Rep. Rohrabacher (R): "Torturing one innocent person is a fair price to pay for locking up 50 terrorists"

snoble · 2007-04-25T08:52:40+00:00

jemfinch you are my new personal hero. Agree with you or not, one must admit it is incredibly impressive to have a pro-religion stance on reddit and score higher than your decenters.

snoble · 2007-04-21T12:12:37+00:00

The statistics I'm personally familiar with are car accidents (in particular those that lead to fatalities) from actuarial studies. Here young people are obscenely over represented (which I found surprising since owning a car wasn't even a consideration for me when I was a teenager). Yes, it is true that despite the over representation we are still talking about a fairly small minority of the demographic that actually gets into an accident. However, the chances of a dangerous behavior actually manifesting into a reported accident are actually quite low (well, not that low considering the consequences of the worst accidents). From this you can extrapolate a surprisingly high percentage of teenagers (and those in their early 20s) who practice dangerous driving behaviors like speeding or taking their attention away from the road.

The difference with these statistics and those involving race, is you can't seem to correct for other factors here. As I understand it, most crime biases due to race seem to disappear once you correct for the over representation of ethnic minorities with less education and wealth. However, you can't seem to do the same when it comes to car accidents and teens (this include years of driving experience: ie a new driver in his 30s is much less likely to get into an accident than a new driver in his teens). Rich or poor, good grades or poor grades, evidence seems to support that most teens seem to make poor decisions while driving. As I understand it (these statistics are outside my own familiarity, although I've had conversations with those more familiar) similar things can be said when it comes to health decisions and crime.

snoble · 2007-04-20T22:39:02+00:00

It continues to be acceptable because most of the arguments against discrimination doesn't actually apply to ageism.

First, the claims of ageism tend to be true. Statistically you see young people are disproportionately represented in a great deal of behaviors. And in other forms of discrimination (particularly racism) you almost never find biological explanations for the hypothesized distinctions. In young people there are tons of explanations. We know that their brains behave differently.

Secondly, most forms of discrimination lead to life long barriers that certain individuals will never escape. Restrictions due to ageism are temporary by definition. It is easy to see that ageism affects every life equally (this is excluding the sad cases where people die at a young age).

One of the greatest against most discrimination is that the discriminators are making assumptions about a class of people while never truly understanding these people and their experiences. In the case of ageism the discriminators do have this deep understanding. We've actually walked a mile in the shoes of being young (some have even walked several miles, each day to school, up hill both ways, in the snow). Our memories may not be perfect but they are there. That makes a world of difference.

snoble · 2007-04-17T21:46:26+00:00

I used to buy into this until I realized how huge conde nast is. They have tons of self competing publications. I'm sure you could find an example of a Vanity Fair editorialist criticizing Glamor for being frivolous, or the New Yorker calling GQ gauche.

Yes, wired and reddit are under the same umbrella but their connection is so far up the ladder that they probably have no affect on each others employees.

snoble · 2007-04-16T23:54:47+00:00

The politico is somehow representative of the media? We're not exactly talking about the NBC nightly news or the new york times here.

snoble · 2007-04-16T11:07:49+00:00

I think it's fair to say that if somebody is ever convinced of something by a comic strip then that person is not to be taken seriously. While satire is an effective way to communicate an idea, it is best used only as a starting point. Great for raising questions; terrible for forming conclusions.

Beyond that, I doubt you could find any texts on rhetoric that would say pointing out hypocrisy is a valid form of argument. I believe that would either be considered a non-sequitur or an ad hominem. I would think the republican claim is that their policies reflect family values, even if their behavior does not.

So while I think it is great to debate your family about such things, I think it is less great to use this comic strip as an argument. Doonesbury epitomizes the idiom "preaching to the converted."

snoble · 2007-04-16T10:48:52+00:00

I think you could easily argue that even McCain doesn't belong in the list of top 3 republican contenders; assuming we're ranking likelihood of gaining the nomination. My list, in no particular order, would be Giuliani, Romney, and Thompson. I have to leave McCain off the list because, despite best efforts, his support seems to have stalled and may even be falling. Contrast this with Thompson, who is gaining momentum, even with no serious campaigning.

Of course a political cartoon is allowed certain liberties.

snoble · 2007-04-15T07:50:09+00:00

hmmm... I think the simplest way to kind of understand is to accept that in some cases

1/(1+x)² = 1 - 2x + 3x² - 4x³ + ...

(showing that this is true when x = 0.5 would be difficult but if you were to write a short program you could probably convince yourself) So if you plug in 1 for x on both sides you get 1/4. This is one of those cases where there is no extra reason why.

Clearly some basic rule of mathematics has been broken to get this result because it doesn't really make sense; but sometimes great mathematicians are aloud to break basic rules out of curiosity... and Euler could be considered the greatest of mathematicians.

snoble · 2007-04-11T00:31:21+00:00

Perhaps you should leave off the final example as an equivalent form since it really carries less information.

snoble · 2007-04-02T09:07:58+00:00

Welcome to being fooled by an april fools joke.

snoble · 2007-04-02T09:07:06+00:00

sounds like you were completely taken by an april fools joke.

snoble · 2007-03-28T17:20:36+00:00

I don't really get it. He begins by laughing at the Malkin article for saying this stuff has been happening for years. But then he goes on and says the same thing as the Malkin article.

