|
Post by Amadan on Aug 16, 2017 13:00:55 GMT -5
I can't see where Trump has done much right in his response to these events, from his wishy-washy first response to his stupidity in trying to parcel out responsibility to both sides. That said, the above is unfair, imo. It's nice when Presidents reach out to people who suffer losses, but it's ridiculous to suppose that they owe the family of every victim a phone call. He offered condolences to her and to the family of the officers killed, which is what he should have done, to be sure. Wtf, rob. Seriously? I know you have to be Fair and Balanced (tm) to Trump at all costs so no one thinks you're getting soft, but seriously? A rote acknowledgement that he's pretty much been a disaster in every way which you then have to follow with a "but here's this totally pedantic nitpick about how it's not fair to blame him for this one thing"? I mean, that's just being obtuse - no, the President does not routinely phone the families of every single high-profile victim of a crime, but when it's a national incident like this one, and given the optics, yes, it's not unreasonable to ask him if he's reached out to her family. It's not so much "You have an obligation to call every victim's family" as an attempt to dig for some evidence that he actually gives a fuck, or at least give him an opportunity to pretend he does.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 12, 2017 9:54:35 GMT -5
I've read Zunger's essay (much-circulated now as a supposedly devastating takedown of Damore) in which he basically says Damore could not work with women and he deserves to be punched. You know, most people have to work with problematic coworkers who think less of you and might (sometimes you know for a fact) harbor views you find offensive. I am not saying declaring "Women can't code!" isn't a disqualifying statement for a would-be manager of women coders, but I still maintain Damore didn't say that. Google was entirely within its rights to fire him, and after the shitstorm he caused by circulating a memo on Google's internal network, it was inevitable they would. But I think the assumption Zunger and you are falling back on, that anyone who ever expresses doubt about equality between the sexes couldn't possibly work with women and pretty much needs to be let go, is false and more troubling that Damore working on a team with other women. As for Cynthia Lee's essay, which I've also read, she mostly talks about how much it hurts her feelings that people like Damore say the things they say, and also sexism really exists. (Which even Damore's defenders generally don't dispute.) Basically, she's really upset that Damore's essay is being read with insufficient outrage by ostensibly sympathetic people. Now, from the outset I have wondered whether Damore really, truly failed to think this through - did he actually think writing and circulating that manifesto would have no repercussions? I suppose being a young, probably stereotypical tech geek with the implied lack of social awareness, maybe he really did think he could write what he considered to be a calm, dispassionate essay about how Google should stop trying to do so much diversity. Given how quickly he seems to be going for the Wingnut Welfare circuit, though, I can't help wondering if he was planning his exit all along.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 10:14:19 GMT -5
This was all before my post about the infant gaze study (I've read all of this two or three times, I swear) and nothing here responds to my objections about the infant gaze study. Unless something is considered valid because "scientists and experts I've selected and linked to say so." Look, I would never argue that little boys don't, on average, tend to be more rough-and-tumble than little girls, or that little girls don't, on average, tend to be more talkative than little boys. I understand that hormones affect us differently. But to extrapolate cognitive ability in men and women based on this is not logical. I think culture plays the hugest part here - it perpetuates minor, on-average tendencies and that's why we end up with studies that "prove" women prefer working with people and men prefer working with things. Here's another anecdote, because I'm so good at them. I have never been a mechanical person. Not because I'd tried and failed, but because I was never taught to work with things. I never even got to try. And if you'd asked me a year ago, was I good at working with mechanical things, I'd have said, Oh God no. That's what plumbers, electricians, mechanics are for. Thank God for them! So then I bought a house. And there were suddenly a lot of things that needed to be done, and I didn't have a husband or a landlord to take care of them. So over the last six months I have learned to amd successfully installed a five-light bathroom fixture, closet doors, a patio screen, cabinet knobs, and probably more I'm not remembering. I hung a 80-pound mirror (after the guy I hired hung it crooked and then the anchor ripped right out of the wall leaving a giant hole, which I patched and painted). And the best part? It was so much fun. I loved doing these things. I look forward to doing these things in the future. But again, a year ago, I'd have said, I don't know how; I'm not a mechanical person. Those are guy-things. Which is also what I mean when I say people tend to apply statistics incorrectly. I did it to my own damn self. I'm sorry, but your objection to the infant gaze study (and basically any studies suggesting that cognitive differences might have a biological basis) appears to be "Nuh-uh!" To my knowledge, no one has extrapolated cognitive abilities from infant gaze studies. What they have extrapolated is that men and women think differently and focus on different things. Which may - combined with social factors - have an impact on cognitive abilities. It's a lot more complicated than the straw man you keep sneering at, that little girls are more attuned to faces and feelings and therefore they can't grow up to be mechanics. By the way, can you come and do some work on my house? I hate handi-work. That's not what I meant. What I meant is that people may use statistics to "explain" why they are the way they are. E.g., I want to work with people because I'm a woman. I'm not mechanical because I have a woman brain. Etc. Saying "You can't be a mechanic because you're a woman" is obviously dumb and would be a misapplication even if we had proof that women have a lower average mechanical aptitude than men. Saying "There are many more male mechanics than female, and this because of sexism and if we didn't live in a society that discouraged girls from being mechanics, 50% of all mechanics would be women; therefore, we should try to increase the number of women mechanics" is a political statement, not a scientific one.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 9:46:14 GMT -5
I am not saying you can't drink alcohol socially/recreationally or that it inevitably leads to alcoholism. I drink very rarely, but I do on occasion. So yes, it's different from hard drugs in that respect. And I certainly don't advocate going back to Prohibition.
