Tim Harford: “If You Can Make Sure You're Not An Idiot, You've Done Well.”

Tim Harford: “If You Can Make Sure You're Not An Idiot, You've Done Well.” - Freakonomics

"Nightingale, I should say, she wasn’t a professional statistician... she’s a woman in a man’s world. She’s trying to challenge the British medical establishment and the British military establishment. She’s telling them they’re doing it all wrong. She was basically saying, “We need massive public health reform because the hospitals are breeding grounds for disease.” And the chief medical officer at the time, a guy called John Simon, was saying, “Well yeah, disease is bad, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”...

LEVITT: What I hear you saying is that there are two ways in which arguments can go wrong. One is that the facts can be off. And the other is that the interpretation made, given a set of facts, can be wrong. I think that if we divide problems into those two pieces, everything becomes much simpler.  If people don’t agree on facts, then we should go and evaluate the facts and figure out what the facts are. If they don’t agree on the interpretation, then I think that is a much easier problem for the human brain to tackle than the problem which is: how do I take storytelling and facts and everything all mixed together and try to parse out the importance? And I think that’s actually in the background in your book, that’s really lurking in your book and your own thinking...

HARFORD: I talk about the illusion of explanatory depth, which I love. The illusion of explanatory depth is basically: if you ask people, “How well do you understand how a zipper works on a scale of, say, zero to seven?” Most people will say, “Yeah, six, I understand it pretty well.” And then, you say, “Oh, great, here’s a pen, here’s some paper. Use diagrams, bullet points, whatever. Just explain to me exactly how it does work.”  And then, they realize, actually, I don’t really know how it works. The illusion of explanatory depth says just asking people to lay out the facts may help them to understand that maybe they don’t actually know the facts. Maybe they don’t understand the thing that they’re arguing about. It turns out that if you use a similar tactic for say policy choices — so, you say, “Just explain to me how a cap-and-trade system would work.” People who are willing to die in a ditch over whether cap and trade is a good response to climate change or not, it turns out they don’t really know how it works.  When you ask them to explain it, they start to realize, “Oh, I don’t completely understand this. Maybe I should moderate my political views. Maybe I shouldn’t be so critical of people who disagree.” This process of laying out the facts, which I think is worthwhile in and of itself, there’s this bonus which it actually gets people to reflect and be a bit more humble about the limits to their own knowledge.

LEVITT: The other piece that I think is really important for lay people understanding data that I didn’t see you cover in the book that I want to mention is thinking hard about the incentives of the people who are putting forth the argument. And being suspicious of any argument in which the incentives are such that the creators of the argument could benefit in any way...

HARFORD: I feel that people have received that message over and over again. I think people are constantly being told to be suspicious of the motives of the people who are telling them things. And I think we may have gone too far because although it’s true, I think it’s bred a lot of cynicism. A lot of people worry that we believe anything. And actually, what I worry about is that we believe nothing at all, that we’re completely skeptical of everything and we just think, “Well, they’re all lying to us. It’s all fake news.” So, that’s what was very much on my mind in writing the book. And actually, it’s interesting because Freakonomics is a book that doesn’t make that mistake. So, Freakonomics right from the start, is a book that says, “Hey, let me tell you something really interesting about the world using this data.” But most books about data actually don’t do that.  Most of the books about data that I’ve got on my shelf are written by eminent economists, statisticians, explaining all the different ways in which data can be used to lie to you. And of course, it’s a really engaging way to talk about data, but there is this worry that I have that people hear that message over and over and over again. And in the end, it becomes an excuse to just go, “I can’t believe any of these people. I don’t trust any of the experts. I’ll just believe whatever my gut tells me, whatever I feel should be true. And I’m not going to look at any evidence because you can’t believe any of it.”...

LEVITT: The National Rifle Association has been extremely successful at limiting the collection of data around guns, and that has really hamstrung the academic research into it. In fact, one of the most clever papers ever done on guns was done by my good friend, Mark Duggan. He was simply trying to figure out how he could determine how many guns were in different places.  He had the incredibly clever idea to go to a different data source, which is magazine data. So, there’s enormously carefully collected data on magazine circulation because that’s how advertising payments are done. He used purchase of handgun magazines as a proxy for purchase of handguns. And what was very difficult and clever about the paper is he actually showed that over time, the changes in the number of guns correlated very, very highly with his measures of magazine subscriptions. He used that as a proxy and actually was able to say interesting things about guns.  Things that can’t be measured, it’s very difficult to regulate or control them. I think the N.R.A. has understood that for a long time. And they’ve been very, very effective at making sure that guns can’t be measured. If you think about the economy, imagine that we couldn’t measure incomes or we couldn’t measure G.D.P. That’s the equivalent when it comes to guns. We just don’t know how many guns there are in different places and how that changes over time. And so, it’s really hard to study the problem and certainly extremely hard to get a causality...

HARFORD: The story begins in 1975 when this German teenager called Vera Brandes walks out on the stage of the Cologne Opera House bursting with excitement because, a few hours later, Keith Jarrett is going to be on that stage improvising. He’s a great jazz musician. He’s going to be sitting at this piano. And he’s going to be just playing whatever comes into his head.  And all this has come about because Vera is the youngest jazz promoter in Germany. She’s 17-years-old. She just loves jazz. And she’s managed to score this amazing coup of getting Jarrett into the Opera House to play this late-night concert. When Jarrett actually comes on the stage to check out the piano, immediately, it becomes clear that something has gone wrong and there’s been a mix up. They’ve brought out a rehearsal model. The keys are sticky. The pedals don’t work. It’s too small. It sounds tinny. It’s just a bad piano.  And Jarrett says, “Well, I’m not going to play.” But it turns out there’s no way of getting a replacement piano on the stage in time; it’s not possible. The tickets can’t be refunded because of the way the concert’s been set up. This teenage kid is about to be ripped apart by 1,400 people who show up for a concert and there’s no concert. 

And so, Jarrett takes pity on her. And although he’s a real perfectionist, although he likes things exactly the way he likes them, although he feels the piano is completely unplayable, he just thinks, I’ve got to do it because I’ve got to help this girl out.  He, a few hours later, walks out on stage, sits down at this piano that he knows is unplayable, and begins to play. And instead of the musical catastrophe that he expects, it’s a masterpiece. The concert was recorded supposedly to provide documentary evidence of what a musical catastrophe sounds like. But in fact, once it was remixed, it sounded great. Many people think it’s his best work. It’s easily his most successful work.  So, the concert has been released as The Köln Concert, best-selling jazz piano album in history. And it only got played because Jarrett felt he’d been backed into a corner and he couldn’t let this girl down. He thought, “This is terrible. It’s a bad piano. It’s going to be a bad concert.” But he was, of course, forced to play in a different way and to improvise in a different way. So, he stuck to the middle of the keyboard, which made it sound very soothing and ambient because the upper register sounded terrible.  Because it was such a small instrument, it was quiet. So, he was pounding down on the keys to try to create more volume. So, there’s this weird tension. He was playing this nice ambient-y music, but he was really hammering it hard and playing with a lot of energy. And there’s just something about that that worked really well. It’s how I begin my book, Messy. The book that’s really all about how disruption and challenges and weird stuff that’s ambiguous and messes around with us can actually lead to a problem-solving response...

A strike on the London Underground that shut down half of the London Underground for 48 hours. And when researchers looked at the data, they found that tens of thousands of commuters had changed their route because of the closures. And then, at the end of the 48 hours, they never changed back. They discovered a better way to get to work and all it took was this perturbation to the system...

LEVITT: So, I’m really interested in the subject of persuasion... you also have insights for everyday people about how to make an argument persuasive...

HARFORD: I would go for a memorable story. Stories are not so threatening. You’re not attacking anybody. You’re giving them something they’ll immediately find interesting. And they’ll follow the story along and they’ll be curious, and it starts to open their minds.  So, if you’re talking to people in terms of stories, you’re lowering their instinctive psychological defenses that basically say, “This guy is challenging my sacred beliefs. And I’m champion of all that’s right.” Stories get people into a more open-minded frame of mind...

LEVITT: Stories have beginnings and middles and ends. So, what’s interesting is I used to teach a lecture in my course on data to the undergrads where I talked about storytelling with data. And it always left me feeling a little bit strange because it wasn’t very powerful. And then, one year, I just sat back, and I thought about it. And I thought, “Wait a second, if a good story has all of the elements we just talked about, analysis of data never leads to a good story. There’s almost never a person involved that you can identify. There’s almost never any intrigue or uncertainty. There’s not a twist at the end.” And I completely redid the lecture and now, the way I start the lecture is by telling a great story. And everyone laughs. They think it’s a great story. And I talk about what made it a great story.  And then, I say, “Let’s take some examples with data and how we would turn them into stories.” And it becomes really clear to everyone that you cannot tell great stories with data. And I really came to the conclusion that when it comes to data, you just should completely abandon the idea of telling stories, that you should use data and just explain the truth."

