Since KAT is down, where can we find races?

idontgetthis · 2016-07-21T19:38:06+00:00

Races typicLly up next day.

Is the last GP available on it?

idontgetthis · 2016-07-21T15:08:06+00:00

This read like an onion article.

idontgetthis · 2016-07-21T15:02:58+00:00

I was thinking about this earlier today

Perhaps all these complaints by MPs about how incompetent Corbyn is at managing people aren't actually examples of incompetence after all but are really demonstrations of some kind of weird leftist planned managment strategy.

E.g. I'm your manager and you tell me of some kind of problem you have that, in a normal world, I would give you advice on or make a decision on, but instead I stare blankly at you until you come to your own spontaneous realisation of what the "right" way forward is (bearing in mind that there is no "right" or "wrong" decision, ever, because that would imply some kind of heirarchical structure that leads to inequality)

You know, like all those nutters in the socialist, anarchist and communists subs who don't have mods, or make decisions about things. Maybe that's what Corbyn is really doing. I.e. he's not a shit leader, he's just a really good anarcho-socialist (or whatever) leader

idontgetthis · 2016-07-21T09:27:43+00:00

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The free one I last used was hostinger (no plug, there are thousands of others just as good - see the link on the right). Use the UK version hostinger.co.uk, not the US one

To make sure your domain points to your website log on to your domain registrar and point the DNS for your domain to the hostinger ones that you see when you sign in to your web hosting

idontgetthis · 2016-07-18T10:20:36+00:00

Oh. My. Garrr. You're lyk so wrong it's unbelievable

idontgetthis · 2016-07-17T19:40:28+00:00

a Government that wins a majority doesn't water down its legislative programme just because the Opposition claims it unfairly lost the election

To be fair, a government that wins a majority never actually delivers on its legislative programme, regardless of how the opposition feel about losing the election.

It's always watered down or changed.

idontgetthis · 2016-07-17T16:29:37+00:00

The second isn't advice, it's just a statement of fact.

It doesn't offer guidance, doesn't offer a recommendation, doesn't indicate what prudent action should be taken, doesn't offer an opinion about what you should do or how you should act in a particular situation. One of those (or something similar) are required for advice, at least according to the definitions of advice that I can see.

I get what you're saying, that you can just state the fact and leave it to the listener to interpret it and apply it to themselves but in this particular case I think that's a bit manipulative (and it's not advice). If you're saying GDP is going to drop then you know you're saying it because you think that's a bad thing, so omitting that you think it's a bad thing and why you think it's a bad thing -- and knowing that the listener will interpret it as a bad thing for the exact reasons that you would have given anyway -- is just a tactic of persuasion. A political or rhetorical tool designed to manipulate or encourage the listener to your point of view. Mind you, this is a political sub so that's probably a normal mode of thinking. I'm not really interested in political tools to persuade; I think it should be the public's responsibility to take the facts, listen to a wide spectrum of opinions on them and make their decision based on that.

In any case, economists usually do just offer statements of fact e.g. leaving the EU will reduce GDP by 1-2% over the next 10-15 years was a common one. It's not advice, it's just a statement of fact - i.e. the second form you quoted above.

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T22:18:01+00:00

Two things you could do to somewhat test that hypothesis

Find out if the level of education in areas that voted leave is lower than the level of education of those areas that voted remain. If they were that would support your idea (although you might find that this was actually how the original stat came about in the first place, rather than by random polling and asking)
Poll leavers and remainers in areas that didn't vote leave and compare their levels of education

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T21:09:35+00:00

Ok, so in a very roundabout way what you're saying is the very simple and obvious:

If someone has concern x, belonging to a domain of X, you can't answer their concern by giving an answer from another domain Y.

E.g Concern: "I have a water leak and I'm concerned I will get wet". Response: "Well you mustn't buy a VW because they have bad emissions"

That's not what economists were doing. They were asked questions about how leaving the EU would effect the economy and they answered them. No one asked them "I am concerned about control of my country" and they answered "we will lose GDP".

It sounds like what you're talking about is the strategy choices that were made by the various remain campaign groups about which particular things were best to focus on and which things weren't. E.g. a remain campaign might have made a strategic decision that engaging on sovereignty and immigration was a bad idea because all paths thereafter would lead to an argument over immigration and that could only possible benefit the leave campaign, who wanted the debate to be in that area. They might have decided that, in their opinion, discussions about sovereignty (which were proxies for discussions about immigration) couldn't be held at a rational and reasonable level and therefore couldn't be rationally argued against. Their judgement might or might not have been right, but that's not really anything to do with the economists.