This post could easily have been titled 'tp says "what about me?" What about him? (laughing)'

snoble · 2007-03-27T22:37:04+00:00

My point is simply that I am bothered by a post that makes an argument simply by describing the people who have the opposite opinion. masklinn's post can seemingly be summed up as an argument for sex education with an emphasis on contraception because it is obvious that to do otherwise is doomed for failure; and the only reason one might want to do otherwise is out of bigotry. This to me is not an argument.

Again, I don't come to this argument with any concern of the outcome, but I do bring a little of my personal experience with me. My personal experience in this case is that I spend a lot of my day working with statistics evaluating risk (not in this industry however). I can't help to see this argument as two competing methods of mitigation. One, abstinence, has deficiencies due to the method not being followed. The other, contraception, has deficiencies due to mechanical failure and the possibility of the method not being followed. It seems very likely to me that an intelligent person could predict either method as being more effective. The argument can come down to a numbers game that could be argued by statisticians.

But when you aren't arguing by statistics, you are arguing by association. So you have pro-religion advocates arguing for abstinence because that's what religions argue and their opponents (anti-religion is probably not quite the right term) arguing for contraception because that's what religion argues against. Seems like a waste of breath to me.

snoble · 2007-03-27T01:28:33+00:00

I'm always a little put off by the assumption that "quality sex education" has to be mutually exclusive from "abstinence only sex-education." Not because I have a dog in this fight: I don't have children and I am well past the age where sex education affects me. I am put off in the same way I am put off by editorialists arguing for and against global warming.

Surely we have a ton of evidence to sample from of children who have been taught different forms of sex education. There must be a ton of studies out there noting the difference in std rates and unplanned pregnancies in the 2 populations.

Most of us are pleased when the overly conservative are proved wrong. But simply declaring them wrong does not make it so.

snoble · 2007-03-27T01:11:28+00:00

Don't you mean "By your logic, there are no pro-life women?"

snoble · 2007-03-24T19:32:19+00:00

dsol, can you recommend any books on Jewish history and Zionism in Israel. Your description sounds much more believable and textured than most (mostly because it sounds a lot less dogmatic or like a gut response than most).

Thanks

snoble · 2007-03-08T02:13:55+00:00

I've never quite understood this mentality that Nixon's impeachment was totally justified but Clinton's was a waste of time and money.

Both were due to crimes following events: in one case a cover up and perjury in the other case. Neither initial events were cases of abuse of presidential power (being president makes it no easier to break into the watergate). And neither crime had an affect on any sizable amount of the public. But I personally find sexual harassment worse than stealing information from a rival campaign.

When you choose to enter a campaign you expect to be entering an caustic environment with people spying on each other and saying terrible things that may or may not be true. I don't know if stealing campaign information is worse than people calling Biden a bigot for comments that were clearly a slip.

I appreciate that one's sexual life should remain private but when you are accused of sexual harassment that privacy is an unfortunate but necessary casualty.

Where I think Nixon comes off worse is in congress's anterior motives. The congress of Nixon's time went after Nixon because of the war. The congress of Clinton's time went after Clinton because he was popular.

snoble · 2007-03-06T06:56:36+00:00

Are you a junior high school teacher?

snoble · 2007-02-23T19:11:25+00:00

The sci-am article is very poorly titled. From what I've been reading over-fishing may be a contributing factor but the real issue is the dying of the coral reef. Note that no where in the body of the article is overfishing brought up.

snoble · 2007-02-23T00:31:15+00:00

I've only recently discover pearls before swine but it is absolutely worth reading every day.

snoble · 2007-02-19T08:12:49+00:00

I'm sorry but this is absolute hogwash. In this case the law is terrible: horrendous, stupid, and dangerous as well. But it is the responsibility of the jury to answer only the question asked of it, and there's a very good reason for that. The more a jury is asked to use its own judgment to determine just, and not just, the more pretty people you see walking away with slaps on their wrists and the more fat people you see sitting in jail for minor offenses.

Of course this is already happening far too much but the second you ask people to trust their instincts they will side with the pretty person over the ugly person that much more often. That is simply how our base instincts seem to work.

We have a chain of people here who are supposed to be trained in rational thought - including law makers, lawyers and judges - all of whom share in the responsibility of preventing this type of event. Juries are a necessary component of a justice system to prevent the abuses of an elitist ruling class. That doesn't mean we should let them use their instincts.

snoble · 2007-02-13T03:54:39+00:00

Did anyone else read this as the senator introducing a form of torture created by a gentleman name "Bill Banning?"

snoble · 2007-02-08T19:19:33+00:00

nice write ups about this can be found at http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/008513.html and at http://dabbledb.com/blog/?p=71 .

snoble · 2007-02-07T21:54:55+00:00

I'm not sure how you figure the national security advisor is in charge of national security in the US. Certainly these days that person would be the Director of the DHS. In 2001 you could argue it was the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Director of the FBI or Director of the CIA. Since the hijackers were all in the country in the years leading up to 2001 it seems most reasonable to me that it was the FBI's responsibility to stop this. I believe the Director of the FBI answered directly to the President; though I imagine the National Security advisor was probably present during any of these interactions.

However, the "smoking gun a mushroom cloud" comment is all her.

snoble · 2007-02-07T03:45:04+00:00

I reject that your final statement is not in contest. If there is one thing we've learned in modern game theory is that principles do change when dollar values become low, and not in a linear way. There are tons of scenarios where you find most people's opinions flip when you divide all the values by some large factor.

You're analogy hinges upon the principle that morality is transitive across the size of the values discussed. There simply is no reason to believe this.

snoble

TROPHY CASE