[Kosh]

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.

50 years ago America had legalized segragation, lynchings and race based beatings. I think some credit is due for getting rid of all that nonsense.

Although I do think not much progress has been made in the last 20 years, instead it started going sideways in a lot of cases.

[General Battuta]

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.

Why do you think I would get angry about things that happen on a forum about video game spaceships? That would be pretty daft.

I enjoy every moment of these discussions. I try not to be cast the first stone, but once the first stone is cast - once the other poster has started behaving rudely - that rudeness needs to be called out.

Standards must be upheld. If UT can't maintain the required level of discourse he needs to be taught. Now please stop getting in the way of the thread.

[Grizzly]

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.

If the message is not getting across, you should not only see if your adressant is deaf, but also if your pronounciation is right.

[General Battuta]

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.

If the message is not getting across, you should not only see if your adressant is deaf, but also if your pronounciation is right.

The pronunciation is fine. Unknown Target has a problem that recurs no matters who's talking to him. Let's see if he can pull himself together and read the points addressed to him.

Hopefully we can correct this issue and have better discussions as a result.

[Unknown Target]

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.

50 years ago America had legalized segragation, lynchings and race based beatings. I think some credit is due for getting rid of all that nonsense.

Although I do think not much progress has been made in the last 20 years, instead it started going sideways in a lot of cases.

It had a lot of really nasty stuff, yes...and I really do think that a lot of credit is due for getting rid of all of that.

Also I feel that in the last 20 years we've gotten even more liberal, just in terms of how much society accepts things. I would argue that while there's a lot of legal contention, most everyone who is close to issues such as fighting other countries, gay rights, drug usage legislation, etc, is pretty much on the same page and progress has been slow but steady.

In terms of specifics, the thought of electing a black president was literally something that I don't think anyone really considered with a grain of truth back when the country was founded. Whatever happens from here on out, I really think the US accomplished a goal for itself; that it could be led by someone who would have originally been maligned as "inferior" or "too different" not too long ago.

[General Battuta]

So the 'Grand Old America' you've been talking about existed between 1990 and when, exactly?

That's not very grand. And if it rose that fast why are you worried about it 'falling'?

Also I feel that in the last 20 years we've gotten even more liberal, just in terms of how much society accepts things. I would argue that while there's a lot of legal contention, most everyone who is close to issues such as fighting other countries, gay rights, drug usage legislation, etc, is pretty much on the same page and progress has been slow but steady.

Speaking as an active feminist, someone who reads up on race and sex and transgender issues, and a scientist with a focus on the quantification of race issues: you are absolutely wrong. These various interests have been at each other's throats and there is still a lot of dispute about how to proceed.

They're not on the same page, they're not even reading the same book.

[Kosh]

Speaking as an active feminist, someone who reads up on race and sex and transgender issues, and a scientist with a focus on the quantification of race issues: you are absolutely wrong. These various interests have been at each other's throats and there is still a lot of dispute about how to proceed.

And speaking of feminism just how much progress has been made on that front in the last 20 years? They are still noticably few in hard science and engineering, not to mention young women are still just as encouraged to be total airheads as before. Even listening to the "like yeah huh, like yeah huh, like whatever" way of talking grates on my ears, so much so that I can almost feel my IQ dropping the longer I am exposed to it.

[General Battuta]

I don't think young women are on average any dumber than young men. Being a young man you probably just didn't notice how dumb young men are.

But Third Wave has gotten a little bogged down because the issues it's tackling are less concrete and much harder to explain.

[Kosh]

I don't think young women are on average any dumber than young men. Being a young man you probably just didn't notice how dumb young men are.

I'm not saying they are any less intelligent, but they are encouraged to behave that way and often never fully achieve their potential which is just wrong.

But Third Wave has gotten a little bogged down because the issues it's tackling are less concrete and much harder to explain.

So in other words, not much.

EDIT: In fact the simpsons made fun of this issue way back in '94, and 15 years later it's still business as usual.

[General Battuta]

I don't know, I'm hesitant to draw any conclusions without having a long sit-down with the relevant data.

[Unknown Target]

Speaking as an active feminist, someone who reads up on race and sex and transgender issues, and a scientist with a focus on the quantification of race issues: you are absolutely wrong. These various interests have been at each other's throats and there is still a lot of dispute about how to proceed.

And speaking of feminism just how much progress has been made on that front in the last 20 years? They are still noticably few in hard science and engineering, not to mention young women are still just as encouraged to be total airheads as before. Even listening to the "like yeah huh, like yeah huh, like whatever" way of talking grates on my ears, so much so that I can almost feel my IQ dropping the longer I am exposed to it.

I think men are just as likely these days to not think about what they say. The initial thrust of feminism wasn't for them to be in equal employment in all areas, the point is to have the opportunity, I think. Before 50 years ago, a woman in a leadership of a major institution was extremely unlikely.

[Luis Dias]

There has been empirical statistical evidence (and that's not saying much btw) that women differed from men in general "intelligence" in the sense that in average, their IQ is relatively the same, but their bell curve was different. Men's IQ "bell curve" is flatter, meaning that there are more really dumb men than women, but conversely, more genious men than women. IOW, men have higher variance in intelligence.

If these studies are correct, one would actually expect men to outnumber women in top research academia, if "intelligence" were the sole criteria for the job, and thus "affirmative actions" of gender in order to equalise women and men in numbers in these jobs could actually worsen the quality of academia.

But this is politics. One can always state that the policy of creating a culture of equality is more important than optimizing the quality of academia. I have no personal opinion on this matter.

[Unknown Target]

Well I also disagree with the notion of the IQ system, which to me has been shown to be a rather meaningless number, as I've said in past threads. I think that there are societal questions that are not being addressed as fully as they should, and that's really what the focus should be on, rather than comparative test scores.

[Luis Dias]

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?

[Unknown Target]

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.

[Flipside]

So asking people to obey the rules is now 'getting in the way of the thread' is it?

You've changed Battuta, and not for the better.

[General Battuta]

So asking people to obey the rules is now 'getting in the way of the thread' is it?

You've changed Battuta, and not for the better.

If asking for the rules to be enforced in an even-handed manner is a change for the worse, I don't want to be better. You've derailed what should've been an interesting discussion, creating an issue where there was none - there were no rules being violated. By any measure your presence in this thread has been a failure.

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.

[Flipside]

If asking for the rules to be enforced in an even-handed manner is a change for the worse, I don't want to be better. You've derailed what should've been an interesting discussion, creating an issue where there was none - there were no rules being violated. By any measure your presence in this thread has been a failure.

To be frank, I asked people to calm down because the rules were being, as I stated at the time 'line-danced', you were only not breaking the rules by using the old Fox News technique of the question mark, I have little patience with trickery.

On that note, allow me to derail your thread all the more.

[Unknown Target]

I thought we had a rather interesting discussion going on in this thread. I don't know how to split/merge, could whoever split the topic please reopen this one and split all posts after this one:

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=75781.msg1502423#msg1502423

and merge the others into a second thread? Please and thank you.