managed to completely whiff the easiest pitch he'll ever be given
What, condemning violence? Seems he did pretty well on that one.
No, he didn't. He showed himself to be the least competent human being that's ever held the oval office. Since he has nonexistent impulse control, what should have been a piece-of-cake statement became the biggest controversy of his administration because he had to blame "many sides". He continued to fail all week at clarifying the issue. The level of his fail was such that many prominent republicans vocally disagreed with him, and several of Trump's major business committees were disbanded.
Think about how GWB handled September 11. He expressed sorrow and sympathy and promised to take action on the topic. His approval ratings skyrocketed overnight. It was a moment of substantial unity for the country in the aftermath of a national tragedy, and all GWB had to do was read a speech. Charlottesville, thankfully, was far less extensive in the loss of life, but even so it provided an opportunity for Trump to express sorrow and make some statements about bringing the country together. Instead, he not only flubbed it, he doubled down on stupid and turned it into the worst week of his presidency.
Trump is incompetent in the extreme. He hasn't accomplished any of the things he promised to do, despite having majority control of EVERY single level of government. He's a total failure.
Show me who got killed by the left-wing protestors. Show me where the "very fine" people are on the Unite the Right Nazi side. There is no equivalency here, and the fact that Trump acts as though there is shows that he's too stupid and/or racist to score the easiest political points in history by condemning Nazis. I literally cannot think of a single more uniting American principle than hating on Nazis, but President Smallfingers managed to completely whiff the easiest pitch he'll ever be given.
I agree with you, essentially - I'm just saying that "Nazi" is not synonymous with alt-right. The alt-right represents a diverse assortment of dead-end ideologies, of which Nazi-ism is just one type. It's useful to keep names that help us distinguish between different flavors of idiocy, because some of them require different responses than others. There's no denying, though, that the alt-right isn't doing itself any favors by failing to cast out a group who has been synonymous with evil for the last 8-ish decades.
The causes are manifold, but I don't know that the solution is very clear. You can look at Nixon (and perhaps the relativism of the 60's) as the start of a long trend towards some very negative patterns. Mistrust of government, cynicism, partisan isolationism, and the profusion of conspiracy theories has made productive discourse almost impossible.
Unless we can find a way to get ourselves grounded in reality again (which I'm hopeful we might do as a reaction against Trump and Friends), then things don't look good for America. The one good thing that can be said for all of this, though, is that Trump might manage to unite the nation by being so damned repugnant that thinking people of both parties join together to oppose him and the garbage ideology he stands for.
I was hoping someone would post this, as it illustrates nicely what I'm talking about. When did make any excuses for Nazis or white supremacists?
Oh, and by all reports, Bannon put in his resignation weeks ago.
Deflecting blame onto someone else is a common excuse tactic. When Trump caveats his condemnation of the Charlottesville attack by pointing fingers at the anti-Nazi protestors, he is lessening the moral burden of the homicidal Nazi. What's ambiguous about that?
Bannon claims he put his resignation in weeks ago. Other sources say that Trump fired him over the Prospect piece. There have been rumblings of Bannon being on the ropes for a while. Either way, the optics are bad for Trump - in the midst of uproar about his equivocation over neonazi violence, he fires the most incendiary and politically inconvenient member of his staff, who formerly ran a media platform for right wing extremists. The timing makes it look as though he's been cowed by the furor over Charlottesville and so he's sacrificing Bannon as an attempt at appeasement. Whether it's true or not, anybody with half a brain knows that's how it will be interpreted, and so if it isn't true then that makes it even more shortsighted on Trump's part. This move makes him look weak and compliant, and also guilty, while simultaneously pissing off the Breitbart crew. Yet he isn't using it to score any points with the moderates in his party. Anybody halfway competent would choose better timing but Trump doesn't have the self-discipline for that.
Here's my question for you: what would it take to for Trump to lose your support? Is there anything that he could do that you wouldn't interpret as genius? Because he has the lowest approval rating in history for a new president, even though the economy is doing really well, and he continues to say and do things that cause endless headaches for him. He has failed to accomplish a single thing that he promised to do. That's a strange definition of success.