Too bad the British medical establishment didn't "trust the experts"

In my experience, asking people to explain just makes them get upset since they realise they have no idea what they're talking about, and then they block you

People only care about conflict of interest when it threatens their views

Civic Nationalism vs Ethnic Nationalism

A: 9 August: Happy Indigenous Peoples Day everyone. I am proud to be English - a defined ethnic group. We are the indigenous people of our homeland, England, one of the countries which make up Great Britain 🎉 #PatrioticAlternative

National Indigenous Peoples Day - Wikipedia

Indigenous Peoples Day 2020 - Patriotic Alternative 

The English are the indigenous people of England and are a defined ethnic group. Likewise the Welsh/Wales, Scottish/Scotland, Cornish/Cornwall etc. Together, we are the indigenous British people of Great Britain. Today we celebrate our rich heritage and culture which have shaped this island and our people. British children will be a minority in the classroom by 2037.
The children of today will be the Britain of tomorrow.

#IndigenousPeoplesDay

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=975878882929880

B:  "The future society is made by those who show up"

Mark Steyn.

Me: So are you celtic, Anglo saxon, Norman or something else?

B:  I'm a civic nationalist.

The problem with these indigenous days is. You grant it for one, you grant it for all. But as soon as you deny any "group" then they have a right to feel resentment.

That's why I think the whole idea is bollocks and I prefer civic nationalism because it is based on shared ideas and values within a coherent political unit - the nation state. Something you can shape with a vote.

A: Do you have a problem with the indigenous British becoming a minority in our own homeland within just several decades?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/white-britons-will-be-minority-before-2070-says-professor-8600262.html

Me: I was addressing A

B: Yeah.. Mine was just a general comment. Not aimed at anyone in particular.

It's why celebration of a nation state e.g. In Australia they have Australia Day. It likely to be more socially cohesive than having days based on "ethnicity".

A - Kind of but not really because of skin colour. I'm anti-mass immigration and pro nationalism (civic). So under the civic nationalist anti-mass migration system the phenomena would simply not occur.

But if such a change is driven because of "diversity is good NPC woke garbage" and all that crap then yes. I'm firmly against that.

I guess the outcome would be the same as the ethnonationalist (which I'm not) but for civic nationalist reasons. I hope that makes sense???

A: 1/ Why do you refer to ‘skin colour’ in respect to my question?

2/ You talk of mass migration; do you realise that the indigenous British will become an ethnic minority within just several decades even if all immigration were to cease immediately?

B: Fair questions.

1. It was implied in the article you linked to. So I wasn't clear whether you were referring to "white" or "Anglo-Saxon" or "Celtic" or whatever...

2. Kind of. Yes. Is British an ethnicity or a nationality though. There is a difference or at least I'm using them in a different context. Assuming the current demographic trends then yes. I've read The Strange Death of Europe. But I'm not clear on your definitions.

I guess do you think British is an ethnicity? Or a nation?

If ethnicity then by definition any citizen will always be British so we can not be an ethnic minority if citizenship is granted based on British values.

If you mean British as a single ethnicity it isn't. It is made up of various ethnic groups so I guess which ethnic groups would you consider to be British and which are not. E.g. Cornish, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon etc etc etc.

These discussions are hard unless we agree on terms as nationality and ethnicity are sometimes used interchangeably. But I think they are distinct.

Me: it's peculiar how when it comes to Europe a lot of people insist on only using the terms to refer to ethnicity

BTW I think you meant

"if nationality then by definition any citizen will always be British"

I find it interesting how in Canada some people put their ethnicity as "Canadian". No they're not aboriginal

B:  Yes. I did mean that is mistyped....cheers.

A: You appear unaware that British is an umbrella/collective for the various ethnic groups of Britain, which includes the English, the Scottish, the Welsh, the Northern Irish, the Cornish - the countries that make up Great Britain.

It would be helpful to this discussion if you could watch this short explanation
https://youtu.be/e8LCm91r8Jo

B: I'm not unaware of it. It can be used synonymously in some cases. That's why I asked for clarification. My point was regards to citizenship. So I could become a Chinese citizen but I wouldn't fit into any of the variety of their indigenous ethnic groups. So I would not be any ethnic " variety" of Chinese, obviously. I think it was Lauren Southern who did a viral video about this with regards to passports....

A: The British (the tribes English,Scottish,Welsh,Cornish) are a defined collective ethnic group - no iffs/buts.

Of course someone who does not belong to one of the tribes can have British citizenship - but that is an entirely different matter. An example being Priti Patel - daughter of Ugandan Indian parents - she is not ‘British’.

So my question once again is: do you have a problem with the British becoming a minority in their own ancestral homeland within just a few decades?

B: Sure if it is because of diversity driven garbage. But it wouldn't happen under low immigration civic nationalism as I explained earlier.

You can make the same ethnic argument for Cornish separatism, Scottish separatism. Etc.

It's at what level the political unit is to be accepted.

For example do you support Scottish Independence?

Welsh separatism - based on the ethnicity graph earlier they have less in common with England which is majority Anglo-Saxon. Whereas Wales is almost zero Anglo-Saxon.

Or maybe that each nation should only be one ethnic group?

On a political level since devolution there is a strong case for an English Parliament.

What level the national state should be and the ethnics groups it contains will always be a source of debate. The ethnicity map above is based on current UK borders but of course it was different in the past. That's partly the argument the IRA use for reunification.

These arguments have always been and always will be.

A: I believe the tribes are stronger under a single union. But I don’t know why you bring this into the discussion.

The existing problem, and which is leading to the British becoming a minority, is because of its civic nationalism policy - that anyone can become British. Don’t you see that?

I’ve also said that if immigration was halted tomorrow, that would not make any difference; unless something is done to reverse the present situation; the British will still become a minority in their homeland within just several decades. Do you accept this and understand the reason why?

B: I didn't bring tribes in. You did.

Sure I understand the main conflicts between ethnonationalism and civic nationalism. But I'm not an open borders mass immigration one. So it would not follow to the outcome you say. We don't have civic nationalism in the UK. We have mass immigration cultural relativism crap.

Of course I understand why. Because of the demographics. The various fertility rates amongst different groups. As outlined in The Strange Death of Europe. I also had to study demography. I'm a geography teacher.

"The tribes are strong as one Union" argument can be used by the IRA. Or if you want to translate it to a higher political level the European (a United States of Europe). The tribes of Europe are stronger as one.

But as Jordan Peterson points out once the hierarchy gets too distant from the electorate then they start losing faith in the democratic system as the power of voting gets more and more diluted.

Me: the cornish also have a separatist streak *Braveheart freedom GIF*

what do you think of allowing 3 million Hong Kongers into the UK?

A: Tribes/Stronger: You questioned me on Scottish Independence. I said it wasn’t relevant to the discussion.

The present system recognises anyone with a British passport/citizenship as ‘British’ - that is civic nationalism.

It’s not until Britain recognises that the British (the actual British) have a right of self-determination, that the present course of the British becoming a minority in their own homeland within just several decades can be addressed/reversed. That is ethno-nationalism.

B: Ok. Your a British Nationalist. That's fine. I'm just saying the same arguments can be made for Welsh Nationalism. Irish Nationalism. Scottish Nationalism. It's a question of where you draw the line at the political unit (the nation state, and which ethnic groups are going to be the majority of its formation and then the extra via low migration to be assimilated - depending on whether you think Uk is overpopulated, about right or underpopulated).

I actually support Scottish independence in principle but the SNP are fake nationalists.

Gabriel - It's a harsh one. In terms of assimilation 3 million is too many. Even though the cultural divide is nothing like letting 3 million from Sudan in (which would be beyond stupid). Then there are all the housing, infrastructure, public service and pressures on the green belt.

There are at least probably 2 million in the UK illegally that need booting out first. So I guess allow a reasonably sustainable number? Also any criminals with dual citizenship, boot them out too. That will kick out a load of Islamists for a start.

A: On the one hand you do not dispute the findings of leading demographers, backed up with government data (ONS, census etc), if nothing is done to halt the matter, the British (the actual British) will become a minority in their own homeland within several decades for the reason of fecundity. You appear to object to such a concept.

Yet you say that you are a civic nationalist - the very system under which ‘anybody can be British’.

Do you not see the problem?

B: Reread my posts. I haven't said that at all. Our system is not a civic nationalist low migration system. We have been running net 250k plus migration system for ages now (and with cultural relativism....the very fact that FGM is even a thing here proves it) especially since the A8 joined the EU. And fertility rates in some Islamic communities is much higher. Hence they are segregated areas. The No Go Zones.

Not sure how else I can explain what I think. Sure is see the problem and I understand why. Like i said, I've studied demographics and know the patterns pretty well.

Low migration civic nationalism does not mean "anyone can be British". An Islamist, even just one will never be British. You could have a self-loathing Anglo-Saxon communist born to an expat family in France who moves to Britain and they will never be British either.

I guess the question is, at least in terms of immigration policy - what does it mean to be British? I support strict vetting. Trumps extreme vetting was too weak even by my standards...lol

Give me a well assimilated West Indian who loves Britain over a self-loathing ex-pat back to England Anglo-Saxon "intellectual" communist day and night.

