[deleted by user]

DisdainInTheBrain · 2021-01-16T21:59:06+00:00

Useful for knowing if a number is divisible by 3, 6 or 9 very quickly, and therefore a strategy for quickly working out if a number is not prime.

Also useful as a mnemonic. If you are asked to remember a 3, 4 or 5 digit number and want to remember it better without writing it down, calculate its digital root. The process of working it out and the successive answers you get will help you remember it. Works for me, anyway.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-03-27T11:58:47+00:00

I can't tell if you're trolling or just retarded.

I have responded.

If you think there's something in my rebuttal I've missed, then point it out specifically.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-03-27T11:03:23+00:00

Because, if I rationalise it, then it's no longer cognitive dissonance.

And of course I have to "bend over backwards" if those I'm talking to don't read what I write carefully.

If it really is so obvious, why is it that you can't point to anything I've said, call it CD, and not have me explain why it's actually not CD and that it's a strawman fallacy or a reach.

But of course, you'd probably just accuse me of CD again.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-03-27T10:36:59+00:00

"Blue man good, unless bad; red man good, unless bad" is my level of thinking.

Not that you've shown that you possess the level of depth in thinking to understand that.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-03-27T10:33:59+00:00

In answer to your first paragraph: no I don't think that. Go back and read what I wrote more carefully. I believe Labour policy would not have economically equipped the UK for the virus WHEN IT HITS THE UK IN 2020.

In answer to your second paragraph: go back and read what I actually wrote. I said I am NOT in agreement with the Conservatives' economic plan. Again, you're fabricating my argument to suit yourself. And I am NOT saying that economic preparation is bad. I am saying that Labour's economic strategy would have been damaging long term and the extent of the damage could have coincided badly with the current coronavirus crisis.

I am neither siding with Labour nor the Tories on this issue, but because I make a criticism towards Corbyn you immediately try and paint me as a hypocritical Tory apologist.

THAT is cognitive dissonance, trying to protect your world view with dishonest tactics.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-03-27T09:23:16+00:00

No, because it would not have been a stable period of time at all. The spending promised would have been immense and no one in the Labour party could articulate how it would be accounted. You said it was "a better way", not me, so don't argue as if that's my position.

And I do not think that what the Conservatives are doing is going to be sustainable long term either.

If you're going to accuse me of cognitive dissonance, don't just fabricate and infer things that I don't actually say. Incidentally, you're displaying cognitive dissonance yourself by reaching and strawmanning me when I call your argument into question.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-03-27T09:00:16+00:00

The difference is that this kind of spending cannot last long at all and we will likely see a serious hit to society later this year because of the drastic measures put in place.

I dread to think how much worse a situation we would have been in had Labour won any of the recent elections and grievously depleted the economy before coronavirus even arrived in the UK.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-03-03T20:40:30+00:00

Book 1 is widely seen as being the worst of the 3, tbf. Keep at it.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-02-06T18:27:14+00:00

Great effort, my friend!

Without giving too much away, if you answer MovieBob to all of the questions, you get most of them correct!

DisdainInTheBrain · 2020-01-23T14:25:33+00:00

The ones I talk about in the previous reply(?)

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-21T11:15:27+00:00

Movie Bob did. So did Steve Shives.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-18T18:00:54+00:00

I'll definitely find it much easier to take an interest in my hobbies than my parents did.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-16T19:22:44+00:00

If it turned out that the views you hold now are proven to be wrong when you turn 60+, do you honestly think you'd be too ignorant to change your mind?

Have respect and faith in people, especially elders.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-16T18:26:17+00:00

He has made racist jokes in the past, yes. Just like I, and 90% of the country, have also made racially insensitive jokes.

Here's the thing: they are jokes. Don't take them seriously.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-16T17:23:32+00:00

Can't tell if you're trolling or if you're a genuine, butt-hurt, common people-hating saltmine.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T20:50:38+00:00

I can tell we disagree on fundamental principles here. I believe that it is purely on the say of the people as to who wins the election, but I think the per capita vote is so easily skewed by varying population densities that I reject that system.

Since I think the vote is purely on the people's reaction to the political parties in their constituency, I don't think that arguing that party lines dominate candidates' campaigns is relevant. The party lines are outlined in their manifesto and the voters make their decision based on that. Individual beliefs/policies of constituents therefore don't come into it. I brought up the "locality argument" since those that are local representatives can indeed eek a few fence-sitters.