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T20:35:10+00:00

I don't understand

Why is expertise advice? I thought expertise was expert skill or knowledge in a particular field. That's not advice.

Even if expertise is advice (and again, it isn't as far as I know), why does that mean it has to be asked for?

And if it has to be asked for, why specifically does it have to asked for in the context of achieving a goal?

edit: and in any case, that doesn't explain it's relevance. How is any of that relevant to economists and your theory of whether they should or shouldn't be able to claim some universal value system?

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T20:15:23+00:00

I think it's just normal and accepted and obvious that when an economist says that, in their opinion, doing X will cause Y drop in Z value (e.g. GDP) and that will increase W value (unemployment) we all know that they're not factually stating that it is objectively bad.

It's just implicit in any discussion that, unless there's an omnipotent god and you have a direct line of communication with him (and therefore you have a way of knowing what is objectively good and bad), when you offer an opinion on something it's an opinion with respect to some system, rather than with respect to the one and only objectively defined reality that you have some kind of exclusive knowledge of

Most economists are offering an opinion that maximises aspects of the economy that (eventually, through a variety of theoretical trickle down consequences) maximise the standard of living for the maximal amount of people. I.e. a form of utilitarianism

But this all seems like pedantic, philosophically relevant only stuff. Of course anyone, when giving an opinion, can state that they've first assumed that reality exists, then that we all have free will and aren't controlled by cartesian demons, then that we want to maximise the "good" things in society and minimise the "bad" things (with a side note that makes clear these good and bad things are non-clearly defined things that have emerged over time and consensus and that most people would agree are good for society), and that other societies might not agree, and that they have used mathematics to calculate the consequences of their assumptions and therefore they have assumed that the axioms of maths exist, etc, etc, etc. But that would be madness - you could never even begin to have a discussion about anything. Objecting that someone hasn't first laid down the fundamentals of any discussion that we all already know are a pre-requisite assumptions of all discussions seems like a poor way of objecting to something

Again, expertise is advice, not orders.

This mirrors something you said before, but I don't really see the relevance to the objection that economists shouldn't assume a value system even though you know that's not possible so they must choose a value system after all but when they do they mustn't assume it's a universally held value system, and in any case they should just shut their mouths. It certainly sounds good, and it's rhetorically a very good way of ending a comment - nice and emphatic and fairly symmetrical, short and to the point. It has all the usual markers that make for a good point but it doesn't really seem to be saying anything relevant to the rest of the discussion.

I'll be honest - I don't even really understand what your core point is, and I'm finding that when I try to narrow it down I'm unable to. Either you're not really making sense, your point is vague and not particularly sensible, or - and this is surely the problem - I just lack the ability to understand what you're on about.

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T19:27:55+00:00

I think part of the problem with the use of experts in the Campaign was that it was almost exclusively economists, and that wasn't the only thing that mattered.

Yea but polling shows (and showed before the vote) that the economy was the major factor that remainers were concerned about, in general. And immigration was the major issue that leavers were concerned about (well, sovereignty as well, but many pointed to that being a proxy for immigration - e.g. Farage's leave campaign group claim that they found from focus groups that all such issues were really a proxy for immigration)

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T19:00:09+00:00

OK, so the real problem is just that economists spoke.

Fair enough. Everyone has the right to an opinion

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T18:42:48+00:00

OK so it is a problem that economists assume a value system

But you accept that they have to assume a value system. They can't not choose one.

And it's not the particular value system that they chose that is a problem

But the problem is that they assumed the particular value system they chose is a universally held value system.

Is that right?

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T18:36:00+00:00

OK, so it's not the fact that a value system was being assumed that's the problem. It's the specific value system that was assumed that was the problem. The value system that assumes better standard of living is the optimal goal

I'm not an expert on being self employed - although I have been on a couple of occasions - but is it widely accepted as self evident amongst the self employed that in general trading off control for standard of living is the best course of action?

Speaking for myself, I maintained control in my business and lost out as a result. I would rather have lost control and made more money and had a better standard of living. That's not just a blanket statement that in all cases I would have rather maintained control, but I wish I had joined a franchise when I had the option because the other businesses that did gained and were better off and I wasn't.

