As a reasonably patriotic US citizen, I find that attitude depressing. I want my country to be good, not just less bad than that of lots of developing countries.
Trump is 70, and does not appear to live a healthy lifestyle. People like that can develop serious health problems rapidly. That could take him out. He could get frustrated enough to resign, which seems unlikely but possible. As long as he's got good approval ratings with Republican voters, he won't be impeached and convicted (the Democrats physically cannot get a large Senate majority in 2018). The Twenty-Fifth Amendment route would involve agreement among a lot of Cabinet officials who wouldn't be kept by a sane administration. He's probably there until January 20, 2021.
We have evidence of collusion with Russia and attempts to cover that up. We'll know how strong the evidence is when the investigation is over. I think it very likely that there was serious collusion.
Okay, name a country that is a nation. None of any size are linguistically, religiously, culturally, or culinarily homogenous. You'll find that's also true in the "nine nations". I think your definition of "nation" isn't really useful.
Most of the US speaks English. Most are nominally Christian. There is a common culture, primarily maintained through TV and movies. There are lots of different cuisines, but everybody's got a McDonald's reasonably close.
Trump has something to do with it. The bad treatment of visitors from abroad pretty much started with Bush, got worse with Obama, and has gotten worse yet with Trump. There's plenty of blame to spread around, but Trump does get some.
The electors did not carry out the will of the people. They carried out the wills of various peoples. The will of the people of the United States was fiarly strongly for Clinton, but in the US that really doesn't mean anything legally.
I would take p-hacking to mean that the probabilities are likely correctly calculated, but the p values used were insufficient to tell significant results by chance. If you have 400 correlations, you'll likely find about 20 significant at 0.05 and 4 significant at 0.01, just by chance. I'd call that p-hacking if it were published (and I've seen it in a peer-reviewed paper). If you get p values on the order of 1e-6, however, that's not at all likely to be due to chance.
A long time ago, I was told about a study done with child protection. There were a large number of women who were basically unfit to raise their children, and so the children were taken and placed in generally similar white middle-class households. The tested IQ of the mother plus twenty points was a good predictor of the child's IQ.
Culture has a lot to do with income and education. My son was selected for a special program for talented young mathematicians. The selection was based on a test designed to be as culture- and education-neutral as they could (plus a a free-form question about why the kid wanted to join the program). Nomination was primarily by teachers looking at students' math abilities.
The test was pretty well swamped by people of Asian descent, and most of them simply didn't get in. They presumably excelled at match in school for cultural reasons, despite not having any greater inherent aptitude.
Basic understanding of evolutionary biology suggests that genetic differences between the intelligence (or any other genetically complex quality) of races is probably very small, if it exists. We divide races with some fairly simple genetic markers, and other than those the genetic differences between races are swamped by genetic differences within races.
We also know that the average European-American lives in a more favorable development environment than the average African-American, leading to higher income and IQ scores. There is also racial discrimination in employment. It's nearly impossible to prove an individual case, but scientists have done things like sending out functionally identical resumes with different names, and found that having a black-sounding name is a handicap. Legal discrimination ended in my lifetime, and that's not enough time to equalize socio-economic standing.
Therefore, we have little reason to think that the differences are genetic, and we know they're affected by environment, so while there may be genetic differences they're likely to be small if they exist. You seem to be either ignorant or uncaring about racial relations in the US over the past couple hundred years.
If the difference in outcomes were found to be primarily genetic, that still would not justify racial discrimination, since people vary widely within races.
It's also easy to find people who tried using science to establish that some races are superior and inferior, and used those excuses to dominate other races. It's easy to find people who resent other races and will find excuses to think them inferior. For that reason, people who try to excuse US racial relations with appeals to science and genetics are suspicious, as most of them have had evil motives.
I'd have to get into the details of the tests to show it, but I'll give you examples from my last test.
I was told a couple of stories about everyday activities, and asked how many details I remembered. When listening, I was able to filter out the stuff to be expected and concentrate on the important details. If I wasn't as familiar with the "to be expected", I'd have been trying to remember more details. If some of the details had been unusual, I'd have remembered them differently.
I was read a list of words, and tested how many repetitions it took for me to remember them all. They were all English concrete nouns, which helped. If I had learned English as second language, it would have taken me longer.
Don't forget the Flynn effect, which is the general rise in IQ scores that is masked by renormalizing to keep mean and standard deviation the same. If US blacks now score about ten points lower than US whites, they're effective scoring higher than US whites of the 1930s.
I've seen counts of repetitions. Last I took such a test, I was given a list of words and asked for them several times until I repeated them all back perfectly. I suspect that went into the score. I got a Tower of Hanoi test that was explicitly not timed, and graded based on number of false moves, which of course I didn't make. (All you need for that is a good understanding and patience for detail.)
