
Then maybe you should address the reason the aid is needed instead of assigning aid at all...?
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That I agree with, but it doesn't answer BlackWolf's question in other hypothetical scenarios. If you know a population is prone to a particular issue, do you base your decisions on that knowledge?
Say you know an area has a lot of undiagnosed diabetes sufferers. Do you send more tests to the doors of those who belong to a diabetes-prone population?
If they're undiagnosed, how do you know that the area has a lot of diabetes sufferers?
Statistical inference. You're seeing a lot of cases and you know the diagnosis rate is low there because of inadequate screening and education.
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My problem is that what I want is social change from people - generally non-scientifically educated people at that. The easiest way to get that change from those people is to work through existing social constructs that they already understand. If, instead, we ignore the whole concept of race, we lose what can potentially be an advantage. It's about presentation to the masses.
But the masses don't understand race to begin with. The public at large doesn't really understand the loaded definition, the imperialist history, and the superiority silliness that accompanies the concept. It's embedded in literature from the mid-18th century onward, and hit it's heyday in the 19th and 20th. A flawed concept is not a good way to explain an issue to people.
MP Ryan - I'm not arguing the genetic evidence - obviously the old ideas of race don't apply in the biological sense. I would ask though, how would you practically separate a group into populations without using racial characteristics?
Biological screening. Microarray analysis is friggin' cheap. So are blood tests. Both techniques work admirably and can be applied on a large scale quite affordably. In circumstances where a medical issue is widespread enough to make screening impractical, it may often be easier to treat everyone with preventative measures (for things such as diabetes.
Is it not OK, therefore, to use racial characteristics to target health care if there's an increased risk of one disease or another in a particular racial group (my above reference to diabetes, for example)?
Nope, because it's equivalent (in term of rigor) to simply treating everyone, BUT has the added detraction that it will miss people and simultaneously treat others who don't require it. Better to either screen, or treat everyone regardless of race.
Incidentally, if there are medical differences that can be determined even after screening for lifestyle and social factors, those are biological distinctions, yes or no?
Yes, but they are either distinctions between individuals or shared frequencies that constitute a distinct population (on those markers only). In neither case are they related to the perceived race of the people involved (which is another good aside: race is all about perception. "Asians" are often perceived by "Caucasians" as a single racial group, but Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Mongols, Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians do not self-identify as a single cohesive racial group).
Digression: this conversation has reminded me why I disliked my population genetics class so intensely.
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It's not a matter of forms or anything... OK, I'll give a specific example. 1/4 of the populatiion of the Northern Territory here are aboriginal. Previous studies have suggested that aboriginals have a higher risk of diabetes. If there's no biological basis for race, then those studies, almost certainly performed in another part of the country, probably on the east coast, are not applicable. So, should the federal government increase funding for diabetes prevention in the Northern Territory relative to other states and territories, with smaller aboriginal poulations, or not?
The problem is in the definitions. The population that fuzzily encompasses the racial definition of aboriginals has a higher risk of diabetes, not the racial group. It comes down to laziness. People LOVE categories, and it's an easy way to do research, but it misses a part of the picture because race is subjective.
Ashkenaze Jews are a population group that coincides with a cultural which have a very high incidence of Tay-Sachs disease relative to the general population - but screening is not limited to their cultural group, nor are all people who are members of that cultural group necessarily screened. Screening is primarily aimed at their historical reproductive population.
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This is for UT, so he knows what to say next time someone asks him to talk about recent trends in global political violence: Human Security Report. (http://www.hsrgroup.org/docs/Publications/HSR20092010/20092010HumanSecurityReport-Part3-TrendsInHumanInsecurity.pdf)
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Hmmm. I geuss you are right. But how is it not high on the agenda of Afghanistan? I thought our very presence there and us training the police force etc. was all towards achieving that goal.
The last Afghan election was blatantly rigged. Also there's not nearly as much of a fuss about things like access to legal counsel or corporal punishment.
You really think America only supports democracies, don't you?
Ah, thanks for clearing that up
And no, I really do not think America only supports democracies. In fact, I can not think of any statements I made which could attribute towards me thinking that (I mean... WHAT?). However, I am quite sure that the NATO (that is who I meant with 'us') presence in Afghanistan has something to do with getting the country more stable. Because then, they can mine their vast amounts of natural resources and we can buy them.