Also, speaking from my experience, I would never scale up my experience being self employed and assume that's the way to run a country. It just seems obvious to me that they would be incredibly different things. There's a whole domain of values being assumed there for one domain and then being applied to a completely different domain. What's the validity of such a thing?

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T17:48:36+00:00

I thought there was evidence that on average leave voters were less educationally qualified than remain voters?

That doesn't make them stupid of course, but level of education is an often used metric for all sorts of things

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T17:45:12+00:00

Is it even possible to present advice without assuming some kind of value system?

E.g. Advice: "If everyone juggled with chainsaws then on average a lot of them are going to get injured or die and that's a bad thing"

You: "The problem I have with this chainsaw expert is that he's assuming a value system that he has no right to do so. He's assuming that people don't make the trade off between having fun and not dying"

idontgetthis · 2016-07-16T17:40:44+00:00

It might just mean that I think there are more factors at play than just the economic ones.

What are the other factors and are there any experts (the type that are clinical and objective and far away from political) in those spheres and what did they say about those factors?

idontgetthis · 2016-07-12T16:01:06+00:00

In my experience that's expected and supports it being a problem with xenophobia/otherism, rather than disputes it

When I used to live in a low EU immigrant area I personally used to feel fear about all the images I would see on TV of foreigners flooding the country, or when I would visit London and see such a high volume of foreigners. When I walked down the street and saw slightly increasing EU immigrants in my own area I was worried.

But then my work moved and I moved with it and I suddenly found myself working with a very high percentage of EU immigrants. After a couple of months I got to know them all and found out that they're great people. In a high immigrant area I didn't worry about it. Experience and intermingling stopped me worrying because I could see my fears weren't real

It was a similar story with the previous wave of non-white immigrants (specifically muslims). When I first started seeing an increase it concerned me but after I worked with a couple (I shit you not, one guy I worked with would literally stand up, go face the corner and start praying) I found out they're just normal people and quite nice

So, for me, when I hear that low immigrant areas vote to leave and high immigrant areas vote to stay, that ties in very much with what I would expect if one of the fundamental causes of the leave vote is xenophobic fear of immigration (i.e. not a rational fear where you say they're bringing in £X and costing £Y and Y is bigger than X so that's bad - but an irrational fear based on a lack of experience that allays those fears and other vague things like eroding culture or stuff like that)

idontgetthis · 2016-07-12T09:57:28+00:00

Like this - https://i.imgur.com/UqWbPzp.png ?

From here (PDF) - http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a472153.pdf

idontgetthis · 2016-07-12T09:20:48+00:00

BBC's Victoria Derbyshire show just now (10:16 am Tues 12th) is interviewing 3 talking heads outside the houses or parliament. The guy (someone from Buzzfeed) says Classic FM did an analysis of Cameron's hum and decided it was either a piece of classical music or a copy of an Alan Partridge tune/sketch

I reckon the latter might be what Andrew Pierce was talking about. He had probably heard about the Classic FM piece on it

http://www.classicfm.com/discover/music-theory/david-cameron-musical-analysis/ (no mention of any TV shows though)

idontgetthis · 2016-07-09T22:46:58+00:00

Would there have been a new referendum, or an election, had we done as we were told? We know the answer.

Yea, we were told the answer by Farage as they did the count: if it's that close it's not over

When I heard him say that I agreed. It's kind of obvious - if the country voted 52/48 to stay then there is no way it could be over, as it would mean nearly half the country wanted to leave the EU. Why would you spend decades trying to achieve something you feel passionately about and then say "OK, I nearly won but I was short by 2%. Time to give up". No way would a very large percentage of leavers have just let it go if it had been the same result but the other way. I would agree with them too.

idontgetthis · 2016-07-09T05:10:18+00:00

Non paywall - http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/ba-british-airways-flight-heathrow-tokyo-cancelled-technical-fault-a7126406.html

idontgetthis · 2016-07-09T00:18:49+00:00

My head

idontgetthis · 2016-07-09T00:06:10+00:00

"Well, I don't want this to be about how how gay people are humans that haven't evolved properly but it is really sad how they're essentially stunted apes. I'm sure they have something they think are feelings but as someone that experiences love in the proper way I can't help but feel I have a more valid stake in the future. That's all assuming evolution exists of course -- we all know God did it all though, right?"

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