A: 1/ Do you accept that under the present system, anyone with a British passport/citizenship is categorised as ‘British’?

2/ Do you dispute the findings of leading demographers whose research is based upon government data (ONS, census etc), that if nothing is done to halt the matter, the British (the actual British - not immigrants or people of immigrant descent) will become a minority in their own homeland within several decades?

B:  1) In law then yes. Do I agree on that basis? No. I think I've explained why previously.

2) No. I've said that from the very start. I've even said 2 million need booting out and a load with dual nationality who have criminal records.

The big but though is in demographic extrapolation. Because fertility rates, political policies etc change over time. So under the assumptions made by the ONS, then yes. But only if those assumptions remain as they are.

A: 1/ Do you accept, therefore, that being British is not a legal or social construct, rather it is based on a belonging to one of the tribes of Britain - eg being English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish - each of which are defined ethnic groups, those countries (England, Scotland, Wales) which make up Great Britain?

2/ You appear to suggest that only non-British (those as defined in 1 above) ought to be ‘booted out’ for various reasons. Is this right?

B: 1. No. I think it is a value set. Or maybe to be more specific I think that's a better way to look at it if you were going to have a strict immigration policy and use extreme vetting. For example is a British person who calls for the destruction of Britain and its erasure off the map really British in any meaningful sense. I don't care that much about DNA.

2. I think within the parameters of the law and what is practical, ethical and could be sold as a policy then yes. Practically you can't actually deport anyone who is a "pseudo-Brit" anyway because no country would just accept them. That's half the problem with letting illegal immigrants set foot on British soil after they have burnt their paper work. Almost none are deported.

A: 1/ One cannot alter the meaning of British; that being English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish - defined ethnic groups. Whether you personally ‘care’ about ethnicity or DNA is irrelevant; it is real. Whether a British person is badly behaved, or has good or bad values, does not make that person any more/less British.

2/ You agree that non-British people ought to be deported for the various reasons which you outlined (criminals etc).

Once again, do you not recognise there is a problem with you position?

B: I think I have tried my best to answer the questions honestly as I can.

I have one for you.

Can anyone from Britain ever become an Australian?

A: I’ll await your answer to mine firstly, then be pleased to address yours

B: Eh? I have answered loads of your questions. I ask one and get nothing. Lol.

A: I would prefer to finish one area of discussion before moving on to a new one.

Your position is flawed; it needs to be resolved. Or is that why you wish to change the subject?

B: I'll leave this thread to stand for itself. I've invested time and effort into answering multiple questions I ask you just one and you don't even give a reply. It's not a new discussion it is directly linked to the topic being explored.

You can actually have different meanings for words they evolve over time, it's called semantics.

A: OK then....let’s go with your question as it will expose the folly of your rationale!

Please answer yes or no to the following:

1. Could David Lammy be English?

2. Could David Lammy be Australian?

B: That's not an answer you are just firing more questions at me.

Sorry fella. This is a disingenuous conversation. Maybe others wish to chip in.

A: Gotcha!

B:  By not answering a single question yet I have invested time and thought into multiple ones.

Fair enough. Others can read and judge for themselves.

Me: maybe you can get someone of Norman descent into this thread to denounce the bloody Germans who have only been in the UK since the 18th century

Next find someone of Anglo-Saxon descent to denounce the damn Normans who are immigrants and only came over from 1066

After that find someone of Gaellic stock to condemn the Anglo-Saxons as foreign invaders who need to be thrown out of the UK

B: I tried having a discussion but it was just a fire loads of questions at me, never answer a single one back gotcha game. Oh well....lol. Ironically Cathy Newman Mark 2 in an inverted way.

 Ssshhhh that would involve understanding history.

A: The ‘gotcha’ is that, as you know full well, anyone can be Australian - even David Lammy.

Whereas David Lammy could never become English,Scottish,Welsh,Cornish - the indigenous peoples and defined ethnic groups of England,Scotland,Wales,Cornwall respectively. One cannot magically ‘become’ an ethnicity, in the same way that a man cannot magically become a woman and vice versa!

In summary, it is impossible to be black and English, or Scottish, or Welsh, or Cornish because those are distinct ethnic groups - defined as ‘White European’. Whereas one can be black...or any ethnicity for that matter...and be Australian.

The Cognitive Dissonance of TDS: A Case Study

Here is an example of the cognitive dissonance of people with Trump Derangement Syndrome and their post-truth attitudes and how fast the hamster wheel spins.


NPR: "President Trump downplayed the danger of the coronavirus, claiming in an interview that many cases are simply people who "have the sniffles.""
(even ignoring the fact that "A majority of people with COVID-19 are expected to have relatively “mild” symptoms that resolve at home", so the premise is already wrong)

Jean Krause: So Donny has zero empathy or sympathy for the he people who's loved ones have died, or for the people that are fighting for their lives in the ICUs of hospitals, and I have never heard him mention one word honoring the super hero hospital staffs that care for the sick ! He must've forgotten that they ALL vote. Donald Trump disgusts me.

Lori Hadlock: Jean Krause trump is devoid of any emotions. And he is the epitome of a sociopath

Wanda Bryant: Jean Krause sociopaths are incapable of emphaty

Carol Clarke: Jean Krause you’re not the only one he disgusts, believe me. Can’t stand the orange squattoad!

Susan Sparkman: Yes Jean you are absolutely correct.
He just does not have those abilities. Every ounce of energy must be focused on himself. Exhausting; he sucks up all the oxygen in the room, and NO, even in pandemic, he can’t bring himself to share any!

Jodie Anne Huntley: 45 is incapable of empathy or sympathy.

Me: Donald Trump grateful to health workers for Covid-19 fight: White House - world news - Hindustan Times

US president Donald Trump is tremendously grateful to all the doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals, including Indian-Americans, who have selflessly risen to the occasion to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the White House has said.

Dean Love: “The White House said”? So he doesn’t say it in a speech, but they release a press release saying he is grateful. They are trying to cover for his lack of empathy by putting words in his mouth. Pitiful.

Renee Michele: is this a joke? He doesn't care about anything.

Arnold Ho: Lori Hadlock He exhibits alot of narcissistic tendencies. In a graph, sociopathic tendencies overlap with narcissistic tendencies.

Me: Dean Love I look forward to seeing how you dismiss this

Remarks by President Trump and Vice President Pence in a Briefing with Nurses on COVID-19 Response | The White House

"today I welcome the great nurses of our country to the White House and express our gratitude for those on the frontlines in our war against the global pandemic."

Dean Love: Wow he can read a teleprompter! I was sure he couldn’t read! He next said it would go away fast, that was in March. How can you actually try to defend this embarrassment in the WH? 🥴

Me: Dean Love I guess facts don't matter

Dean Love: Oh well that explains it, they matter to me. 😆

Gaye Horn: yeah after he got called out this called damage control..

Me: "Issued on: March 18, 2020"

Carol Clarke: Hindustan Times?? Really?

Me: Hindustan Times - Wikipedia

"Hindustan Times is an Indian English-language daily newspaper.[2] Inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1924, it played integral roles in the Indian independence movement"

Carol Clarke: ok but couldn’t you find a news source a bit closer to home? Or do you live in India?

Jim Kehoe: Hindustantimes? That's your source?

Me: Jim Kehoe I like how fake news started out as just fox. Isn't it racist to discount a brown publication from a brown country?

Carol Clarke I don't live in the US either. Isn't it natural Indian media would be interested in news pertaining to Indian Americans? There're other Indian sources which reported this. Why does the geographical location of the news source matter?

Jim Kehoe: If that's the only source, then it is suspect.

Charlotte Parker Perkins: they hear what they want to hear!

Me: Jim Kehoe

I don't know if this will change your mind, but here are some other sources

Trump grateful to healthcare workers, including Indian-Americans, for combating Covid-19: White House - Times of India
Trump grateful to healthcare workers, including Indian-Americans, for battle against COVID-19: White House - Connected To India

Lori Ellen: That article is sheer comedy! His press secretary said he was grateful. We all know that his press secretaries all lie for him, or risk being out of a job.

Jim Kehoe: So you cite 2 indian sources. Show me where Fox, CBS, NBC, NPR, ABC, NYT, WAPO or any US news source says this.


Ann Williams: He said in the same interview that he wouldn’t honor the vote if he loses.

Charlotte Parker Perkins: Ann Williams the interview I heard he said “if I lose I will go back to my life.”

Me: Charlotte Parker Perkins 2016:

"I'm not sure you're ever going to see me there. I don't think I'm going to lose, but if I do, I don't think you're ever going to see me again, folks. I think I'll go to Turnberry and play golf or something."

2020:

""Certainly, if I don't win, I don't win." The president added he would "go on, do other things.""

Ann Williams

Jim Kehoe: Charlotte Parker Perkins Even if he did say it. After 4 years of a baffling amount of dishonesty, which has been cited on every news source (left and right), you would believe him? I feel sorry for you. I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale if you're interested.