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-Joshua-, to be honest I think that the standard
"Oh what, you don't believe your country does X?" (specifically America these days)
is basically just a troll comment. An era of ignorance on the part of the American public towards it's governments' foreign adventures, both past and present, is rapidly coming to a close. I think that if anyone's discussing politics these days, they know that there's a problem with America and that it needs to be fixed.
And no, I really do not think America only supports democracies. In fact, I can not think of any statements I made which could attribute towards me thinking that (I mean... WHAT?). However, I am quite sure that the NATO (that is who I meant with 'us') presence in Afghanistan has something to do with getting the country more stable. Because then, they can mine their vast amounts of natural resources and we can buy them.
Then by "us" you must have meant Western Europe/North America?
But yea, our presence in Afghanistan really was towards promoting stability in the region...but instead of actually giving them the resources that they need, we try to help sides fight over what little resources in the area there are.
A friend of mine wondered why we send gunships to Afghanistan instead of cows? It seems that that's what they'd fight over most...the few resources that they have. Why don't we let more of the public in on what Israel's doing in Gaza? Maybe that would help build pressure in the US Government for Israel and Gaza to come to peaceful terms, that includes Israel giving up some land. Not a ton, an equal amount of land for land.
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The era of ignorance on the part of the American public towards it's governments' foreign adventures, both past and present, is/has rapidly come to an end. I think that if anyone's discussing politics these days, they know that there's a problem with America and that it needs to be fixed.
Prove that this is true. How do you know that Americans are more aware of foreign policy than they were in the past?
In its early years, World War II was a divisive war like any other. Was public awareness somehow lower then?
I'll give you a book to read if you want to learn more about what you're talking about. You're young, and it's easy to assume that because you don't know about something happening in the past, it didn't happen.
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Furthermore,
I think that if anyone's discussing politics these days, they know that there's a problem with America and that it needs to be fixed.
What problem exists now that did not exist in the past 100 or 200 years?
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It's more a question of 'values' (not moral values, values as in amounts) people are convinved there's a lot more bad stuff these days, and the truth is, even with balancing for the increased population, this isn't actually true.
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It's more a question of 'values' (not moral values, values as in amounts) people are convinved there's a lot more bad stuff these days, and the truth is, even with balancing for the increased population, this isn't actually true.
Are people convinced of that, though? Hasn't every generation, at every point in history, believed that there's a lot more bad stuff these days?
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Oh definately, it's an ongoing thing, generation after generation. I suppose the only thing that has really changed is access to the information over a much wider area, so we have learned that every country in the world has the same problems. This, I agree, is not indicative of anything getting worse, it's just that someone turned on the light on the Human race and many people don't like what they see.
I.E. That people don't do evil stuff because they are 'evil', but because they are 'people'
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They're very silly, then - as pointed out in that article I linked, the human race has become enormously more decent over the past 200 years.
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The world is a silly place unfortunately.
I've always pointed this thing about 'morals', we go on about teenager pregnancy being immoral when 100 years ago it was the norm. That's always been the problem with people confusing 'Moral behaviour' with 'Ethical Behaviour'.
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Oh definately, it's an ongoing thing, generation after generation. I suppose the only thing that has really changed is access to the information over a much wider area, so we have learned that every country in the world has the same problems.
Sounds like people need to get together and stop the cycle.
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-Joshua-, to be honest I think that the standard
"Oh what, you don't believe your country does X?" (specifically America these days)
is basically just a troll comment. An era of ignorance on the part of the American public towards it's governments' foreign adventures, both past and present, is rapidly coming to a close. I think that if anyone's discussing politics these days, they know that there's a problem with America and that it needs to be fixed.
And no, I really do not think America only supports democracies. In fact, I can not think of any statements I made which could attribute towards me thinking that (I mean... WHAT?). However, I am quite sure that the NATO (that is who I meant with 'us') presence in Afghanistan has something to do with getting the country more stable. Because then, they can mine their vast amounts of natural resources and we can buy them.
Then by "us" you must have meant Western Europe/North America?
But yea, our presence in Afghanistan really was towards promoting stability in the region...but instead of actually giving them the resources that they need, we try to help sides fight over what little resources in the area there are.
