sykhic

Some ideas are so idiotic - like flat Earth belief - that one should not waste their time engaging with said ideas. There are people who deny that Sandy Hook happened. I see no need to understand such fools.

The same way that I know the flat Earth position is insane.

It seems to me that the problem now versus 30 years ago is one of scale. It's much easier sequester oneself from sources of information we don't like for political reasons. It's easier in terms of time and money to get masses of people to believe easily disprovable claims. The adage in politics has been, "All politics is local." Is that true anymore? Will it be true in 10 years?

With demographic and economic changes and the power/scale of social media the U.S. is facing, I think the intermediate future does not look good for political discourse.

If the world's population were 100 million people then pollution would probably not be an issue.

If the numbers favored men, we wouldn't be having this conversation for a number of reasons.

I think you missed my point. I was responding solely to the above quote that you made.

Judging by my Facebook feed Americans are perfectly capable of vicious, polarized discourse without foreign influence.

It's gotten quite bad in the U.S. Common political discourse has devolved into a back and forth of insults, hyperbolic accusations, and sometimes just plain insanity. I agree with you that this will probably be something that will last a while.

If only we could get people to realize that believing something to be true merely because it reinforces a pre-conceived idea or because it's plausibly true is not a path toward finding the truth. How do you have a discussion with someone who believes the political equivalent of a flat Earth?

I was born and raised in the Canal Zone. While it was still an American territory. Went to American schools and was taught about the U.S. I too once had the patriotic fervor you display. Then I came to the U.S. and slowly realized that reality did not match what I was taught.

I do not sweep under the rug the ills our society and government have done. Nor do I diminish their accomplishments. Indeed I don't do this for any nation now that I understand that the blind patriotism I was raised with is a destructive thing.

Empires come and go. The American empire is in decline. It may rise again to greater heights and glory. It might not. Eventually it will be replaced. There is no longer any moral superiority in our leadership.

It seems foolish to decry Google doing business in China whilst importing billions and billions of dollars of Chinese made goods. Google works with the American government to do mass surveillance on its citizens. I'm not going to get in a tizzy if they decide to do the same in China.

It's increasingly hard to justify not doing business in China for moral reasons whilst doing business in the U.S. If the moral high ground could indisputably be claimed by the U.S. then peoples' views would be different. Now it's not a big deal that Google wants to do business in China since it's doing business in the U.S.

It's not necessarily that morality has gone down in the U.S; it's that trust in the morality of America's leaders has gone down. I see this as a sign of a decline in the faith of America's institutions. Also with globalization the distinction between nation-states begins to erode. This is especially so in the case of business.

There hasn't been thousands of years of gender bias in favor of women so it's expected that results that show men are better than women in some areas are not necessarily newsworthy. Sometimes such results are newsworthy.

I like how joering calls me the troll!

I do not have proof in the mathematical sense that Michelle Obama is a woman. I merely have an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence that she is a woman and absolutely no evidence to the contrary. Indeed, interestingly enough you wrote:

...you can genuinely say SHE is a female?

Emphasis mine. I do not need definitive proof. Collect all the statements you believe to be true. Now collect all of the statements you can actually, definitively prove true. The intersection of these two sets is quite small. This is true for everyone.

You have to give a better example if that's was your best shot to make Jones looks like a loon.

You believe that Alex Jones thinking Michelle Obama is a man is not sufficient evidence that he is a loon and you have the temerity to claim that my approach to reasoning and facts is precisely what's wrong with the country.

Thank you for your post. It was instructive, illuminating, and hilarious all at the same time. That is a rare feat.

Say what you like about his content, but it is not fringe.

This is a man spouting off that there is evidence that Michelle Obama is a man [1]. If that's not a fringe idea I'd like to know what you think one is. To me a fringe idea is one that is so obviously wrong that it is not worth considering its merits.

Doubtless there are many fools willing to consider the 'facts' surrounding Michelle Obama's gender but they are wackos. His ideas are not worth debunking. They are prima facie false. Discussing his punditry gives credence to the notion that his ideas are worthy of consideration. They are not.

His followers will not see him for what he is. They are clearly impervious to facts and reasoning. Anyone willing to follow the rantings of a man spouting off Alex Jones' nonsense is beyond being able to be reasoned with.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=alex+jones+says+michelle+obama+is+...

So they get the tougher cases to begin with.

Do you have evidence that this happens in the ER? When my wife did her ER rotation it wasn't like this.

We have a study that shows women with heart attacks do worse in ERs unless they are treated by a female doctor. You are presenting facts (without attribution) about surgeons. ER doctors are not surgeons. So what evidence do you have from the ER that contradicts the apparent conclusion of the study?

Is funny that those who fight gender biases the most are some of the most biased.

It's quite ironic that you wrote the above sentence given your post. The only evidence you provide is about surgeons and conclude that male superiority in medicine is the most likely reason for the statistics in the study. That is quite a stretch there.

You don't believe that having fewer people in the world would lead to less pollution and less harm to the environment due to human activities? Or you don't believe someone is suggesting that there needs to be fewer people?

It seems clear to me that if there were only 5 million people in the world then human caused climate change wouldn't be an issue. Isn't that obvious? I'm not advocating that we get to that level. I'm just pointing out that there exists a number for the population such that human caused climate change would no longer be an issue. I don't think it's disputable that this is so.

I'm not advocating mass killings or anything like that. Just pointing out an obvious thing. If where were way less people then pollution, etc. would not be an issue.