Still, I can't help but think the net effect of alcohol on society is overwhelmingly negative.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 9:42:44 GMT -5
What I'm saying, and it's been proven by google guy himself, is that people tend to apply statistics incorrectly. People apply them on an individual level, to others and to themselves. Why am I so bad at math? I guess it's because I'm a woman. Why do hate going to social functions? I guess it's because I'm a man. Etc. And I'm not sneering. I'm highly doubtful. If someone says "Most women like social functions and men don't, so you must like going to social functions," that's obviously a misapplication of statistics. What you are doing is the opposite: "I hate going to social functions; therefore the claim that women generally like going to social functions and men don't is false."
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 9:39:07 GMT -5
I don't think we should treat drug addiction as a crime. I do think we should treat theft, burglary, assault, fraud, and various other crimes people commit to feed their addiction crimes. And no, I don't think all that would go away if we legalized everything. Not if they taxed hard drugs to near their black market price today, as seems to be the case with cannabis. At realistic open market prices, there'd be considerable impact. Drugs are expensive because of gatekeeping, not for any scarce resource reason. Slash the price and offer treatment instead of prison, and hard drug use collapses like the USSR. You mean, like alcoholism in the former USSR? Seriously, legalization might get rid of the violence problem (which is no small thing), but considering how much damage (legal) alcohol does today, I still shudder to think of legal meth, heroin, PCP, crack, etc. I honestly do not know what a solution that ends the drug war but also doesn't leave heroin addicts and crackheads littering the streets might look like.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 9:29:52 GMT -5
As for studies not being science, actually, if it is conducted properly, then it is by definition science. What it is not necessarily is proof, or even evidence of a given hypothesis. No one is saying "Infant gazes, therefore boys-blue/girls-pink is biology." But I think Opty did a reasonable job of explaining why those studies are actually valid and considered credible. (And not that they prove anything about whether or not women can be computer programmers.) You're just being dismissive because you don't like anything that goes anywhere near there, and I can't really blame Opty for calling you a science denialist because you certainly do seem determined to deny (and sneer at) any scientific basis at all for a theory you don't like. Can you point to where Opty explained why the infant gaze study is valid? Because, again, I made some points about it and he did not respond. Aug 8, 2017 23:29:04 GMT -4 Opty said: Differences in toy preference among human babies is a well-established and consistent phenomenon. It is indicative of biological mechanisms that contribute to the significant differences in preferences between males and females in several life areas. This area of study is pretty wide, but well-substantiated. The two studies I cited were just two well-known examples of the types of research that give strong evidence of biologically driven differences in male and female behavior. Girls tend to prefer toys that involve social aspects whereas boys tend to involve things that are more structural and mechanistic (people versus things). Again, I feel I should emphasize that this refers to differences in group means and is not necessarily predictive of behavior at the individual level. A common criticism used to be (and apparently still is for ill-informed gender studies "scholars") that these sex differences found early in life were wholly the result of sociocultural influences. This criticism is factually wrong, so I cited two of the most well-known studies that helped to debunk that myth. One study showed sex differences in eye gaze in neonates (male babies tend to prefer to look at mechanical-type objects; female babies tend to prefer to look at faces and people), thus countering the "culture" claim, given that neonates have no concept of sex or culture. The other study that you seem to not have bothered reading past the title, was demonstrating that sexually dimorphic toy preferences that have been well-documented to exist in human babies are ALSO found in monkeys, giving more evidence contra to the "culture" claim, because monkeys are obviously not significantly influenced by human cultural gender roles. These types of preferences are biological, not sociocultural (they have absolutely nothing to do with "socialization" as you incorrectly tried to claim). That was the entire point of me posting them. I was debunking your false "socialization" argument before you even made it. That's not to say that sociocultural influences don't impact our behavior. It is merely underscoring that much of our behavior is significantly biologically influenced and