Well, "trolling the left" has certainly provoked a response. Not just from the left, either - from the business community, from the vast majority of Republican politicians, and from many of Trump's historically more loyal supporters. Apparently, making excuses for Nazis pisses off a lot of people. This week has cost Trump dearly in terms of poll numbers, business support, conservative media support, party support, and even forced his hand on firing Bannon.
I'd say the left doesn't really need to do "their side" any favors - Trump is doing more for them right now than they could ever do on their own.
Yep. The alt-right is a diverse bunch - there are white supremacists who believe in ethnic superiority of anglo heritage, there are nationalists who believe in economic isolationism and are opposed to immigrants, there are religious authoritarians who want the government in our bedrooms, there are antisocial conspiracy theorists who are trying to hide out from government mind rays, and there are desperate suckers whose lives aren't going very well who will naively cling to any ideology, no matter how evil, that promises easy fixes. None of those things, on its own, makes you a Nazi. That said, if you are holding a swastika, or making excuses for someone that does, what should we conclude about you?
There's "censorship", and then there's "you're an asshole, and association with you will hurt my reputation, so I won't do business with you".
It's not like an ISP is proactively blocking people who want to read this site's content, or the government is forcing people to abandon him. The free market is acting.
Go UBI. The possible downsides of minimum wage are obvious - and although it might work in some instances, in our current situation it will only accelerate automation. It's also not tenable to just allow wages to erode without recourse - the bargaining power of the working class is rapidly approaching zero, and it will end up requiring three jobs to make ends meet for unskilled workers.
UBI puts all the incentives in the right place, it's fair, and it's humane. It allows a true market price to be established for labor, with laborers that aren't desperate and powerless. It's easily affordable too with pretty minor restructuring of the tax code, especially since it would streamline so much bureaucracy and allow us to get rid of welfare, etc, which puts all the incentives in the wrong direction.
Oh, and before you ask, no, I wouldn't personally benefit from UBI because of my tax bracket, and yes, I WOULD vote for it even though my taxes would likely go up somewhat. This isn't freeloading - it's humane and economically beneficial social policy.
Exactly right. If you can speak coherently, listen to directions, and show up on time, you'll have no problem holding down a job in this economy. I think there's a set of people that expect to have a job handed to them for no work whatsoever, and sure, you aren't going to come right out of the gate making 6 figures. But the rules seem to be basically the same as they've always been... work hard, do the shit job if you have to, and build your way up into a decent career that you enjoy. But don't expect anybody to hand it to you.
Companies need to stop discrimination, not shift the target of it.
Sure, how? There is LOTS and LOTS of evidence demonstrating consistent bias at every level of the hiring process. Having a name that sounds Mexican will get you fewer resume responses. Orchestra auditions have found that a truly blind audition process INCREASED the level of female representation, proving that bias was causing the gender imbalance to be larger than it should be.
So tell me, how do you hire with no discrimination? Something equivalent to a blind audition just isn't practical for most hiring situations. And all the evidence suggests that humans discriminate, even when they don't intend to.
Wrong. I don't consider myself an SJW, but people have labeled me that before and I certainly think that social justice is something we should strive for. I also grew up pretty damn poor and lived in some very poor communities. I lived in a trailer more than once growing up, and most of my friends did as well. There were times we got food from the food bank.
Low-income white conservatives need to pull their heads out of their asses and stop blaming minorities for the real problem - policy that systematically redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich. Any jobs lost from affirmative action don't hold a candle to the erosion of manufacturing due to automation and the changing economics of labor. And why in the hell does anybody still expect that you can slack off in school, skip college, build no useful skills, and somehow end up being paid a decent salary?
I don't want anybody to be discriminated against, but this whole white victim narrative is wrong on two counts - first, that whites are at a disadvantage compared to their peers (there's no evidence supporting this) and second, that minorities and affirmative action policy is at fault. Blame the inequality inherent in our economic structures. What's more, if you fix that, you fix society for everyone, regardless of race.