A friend of mine wondered why we send gunships to Afghanistan instead of cows? It seems that that's what they'd fight over most...the few resources that they have. Why don't we let more of the public in on what Israel's doing in Gaza? Maybe that would help build pressure in the US Government for Israel and Gaza to come to peaceful terms, that includes Israel giving up some land. Not a ton, an equal amount of land for land.
There have been a few studies which say that Afghenistan has an awfull lot of natural resources, such as gold, hidden. They are just too busy shooting each other to exploit it. Now that China has decided to keep their natural resources for themselves, 'we' (As in the EU and such) would have a great interest in securing those.
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There have been a few studies which say that Afghenistan has an awfull lot of natural resources, such as gold, hidden. They are just too busy shooting each other to exploit it. Now that China has decided to keep their natural resources for themselves, 'we' (As in the EU and such) would have a great interest in securing those.
You're right...but that would take a lot of infrastructure investment, a lot of people and electricity and jobs to be able to use ecologically.
Yet all we're doing is trying this stuff with guns and corporate/government contracts. Neither really represent the actual people involved, IMO. For instance, you don't see many millionaires in the military, yet they're the ones in office and running the companies.
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Oh definately, it's an ongoing thing, generation after generation. I suppose the only thing that has really changed is access to the information over a much wider area, so we have learned that every country in the world has the same problems.
Sounds like people need to get together and stop the cycle.
Stop the cycle of thinking things are worse than they were last generation when they're actually improving, definitely. Why don't you help out?
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The thing is, there a little side of me in a white labcoat saying "Friction between internal groups generates a lot of the heat that powers the Engine of humanity". Coffee is hot because the molecules are constantly bouncing off of each other (edit: Yes, I know not strictly true, it's the other way round, but you get the meaning :p), there's lots of energy in there, it's kind of the same dynamic in humanity. The hard part is finding a way of doing it without stabbing the other molecules on the way past ;)
We are getting there, but perceptions are usually centred around a very small part of society for a very small space of its existence.
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The thing is, there a little side of me in a white labcoat saying "Friction between internal groups generates a lot of the heat that powers the Engine of humanity". Coffee is hot because the molecules are constantly bouncing off of each other (edit: Yes, I know not strictly true, it's the other way round, but you get the meaning :p), there's lots of energy in there, it's kind of the same dynamic in humanity. The hard part is finding a way of doing it without stabbing the other molecules on the way past ;)
We are getting there, but perceptions are usually centred around a very small part of society for a very small space of its existence.
I like to look at fluidic flow myself. :)
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There's a difference between that and the problem we're trying to help Unknown Target cure. UT's problem is that he doesn't understand the historical causes of an issue, so he's unable to figure out how to address it. Wanting to improve things is good. Wanting to improve things without knowing why they happen or how to fix them is bad.
You can't attack a problem from a position of naivete. Systems are complex. You need to understand that complexity before you can figure out where to intervene for the best effect. Education is critical.
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There's a difference between that and the problem we're trying to help Unknown Target cure. UT's problem is that he doesn't understand the historical causes of an issue, so he's unable to figure out how to address it. Wanting to improve things is good. Wanting to improve things without knowing why they happen or how to fix them is bad.
Why do you automatically assume that that history or theory written from looking at that history can not be wrong? The meanings of history can change depending on whoever interprets it.
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It's not an issue of interpretation. You need to present data for there to be any interpretation at all. When you make a claim, you need more than a gut feeling to go on. I agree with many of your issues, but you do a poor job of proving that they exist. You need to be able to ground idealism in the empirical.
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It's not an issue of interpretation. You need to present data for there to be any interpretation at all. When you make a claim, you need more than a gut feeling to go on. I agree with many of your issues, but you do a poor job of proving that they exist. You need to be able to ground idealism in the empirical.
Numbers can be misread. :)
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So you're saying that you don't need statistics, you don't need historical precedents, you can make your plans using only the power of your mind?
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So you're saying that you don't need statistics, you don't need historical precedents, you can make your plans using only the power of your mind?
Well it's another possibility. I mean, I doubt the Constitution was written using just statistical inquiries.
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It's not an issue of interpretation. You need to present data for there to be any interpretation at all. When you make a claim, you need more than a gut feeling to go on. I agree with many of your issues, but you do a poor job of proving that they exist. You need to be able to ground idealism in the empirical.
Numbers can be misread. :)
Absolutely. So can words.
But it's better than having nothing at all. You've presented a lot of bad plans because you don't understand the systems you're trying to work with. You can do better.