people who deny that are misinformed/uninformed. Here's another psychologist referencing the exact same studies I brought up (and a meta-analysis). Only difference is that he's a well-known expert in his field and I'm just a schmuck: Gender Differences in Interests Things versus people. Su et al (2009) performed a meta-analysis of studies including a total of over 500,000 people examining gender differences in interests. Despite claims that gender differences are typically “small” (Hyde, 2005), Su et al found a gigantic gender difference in interests. Women preferred working with people, whereas men preferred working with things, a preference that is detectable within the first two days of birth and among our close species relatives, rhesus monkeys! To be sure, these differences were not absolute. Not every man prefers working with things, and not every woman prefers working with people. But the effect size was d= .93, and even if you are not familiar with effect sizes, this would make it one of the largest effects in social psychology; it is gigantic.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 9:27:04 GMT -5
I don't think we should treat drug addiction as a crime. I do think we should treat theft, burglary, assault, fraud, and various other crimes people commit to feed their addiction crimes. And no, I don't think all that would go away if we legalized everything.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 8:56:59 GMT -5
But what I was trying to say is how absurd it is to be so insistent about group differences, for two or three days straight, and then come back and say, you know, I realize now what this guy is doing is wrong... he's applying the group science to individuals (a subset of individuals) and acting like that he just came up with that and it wasn't basically what everyone out there has been disgusted by in the first place. Opty previously had his newspaper "article" re: guy with anecdote before the bit I responded to here. He deleted it after I responded. The sarcastic article, posted for a second time is why I said "Yes, that was very clever." ETA: and someone conducting a study does not make their conclusions science, that's why. Opty went so far as to call me a science denialist and allergic to facts. That's wrong. I love science. But just because someone comes along with a few articles and claims SCIENCE doesn't mean I believe them. I don't think that is a fair characterization. Opty had already mentioned (more than mentioned) the problems with applying statistical group trends to individuals. What he pointed out that was "new" was observing that not only did Damore do that, but that the specific pool of individuals he was talking about - Google employees - is more likely to be made up of exceptions to the larger group. Which made his manifesto particularly inapt for what he purported to be addressing. Maybe you think that is a "duh" conclusion too, but it was neither backtracking nor belatedly admitting something he hadn't acknowledged before. As for studies not being science, actually, if it is conducted properly, then it is by definition science. What it is not necessarily is proof, or even evidence of a given hypothesis. No one is saying "Infant gazes, therefore boys-blue/girls-pink is biology." But I think Opty did a reasonable job of explaining why those studies are actually valid and considered credible. (And not that they prove anything about whether or not women can be computer programmers.) You're just being dismissive because you don't like anything that goes anywhere near there, and I can't really blame Opty for calling you a science denialist because you certainly do seem determined to deny (and sneer at) any scientific basis at all for a theory you don't like.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 8:31:59 GMT -5
Laws against pot are loosening up almost everywhere, but I don't see them easing up on harder stuff anytime soon. I mean, I'm with you about the way the whole "War on Drugs" is being waged, but I still have a hard time seeing a legitimate case for crack, meth, heroin, etc. Yeah, yeah, autonomy and people can do what they want with their bodies, fine, except that people on those drugs do an incredible amount of damage to the surrounding community, and only some of that would be mitigated by legalizing it so they can just crawl into a crackhouse and die. That said, enjoy your travels. I don't think I'd want to live on the road, but for sure I am retiring somewhere without winter.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 8:21:21 GMT -5
Yes, that was very clever. I was using anecdotal evidence. And yet, you JUST STATED that all of your "science" (rhesus monkeys, infant gazes, etc.) can't be proven to apply to any individual. It would be "very difficult" to determine whether a woman is being influenced by your "science" or by, oh, I dunno, aliens or something. I mean, this for example. Do you really not get that "anecdotal evidence" does not mean that individual exceptions disprove conclusions about groups? And what is with "science" in scare quotes?