So if a black person claimed that they had personally never experienced racism, it must also mean that it doesn't exist? Let's see how it scans for fun:
Black males are not oppressed. I am a black male living and working in one of those supposedly terrible conservative places, run by righties, and I have never faced meaningful discrimination. I have never been in, seen, or heard of a workplace that intentionally tried to treat black males badly. I know a lot of conservative republicans, and none of them want black males to be treated badly.
Not sure if you've noticed, but that exact argument is used by conservatives all the time, and the rare black conservative that airs that on Fox pretty easily. Many people point at Obama or black CEO as evidence that racism can't exist.
An anecdote doesn't prove that the state of the country is equitable. It can provide some evidence about the extent of problems, though. Ideally to support any claim about the state of society, you would have aggregated statistics, credible explanations of mechanisms that could produce the phenomena that exist, and individual case studies to understand how this works out in the details. In the case of white men, we have aggregated statistics showing that they are consistently doing as well or better than many other demographic groups, there are many empirical measures that have shown the mechanism for that advantage (a white name on a resume gets you more calls back, for instance), and we have many, many white male individuals who can attest to the fact that lots of white males are experiencing successful lives and careers.
An anecdote is not proof, but it is not useless. And all current signs support the OP's suggestion that white males are in no way oppressed.
What are you talking about? I have multiple friends and acquaintances who would identify themselves both as libertarians and classical liberals. Is it biased to say so?
You apparently can't read. I strongly oppose both those things.
if you can't get your act together on voting, you simply lose power at the state and national level. I see nothing wrong with that.
Really? That statement made it sound like you are ok with disenfrachising voters.
You propose giving the federal government more and more control
I do? Where? I was imagining this would be solved at a local level.
You're a repulsive fascist prick, compounded by the fact that you don't even realize it.
Thanks for making it clear that you've got no recourse but insults at this point. My central claim all along was that we shouldn't blame voting problems on the voters in that district, but rather investigate to see if that district needs more resources or has something fishy going on. So fascist.
People lacking social skills should certainly be able to participate in controversial discussions. Google was in the wrong for firing Damore. But many intelligent people naively believe that changing minds is just a matter of presenting a well-researched argument. Unfortunately, humans don't work that way.
Let me be specific. The attitude you have endorsed is easily abused as follows:
Step 1. Underallocate resources to a district containing voters of the wrong team. Step 2. When voting lines are huge and many voters are turned away, blame the voters themselves for the long lines because they are unprepared and undeserving of a vote. Step 3. Use your newfound political power to apply this tactic on a national level and systematically rig the system to end democracy.
That's what you've advocated. Hopefully that's not too vague for you. But it is repulsive to me.
And, as you are discovering, the problem is self-limiting: if you can't get your act together on voting, you simply lose power at the state and national level. I see nothing wrong with that.
The fact that you don't acknowledge how easily this would be abused to remove undesired votes from the system and disenfranchise arbitrary people groups means that you're being willfully obtuse. I'm guessing you aren't a fan of the Voting Rights Act.
The major results mentioned in the paper you cite:
The conclusion of the cited paper itself shows no correlation. You are quoting from the citation section - either way, my point is that your suggested correlation between criminal behavior and conscientiousness is not a consistent one, as this negative result indicates.
Look up Simpson's Paradox and try to understand it.
Hmm... how do you believe this is applicable? Clearly a relationship within a subpopulation may not match the relationship for a total population. But at the end of the day, you need information about any sub population to know that - and I'm not aware of any evidence showing that the distribution of conscientiousness varies widely between subgroups, particularly when you choose a sample as large as a voting district, which should have enough people to generally limit the wonky averages that you might see from small sample size.
I have no idea. You brought up this straw man, not me.
You suggested that conscientiousness correlates with crime rates. I provided a source indicating otherwise. Where is the strawman?