Me: Jim Kehoe I'm sure you believe whatever he says if it makes him look bad

Why Americans save so little

B: Middle-class Americans queue at food banks as US unemployment hits 38 million - BBC News - YouTube

Americans should have a habit of saving money rather than alway spend lavishly in daily life. Even the middle-class rely on food bank in recession.

A: The reality is, it’s not easy to save in America if you have low or lower middle class income. Here’s why in my opinion: although household goods are China price cheap, everything else is very expensive such as housing, taxes, medical, education, transportation. Transportation is expensive because you need a car and in most cases 2 in America. If you analyze the income of lower middle class, they have not kept up with inflation. By maintaining a middle class lifestyle such as home ownership, it has invariably pushed many into debt. Any crisis such as a pandemic can crash their finances. So, please don’t think Americans live lavishly, most middle class savings capabilities can not be measured the same way to Asian countries’ like Singapore...

public transport is only economically viable in densely populated cities. Therefore, subways exist only in major cities like Boston, New York, San Fran, Washington DC. and a few other metro cities. Most America population live in a term known as suburban sprawl which makes public transport expensive, inefficient and unpopular. Most people own a car and quite often another one for spouse or backup transport. Just a rough guide, it’s $0.58 per mile cost to operate a car and most people commute on average 2 hrs to and from work.

Me: Tax rates and take home salaries for 40 countries - Business Insider

USA: Practical tax rate: 18%
Average post-tax salary: $52,344

Denmark: Practical tax rate: 56%
Average post-tax salary: $28,227

Netherlands: Practical tax rate: 41%
Average post-tax salary: $30,562

Household Saving Rates 2018 | Global Finance Magazine

Household Saving Rates 2018
USA: 3.72%
Denmark: 5.90%
Netherlands: 6.14%

Clearly taxes are not the reason Americans save so little

List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita - Wikipedia

When you correct for purchasing power parity (the cost of goods and services), the US by IMF estimates is ranked 10th in GDP per capita

The Netherlands is #12 and Denmark is #16

Clearly the cost of goods and services isn't the reason why Americans save so little

Your claim about a 2 hour commute is wrong too

"in the U.S., the average, one-way commute time is 26.1 minutes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau" (Study: States with the longest and shortest commutes)

That is under 1 hour a day for the average commuter

A: if you compare US tax rates to Euro countries, then it’s obviously the Euro rates are going to be higher than US because Europe’s healthcare, Education and overall welfare benefits are also better. Compare the US tax rate to Asia, it is significantly different.

I’m not sure if you live in the States and in anyone of the metro centers. I’ve worked in most of the metro cities and I know commute is easily one hour if you have a family and have to live outside the city limits. If you’re fortunate enough to live within a 1/2 hour commute, you’re either single and spend all your money on rent/mortgage or you are in the upper middle or higher class income bracket. Any decent size apartment in Boston starts at $1M USD, most families prefer to move out to the suburbs where you get more room for your money with the trade off for longer commute.

Cost of goods in US are not that expensive compared to some Asian countries because of the China prices as I have mentioned, but services are extremely expensive. Childcare for example can easily eat away a large portion of a low income earner’s salary. Then there are car services can be very expensive depending on the brand/model you drive.

Me: so why are us savings rates lower than in most of Europe despite lower taxes?

Do you think census bureau data is wrong?

Do you know what ppp gdp is?

A: I am not a professional economist who claims a deep understanding of the correct interpretations and usage of ‘ppp gdp’ and I am sure you’d agree that most people have a cursory understanding at best but claims to be subject matter experts with their faded high school economic lessons or google searches.
I am reflecting on the notion that the American saving rates are low is not due to a nationalistic character flaw like being spendthrift. This is highly inaccurate. Americans savings are low is because most families from the lower middle class on down have very little savings left after non-discretionary expenses.

Me: and I have provided data showing that that claim is wrong

A: What I want to clarify here is that the assumption that an American characteristic has a spendthrift inclination is wrong. We can certainly go down a 'rabbit hole' and get into a senseless argument of your interpretation of some site's data as to whether average commute is half hour or one hour and thus my 'claim is wrong' is a moot argument. At the end of the day, it is the understanding the phenomenon that is important, not a one dimensional view of data that you are basing your entire conclusion on. A misinterpretation can lead to misconception if you do not evaluate arguments and facts from multiple angles.

Me: If anyone else is interested, the cost per mile of a car varies depending on your assumptions

The True Cost of Owning a Car

If you buy a 2018 model,
If you drive 10,000 miles per year, a small sedan costs 55 cents per mile
If you drive 15,000 miles per year, a small sedan costs 42.3 cents per mile
If you drive 20,000 miles per year, a small sedan costs 37.1 cents per mile

However, this assumes you buy a new car. If you get a used car, it is much cheaper - consider that according to the AAA "depreciation “remains the single biggest cost of [auto] ownership, accounting for more than a third [36 percent] of the average annual cost” (How Depreciation Affects Your Car’s Value)


Editor's note:

I did try to look at some research on impulsivity/instant gratification and was unable to find cross-cultural research on the topic.

How to make China look alright: false equivalences

A: Congratulations US! We have surpassed China in our total number of cases! Are you sick of winning yet? 😂 Coronavirus Update (Live): 664,590 Cases and 30,890 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer

Me: China is faking their numbers though

A: Both sides have lower numbers than their reality. I am living in Washington state, one of the epicenters in the US and it is still hard to get a test kit even if you show mild symptoms.

So you can be infected and contagious but yet not show up in official figures.

Me: Not the same as actively faking

A: No you don't have to actively fake. You can't get a test kit in Washington state even with a mild fever.

Me: You don't think there's a difference between being unable to test people and making up data?

A: Do you think 1 side is any more honest than the other? Seriously? There is really a white vs black in your political view of the world? If so, then you have probably been brainwashed to believe that one side is always better than the other. 😂

Me: Nope. I look at facts

China’s Coronavirus Figures Don’t Add Up. ‘This Never Happens With Real Data.’ - Barron's

"A statistical analysis of China’s coronavirus casualty data shows a near-perfect prediction model that data analysts say isn’t likely to naturally occur, casting doubt over the reliability of the numbers being reported to the World Health Organization."

Please tell China that they have been brainwashed too

Here’s why it matters that China is admitting that its statistics are ‘unreliable’ - The Washington Post

"The Chinese government itself has just publicly acknowledged that its statistics aren’t always reliable. And it has done so not just in English but in Chinese."

Some Recovered Coronavirus Patients In Wuhan Are Testing Positive Again : Goats and Soda : NPR

"Under its newest COVID-19 prevention guidelines, China does not include in its overall daily count for total and for new cases those who re-test positive after being released from medical care. China also does not include asymptomatic cases in case counts."

A: That doesn't imply US numbers are therefore accurate either. Coronavirus: Doctors At Hospitals Say COVID-19 Death Numbers Aren’t Consistent

Also:
Reasons to trust China's coronavirus numbers and reports - Business Insider

How Many Americans Really Have the Coronavirus? - The Atlantic

Me: "You don't think there's a difference between being unable to test people and making up data?"

A: I think BOTH sides are as liable to make up data. Why would you think Chinese people are less trustworthy than Americans? Because the western media told you so? 😂

Me: I have posted the explanations. I can explain things to you. I can't understand them for you.

A: I have also posted my explanations that countered yours.

No wonder Singaporeans have a reputation, among Malaysians and Indonesians, even among Vietnamese Americans, as being overly obsequious to white people. 🤣

Me (to someone else since A: is an idiot): wuhan's medical system collapsed
They did lock down drastically. Outside Hubei damage was limited

A: There are just too many propaganda in western media right now against China.

I trust people who are actually in China to report what they see around them and discovered that there were really western propaganda that seeks to foment hatred against China through lies and disinformation.

What Was Lockdown Like In China? Daniel Dumbrill - YouTube

Again, the trusting old Singaporean! If it appears in CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News, it must be accurate! After all, they have no incentive to lie to us, right? 😂

Me: From people who were in wuhan

‘They’re chasing me’: the journalist who wouldn’t stay quiet on Covid-19 | World news | The Guardian

"Li Zehua, 25, a citizen journalist in Wuhan, is being chased. Wearing a facemask underneath a baseball cap, he quickly records a video while driving. “I’m on the road and someone, I don’t know, state security, has started chasing me,” he says breathlessly. “I’m driving very fast. Help me.”
Later, Li posts a live stream of himself in an apartment, waiting for those same agents to knock on his door, probably to detain him"

Coronavirus: journalist missing in Wuhan as anger towards Chinese authorities grows | World news | The Guardian

"In a video posted on 30 January, Chen described visiting hospitals full of sick patients, most of them on oxygen tanks and many of them laying in the corridor. The video includes footage of a woman with her arm wrapped around a recently deceased man in a wheelchair as she tries to call someone to take him away.

“I am afraid. In front of me is disease. Behind me is China’s legal and administrative power. But as long as I am alive I will speak about what I have seen and what I have heard. I am not afraid of dying. Why should I be afraid of you, Communist Party?”"