I mentioned that it's not practical. Forced sterilization - I'm not advocating this - would do the trick. Again, it's not practical to implement just now but I think it's clear that having fewer people would be ideal and would solve lots of problems.

It’s not just energy production and consumption that is the problem. Resource extraction, pollution, toxification of the environment are all contributing to the creation of a planet that sucks to live in.

Yeah, it’s not a practical solution in terms of implementation. However, if implemented it would work and not require Star Trek levels of innovation. There are simply too many people in the world.

The uncomfortable reality is that 7 billion people can’t all live like Americans (or Europeans). Extracting the resources necessary for everyone to live like Americans would be very bad for the environment. The effective action is to greatly reduce the number of births worldwide. It seems to me all other options are not effective.

I think it is undeniable that Sung would, with Chinese and Soviet help, would have revolted against anyone who was in power at the time. Regardless of US actions. (The Sino-Soviet split occurred later.) Without US backing Sung would have won and Korea would be much worse off now. At least as I see things.

There’s a commonly held belief (myth?) that mathematics is a young person's pursuit in the sense of great discoveries. If you look at Erdös you see most of his great contributions occurring when he was younger and he was prolific throughout his life.

I think the downvotes come from your sentence about significant developments going under reported. I don’t think this happens at all. If someone discovers something great or profound in math no one cares about the age of the discoverer. Wiles was given a special prize because he was past the age of 40 when he proved Fermat's Last Theorem.

The Korean War ended up benefitting South Korea in the sense that they didn’t up like North Korea. The free trade agreements have largely been responsible for large numbers of the world's population improving their living standard. There are other examples of intervention being good. Of course there are lots of examples of intervention being bad.

There is nothing special about Western intervention vs. intervention by other regional powers. Nations with power rarely use it for the well being of the world. But shouldn’t one strive to have governments do what you consider to be right?

It's totally reasonable for someone to like Dell and want to stay with Windows. It's not for me though and my point to the OP was that it's not irrational to prefer Macs. I don't buy them for status symbol (at least not consciously). I've looked at Surface Pro and Surfacebook but I just can't get over how clunky Windows feels to get anything done. I especially hate the nagging to get a One Drive account.

I don't think of people who prefer Windows and Dell as status seekers or in otherwise derogatory terms. To each his own!

In 2008 I bought a high end Dell laptop. It ended up running way too hot and it would freeze up playing some games. I got fed up with the Windows ecosystem and tried out a MacBook Air. It was easy to setup out of the box. No crap Ware was on the computer. For the first time I actually used a trackpad and it was good enough that I no longer use a mouse with Mac laptops. When I bought my next computer it was a breeze transferring over my settings and programs. Whenever I use a Windows machine the workflow is way worse from my perspective. I remember well the frustrations with using Windows that disappeared with using Mac OS. I won’t go back.

Apple has its own set of frustrations but none of them, in my experience, compare to the hell of dealing with Dell and Windows. Never again for me. I recommend to people to use Macs. I think it’s rational to use Apple products. My iPhone 6 Plus still gets updates and works well. My iPad Pro is better than any other tablet I’ve looked at.

As with most beliefs my belief about "Ayn Randians" comes from anecdotal experience. I can't cite a study or source. Just going by my experience with such people.

We Americans have a pathological fear of socialism and since the 1980s it's been ingrained in the collective psyche of the nation that government is bad. You'll hear people talk about how government can't do anything right but we have the greatest military in the world. Such contradictions are endemic to the right leaning people of the country. Left leaning people of the country have a differing set of contradictions.

There is also a coupled fear of a poor person getting something they don't deserve. This has foundations in religion and in the development of the nation. There was a time (over a hundred years ago) when a man(family) could do it on their own and live off the land. This inculcated in us the idea that being poor is associated with being a slouch. Such a time has long since passed but that ethos is still in the collective consciousness.

There is also a pathological fear of taxes. It is widely believed that government is always more inefficient than a privatized solution. We had a Vice-Presidential candidate laugh at the notion that paying taxes is patriot and this while her son was in the military during a time of war! A lot of people think of themselves as some sort of Daniel Boone character that can do it on their own if only government got out of the way.

We do have a national healthcare system for elderly, members of the military, and most children. Everyone else can fend for themselves.

I don't think I can. I gave an example of how people speak colloquially. For instance, one can mention Christianity in a discussion but that term means different things to different people. People will say things like, "Christians believe this..." without it being literally true. Most people speak colloquially and not in a technical sense. The phrase "Ayn Randian paradise" does not imply the sort of paradise envisioned by Ayn Rand. It's a reference to a belief commonly held by people who nominally agree with Ayn Rand's view as they understand it to be.

There is colloquial and there is technical usage of terms. I’m speaking colloquially. Like some people generally refer to the US as a Christian nation. They typically mean this in the sense of history or values and don’t necessarily mean to say that a majority of the population fits their personal definition of what a Christian is.

Countries do make agreeements on water usage. Even countries that don't like each other. Like Pakistan and India.

I use Any Randian to describe those who publicly cite her and they tend to have a certain political philosophy that is best described by me as, "I've got mine, fuck you." I'm not critiquing her personally or her philosophy. It's sort of like Ghandi's famous quote on Christianity. He said, "Your Jesus I like. Your Christians, I do not."

Supporting that 5% who really need it would effectively be a means tested pension system. The point of a pension (retirement savings) is to prevent masses of destitute elders. The goal is to have a society in which masses of elderly are not left without means to live at a reasonable standard. That’s the purpose of a pension system. If the goal can be effectively accomplished in another way then I support it. I’m not personally tied to the notion of a pension system.

We do have massive deficits.