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 11, 2017 8:12:42 GMT -5
You do this a lot. You either claim people haven't read something, or you suggest they should go read it again. It's an attempt to dismiss, or gaslight, someone who DISAGREES with what you've said. Which they've read. You know, you could try to state what you were *trying* to say again (especially now that your opinion has changed). You could do that, or you could lash out, as you did. Sorry, but no. I've read everything you and Opty have posted, and he's right and you're wrong. Not necessarily about the topic - that's still up for debate. But about what he did and didn't say and whether you're lying about it. I realize you'll probably dismiss this because Opty and I generally have the same opinion on the topic itself and you violently disagree with that opinion, but I think I have a good record of calling out people even if I agree with them when they are spouting BS or using disingenuous tactics. You're just wrong here, and your characterization of Opty as "backtracking" and then claiming he didn't acknowledge things he pointed out earlier in the thread is extremely disingenuous. And if you're going to keep using sarcastic "Must be because I'm a woman" snarks, you are really begging for rejoinders in the same vein. Might want to knock that off.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 9, 2017 15:21:16 GMT -5
How am I supposed to know what Trump has done that differs from what EVERY other president has done and would do? So tell me something he specifically has done that is the basis for your asking us if we aren't "a teeny bit glad" that he's in charge. Name a Presidet who wasn't pro-military and full of rhetoric about making our military stronger and appreciating our soldiers. Also, what does any of that have specifically to do with him being well-prepared to deal with North Korea? Trump has also been blatantly pro-making America great again in his rhetoric since day one of his campaign. How's he doing with that? Putting generals in charge may or may not be a good idea, but let's say it is. How does that position us to better deal with North Korea? How did any of that money make us better prepared to deal with North Korea? How much of it was spent on missile defense? How many missiles do you think it will stop? Our world is going to hell? Really? I mean, what has changed in NK? They are the same regime they have been for over half a century. I find it curious that you are advocating "Throw money at it" as good policy. Does that only pertain to military issues? Bernie was never seriously in contention, and I wasn't asking whether you think Bernie Sanders would do a better job of dealing with North Korea (personally, I think he would, but I think you and I and my mailman would do a better job of dealing with North Korea). I asked what specifically gives you reason to be glad that Trump is in charge. So, he asked for more money and he appointed some generals, and that's why he's doing a crackerjack job of dealing with North Korea and why we should be glad it's him and not Clinton. Do I have that right? Seriously, what do you think Clinton (or even Sanders) would be doing differently - letting Kim Jong-Un march into Seoul? Dismantling all our missile defense?
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 9, 2017 14:50:18 GMT -5
It would be interesting though, in an academic sense, if the US would actually invade-attack-occupy a nuclear armed country. I think not. Too much political risk do to blow-back. Blow back? Here's how it would play out: The US threatens/launches invasion. Balloon goes up. NK launches. Seoul and a lot of other South Korean cities get pulverized in the first few minutes. Most of the US 8th Army will be wiped out. (Besides nukes, North Korea has most of their conventional artillery pointed across the DMZ at Seoul.) Probably parts of Japan, Guam, and wherever else NK can reach shortly thereafter. Most of habitable North Korea gets turned into glass by US retaliation. If we're lucky, no one else joins in the fun. We spend the next few decades rebuilding and recovering. The entire Korean peninsula will probably be knocked back to third world standards for a while. The death toll will be horrific. The current generation will have something to eclipse 9/11.
|
|
|
Post by Amadan on Aug 9, 2017 14:18:00 GMT -5
What's this "without using Google" crap? You'll believe me without citations? right. No, I mean I want you to produce an original, defensible thought rather than searching for someone else's words as you desperately reach for a defense of Trump. No. I'm sure military brass have been meeting with the President (duh) and asking for more money (duh) and including "missile defense preparednes/capability etc." in their justifications (duh). This would be a true statement, umm, pretty much every year since 1946 or so. I want to know what Trump has actually done, and in what way it differs from what every other president has done and would do, that makes you feel so tingly and safe with Trump in charge and comparing nuclear dick sizes with North Korea.
|
|