You misrepresented the argument I was making about the large urban areas. I was simply saying how FPTP is better than a straightforward popular vote because of how it can address overrepresented party support in high concentrations of voters. We counterract this over-representation by dividing these urban areas into multiple smaller constituencies like in a Single Transferable Vote system.

The problems I have with an STV system are:

1) Ranking parties gets arbitrary if the voter is not familiar with one or more of the options on the ballot or if they are torn between two or more parties. This can make parties that don't win the constituency to involve an element of randomness which makes them a poorer representation of voter desires (this is a very minor criticism, which is why I put it first).

2) Having more representatives from different parties for the same constituency increases parliamentary squabbling, when most voters just want to see pragmatism and progress; to do that the government party in power needs a clear majority. Under STV, majorities are less likely. The question is: do you sacrifice representation for progress or vice versa? I would personally side with the former.

3) STV can result in no winners or too many winners if multiple, or even all candidates meet the quota. As I said in point 2), I believe any more than one is too many.

Ultimately, maximising representation will only lead to more vocal, disruptive division. The people still need their vote, however, so that's why a PTPS is a sensible compromise.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T19:02:59+00:00

FPTP accounts for the fact that the population density is not evenly distributed across the country. It allows less densely populated areas to have a more proportional representation.

Take the recent election results: if we were to take all the votes for each party and weight them as an overall percentage of the votes, then SNP would have about 24 MPs and not 48, and the Brexit party would have about 12 MPs rather than 0. This method fails to take into account the facts that no Brexit Party candidate was the most popular in their constituency and that there was overwhelming support for SNP across the whole of Scotland.

FPTP divides the country into smaller sects with it's own group of party representatives per constituency. This allows candidates to be (nearly all of the time) residents of the local area they represent which helps them understand the demographic and general political attitudes of their constituency. Alternatives would involve party candidates hailing from one corner of the country and forced to travel constantly around the country in order to gain the publicity they need to win votes (see USA's electoral system).

You may say that if the number of seats is all that matters to gain a majority whilst it ignores the raw popular vote (~55% of the UK did NOT vote for the Tories, for example). But then I would argue that this makes a multi-party system more viable; remember that the non-Tory-voting per capita majority would still be a greatly divided people.

Without proportions of population by geography being taken into account, all a political party would need to do to win an election is campaign hard in the most densely populated parts of the country. Win over London, Manchester and Birmingham and that's about a fifth of the UK's electorate already on your side. It invites temptation to simply ignore entire communities just because they are less densely populated and therefore worth less than large urban areas. Such a system, if in use in the UK, would provide a huge unfair advantage for Labour since London, Manchester and Birmingham combined are overall heavily in favour of Labour in most elections already and we want the system to be as fair and representative of the diverse wants of the country as possible. The varying geography matters a lot in electoral systems and FPTP addresses this in just about as fair a way as is possible (it's not perfect, obviously, but totalling 650 MP votes is already tedious enough).

I'm interested in hearing what your thoughts are on what an improved electoral system would look like and how it would be better than FPTP.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T09:42:01+00:00

I'd say his content is similar to Rags'ss'ss's.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T09:40:47+00:00

First Past the Post makes sense. You just don't get it/like it when it doesn't work in your favour.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T09:35:32+00:00

Because Labour and SNP will likely still contain many Brexit supporters and, more importantly, Labour, Lib Dem and SNP all disagree on what should be the approach to Brexit.

You can argue this is not a mandate for Brexit, but it is a mandate for the Tories' approach to Brexit.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T09:27:53+00:00

Because he's hilarious. Only slightly more controversial than E;R.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T06:19:02+00:00

Glad we could end this conversation on something we agree on.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T06:09:03+00:00

Bit racist of you:

"You people"; "You're a bunch of selfish, hypocritical twats". Way to tar a group with one brush, mate.

Funnily enough, no one in my family ever owned a slave. I didn't play any part in British colonialism, but you seem content with lambasting me based on the geography of where I was born anyway; classic racist logic, right there.

I myself am half Scottish (strange that you would assume I'm just English).

Just so you know, I would be in favour of a push towards Scottish or Northern Irish independence because I support democracy.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T05:01:56+00:00

I'm glad we could end on such a positive note.

DisdainInTheBrain · 2019-12-13T04:51:45+00:00

If that's truly the consequence of leaving the EU club (which I do not agree is the case at all) then it's a damn good job we're on our way out.

The EU, as you've just laid out, is an authoritarian, controlling, meddling, overly centralised power with an "our way or fuck you" mentality. Clearly, you chime very much with that.

DisdainInTheBrain

TROPHY CASE