I think this discussion is getting slogged down in the details. Ultimately, it seems that you are trying to argue that any difficulty in voting because of long lines is the fault of the voters, and is therefore acceptable. If I've mischaracterized your argument, tell me where I am wrong. I disagree that it is the fault of the voters because I find it statistically implausible, but you can reject that if you want. Hell, let's suppose that you are correct, and the long lines ARE the fault of unprepared voters that strangely enough decide to all reside in one district. Why then, is it acceptable to allow 2-3 hour waits in that district? Is it ok to expect the prepared voters in that district to be unable to vote if they can't afford to wait in a 3 hour line? Is it ok to turn away votes because a certain voting district is difficult to service?
If you value democracy, then it seems to me that any story of inaccessible ballot boxes would be of concern to you, regardless of the cause. We should allocate resources as needed to ensure that any citizen that chooses to has the ability to vote. But it seems like you're suggesting that it's acceptable to disenfranchise the voters of any district with too many unprepared people. That's sad to me.
There is such dramatic variation in many other observations (murder rates, drug use, single parenthood, etc.).
Greater than 10x between voting districts in the same city? That would mean you go from one district where 5% of people are unprepared, to a district where >50% of people are unprepared. Implausible.
Your reasoning is so shoddy and unscientific that it would be pointless.
Nice ad hominem there. If that is really the case it should be easy for you to point out several specific errors rather than just hurling insults.
More importantly, it's also irrelevant. If legitimate voters are denied their right to vote, that's a matter for the legal system, requiring proper evidence and process in each individual case.
Yes, because that's clearly a reasonable recourse for someone who encounters an absurdly long voting line and has to go back to work.
Inferring voting rights violations from statistical observations is not acceptable.
Ignoring statistical observations that suggest a voting rights violation is immoral and anti-democratic. While statistical anomalies are not enough by themselves to prove a voting right violation, they are certainly enough to warrant further investigation and possible action. I don't know why you would oppose that.
Slashdot Mirror
managed to completely whiff the easiest pitch he'll ever be given
What, condemning violence? Seems he did pretty well on that one.
No, he didn't. He showed himself to be the least competent human being that's ever held the oval office. Since he has nonexistent impulse control, what should have been a piece-of-cake statement became the biggest controversy of his administration because he had to blame "many sides". He continued to fail all week at clarifying the issue. The level of his fail was such that many prominent republicans vocally disagreed with him, and several of Trump's major business committees were disbanded.
Think about how GWB handled September 11. He expressed sorrow and sympathy and promised to take action on the topic. His approval ratings skyrocketed overnight. It was a moment of substantial unity for the country in the aftermath of a national tragedy, and all GWB had to do was read a speech. Charlottesville, thankfully, was far less extensive in the loss of life, but even so it provided an opportunity for Trump to express sorrow and make some statements about bringing the country together. Instead, he not only flubbed it, he doubled down on stupid and turned it into the worst week of his presidency.
Trump is incompetent in the extreme. He hasn't accomplished any of the things he promised to do, despite having majority control of EVERY single level of government. He's a total failure.
Show me who got killed by the left-wing protestors. Show me where the "very fine" people are on the Unite the Right Nazi side. There is no equivalency here, and the fact that Trump acts as though there is shows that he's too stupid and/or racist to score the easiest political points in history by condemning Nazis. I literally cannot think of a single more uniting American principle than hating on Nazis, but President Smallfingers managed to completely whiff the easiest pitch he'll ever be given.
Nazi terrorist murderers using ISIS tactics.
I missed that news.
Driving a car into a crowd is a terrorism tactic that ISIS has used to terrible effect across Europe - only days ago in Barcelona, in fact.
I agree with you, essentially - I'm just saying that "Nazi" is not synonymous with alt-right. The alt-right represents a diverse assortment of dead-end ideologies, of which Nazi-ism is just one type. It's useful to keep names that help us distinguish between different flavors of idiocy, because some of them require different responses than others. There's no denying, though, that the alt-right isn't doing itself any favors by failing to cast out a group who has been synonymous with evil for the last 8-ish decades.
The causes are manifold, but I don't know that the solution is very clear. You can look at Nixon (and perhaps the relativism of the 60's) as the start of a long trend towards some very negative patterns. Mistrust of government, cynicism, partisan isolationism, and the profusion of conspiracy theories has made productive discourse almost impossible.