A: The Guardian is a UK based news outlet that is always against China! 😂

Me: If xi jinping says the capital of China is Beijing and the Guardian quotes him saying that, that means Beijing isn't the capital

Coronavirus: stranded in Wuhan, the people who just want to go home | South China Morning Post

Ah damn it. The South China morning Post has been corrupted by the cia. Time to purge the staff and send them to re-education camps

A: The Iraqi WMDs are irrefutable? 😂

Irrefutable - The Washington Post


As usual, anything that makes China look good is reliable and true, and anything that makes China look bad is unreliable, fake news and a Western conspiracy to put China down.

Given the number of Singaporean Chinese who are China shills, I have concerns if China ever attacks Singapore - there will be a ready fifth column.

The Marvelous Simplicity of China Shill Logic

B: 'This is mass rape': China slammed over programme that 'appoints' men to sleep with Uighur women - NZ Herald

« As part of the "Pair Up and Become Family" programme, Han Chinese men stay with and sleep in the same beds as Uighur women.

According to the Chinese Government, the programme is designed to "promote ethnic unity".

But to Rushan Abbas, a Uighur activist whose family members have been detained in the Xinjiang camps for more than a year, it's nothing more than systemised rape – part of the Government's brutal ongoing crackdown against the country's ethnic minority. »

A: People would criticise the NYT for using anonymous sources and then they would accept anonymous sources when it suits them.

"The reports came out after an anonymous Chinese official gave an interview with Radio Free Asia"

Me: are you referring to the trump debacles?

People criticised nyt for using anonymous sources without corroboration who were later found to be talking rubbish

A: then the same skepticism is not applied here?

Me: You haven't been following the news about the uighers I take it

A: I compare the western version with other sources. Many westerners who moved and lived in China will tell you how the western media are bias fake news.

There are people who do extensive researches. I can show you the original allegation of 1 million people and how they do their estimate, and how not to do the estimate in such a way.

Xinjiang - Lets talk about it - 我们来谈谈关于新疆 - YouTube

Me: The leaked CCP documents are pretty telling. And there're many westerners who live(d) in China who can attest how bad it's become

Why I Changed my Opinion on China - YouTube

A: You may as well link a China Uncensored video. The fact is that he blinded saying there are concentration camps in Xinjiang meaning that he has done no homework and just using the western talking points to get clicks.
He also goes with the western media's view of HK which is completely different from what is going on. Maybe you believe it when you wanted to believe.
Always look at local media when it is about another country.

This is back in 2002 when the US classified the ETIM as a terrorist group. 17 years ago.

EASTERN TURKISTAN ISLAMIC MOVEMENT | United Nations Security Council

Me: we all know pravda told us the truth about the USSR!

A: Believe what you wanted to believe.

Me: I guess that's your motto

A: I have a big list of evidence but I am not going to bother because I have seen enough people ignorant of the truth. The anchoring bias will always the hurdle for some. .

Me: "Believe westerners who live(d) in China when they tell you China is good. Don't believe them when they tell you China is bad"

It's amazing how easy it is to arrive at a conclusion when you've determined it beforehand

A: Did the video you state actually going into anything about Xinjiang? No, those are talking points. I criticise him not doing any homework. If you are in any way curious about ETIM then you will want to look up further about this Al-Quida linked terrorism network in Xinjiang.

I bet you never considered the relative distance between Xinjiang and Afganistan because it is most likely you don't even know where it is.

Me: Not sure what going into xinjiang has to do with what the video is saying. Have you been to xinjiang?

I've read accounts of people who visited xinjiang which are consistent with what we know from the "biased" western media. I know you'll just dismiss them though I admit I have a certain morbid curiosity about how you'll twist and turn in that case.

Going by your logic, we should trust the testimony of people who live(d) in xinjiang even more than people who've been there. Yet I'm sure you don't believe all of the uighers who have told of what is happening there because it clashes with your narrative.

Not sure what you're ranting about on the distance between xinjiang and Afghanistan

A: "Not sure what you're ranting about on the distance between Xinjiang and Afghanistan" meaning you just wanted yap about things and not actually doing any homework of how so many people got radicalised.

If you read the accounts of the ETIM then ofc it will confirm the western propaganda.

Me: Ah. I see.

You think some uighers being terrorists and China is repressing the uighers as mutually exclusive propositions.

I guess that explains why you think one must have a binary view on China. That it's either good or bad.

Don't think I can save you from your manichean world. Maybe someone else can try.

A: Whatever.

Me: thanks for confirming that if I'd tried it'd have been a waste of my time


The video the China shill linked (with the white guy talking about the Xinjiang camps) claims that only terrorists or potential terrorists are kept in the camps.

Ironically, the white guy admits he suspects but doesn't have any evidence about what goes on inside the camps - and even then he thinks the truth is between what China claims and what the West thinks (i.e. they're not entirely innocent).

So the video is not as favourable to the China shill's position as he thinks.


In summary, China shill logic seems to be:

Some Uighers are terrorists. Therefore extreme measures against all/most/many Uighers - even those who have nothing to do with terrorism - are justified.

Ironically, this would justify mass repression against ethnic Chinese outside of China as possible fifth columnists.


Unsurprisingly, A looks to be an ethnic Chinese - indeed a Chinese national who now lives abroad.

In the pipeline is a post exploring why many ethnic Chinese are uncritically pro-Chinese Communist Party.

The Rights Lee Kuan Yew had that Lesser Mortals don't

Perhaps due to Singapore's culture of political deference, many Singaporeans think that Lee Kuan Yew had rights that normal people don't.

For example, commenting on other countries:


B: Commentary: This may be the end of Hong Kong as we know it - CNA
[Ed: by the Brookings Institution's Richard Bush]

This is a balanced and deeper evaluation of the current situation in Hongkong and honestly, I hardly see any hope that it can turn up good for Hongkongers. And that is sad....

A: Sad as in it maybe, but it’s their country and their lives. I stay out of it, no comment.

Me: quite sad that singaporeans think commenting on other countries is a violation of sovereignty

C: it's called minding your own business and keeping a peaceful mind...

Me: too bad Lee kuan Yew didn't mind his own business and keep a peaceful mind

B: you don’t understand what Sovereignty is.
you are not LYK, neither are we anything close.

Me: so Lee kuan Yew had rights lesser mortals don't?

A: who on earth is listening to you, try doing it at home first.


Then again, this could just be a specific case of thinking people are sanctified by results.

For example, the exact same proposition uttered by a "successful" person and by a normal person is evaluated differently.

How to deal with a progressive bully

"As C.S. Lewis rightly observes in God in the Dock (1971): “Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

or many people, myself included, the first step in dealing with a progressive bully is to recognize that they exist. Just because someone’s committed to social justice doesn’t mean they’re socially just. Notorious bullies have been known to lead anti-bullying campaigns. I recently had to part ways with an old friend over this very issue. He was always a bit of a bully, even when we were kids. But his engagement with online progressive politics has brought those tendencies out like never before. He’s become an abusive asshole who thinks the fact that he’s right gives him the right to be nasty and disrespectful.

He’s alienated at least a dozen old friends and family members, and he’s clearly unhappy, maybe even depressed. Yet he keeps on this miserable path, in part, because he has a cloud of online sycophants who Facebook-like every stupid thing he says: the meaner the better. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that none of these people are real friends. He’s never met these people and they have no intention of meeting him. When he was in the hospital last year, none of them came to visit him. It was his real friends, the ones he keeps alienating with his zealotry, who came to see him.

I’ve learned some valuable lessons from my fraught interactions with this angry little man, and others of his stamp, lessons which may prove useful to you: namely, beware of kafkatrapping, avoid orgies of self-flagellation, prepare for charges of gaslighting and mansplaining, prepare to be told that you need to check your privilege, and know what kind of person you’re dealing with...

Progressive bullies seem to delight in kafkatrapping, as it’s their preferred strategy of attack in Social Media Land. So you should be prepared for it. Just as schoolyard bullies tell you to move your hands out of the way so they can punch you in the face, progressive bullies hurl abuse at you and then accuse you of “white fragility” if you refuse to passively accept it. The irony of an utterly offensive person telling the person they’re offending to stop being so defensive never seems to occur to them... the kafkatrapper’s circular argument is more or less absurd. Just as a net that catches the whole sea isn’t much of a net, an argument that explains everything isn’t much of an argument...

Progressive bullies will want you to cower and debase yourself in their presence. Do not comply with this demand... As Omar puts in The Wire: “If you act like a little bitch, people gonna treat you like a little bitch.”...

If you stand up to a progressive bully, you’ll eventually be accused of gaslighting... the circular reasoning employed by those who habitually accuse others of gaslighting makes it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Accusing someone of gaslighting is like accusing someone of witchcraft. There’s no way for the accuser to be wrong. If the accused denies it, or attempts to defend themselves in any way, this is proof that they are guilty...