I was an activist for years; I've helped in efforts to elect presidents and senators. It's not done by feeling good and wanting change. It's done by having a plan.
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So you're saying that you don't need statistics, you don't need historical precedents, you can make your plans using only the power of your mind?
Well it's another possibility. I mean, I doubt the Constitution was written using just statistical inquiries.
The Constitution was written in no small part by devout rationalists and enlightenment thinkers, and many of the greatest debates surrounding it were about the actual realities of how to divide political power and make the system work.
It was written by knowing the country and how it worked. It was written by practical, intelligent men who knew how to translate an idea into action.
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Yes, and?
I bet you they didn't base their entire decision off of what the latest numbers from X were saying compared with the latest trends in Y.
Statistics are just another problem solving tool, not an end in themselves.
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Exactly - but they're also the only way to test models. They're a necessary ingredient. You can't roll without them.
ed: For example, you've made claims that the people want something. How do you know they want it? How can you tell?
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Exactly - but they're also the only way to test models. They're a necessary ingredient. You can't roll without them.
ed: For example, you've made claims that the people want something. How do you know they want it? How can you tell?
Why not measure it in time?
To answer your example; one possibility of how to measure it could be that over time you measure how often an individual says they mayhave heard key phrases during the course of their day? So for every day for X number of years, Z is how often an individual hears "seems like things are getting worse", and Y is time.
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Exactly - but they're also the only way to test models. They're a necessary ingredient. You can't roll without them.
ed: For example, you've made claims that the people want something. How do you know they want it? How can you tell?
Why not measure it in time?
To answer your example; one possibility of how to measure it could be that over time you measure how often an individual says they mayhave heard key phrases during the course of their day? So for every day for X number of years, Z is how often an individual hears "seems like things are getting worse", and Y is time.
Exactly, and now you're gathering population statistics. Except there are far easier and more representative ways to get the data you're after, and much better questions to ask.
ed: How many people do you think you'd need to poll in order to be sure you have a representative sample? How would you do it?
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ed: How many people do you think you'd need to poll in order to be sure you have a representative sample? How would you do it?
Honestly I just wouldn't do it. I would basically use myself as the example's barometer. If I am doing what I believe to be the right thing, I would talk to others around me and see how they reacted to some of the things I do. I would think about the results, and experiment with another course of action.
Basically, I'd think for myself, instead of wondering what the numbers said the likelihood of me thinking about something different was.
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Isn't governing by that method essentially tantamount to dictatorial rule?
Why do you believe that using statistical methodology precludes thinking for yourself?
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Isn't governing by that method essentially tantamount to dictatorial rule?
Why do you believe that using statistical methodology precludes thinking for yourself?
I don't, I think that's what you're not doing, though.
These questions you ask me, why don't you answer them in your next post? Use any perspective you'd like on the matter.
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No, you're missing the issue. The reason I'm asking you to supply statistics is because you make statements about how EVERYONE feels, when really you're saying what YOU feel.
If you're going to describe the attitudes of a population, you need population statistics.
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No, you're missing the issue. The reason I'm asking you to supply statistics is because you make statements about how EVERYONE feels, when really you're saying what YOU feel.
If you're going to describe the attitudes of a population, you need population statistics.
The issue is that you're refusing to answer that personal question asking you to do what?
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No, you're missing the issue. The reason I'm asking you to supply statistics is because you make statements about how EVERYONE feels, when really you're saying what YOU feel.
If you're going to describe the attitudes of a population, you need population statistics.
The issue is that you're refusing to answer that personal question asking you to do what?
This sentence doesn't make sense, please rephrase it.
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Can anyone else reading this thread answer the question? Do you think any of them can help you, General Battuta?
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Can anyone else reading this thread answer the question? Do you think any of them can help you, General Battuta?
What question exactly are you asking? I'm not clear on what you want answered. You want me to answer if governing by what you feel is right is dictatorial rule? Yes, absolutely. Do I think using statistics precludes thinking for yourself? No, of course not, I've already explained why.
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Explain what point you're trying to make. Is your argument that decisionmakers should never consult population statistics to see what others believe before making a decision?
Are you essentially arguing that democracy should be done away with?
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The question is: what do you think I would say?
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You're not sure any more. Come back when you've figured it out, and we can continue.