NAFTA is controversial, but the NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act, which Presidents pretty much have to sign. You're probably thinking of a provision that a Republican Congress put in one for a Democratic President.
People need money. Getting money is extremely popular. People don't necessarily need to work, and most consider work as a way to get money, so working will never be as popular as getting money.
In other words, you're saying politicians will never stop taking financial incentives and failing to stand up for their constituents, which seems plausible.
If you're in the US, you can call someone a fag for any or no reason, provided you're not directly inciting violence. It's probably not going to cause significant harm, so even if it's false it's not going to get you into a libel or slander suit.
I'd probably disapprove of it, depending on circumstances, but I disapprove of a lot of your posts, so who cares?
"The Left" is not a monolith. There's lots of us with differing views.
I could as easily say that the right has absolutely no problem generalizing the evils of "Muslims", "black people", etc. Some do, some don't.
There are evils that are perpetrated primarily by white people, men, and people who call themselves Christians (but seem to me to have little to do with anything Jesus said). Some people overgeneralize.
Not quite. Speech that incites violence is illegal in the US. "Grab that Canadian! Kill him!" is not protected. "Someone should kill all Canadians!" is protected speech. "I'm going to shoot Canadians if I see them" may be part of an assault charge, if it's part of a credible threat against an individual.
Nothing is a hate crime in the US unless it's a crime independently. Implied threats to people of a target group have been considered to increase the severity of the crime. Crimes normally come with a range of possible punishments, allowing the judge to consider aggravating and extenuating circumstances, and this would be one of the aggravating ones. Burning a house down is arson. It's still arson if it's because a Canadian lived there and you hate Canucks. If you leave a "Death to Canadians!" sign at the fire, you're likely to get a longer sentence.
Nobody on the left has ever called for anything offensive to be banned or restricted.
Speaking as a leftist, that's wrong. There's lots of idiots all over the political spectrum who'd like to ban or restrict things they find offensive. They all phrase it so it sounds good.
Somebody insulting me or reviling me is potentially doing psychological harm, but laws against that would be far too easy to abuse. I'd much rather just condemn speech I disapprove of than try to outlaw it.
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Yeah, but consider the people who said they'd emigrate if Obama won. I'm still waiting, guys.
If I'm not interested in a topic, I don't click on it. Works for me.
As a reasonably patriotic US citizen, I find that attitude depressing. I want my country to be good, not just less bad than that of lots of developing countries.
Trump is 70, and does not appear to live a healthy lifestyle. People like that can develop serious health problems rapidly. That could take him out. He could get frustrated enough to resign, which seems unlikely but possible. As long as he's got good approval ratings with Republican voters, he won't be impeached and convicted (the Democrats physically cannot get a large Senate majority in 2018). The Twenty-Fifth Amendment route would involve agreement among a lot of Cabinet officials who wouldn't be kept by a sane administration. He's probably there until January 20, 2021.
We have evidence of collusion with Russia and attempts to cover that up. We'll know how strong the evidence is when the investigation is over. I think it very likely that there was serious collusion.
Okay, name a country that is a nation. None of any size are linguistically, religiously, culturally, or culinarily homogenous. You'll find that's also true in the "nine nations". I think your definition of "nation" isn't really useful.
Most of the US speaks English. Most are nominally Christian. There is a common culture, primarily maintained through TV and movies. There are lots of different cuisines, but everybody's got a McDonald's reasonably close.
Trump has something to do with it. The bad treatment of visitors from abroad pretty much started with Bush, got worse with Obama, and has gotten worse yet with Trump. There's plenty of blame to spread around, but Trump does get some.
The electors did not carry out the will of the people. They carried out the wills of various peoples. The will of the people of the United States was fiarly strongly for Clinton, but in the US that really doesn't mean anything legally.
I would take p-hacking to mean that the probabilities are likely correctly calculated, but the p values used were insufficient to tell significant results by chance. If you have 400 correlations, you'll likely find about 20 significant at 0.05 and 4 significant at 0.01, just by chance. I'd call that p-hacking if it were published (and I've seen it in a peer-reviewed paper). If you get p values on the order of 1e-6, however, that's not at all likely to be due to chance.
Your claim would seem to conflict with the well-established Flynn effect.
A long time ago, I was told about a study done with child protection. There were a large number of women who were basically unfit to raise their children, and so the children were taken and placed in generally similar white middle-class households. The tested IQ of the mother plus twenty points was a good predictor of the child's IQ.
You might want to check the 1950s and 1960s to see which people were involved in the big change in the legal climate that occurred then.
Culture has a lot to do with income and education. My son was selected for a special program for talented young mathematicians. The selection was based on a test designed to be as culture- and education-neutral as they could (plus a a free-form question about why the kid wanted to join the program). Nomination was primarily by teachers looking at students' math abilities.