Unless we can find a way to get ourselves grounded in reality again (which I'm hopeful we might do as a reaction against Trump and Friends), then things don't look good for America. The one good thing that can be said for all of this, though, is that Trump might manage to unite the nation by being so damned repugnant that thinking people of both parties join together to oppose him and the garbage ideology he stands for.
I was hoping someone would post this, as it illustrates nicely what I'm talking about. When did make any excuses for Nazis or white supremacists?
Oh, and by all reports, Bannon put in his resignation weeks ago.
Deflecting blame onto someone else is a common excuse tactic. When Trump caveats his condemnation of the Charlottesville attack by pointing fingers at the anti-Nazi protestors, he is lessening the moral burden of the homicidal Nazi. What's ambiguous about that?
Bannon claims he put his resignation in weeks ago. Other sources say that Trump fired him over the Prospect piece. There have been rumblings of Bannon being on the ropes for a while. Either way, the optics are bad for Trump - in the midst of uproar about his equivocation over neonazi violence, he fires the most incendiary and politically inconvenient member of his staff, who formerly ran a media platform for right wing extremists. The timing makes it look as though he's been cowed by the furor over Charlottesville and so he's sacrificing Bannon as an attempt at appeasement. Whether it's true or not, anybody with half a brain knows that's how it will be interpreted, and so if it isn't true then that makes it even more shortsighted on Trump's part. This move makes him look weak and compliant, and also guilty, while simultaneously pissing off the Breitbart crew. Yet he isn't using it to score any points with the moderates in his party. Anybody halfway competent would choose better timing but Trump doesn't have the self-discipline for that.
Here's my question for you: what would it take to for Trump to lose your support? Is there anything that he could do that you wouldn't interpret as genius? Because he has the lowest approval rating in history for a new president, even though the economy is doing really well, and he continues to say and do things that cause endless headaches for him. He has failed to accomplish a single thing that he promised to do. That's a strange definition of success.
Well, "trolling the left" has certainly provoked a response. Not just from the left, either - from the business community, from the vast majority of Republican politicians, and from many of Trump's historically more loyal supporters. Apparently, making excuses for Nazis pisses off a lot of people. This week has cost Trump dearly in terms of poll numbers, business support, conservative media support, party support, and even forced his hand on firing Bannon.
I'd say the left doesn't really need to do "their side" any favors - Trump is doing more for them right now than they could ever do on their own.
You can be alt-right, but not a Nazi?
Yep. The alt-right is a diverse bunch - there are white supremacists who believe in ethnic superiority of anglo heritage, there are nationalists who believe in economic isolationism and are opposed to immigrants, there are religious authoritarians who want the government in our bedrooms, there are antisocial conspiracy theorists who are trying to hide out from government mind rays, and there are desperate suckers whose lives aren't going very well who will naively cling to any ideology, no matter how evil, that promises easy fixes. None of those things, on its own, makes you a Nazi. That said, if you are holding a swastika, or making excuses for someone that does, what should we conclude about you?
It's noisy fringe vs noisy fringe.
I disagree.
I've got some hard news for you, Mr. AC. You are in the noisy fringe.
Let's look at the comparison:
Case 1: Media site that supports white supremacy writes a tasteless article slandering a victim of a domestic terrorist attack.
Case 2: Guy wants to buy a cake for his wedding.
In one of these cases, you have a morally justified reason to abandon the business relationship. Guess which one?
There's "censorship", and then there's "you're an asshole, and association with you will hurt my reputation, so I won't do business with you".
It's not like an ISP is proactively blocking people who want to read this site's content, or the government is forcing people to abandon him. The free market is acting.
Go UBI. The possible downsides of minimum wage are obvious - and although it might work in some instances, in our current situation it will only accelerate automation. It's also not tenable to just allow wages to erode without recourse - the bargaining power of the working class is rapidly approaching zero, and it will end up requiring three jobs to make ends meet for unskilled workers.