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(http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/2918/98836831.jpg) (http://img857.imageshack.us/i/98836831.jpg/)
What is the topic of discussion here?
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oh snap a flaming giboon
Originally we were trying to explain to UT why the way he feels something is does not necessarily represent the way it actually is or even the way other people actually think it is. Now I dunno, he seems to have gone off on a tangent where if you use science you are evil?
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(http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/2918/98836831.jpg) (http://img857.imageshack.us/i/98836831.jpg/)
What is the topic of discussion here?
How not to do photo-manipulation, or so it seems. :blah:
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Don't disrespect that giboon's forcefield.
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Originally we were trying to explain to UT why the way he feels something is does not necessarily represent the way it actually is or even the way other people actually think it is. Now I dunno, he seems to have gone off on a tangent where if you use science you are evil?
But that's a basic question of epistemology. How do I know the outside world exists? How do I know what everyone else says is a lie?!
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Originally we were trying to explain to UT why the way he feels something is does not necessarily represent the way it actually is or even the way other people actually think it is. Now I dunno, he seems to have gone off on a tangent where if you use science you are evil?
But that's a basic question of epistemology. How do I know the outside world exists? How do I know what everyone else says is a lie?!
YOU DON'T D:
(but if you're going to try to implement public policy, you might as well figure out what all those hallucinatory liars are telling you, so they don't lie you out of office and so you can act in accordance with their self-interested lies)
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oh snap a flaming giboon
Originally we were trying to explain to UT why the way he feels something is does not necessarily represent the way it actually is or even the way other people actually think it is. Now I dunno, he seems to have gone off on a tangent where if you use science you are evil?
No, that's not what I was saying.
The closest thing to that that I was saying was that science as part of it's nature has to accept the possibility of religion, and while religion makes you feel great, science grows a lot more food you can eat.
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Since this thread desperately needs rescuing, I'm going to talk a bit more about how stupid voters are.
We (geniuses) have known for a long time that one of the primary determinants of a president's chances of getting re-elected (or plain elected, if he's the challenger) is the real disposable income growth that occurs in the country during his four years in office. This is a measure of the amount of income that becomes available to workers after inflation.
Now, voters are stupid about this on several levels. First off, they believe the president has control over the economy - this is a dubious prospect at best. Second, however, a rational voter would (probably) look at RDI growth over all four years of the president's term. It's possible that they would attribute the early years to the previous president's policy, but actual questions don't seem to suggest this is true - they don't even think about that.
So what do they do instead? Well, really they only seem to care about RDI growth in the election year. If the election year went well, they vote to re-elect. If the election year went badly, they vote to kick the bum out. They don't even think about the past three years.
And do presidents know this? Well, we're not sure. It's looking like they might; average historical RDI growth in election years is nearly double that in non-election years.
Voters might be cleverer than we suspect, too. We're going through cached polls as far back as the 1930s to try to spot questions asking about 'election year gimmicks' and related behaviors.
Interesting stuff. The general term for it is 'voter myopia'. We've even managed to replicate it in an experimental paradigm, using small amounts of money and an automated allocator the player can choose to keep or reject.
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Since this thread desperately needs rescuing, I'm going to talk a bit more about how stupid voters are.
Since we all can vote, how is it a rescue for us to talk about how stupid we are?
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Well if candidates receive the largest part of their funding from corporations, doesn't it make sense that these companies will offer the incumbent the most funding in the years with highest RDI growth?
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Well if candidates receive the largest part of their funding from corporations, doesn't it make sense that these companies will offer the incumbent the most funding in the years with highest RDI growth?
(Anything you say in this thread may be used in peer-reviewed papers, be advised)
That's interesting, I hadn't really thought about corporate donations. Are you suggesting that'd draw more votes through some intermediary, like better campaigning?
That should actually be pretty easily checkable coming from historical records. But I'm not sure it can explain why RDI growth tends to be higher in election years - can corporate donations explain that...?
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Since this thread desperately needs rescuing, I'm going to talk a bit more about how stupid voters are.
Since we all can vote, how is it a rescue for us to talk about how stupid we are?
Who says we all can vote?
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RDI growth must equal less taxes a lot of the time, and the rich pay the most taxes. So more RDI likely means less taxes on the rich, encouraging the rich to donate to the incumbent.
Are you suggesting that'd draw more votes through some intermediary, like better campaigning?
