The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

That's a good read. @elodea read this please. I'd love to hear your opinion

By showing a screenshot of me and other people liking a message and then saying that this is the definition of alt-right behaviour is just absurd. Again, according to this logic this whole thread only consists of communists and nazis, which is not true ofcourse.

Considering how incompatible the views appear to be one might end up thinking that

I don't like that screenshot-way of showing this either. I can't tell which of elodeas posts that is. Some of his posts are reasonable. Some are not.

IQ tests are an interesting metric- a good IQ test certainly accounts for more than just mathematical ability. The issue with them of course is that they (like any form of measurement for something as vague as 'intelligence') are imperfect. It is known for example that you can practice taking IQ tests and as a result get a higher score- if an IQ test was perfect in identifying an individuals 'maximum' capability then that shouldn't be possible.

It's also interesting to note that the origin of the IQ test stems back to the Victorians when it was used to identify individuals with *sub standard ability* (invariably with a view to putting them into an insane asylum or something equally horrible), whereas it's evolved to identify the strongest. I personally think that they can provide a useful set of data points (the better tests usually providing a profile rather than just a score), however they don't measure all facets of a persons ability and generally don't cover 'soft' skills that are just as important in determining how successful someone would ultimately be. Case in point I know quite a few business owners who have done incredibly well (at least from my perspective) who have little in the way of formal education and probably wouldn't score particularly highly on such a test. An IQ test isn't a good way to measure someones ability in sales or marketing roles- two areas essential for business.

The question I find interesting is this- how do we determine what skills are most 'important'? Is an engineer who can comprehend and solve complex problems, but has terrible interpersonal skills 'more intelligent' than a gifted salesman who wouldn't be able to tackle the engineering problem, but who really understands people and how to deal with them? An IQ test would probably favor the engineer, however in reality both people would fulfill different but essential roles at the same firm and from that perspective it would be hard to argue who is more critical overall. You need the engineer to develop the product- however you also need someone to get the message out there and sell it or you have no business.

Then what is the point of having it, or using it? I mean i could show pictures and it would show that there's a difference in men and women. My point is, differences that exist may matter in the extreme (special forces, athletes, astronauts), but we're talking about an IT company, and daily life.

Again, show that IQ is a better predictor of what people want to do, than say role reinforcement.

ugh wtf? People who outright deny otherwise well documented events with video proof and eye witness testimony disgust me. Yea everything you don't like to hear is a "breitbart headline".

I've spent a lot of time studying the 20th century trying to figure out how entire countries could fall to ideologies as blatantly genocidal as nazism or communism. Want to know how it was possible? Because of people just like you who didn't have the balls to speak the truth and would rather hide in the comfort of their ideological lies.

Pull your head out of your *** for one second and you might even realise that both the murderer and victim in the chartlotteville car attack were white. But... muh racist genocidal violence! It was communists vs nazis in the streets you dummy. And as far I care, let them fight each other if they want to. The world would be a better place if they destroyed one another and left the rest of humanity in peace.

Now you want to talk about movements that espouse racist genocide? Then let's talk about BLM and the ferguson riots where people were literally going around looking for white people to lynch. Where a random white person by the name of Zemir Begic was pulled from his car and beaten to death with hammers on the street. Yea, let's talk about BLM founders tweeting to kill all white men. Though I have a hunch you would again rather deny reality like a fool than confront the blatant racist hatred in your own ideological tribe. You're not anti-racist, you're not anti-sexist, you're not for the oppressed. You don't get to claim those virtues.

You don't think it's suspicious that trump is quick to denounce any article against him as fake news, but can barely make himself denounce an actual hate group that for all intents and purposes, committed a terrorist act?

He has no problems with being endorsed by the KKK, an organization that actively tried to eradicate black people. People were upset about hillary and her email allegations and wall street alleged connections. Where's the outrage from the right now? Why aren't they angry about Trump's massive conflicts of interest, lack of transparency, shady dealings and questionable connections?

EDIT:

Unrelated, but can anyone explain why there even are Lee statues? If germany erected a Hitler statue, the US would practically invade the place to tear it down. Why is it that the losing side of a civil war gets such recognition?