If you’re a dude, and you dare to stand up to a progressive bully, you’ll eventually be accused of mansplaining... “There is no problem with the idea of mansplaining but it requires an argument. You can’t just drop it and walk away from it like a fart in an elevator.” Dropping the mansplaining bomb in Social Media Land has become sort of like saying: “Hmm, that sounds just like something Hitler would say.” Those who wield this weapon no longer feel the need to justify their claims. What they want, what they’ve come to expect, is automatic deference. Calling people out for mansplaining has become little more than a progressive bullying technique, yet another convenient way to silence critics and shut down debate...

Check Your Privilege: This expression was once uttered in the spirit of John 8:7, wherein Jesus famously tells a group of men who are about to stone a woman to death: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” But it’s now uttered in precisely the kind of sanctimonious spirit Jesus despised: the self-righteous spirit of the Pharisees, who love to perform their good works “on the street corners to be seen by others.” These days, the person who says “check your privilege” is in all likelihood little more than a progressive bully who’s trying to silence you...

Rhetorical gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by unilaterally redefining the borders of a word’s meaning. Here’s how it’s done: (i) Begin with a word, phrase, or concept like “racism” or “hate speech” that (a) has a commonly understood meaning, and (b) is commonly understood to be good or evil. (ii) Sneak in a weird, atypical definition (e.g., racism is only racism when certain people do it, hate speech is only hate speech when it’s about certain people, etc.). (iii) Now claim that anyone who is against this thing that is commonly understood to be evil, or for this thing that is commonly understood to be good, must agree with your policy proposal, analysis, etc. It’s a clever hustle. Beware of it. [Ed: Aka Bait and Switch]...

If you want to know who’s going to be a tyrant in power, pay attention to who walks and talks like a tyrant out of power. If you want to know how a freedom fighter’s going to rule tomorrow, pay attention to how they deal with people who disagree with them today. As Maya Angelou wisely cautions: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Progressive bullies keep showing us who they really are. We need to listen to them. We need to believe them the first time. And we need to beware of them."


Ironically Angelou's quote rules out the possibility of change/growth, or simply of you being wrong.

Observations - 17th April 2019

"Behind every successful man there is a woman. Because women don't follow unsuccessful men"

If men shouldn't be upset if their supposed child isn't related to them (i.e. cucking), why should women be upset if the hospital hands them the wrong baby?


So apparently some white people in Singapore feel there's double standards because anything they do, they'll get STOMPed, and they get shouted at more. The former is almost certainly true

Amused that in Singapore you can't let mentally defective women have sex with men they're not married to ("Permitting mental defective to use premises for sexual penetration")

The bar for being an unsung hero in Singapore seems much lower than in the rest of the world, which is why road sweepers and hawkers qualify


Meritocracy is the worst form of rewarding people except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

The heretic is more dangerous than the infidel because he has glimpsed The Truth but still refuses to follow it; at least the infidel's transgressions can be charted up to ignorance.

"When I was in uni had a shared network with a guys college
I've seen some well organized shit
There was one guy super systematic.
1 dick 1 hole. 2 dicks 1 hole, etc etc"


"I'm not sure why you enjoy putting out the names of several books and articles. If you can't bring forth the author's argument on your own and into the context of the discussion, you can't possibly expect the other person to read the entire book then come back to the argument at hand."

Great minds discuss ideas; small minds dismiss facts that come from people or sources they dislike


Amused that the APAC recruitment head of a major tech MNC says Malaysia is the hardest place in SEA to recruit. And they need training on PowerPoint and writing emails

"Actually the religious authorities in malaysia can only raid budget hotels because they have no power to raid 3 star etc hotels"

Government agencies being neutral and just following the science untainted by ideological, political or any other biases

A on Singapore's proposed tax/ban on high-sugar drinks: While I can somewhat understand the sugar tax, I don’t think banning is a logical solution, especially since cigarettes themselves aren’t banned. Yes, cigarettes are highly taxed, but instead of high sugar consumption which affects only the individual, smoking affects the people around you too. They should follow through with a cigarette ban if they insist on a sugar ban.

Probably the thing I take the most issue out of this proposal is that banning will take away people’s freedom to choose for themselves. There are better ways to encourage a less-sugar intake such as subsidising healthier drinks, labelling sugary drinks with health warnings and education. Banning should never even be considered.

If they do go through with a ban, I’d argue that we should also ban not just cigarettes, but alcohol as well. Alcohol can affect people around you, if you become drunk and violent. I think if the government feels like we cannot make choices properly and control ourselves, then they should ban all such harmful consumables, and not just sugary drinks. Salt and MSG should probably be considered as well, due to the high levels of hypertension and heart disease we have here.

Me: the harms of secondhand smoke are greatly exaggerated

A: They aren’t. There’s a reason why we have smoke-free zones, and I’d actually much prefer it if the whole country is cigarette-free as well.

A cursory lookup on MOH’s health sites will inform you about the dangers of second-hand smoke, so since this information is by the government, I'm not spreading Fake News: Environmental Tobacco Smoke

Me: It's based on bad science

Secondhand smoke isn’t as bad as we thought.

"Newer, better studies with much larger sample sizes have found little to no correlation between smoking bans and short-term incidence of heart attacks, and certainly nothing remotely close to the 60 percent reduction that was claimed in Helena. The updated science debunks the alarmist fantasies that were used to sell smoking bans to the public, allowing for a more sober analysis suggesting that current restrictions on smoking are extreme from a risk-reduction standpoint."

A: Are you saying MOH's finding is bad science and thus false? That's quite a serious allegation there.

Me: Are you saying MOH is infallible?

A: I'm saying that I trust MOH, an agency with certified doctors and other health professionals and nutritionists, instead of sites with dubious origins.

If you think MOH is spreading Fake News, you are free to report them to the police. I believe we have laws in place for these things. :)

Me: I'm amused that you think slate is a site with dubious origins

Or that the numerous scientific articles they link to, published in peer reviewed journals are dubious

A: I'm similarly amused you think MOH partakes in bad science and publishes false data, and thus is guilty of spreading Fake News. This is a government body, and such allegations are extremely serious.

I guess all the professional expertise in their medical facilities and their research must be wrong then, since some other site disagrees and contradicts MOH's professionally-sourced and scientifically-based findings. :)

Me: You need to learn more about how science works and the interaction between public policy and science.

I'm assuming you also imagine that vaping is more harmful than cigarettes, that Marijuana is harmful and that the death penalty deters crime.

A: You also need to learn more about how to substantiate your points with factual and accurate sources, instead of accusing a government body of spreading lies.

If you think Slate is more accurate as compared to a government agency which employs the scientific method and the rigours of research to formulate their data, then you should seriously re-examine your education.

:)

Nice assumptions, btw. Typical of someone who boasts of online research > hard facts.

Me: Well, clearly you didn't read the article, or put any store in the links to numerous peer reviewed studies even after I pointed them out

Quite amusing that you claim I need to substantiate my points

Your "substantiation" is "gahmen say one, must be correct"

A: Lmao, I didn't say that 'gahment say one, must be correct'. Amusing level of comprehension you have there. I only said that I'd rather trust a professional body which employs rigorous research and hard science to formulate their data, instead of Slate, which likely cherry-picks their opinions to form their opinion piece.

Quite amusing you cannot see this when I quite literally have to spell it out for you. :)


Secondhand smoke isn’t as bad as we thought.
Also headlined as: "We Used Terrible Science to Justify Smoking Bans"

"In the early 2000s, as jurisdictions across the country fought over expanding smoking bans to bars and restaurants, anti-smoking advocates seized on the Helena study and related research showing that secondhand smoke exposure can affect coronary functions to promote fear of secondhand smoke. Groups across the country stated that “even half an hour of secondhand smoke exposure causes heart damage similar to that of habitual smokers.” Not to be outdone, the Association for Nonsmokers in Minnesota wrote in a press release that just 30 seconds of exposure could “make coronary artery function of non-smokers indistinguishable from smokers.” The message to nonsmokers was clear: The briefest exposure to secondhand smoke can kill you.

A decade later, comprehensive smoking bans have proliferated globally. And now that the evidence has had time to accumulate, it’s also become clear that the extravagant promises made by anti-smoking groups—that implementing bans would bring about extraordinary improvements in cardiac health—never materialized. Newer, better studies with much larger sample sizes have found little to no correlation between smoking bans and short-term incidence of heart attacks, and certainly nothing remotely close to the 60 percent reduction that was claimed in Helena. The updated science debunks the alarmist fantasies that were used to sell smoking bans to the public, allowing for a more sober analysis suggesting that current restrictions on smoking are extreme from a risk-reduction standpoint.

By the time the Helena study was published in the British Medical Journal, the authors had lowered the observed reduction in heart attacks from 60 percent to 40 percent; still an impressive figure but a substantial drop from the claim they had prematurely publicized to press worldwide. Immediate responses to the paper from other scientists were harshly critical, noting the small size of the Helena population—about 68,000 residents at the time—and the medical implausibility of achieving such a massive effect in such a short period. It was impossible to know with certainty whether the drop was caused by the ban or was simply due to chance.