And you thought that was just window dressing.
But I'm not sure it can explain why RDI growth tends to be higher in election years - can corporate donations explain that...?
Taxes as mentioned above, plus more pork projects temporarily boosting GDP and employment.
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So you're suggesting president drops taxes on the rich, shovels money into short-term programs, gets donations from the rich, and gets votes from the pork?
Could be. Doesn't that make the rich pretty myopic too, though?
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Since this thread desperately needs rescuing, I'm going to talk a bit more about how stupid voters are.
Since we all can vote, how is it a rescue for us to talk about how stupid we are?
Who says we all can vote?
Do you know anyone who can't?
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That should actually be pretty easily checkable coming from historical records. But I'm not sure it can explain why RDI growth tends to be higher in election years - can corporate donations explain that...?
Also, politicians probably like to maintain unsustainable but popular policies that result in a crash just after election day, meaning low RDI growth in the first years of the next term. Look at Mexico in 1994, when the economy fell apart just after election day because of unsustainable expansionary policy in the years prior.
Could be. Doesn't that make the rich pretty myopic too, though?
Not if the poor bear the brunt of it and upper-incomes pretty much make the same (eg after the last financial crisis).
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That should actually be pretty easily checkable coming from historical records. But I'm not sure it can explain why RDI growth tends to be higher in election years - can corporate donations explain that...?
Also, politicians probably like to maintain unsustainable but popular policies that result in a crash just after election day, meaning low RDI growth in the first years of the next term. Look at Mexico in 1994, when the economy fell apart just after election day because of unsustainable expansionary policy in the years prior.
Presumably RDI falls off after an election year when the presidential jiggering ceases. The question is whether that corresponds to a crash or just a correction. I'm not even sure of the mechanisms presidents would use to cook up this brief RDI spike so it's hard to know what the consequences would be afterwards.
Not if the poor bear the brunt of it and upper-incomes pretty much make the same (eg after the last financial crisis).
Hrm. That relies on the very wealthy being able to swing a disproportionate number of votes. I buy it intuitively but I'm not sure the models support it. Do incumbents consistently receive more donations from the wealthy than challengers?
****, we need data.
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Hrm. That relies on the very wealthy being able to swing a disproportionate number of votes. I buy it intuitively but I'm not sure the models support it. Do incumbents consistently receive more donations from the wealthy than challengers?
It doesn't matter, all they need is more donations when RDI grows fast than when it doesn't for fast RDI growth to be advantageous to the incumbent.
Presumably RDI falls off after an election year when the presidential jiggering ceases. The question is whether that corresponds to a crash or just a correction. I'm not even sure of the mechanisms presidents would use to cook up this brief RDI spike so it's hard to know what the consequences would be afterwards.
Federal reserve interest rates (the president appoints the chairman of the fed), government insured mortgages, infrastructure projects. Expansionary monetary and fiscal policy in general. When all these programs end GDP falls back to normal or less.
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Going to war can also boost RDI in the short run thanks to the one-time boost to defense production.
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Hrm. That relies on the very wealthy being able to swing a disproportionate number of votes. I buy it intuitively but I'm not sure the models support it. Do incumbents consistently receive more donations from the wealthy than challengers?
It doesn't matter, all they need is more donations when RDI grows fast than when it doesn't for fast RDI growth to be advantageous to the incumbent.
Sure, but for your previous explanation (of how the wealthy aren't myopic) to hold up, the wealthy have to do well off the RDI growth and then not suffer from the RDI decline afterwards. If the wealthy figure this pattern out, RDI growth stops being advantageous to the incumbent.
Federal reserve interest rates (the president appoints the chairman of the fed), government insured mortgages, infrastructure projects. Expansionary monetary and fiscal policy in general. When all these programs end GDP falls back to normal or less.
It's a model we can test, at least. Apparently this is called the Electoral Business Cycle, and this lit review (http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317&context=parkplace&sei-redir=1#search=%22do+presidents+manipulate+RDI%22) is pretty good.
Going to war can also boost RDI in the short run thanks to the one-time boost to defense production.
We need F-22 Raptors to serve as mobile IED jammers. The most mobile IED jammers.
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That should actually be pretty easily checkable coming from historical records. But I'm not sure it can explain why RDI growth tends to be higher in election years - can corporate donations explain that...?