So in your mind it is impossible for there to be a person who just wants to peacefully protest a nazi march?
Anybody who protests against Nazis is a Communist now? Now that is an extreme form of black and white thinking.
You're actively trying to put a moral equivalence in place between Nazis and people who protest against Nazis, which really has only one purpose: Defend Nazis.
I am not quite sure why you do so, either because you're actually a Nazi yourself or because you've fallen HARD for alt-right propaganda camouflaged as libertarianism. I'd guess the later however.

yeah bad things happened, they're bad things. But you are really just trying to throw "but what abouts" in here because you are long out of rational arguments.

Violence parts of the left are assholes and I hereby condemn them for their violent acts. They're not part of any society I want to live in. They're criminals and ought to be brought to justice.

Can you say the same about the violent right (i.e. Nazis, KKK, etc) without diverging into "but what about the left"? It is starting to look like you can't.

"It proved, as you've no doubt learned along the way in biology class, that different parts of the brain have different functions. But it never suggested that the right half was "emotional" and the left "logical." That's an invention of pop psychologists and internet quiz authors." This is just straight up not true.

"Right hemisphere-damaged (RHD) and left hemisphere-damaged (LHD) aphasic patients were tested on a nonverbal cartoon completion task that included a humorous (Joke) and a nonhumorous (Story) condition. In both conditions, RHD patients performed worse than LHD patients. More importantly, the qualitative difference between the errors produced by the two groups suggests that right and left hemisphere brain damage impairs different components of narrative ability. RHD patients showed a preserved sensitivity to the surprise element of humor, and a diminished ability to establish coherence. Conversely, LHD patients, when they erred, showed an impaired sensitivity to the surprise element of humor, and a preserved ability to establish coherence by integrating content across parts of a narrative. These results suggest that the observed humor comprehension deficits of RHD patients result specifically from right hemisphere disease and not from brain damage irrespective of locus. The performances of the RHD and LHD patient groups together support a separation of narrative ability from the traditional aspects of language ability typically disrupted in aphasia." ~http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0278262686900424.
This is actual research that has been done. It is clear that LHD are better at pattern recognition than RHD.

Here is another one. This artcile shows that boys and girls differ in grey matter mass in the left and right hemispheres. Boys have more matter in the left side, whereas girls have more in the right side. Boys are generally better at maths etc. and girls on average are with creativity. https://oup.silverchair-cdn.com/oup...b06~qrUpXw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIUCZBIA4LVPAVW3Q

Please post conducted reseach instead of blogs (Where some don't even have references in them).

My point in relation to the IQ study is only that men and women think differently and this test shows that they do think differently. I'm only saying that biology is a factor in these differences, as are environmental factors as people grow up.

I'm not saying one is better than the other only that as a population they are different (this is not a bad thing, different strengths etc), so why have a 50/50 quota for a men/women for a particular job type instead of hiring the right individuals for a particular job/team.

IQ tests aren't perfect, but that only speaks to the method of measurement, not the object that people are attempting to measure. You can't say "cancer tests are sometimes inaccurate, therefore cancer is probably not a real thing".

Different levels of general intelligence between people is a very real thing. You can think of intelligence as being comprised of two parts: fluid intelligence and crystallised intelligence.

Having high fluid intelligence means you are very good at wrestling with and understanding new, high level abstract concepts. It's why theoretical physicians and mathematicians tend to have incredibly high IQ's.

Crystallised intelligence is what you learn and how you order information. You can certainly put in effort to become better at things and build this up, but again it tends to be the case that those with high fluid intelligence thus have a greater ability to build and organise their crystallised intelligence.

The lay answer would be to look at industry hiring practices in the for profit sector. For example in finance and accounting where I work, it generally comprises some sort of of an IQ test + personality testing. Because of the job, what they look for is high fluid intelligence, high trait conscientiousness, and high trait oppenness. Depending on the type of job, they'll probably look for extraversion as well if the job requires successfully interacting with people a lot.

Intelligence and personality is essentially what everyone is testing for. Though the testing method will differ quite widely from current employee vouching/recommendation, to proxy testing via past employment, all the way to formal IQ/personality tests.

Yep conscientiousness along with IQ are the best predictors for long term life succes, although conscientiousness can change in the course of your life and IQ not so much.

"The question I find interesting is this- how do we determine what skills are most 'important'?" Well that would totally depend on the job. If you are a manager, then disagreeableness and conscientiousness along with IQ would be pretty good predictors for succes. However, if you want to be a nurse, high extraversion and low neurotism would probably be good predictors for succes.