Nonetheless, the Helena paper spawned a wave of studies seeking to replicate the finding. Research observing similar reductions followed in places such as Pueblo, Colorado; Bowling Green, Ohio; and Monroe County, Indiana. One characteristic shared by these places was their low populations and correspondingly small sample sizes: The last of these studies covered only 22 heart attacks among nonsmokers over the course of nearly four years.

When studies sampling larger populations finally appeared, the reported declines in heart attacks began to shrink...

A 2008 study covering the entire country of New Zealand—a population smaller than England’s, but bigger than the American towns previously studied—found no significant effects on heart attacks or unstable angina in the year following implementation of a smoking ban; hospitalizations for the former had actually increased.

Contradictory research continued to come in. A clever study led by researchers at RAND Corp. in 2010 tested the possibility that the large reductions identified in small communities were due to chance. They assembled a massive data set that allowed them to essentially replicate studies like those in Helena, Pueblo, and Bowling Green, but on an unprecedented scale. Whereas those studies had compared just one small community to another, the RAND paper compared all possible pairings of communities affected by smoking bans to all possible controls, for a total of more than 15,000 pairings. They stratified results by age in case there were differential effects on the young, working age adults, or the elderly. And in an improvement on most other studies, they also controlled for existing trends in the rate of heart attacks.

The study found no statistically significant decrease in heart attacks among any age group...

A 2012 study of six American states that had instituted smoking bans came to a similar conclusion. So did a 2014 study, which is notable for being co-authored by some of the same researchers who had previously published papers suggesting that the Colorado towns of Pueblo and Greeley had experienced reduced rates of heart attacks after implementing smoking bans. When Colorado enacted a statewide ban, the authors had an opportunity to see if their earlier results could be duplicated across the larger population of nearly 5 million people. No effect appeared. As an additional test, they re-examined the data excluding 11 jurisdictions that had already implemented comprehensive smoking bans: The statewide ban still showed no effect.

In the paper’s admirably honest commentary, the authors reflected on the reasons that earlier studies, including their own, had overstated the impact of smoking bans. The first is that small sample sizes allowed random variances in data to be mistaken for real effects. The second is that most previous studies failed to account for existing downward trends in the rate of heart attacks. And the third is publication bias: Since no one believes that smoking bans increase heart attacks, few would bother submitting or publishing studies that show a positive correlation or null effect. Thus the published record is likely unintentionally biased toward showing a larger effect than truly exists...

Drawing on data from 28 states from 2001–2008, lead author Vivian Ho, an economist at Rice University, compared rates of hospitalization for heart attacks in areas with and without smoking bans.

Following the methodology of previous studies, she and her coauthors found a statistically significant reduction in hospitalizations for heart attacks and congestive heart failure following implementation of a smoking ban (though only among people older than 65). But when they went a step further, adjusting the analysis with county-by-county health data addressing variables such as access to hospitals and increases in cigarette taxes, the effect of the smoking bans disappeared. Ho and her co-authors suggest that modest improvements in cardiac health that were previously credited to smoking bans may actually be caused by differentials in access to medical care and people smoking less when cigarette taxes increase (smoking cigarettes does have a proven negative effect on cardiac health)...

“No clear link between passive smoking and lung cancer,” read a 2013 headline in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, hardly a pro-tobacco publication. That was a report on a cohort study tracking 76,000 women that failed to detect a link between the disease and secondhand smoke. The finding comports with existing literature suggesting that the effect is borderline and concentrated on long-term, high levels of exposure.

Despite the mounting evidence that transient exposure to secondhand smoke is more an annoyance than a mortal threat, smoking bans have become widespread and politically entrenched. According to the latest update from Americans for Nonsmokers Rights, which publishes quarterly reports on anti-smoking laws, more than 80 percent of the American population now lives under smoking bans covering workplaces, restaurants, or bars. An additional 3,400 jurisdictions ban smoking in outdoor areas such as parks, beaches, and stadiums. More than 400 cities and counties restrict smoking while dining outdoors. More than 1,700 college campuses are completely smoke-free. Nearly 600 jurisdictions include e-cigarettes under their smoke-free laws. Some jurisdictions make limited allowance for places such as cigar bars and hookah lounges, while in others these are completely forbidden or limited to businesses grandfathered in before ordinances took effect.

The cost of these policies falls almost entirely on people who smoke, an increasingly put-upon minority of the population. Rarely are their preferences consulted...

Smokers increasingly find their habit viewed as on a par with use of illicit drugs. Smokers also report that judgments against them cut deeper than their outward behavior, extending to their identity as human beings. “Even if you can’t articulate it you probably intuitively feel it in the same way that if you’re black or a woman and you’re being discriminated against,” one subject told his interviewers. “Like even if you can’t articulate it or you certainly can’t prove it or you’d be at the Human Rights Commission, but you kind of know it’s happening.”

To some anti-smoking advocates, that stigmatization is useful if it encourages people to quit. The authors of this paper are skeptical, noting that such stigmatization could instead lead to feelings of powerlessness...

Early arguments for smoking bans at least paid lip service to the idea that restrictions were necessary to protect unwilling bystanders’ health. But as bans have grown ever more intrusive even as the case for expanding them has withered, that justification has been revealed as a polite fiction by which nonsmokers shunted smokers to the fringes of society. It was never just about saving lives...

As Jonathan Swift said in an apt aphorism, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.” Too late to help smokers banished from public life.

There were good reasons from the beginning to doubt that smoking bans could really deliver the promised results, but anti-smoking advocacy groups eagerly embraced alarmism to shape public perception. Today’s tobacco control movement is guided by ideology as much as it is by science, prone to hyping politically convenient studies regardless of their merit and ostracizing detractors.

This has important implications for journalism. As health journalists take on topics such as outdoor smoking bans, discrimination against smokers in employment or adoption, and the ever-evolving regulation of e-cigarettes, they should consider that however well-intentioned the aims of the tobacco control movement are, its willingness to sacrifice the means of good science to the end of restricting behavior calls for skeptical scrutiny...

To cite just a few recent examples: In Washington, the city council has passed legislation restricting e-cigarettes, which emit vapor, and chewing tobacco, which doesn’t emit anything. In England, health advocates argue for restricting outdoor smoking because children should not so much as see someone lighting up. “Smokers themselves are also contaminated… smokers actually emit toxins,” one Harvard researcher mused to Scientific American in 2009, warning against exposure to invisible “thirdhand smoke” wafting off of smokers’ clothing and hair. Writers at Vox have gone so far as to advocate banning smoking even in private homes. The list could go on endlessly. Is it any wonder smokers feel stigmatized?"

"Correlation does not imply causation"

(via Correlation does not imply causation. Except when it does.)

Moral Skepticism

莫丽蜜: "First, be humane to Inuka.
Next, be humane to humans.

Ed Nolan: On instagram some retarded Sinkies are insisting that polar bears and dogs should be treated the same as cows and rats because "they are all animals".

Me: Yup I agree. I treat animals the same way.

That's why I've eaten dog and want to eat cat.

There is no morally relevant distinction between cute and ugly animals.

BTW I find pigs cute. And they're smart. So you shouldn't eat them

Ed Nolan: Silly to say all animals are the same when a polar bear is not the same animal as a rat. Also silly to say there's no "morally relevant distinction" as if it's the universal truth, when the fact is that "morals" are subjective and determined by humans and society. And most people and societies will consider those who say "there is no morally relevant distinction between cute and ugly animals" as "immoral" people.

Me: So what would you say are the morally relevant differences between polar bears and rats?

Social acceptance is different from morality. Is an incoherent moral system really a system?

Ed Nolan: Morality is personal/societal and not universal. And trying to talk about logic and coherence when it comes to morality is illogical and futile.

Me: Ethicists and moral philosophers would disagree on the latter even if they might on the former

Ed Nolan: Doesn't mean they or their adherents are logical or smart. Purist thinking such as viewing all animals as the same is often reductive and illogical, as illogical as conflating morals with universal truths.

Me: First you claim logic and coherence for morality is illogical and futile so we shouldn't care about it, but now you use illogical as a derogatory term

Maybe you haven't made up your mind about whether logic is a good thing

Ed Nolan: You don't get it. I'm saying it is illogical to try to justify morals with logic. Trying to justify treating all animals the same by invoking the logical fallacy that "all animals are the same" is illogical.

Found another data point for the pool of stupid Sinkies who try to justify killing and eating dogs by invoking false logic and trying to make it sound logical. Not only stupid but also dishonest and cowardly to hide behind false logic.

Me: Lol. You just said logic is a bad thing when applied to morality

Guess you changed your mind (again?)

Ed Nolan: Yes I said logic cannot be applied to morality and that's exactly why I disagree with your attempt to apply logic to your moral value of how you treat dogs. You still can't comprehend this?

Me: If "logic cannot be applied to morality", then there's nothing wrong with "false logic"

For someone who keeps bashing logic you seem to implicitly value it a lot

(not to mention that if you claim you cannot apply logic to morality and then start arguing about the situation you are engaging in self confessed futility)

Ed Nolan: Using logic to debunk your attempt to apply logic to morality doesn't mean I'm applying logic to morality myself. Is that too difficult for you to understand or are you just unwilling to admit it?