UBI puts all the incentives in the right place, it's fair, and it's humane. It allows a true market price to be established for labor, with laborers that aren't desperate and powerless. It's easily affordable too with pretty minor restructuring of the tax code, especially since it would streamline so much bureaucracy and allow us to get rid of welfare, etc, which puts all the incentives in the wrong direction.
Oh, and before you ask, no, I wouldn't personally benefit from UBI because of my tax bracket, and yes, I WOULD vote for it even though my taxes would likely go up somewhat. This isn't freeloading - it's humane and economically beneficial social policy.
Exactly right. If you can speak coherently, listen to directions, and show up on time, you'll have no problem holding down a job in this economy. I think there's a set of people that expect to have a job handed to them for no work whatsoever, and sure, you aren't going to come right out of the gate making 6 figures. But the rules seem to be basically the same as they've always been... work hard, do the shit job if you have to, and build your way up into a decent career that you enjoy. But don't expect anybody to hand it to you.
Companies need to stop discrimination, not shift the target of it.
Sure, how? There is LOTS and LOTS of evidence demonstrating consistent bias at every level of the hiring process. Having a name that sounds Mexican will get you fewer resume responses. Orchestra auditions have found that a truly blind audition process INCREASED the level of female representation, proving that bias was causing the gender imbalance to be larger than it should be.
So tell me, how do you hire with no discrimination? Something equivalent to a blind audition just isn't practical for most hiring situations. And all the evidence suggests that humans discriminate, even when they don't intend to.
Wrong. I don't consider myself an SJW, but people have labeled me that before and I certainly think that social justice is something we should strive for. I also grew up pretty damn poor and lived in some very poor communities. I lived in a trailer more than once growing up, and most of my friends did as well. There were times we got food from the food bank.
Low-income white conservatives need to pull their heads out of their asses and stop blaming minorities for the real problem - policy that systematically redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich. Any jobs lost from affirmative action don't hold a candle to the erosion of manufacturing due to automation and the changing economics of labor. And why in the hell does anybody still expect that you can slack off in school, skip college, build no useful skills, and somehow end up being paid a decent salary?
I don't want anybody to be discriminated against, but this whole white victim narrative is wrong on two counts - first, that whites are at a disadvantage compared to their peers (there's no evidence supporting this) and second, that minorities and affirmative action policy is at fault. Blame the inequality inherent in our economic structures. What's more, if you fix that, you fix society for everyone, regardless of race.
So if a black person claimed that they had personally never experienced racism, it must also mean that it doesn't exist? Let's see how it scans for fun:
Black males are not oppressed. I am a black male living and working in one of those supposedly terrible conservative places, run by righties, and I have never faced meaningful discrimination. I have never been in, seen, or heard of a workplace that intentionally tried to treat black males badly. I know a lot of conservative republicans, and none of them want black males to be treated badly.
Not sure if you've noticed, but that exact argument is used by conservatives all the time, and the rare black conservative that airs that on Fox pretty easily. Many people point at Obama or black CEO as evidence that racism can't exist.
An anecdote doesn't prove that the state of the country is equitable. It can provide some evidence about the extent of problems, though. Ideally to support any claim about the state of society, you would have aggregated statistics, credible explanations of mechanisms that could produce the phenomena that exist, and individual case studies to understand how this works out in the details. In the case of white men, we have aggregated statistics showing that they are consistently doing as well or better than many other demographic groups, there are many empirical measures that have shown the mechanism for that advantage (a white name on a resume gets you more calls back, for instance), and we have many, many white male individuals who can attest to the fact that lots of white males are experiencing successful lives and careers.
An anecdote is not proof, but it is not useless. And all current signs support the OP's suggestion that white males are in no way oppressed.
What are you talking about? I have multiple friends and acquaintances who would identify themselves both as libertarians and classical liberals. Is it biased to say so?
You apparently can't read. I strongly oppose both those things.
Really? That statement made it sound like you are ok with disenfrachising voters.
You propose giving the federal government more and more control
I do? Where? I was imagining this would be solved at a local level.
You're a repulsive fascist prick, compounded by the fact that you don't even realize it.