Except you misunderstood. The idea that left brain is pure logical and right half is pure emotional isn't true. Yes the brain is specialized by region, and that includes differences in left brain and right brain halves. But there isn't some perfect correlation there. While the left brain handles certain aspects of speech for instance, it doesn't do so uniquely.

Therefore, the underlying notion (an emotional "right half" and a logical "left half" ) is incorrect.

I just wanted to address this point in particular- I wasn't arguing against IQ tests as a form of measurement. I just wanted to point out that it's important to know what a certain testing method can and cannot measure- and to understand what it's weak points are. I certainly wasn't suggesting that 'intelligence isn't real' due to the tests inaccuracies- being strong in an IQ test shows an individual has aptitude in the areas the test covers (and different IQ tests can cover different areas or be more biased towards one skill set or another). My point was merely to say that it needs to be taken as what it is- not the be all and end all of a person.

Obviously there were participants who were neither nazi nor communist. Where did i say that I would like the nazis and commies to beat them up? The very fact that they beat up peaceful people who aren't nazi or communist is why I condemn them both, and yet here you are saying that my position is the very opposite. That I would like the nazis and communists to beat up everyone!

This is why I am so highly skeptical of hate speech laws. Because of people like you who get in power thinking they are nothing but unblemished paragons of virtue but are blind to their own dark shadow self. Think deeply about what you just tried to do. You tried to twist my words and definitions to mean something they did not in order to pass an emotional connection that would sort me into a box of moral damnation.

How many times now have I defended the common sense value of Trump's blanket condemnation of both sides? How many times have I personally stated that both the nazis and commies are **** tier. Which I stated in no uncertain terms in the very same post you decided to quote for heavens sake. Just because I also condemn communists (who let me remind you killed 3 times more people than the nazis) you have the audacity to try and suggest that I might be a nazi apologist?

The facts on the ground are clear. The neonazi white supremacists went out to protest against the removal of a confederate statue. The first time they went out all was peaceful. The second time they went out, antifa had organised to violently confront them.

At this point, I know exactly what you're thinking right now. Not because I know you personally but because I know the ideological thought patterns that you've been infected with - "Look! He's saying the nazis were peaceful and antifa were the bad guys! He's still defending the nazis!".

Well here's another thought. Did it ever occur to you that maybe the best way to fight neo nazism would be to let these retards march openly and peacefully through the street showing on full display their ugliness for all to see? Did it ever occur to you that maybe violently attacking them would give them legitimacy and build their base of support?

The brain is devided into two pieces, the left and right brain. These two pieces have there own separate chain of memories. One hemisphere can not acces the memory of the other hemisphere. The two brain parts could be learned contradictory statements/ solutions to a problem or task and there would be no mental conflict between the two parts. http://people.uncw.edu/puente/sperry/sperrypapers/70s/190-1975.pdf~

If you can send me an article on that I would like to read it.

That of course raises another interesting question- how do you measure 'life success'? I suppose many would look at financial success, however I've met quite a few very wealthy people with catastrophically bad personal lives. It's also not uncommon for very academically gifted people to not be especially wealthy, whilst being highly respected in their individual fields.

I guess the point I am making is there is more than one way to be successful. I think IQ tests are useful in that they can help identify where a person is strongest which can be quite handy in identifying a role that's suited to them.

1. You are the only person who has ever studied anything, and the only person to hold an opinion on said studies

2. Nobody talked about the race of the victim in Charlottesville. Literally, wasn't mentioned.

3. You have no idea what "communist" means. "socialist" is not "communist". "anti-fascist" is not "communist". "anybody who doesn't like Neo-Nazis" are not "communists".

4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-30287363

5. You seem unnecessarily fixated on BLM, and weirdly dismissive of actual Neo-Nazis. Strange, that. Almost like there's a racist angle to your fixation. And before you whine about ad hominems, you told me to get my head of out my ***

Figured as much.

Science you agree with is Good, science you disagree with is Bad.

Have you even read some of the links you posted? It were blogs, no scientific studies. Some blogs didn't have any references at all which means they could have made that stuff up. I have never stated that your "science" is bad. I just have a hard time believing your "science" if some consist of blogs without references.
Further more I took the time to review your articles. Can you say the same thing about mine?

On elodeas point, if you actually read what he wrote you know it's not true that elodea is only fixated on BLM and dismissive of neo nazis

It's almost like you completely ignored all the ones that weren't.

Also, the science isn't mine. I'm a software developer