Don't use strawman. I never bashed logic. I'm bashing stupid Sinkies who try to apply logic to their immoral values.

Using false logic to justify one's moral value is stupid, dishonest and cowardly.

Not justifying one's morality with logic is entirely consistent with pointing out why some Sinkies are stupid in trying to justify their morality with false logic. But of course it is not surprising that stupid Sinkies can't or refuse to comprehend this.

Me: The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Observations - 15th December 2017

"When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear." - Thomas Sowell

***

Are rich liberals stupid for voting against their economic interests - for politicians who will raise taxes?

If a Chinese has bad experiences with Indian people and concludes Indian people are annoying, he is racist
If an Indian has bad experiences with Chinese people and concludes Chinese people are racist, he is right

The fact that minorities are only championed and fetishised when they're unsuccessful points to an underlying ideology of envy and spitefulness

"I asked some antifas why its okay for them to be violent but duterte's "vigilantism" is a human right violation
Wahhhh everyone damn triggered."

"Whatever happened to "be the change you want to see in the world?"
It became "bitch about the change you want to see in the world.""

"If our ecosystem is collapsing because we consume too much, should we really be bringing people from low consuming countries to high consuming countries where they'll end up consuming more than they would have back home?"

"When I was younger and dumber I thought I could transform unhappy people into happy people by giving them whatever they wanted, or fixing whatever they thought was broken. This approach worked approximately zero times. Once a dopamine addict’s alleged problem is fixed, the addict still needs the next high. So they magnify small problems into big ones just to feel something. Or they create a problem where there was none."


Do people who don't look like their parents have identity issues? (mixed race children and adoptees being some examples)

Having a second kid so the first one doesn't think it's the most important person in the world is like not having a second kid because you're afraid of favouritism. Or, in a different way, like giving away your money to charity so you don't gamble it away

"The best celebration after surviving the first year is a year's holiday without the kid. 😩"


Going by the philosophy that those who have not accomplished much have no standing to criticise those who have done more (a philosophy which seems not uncommon in Singapore), Confucius should be ignored since he only had a brief civil service career before becoming a scholar. So all the rulers who sought his advice were idiots

A lot of Singaporeans think that testing claims for logical consistency is changing the subject. But then, so much about Singapore is special pleading or exceptionalism


Why do people celebrate Down's Syndrome in a way that they don't cerebral palsy?

[On bemoaning the youth] "The people who created the next generation are pretty quick to absolve themselves of the mess they created."

'A great novel can change who you are. For example, after I read "War and Peace", I became way more pretentious.'

"Social constructs are a social construct"

"The government says if you're not doing anything wrong you shouldn't have to hide anything. If that's true shouldn't the government declassify everything?" (aka if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide and nothing to hear from increasing surveillance and violations of privacy)

Reusing disposable plastic containers means the contents may spill. Onto your pants. On 2 separate days. Before you save the earth, you must save yourself.

The dying art of disagreement

'The dying art of disagreement'
(This was also a NYT op-ed)

"To say, I disagree; I refuse; you’re wrong; etiam si omnes—ego non—these are the words that define our individuality, give us our freedom, enjoin our tolerance, enlarge our perspectives, seize our attention, energize our progress, make our democracies real, and give hope and courage to oppressed people everywhere. Galileo and Darwin; Mandela, Havel, and Liu Xiaobo; Rosa Parks and Natan Sharansky—such are the ranks of those who disagree.

And the problem, as I see it, is that we’re failing at the task.

This is a puzzle. At least as far as far as the United States is concerned, Americans have rarely disagreed more in recent decades...

This is yet another age in which we judge one another morally depending on where we stand politically.

Nor is this just an impression of the moment. Extensive survey data show that Republicans are much more right-leaning than they were twenty years ago, Democrats much more left-leaning, and both sides much more likely to see the other as a mortal threat to the nation’s welfare...

The polarization is personal: Fully 50% of Republicans would not want their child to marry a Democrat, and nearly a third of Democrats return the sentiment. Interparty marriage has taken the place of inter-racial marriage as a family taboo...

Thirty years ago, in 1987, a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago named Allan Bloom—at the time best known for his graceful translations of Plato’s Republic and Rousseau’s Emile—published a learned polemic about the state of higher education in the United States. It was called “The Closing of the American Mind.”...

I got the gist—and the gist was that I’d better enroll in the University of Chicago and read the great books. That is what I did...

I’m not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn’t a “teaching” with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.

To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind—this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.

It’s what used to be called a liberal education.

The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.

Socrates quarrels with Homer. Aristotle quarrels with Plato. Locke quarrels with Hobbes and Rousseau quarrels with them both. Nietzsche quarrels with everyone. Wittgenstein quarrels with himself.

These quarrels are never personal. Nor are they particularly political, at least in the ordinary sense of politics. Sometimes they take place over the distance of decades, even centuries.

Most importantly, they are never based on a misunderstanding. On the contrary, the disagreements arise from perfect comprehension; from having chewed over the ideas of your intellectual opponent so thoroughly that you can properly spit them out.

In other words, to disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen well, watch closely. You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate empathically with his line of reasoning. And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say.

“The Closing of the American Mind” took its place in the tradition of these quarrels. Since the 1960s it had been the vogue in American universities to treat the so-called “Dead White European Males” of the Western canon as agents of social and political oppression. Allan Bloom insisted that, to the contrary, they were the best possible instruments of spiritual liberation.

He also insisted that to sustain liberal democracy you needed liberally educated people. This, at least, should not have been controversial. For free societies to function, the idea of open-mindedness can’t simply be a catchphrase or a dogma. It needs to be a personal habit, most of all when it comes to preserving an open mind toward those with whom we disagree.

* * *

That habit was no longer being exercised much 30 years ago. And if you’ve followed the news from American campuses in recent years, things have become a lot worse.

According to a new survey from the Brookings Institution, a plurality of college students today—fully 44%—do not believe the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects so-called “hate speech,” when of course it absolutely does. More shockingly, a narrow majority of students—51%—think it is “acceptable” for a student group to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. An astonishing 20% also agree that it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking.

These attitudes are being made plain nearly every week on one college campus or another...

The mis-education begins early. I was raised on the old-fashioned view that sticks and stones could break my bones but words would never hurt me. But today there’s a belief that since words can cause stress, and stress can have physiological effects, stressful words are tantamount to a form of violence. This is the age of protected feelings purchased at the cost of permanent infantilizaton.

The mis-education continues in grade school. As the Brookings findings indicate, younger Americans seem to have no grasp of what our First Amendment says, much less of the kind of speech it protects. This is a testimony to the collapse of civics education in the United States, creating the conditions that make young people uniquely susceptible to demagoguery of the left- or right-wing varieties.

Then we get to college, where the dominant mode of politics is identity politics, and in which the primary test of an argument isn’t the quality of the thinking but the cultural, racial, or sexual standing of the person making it. As a woman of color I think X. As a gay man I think Y. As a person of privilege I apologize for Z. This is the baroque way Americans often speak these days. It is a way of replacing individual thought—with all the effort that actual thinking requires—with social identification—with all the attitude that attitudinizing requires.

In recent years, identity politics have become the moated castles from which we safeguard our feelings from hurt and our opinions from challenge. It is our “safe space.” But it is a safe space of a uniquely pernicious kind—a safe space from thought, rather than a safe space for thought, to borrow a line I recently heard from Salman Rushdie.

Another consequence of identity politics is that it has made the distance between making an argument and causing offense terrifyingly short. Any argument that can be cast as insensitive or offensive to a given group of people isn’t treated as being merely wrong. Instead it is seen as immoral, and therefore unworthy of discussion or rebuttal.

The result is that the disagreements we need to have—and to have vigorously—are banished from the public square before they’re settled. People who might otherwise join a conversation to see where it might lead them choose instead to shrink from it, lest they say the “wrong” thing and be accused of some kind of political –ism or -phobia. For fear of causing offense, they forego the opportunity to be persuaded...

One final point about identity politics: It’s a game at which two can play. In the United States, the so-called “alt-right” justifies its white-identity politics in terms that are coyly borrowed from the progressive left...

In the United States are raising a younger generation who have never been taught either the how or the why of disagreement, and who seem to think that free speech is a one-way right: Namely, their right to disinvite, shout down or abuse anyone they dislike, lest they run the risk of listening to that person—or even allowing someone else to listen. The results are evident in the parlous state of our universities, and the frayed edges of our democracies...

We disagree constantly. But what makes our disagreements so toxic is that we refuse to make eye contact with our opponents, or try to see things as they might, or find some middle ground.

Instead, we fight each other from the safe distance of our separate islands of ideology and identity and listen intently to echoes of ourselves. We take exaggerated and histrionic offense to whatever is said about us. We banish entire lines of thought and attempt to excommunicate all manner of people—your humble speaker included—without giving them so much as a cursory hearing.

The crucial prerequisite of intelligent disagreement—namely: shut up; listen up; pause and reconsider; and only then speak—is absent."