Thanks for making it clear that you've got no recourse but insults at this point. My central claim all along was that we shouldn't blame voting problems on the voters in that district, but rather investigate to see if that district needs more resources or has something fishy going on. So fascist.
People lacking social skills should certainly be able to participate in controversial discussions. Google was in the wrong for firing Damore. But many intelligent people naively believe that changing minds is just a matter of presenting a well-researched argument. Unfortunately, humans don't work that way.
"Classical liberal" is a common self-identifier for libertarians, some of whom are farther right than a typical conservative.
Let me be specific. The attitude you have endorsed is easily abused as follows:
Step 1. Underallocate resources to a district containing voters of the wrong team.
Step 2. When voting lines are huge and many voters are turned away, blame the voters themselves for the long lines because they are unprepared and undeserving of a vote.
Step 3. Use your newfound political power to apply this tactic on a national level and systematically rig the system to end democracy.
That's what you've advocated. Hopefully that's not too vague for you. But it is repulsive to me.
And, as you are discovering, the problem is self-limiting: if you can't get your act together on voting, you simply lose power at the state and national level. I see nothing wrong with that.
The fact that you don't acknowledge how easily this would be abused to remove undesired votes from the system and disenfranchise arbitrary people groups means that you're being willfully obtuse. I'm guessing you aren't a fan of the Voting Rights Act.
The major results mentioned in the paper you cite:
The conclusion of the cited paper itself shows no correlation. You are quoting from the citation section - either way, my point is that your suggested correlation between criminal behavior and conscientiousness is not a consistent one, as this negative result indicates.
Look up Simpson's Paradox and try to understand it.
Hmm... how do you believe this is applicable? Clearly a relationship within a subpopulation may not match the relationship for a total population. But at the end of the day, you need information about any sub population to know that - and I'm not aware of any evidence showing that the distribution of conscientiousness varies widely between subgroups, particularly when you choose a sample as large as a voting district, which should have enough people to generally limit the wonky averages that you might see from small sample size.
I have no idea. You brought up this straw man, not me.
You suggested that conscientiousness correlates with crime rates. I provided a source indicating otherwise. Where is the strawman?
I think this discussion is getting slogged down in the details. Ultimately, it seems that you are trying to argue that any difficulty in voting because of long lines is the fault of the voters, and is therefore acceptable. If I've mischaracterized your argument, tell me where I am wrong. I disagree that it is the fault of the voters because I find it statistically implausible, but you can reject that if you want. Hell, let's suppose that you are correct, and the long lines ARE the fault of unprepared voters that strangely enough decide to all reside in one district. Why then, is it acceptable to allow 2-3 hour waits in that district? Is it ok to expect the prepared voters in that district to be unable to vote if they can't afford to wait in a 3 hour line? Is it ok to turn away votes because a certain voting district is difficult to service?
If you value democracy, then it seems to me that any story of inaccessible ballot boxes would be of concern to you, regardless of the cause. We should allocate resources as needed to ensure that any citizen that chooses to has the ability to vote. But it seems like you're suggesting that it's acceptable to disenfranchise the voters of any district with too many unprepared people. That's sad to me.
There is such dramatic variation in many other observations (murder rates, drug use, single parenthood, etc.).
Greater than 10x between voting districts in the same city? That would mean you go from one district where 5% of people are unprepared, to a district where >50% of people are unprepared. Implausible.
Your reasoning is so shoddy and unscientific that it would be pointless.
Nice ad hominem there. If that is really the case it should be easy for you to point out several specific errors rather than just hurling insults.
More importantly, it's also irrelevant. If legitimate voters are denied their right to vote, that's a matter for the legal system, requiring proper evidence and process in each individual case.
Yes, because that's clearly a reasonable recourse for someone who encounters an absurdly long voting line and has to go back to work.
Inferring voting rights violations from statistical observations is not acceptable.
Ignoring statistical observations that suggest a voting rights violation is immoral and anti-democratic. While statistical anomalies are not enough by themselves to prove a voting right violation, they are certainly enough to warrant further investigation and possible action. I don't know why you would oppose that.