The test was pretty well swamped by people of Asian descent, and most of them simply didn't get in. They presumably excelled at match in school for cultural reasons, despite not having any greater inherent aptitude.
Basic understanding of evolutionary biology suggests that genetic differences between the intelligence (or any other genetically complex quality) of races is probably very small, if it exists. We divide races with some fairly simple genetic markers, and other than those the genetic differences between races are swamped by genetic differences within races.
We also know that the average European-American lives in a more favorable development environment than the average African-American, leading to higher income and IQ scores. There is also racial discrimination in employment. It's nearly impossible to prove an individual case, but scientists have done things like sending out functionally identical resumes with different names, and found that having a black-sounding name is a handicap. Legal discrimination ended in my lifetime, and that's not enough time to equalize socio-economic standing.
Therefore, we have little reason to think that the differences are genetic, and we know they're affected by environment, so while there may be genetic differences they're likely to be small if they exist. You seem to be either ignorant or uncaring about racial relations in the US over the past couple hundred years.
If the difference in outcomes were found to be primarily genetic, that still would not justify racial discrimination, since people vary widely within races.
It's also easy to find people who tried using science to establish that some races are superior and inferior, and used those excuses to dominate other races. It's easy to find people who resent other races and will find excuses to think them inferior. For that reason, people who try to excuse US racial relations with appeals to science and genetics are suspicious, as most of them have had evil motives.
I'd have to get into the details of the tests to show it, but I'll give you examples from my last test.
I was told a couple of stories about everyday activities, and asked how many details I remembered. When listening, I was able to filter out the stuff to be expected and concentrate on the important details. If I wasn't as familiar with the "to be expected", I'd have been trying to remember more details. If some of the details had been unusual, I'd have remembered them differently.
I was read a list of words, and tested how many repetitions it took for me to remember them all. They were all English concrete nouns, which helped. If I had learned English as second language, it would have taken me longer.
Don't forget the Flynn effect, which is the general rise in IQ scores that is masked by renormalizing to keep mean and standard deviation the same. If US blacks now score about ten points lower than US whites, they're effective scoring higher than US whites of the 1930s.
I've seen counts of repetitions. Last I took such a test, I was given a list of words and asked for them several times until I repeated them all back perfectly. I suspect that went into the score. I got a Tower of Hanoi test that was explicitly not timed, and graded based on number of false moves, which of course I didn't make. (All you need for that is a good understanding and patience for detail.)
NAFTA is controversial, but the NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act, which Presidents pretty much have to sign. You're probably thinking of a provision that a Republican Congress put in one for a Democratic President.
People need money. Getting money is extremely popular. People don't necessarily need to work, and most consider work as a way to get money, so working will never be as popular as getting money.
In other words, you're saying politicians will never stop taking financial incentives and failing to stand up for their constituents, which seems plausible.
It's not that simple. The civil rights movement was very successful, and we're more tolerant of different people than we used to be.
I think it was in the Screwtape Letters that C.S. Lewis wrote about the continuity and spectrum of "my", from something like "my boots" to "my God".
If you're in the US, you can call someone a fag for any or no reason, provided you're not directly inciting violence. It's probably not going to cause significant harm, so even if it's false it's not going to get you into a libel or slander suit.
I'd probably disapprove of it, depending on circumstances, but I disapprove of a lot of your posts, so who cares?
"The Left" is not a monolith. There's lots of us with differing views.
I could as easily say that the right has absolutely no problem generalizing the evils of "Muslims", "black people", etc. Some do, some don't.
There are evils that are perpetrated primarily by white people, men, and people who call themselves Christians (but seem to me to have little to do with anything Jesus said). Some people overgeneralize.
Not quite. Speech that incites violence is illegal in the US. "Grab that Canadian! Kill him!" is not protected. "Someone should kill all Canadians!" is protected speech. "I'm going to shoot Canadians if I see them" may be part of an assault charge, if it's part of a credible threat against an individual.
Nothing is a hate crime in the US unless it's a crime independently. Implied threats to people of a target group have been considered to increase the severity of the crime. Crimes normally come with a range of possible punishments, allowing the judge to consider aggravating and extenuating circumstances, and this would be one of the aggravating ones. Burning a house down is arson. It's still arson if it's because a Canadian lived there and you hate Canucks. If you leave a "Death to Canadians!" sign at the fire, you're likely to get a longer sentence.
Speaking as a leftist, that's wrong. There's lots of idiots all over the political spectrum who'd like to ban or restrict things they find offensive. They all phrase it so it sounds good.
Somebody insulting me or reviling me is potentially doing psychological harm, but laws against that would be far too easy to abuse. I'd much rather just condemn speech I disapprove of than try to outlaw it.