Also, politicians probably like to maintain unsustainable but popular policies that result in a crash just after election day, meaning low RDI growth in the first years of the next term. Look at Mexico in 1994, when the economy fell apart just after election day because of unsustainable expansionary policy in the years prior.
Presumably RDI falls off after an election year when the presidential jiggering ceases. The question is whether that corresponds to a crash or just a correction. I'm not even sure of the mechanisms presidents would use to cook up this brief RDI spike so it's hard to know what the consequences would be afterwards.
Not if the poor bear the brunt of it and upper-incomes pretty much make the same (eg after the last financial crisis).
Hrm. That relies on the very wealthy being able to swing a disproportionate number of votes. I buy it intuitively but I'm not sure the models support it. Do incumbents consistently receive more donations from the wealthy than challengers?
****, we need data.
Hold on, I think I can find you some if I can remember where. There are websites where you can look at who's donating to which Representatives above $200.
EDIT: Yea, here's one of them, it's really good.
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/index.php
We had to look this stuff up for one of my teachers this quarter.
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That should actually be pretty easily checkable coming from historical records. But I'm not sure it can explain why RDI growth tends to be higher in election years - can corporate donations explain that...?
Also, politicians probably like to maintain unsustainable but popular policies that result in a crash just after election day, meaning low RDI growth in the first years of the next term. Look at Mexico in 1994, when the economy fell apart just after election day because of unsustainable expansionary policy in the years prior.
Presumably RDI falls off after an election year when the presidential jiggering ceases. The question is whether that corresponds to a crash or just a correction. I'm not even sure of the mechanisms presidents would use to cook up this brief RDI spike so it's hard to know what the consequences would be afterwards.
Not if the poor bear the brunt of it and upper-incomes pretty much make the same (eg after the last financial crisis).
Hrm. That relies on the very wealthy being able to swing a disproportionate number of votes. I buy it intuitively but I'm not sure the models support it. Do incumbents consistently receive more donations from the wealthy than challengers?
****, we need data.
Hold on, I think I can find you some if I can remember where. There are websites where you can look at who's donating to which Representatives above $200.
Awesome!
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Check my previous post, I put it up.
On this note:
We need F-22 Raptors to serve as mobile IED jammers. The most mobile IED jammers.
I have a question...if we don't want to lose lives in conflict, and we typically don't like to get involved, and we don't have a lot of money, and it's probably that a lot of money is lost to inter-departmental bureaucracy? Why do we have 4 little mini militaries instead of one that we can fund more easily?
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Sure, but for your previous explanation (of how the wealthy aren't myopic) to hold up, the wealthy have to do well off the RDI growth and then not suffer from the RDI decline afterwards. If the wealthy figure this pattern out, RDI growth stops being advantageous to the incumbent.
The wealthy need not suffer declining RDI at all. A recession lends itself to expansionary fiscal policy (in other words more spending, less taxes), so the most taxed people may well gain from a recession. For instance Bush gave out big tax cuts after the recent recession so the wealthy may not have minded at all. Also, it's impossible for anyone to predict exactly when and how bad the decline will be, plus there's all that behavioral economics risk bias jazz.
A recession also means less inflation which is nice if a large part of your income comes from investments, which is true for the wealthy.
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I have a question...if we don't want to lose lives in conflict, and we typically don't like to get involved, and we don't have a lot of money, and it's probably that a lot of money is lost to inter-departmental bureaucracy? Why do we have 4 little mini militaries instead of one that we can fund more easily?
The Air Force actually fought for independence from the Army after WWII. The bureaucratic infighting gets even worse when you have multiple organizations over one stovepipe each fighting for "their" tribe.
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With corporate donations you also have to remember that public companies don't really plan for the long-term and will fund candidates who will do the best job of boosting shareholder value for shareholders who may only be holding the stock for a year.
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With corporate donations you also have to remember that public companies don't really plan for the long-term and will fund candidates who will do the best job of boosting shareholder value for shareholders who may only be holding the stock for a year.
Precisely! Myopic thinking! (sort of, I guess you could argue that's rational if the value of those stockholders is high enough)
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The problem is that
1) You're thinking of the wealthy as a united group, when in practice it's just a bunch of special interests acting under a prisoner's dilemma.
and
2) You don't donate to a candidate because you want them to win, you donate because there's something they can give you right now in exchange for the donation.