We are Doomed! DOOOOOMMED I say!

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Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:What I'm saying is judge people as individuals not as classes.

And if gay is a protected class you would think the marriage thing would be fixed to (some of) their satisfaction.


Again, I cannot fathom the point you are trying to make. People are both groups and individuals. They have characteristics of both. Whether you need to examine them as a group or an individual depends on what question you want answered. For figuring out how they are going to vote, looking at them as an individual is pretty pointless.

For tempting constituencies, you have to know what MOST of them want.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:
As for the difference between a population and an individual, we all know that even though individual members of groups often don't fit specific characteristics, many to most of them do. It's entirely a question of probability.
Well OK. You want to treat people as groups. I was under the impression that you did not care much for that idea in other situations. But perhaps I have you confused with some one else.

Sometimes I want to know how much horsepower an engine generates, sometimes I want to know what spark plug it needs. :)

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

It's funny. You can often find well written and astute articles. What's amazing is that so many people are so blind that they cannot even comprehend them, let alone take them to heart.
Financially, escape is no longer possible, for the crumple zone of the careening vehicle has already been smashed. Insane governments have turned a crisis of imprudent banking into a crisis of imprudent sovereign debt. To cure a disease of debt they have issued more debt. To address a fundamental crisis of insolvency, they are pumping the stock Keynesian emetic as though this were a crisis of liquidity. Like Michael Crichton’s environmentalists (1), destroying Nature they arrogantly wanted to manage, pedigreed economists at the helm of the West’s fiscal and monetary destiny have engaged in ignorant, incompetent, and disastrously intrusive intervention that will be followed by attempts to repair the intervention, followed by attempts to repair the damage caused by the repair.
One after another, fiat currencies are catching fire, as all paper promises by lying governments must. Flight into the perceived safety of U.S. Treasury bonds buys the debt paper of the biggest Greece of them all. Stocks have crashed. If money printing brings them up again it won’t last, for consumer demand itself has cratered. Flight into gold leads into a blind alley foreclosed by the evil vampire squids either through naked shorts that suppress the price as a favor to Leviathan or through fictional fractional business that allows them to sell 100 bars of paper gold against each one they own.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4449

MirariNefas
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Post by MirariNefas »

Diogenes wrote:Sort of a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument.
Precisely. We are on the same page.
Diogenes wrote:Even so, if "it's hard to make a good case that the evolving religious forms of the west are greatly responsible for this success", what is it easy to make a case for?

Is there a simpler explanation? Occam wants to know! :)
There are a lot of books that put forth explanations. Various things. Metals, climate, whatever. I won't pretend to know which set of explanations is the most parsimonious.

In molecular biology, we deal with complex interactions where a new class of biomolecule (its own form too complex to be modeled with complete certainty) interacts with thousands of other types of chemical species and biomolecules which are known to varying degrees of certainty, in combinations which again have a great degree of uncertainty. When you only have one case study with limited available data, just about any statement you make to describe the role or activity of that molecule is useless. You are overwhelmingly likely to be wrong.

Pet theories are fun. I just find it appropriate, when in a public forum, to point out how very tenuous they are.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

MirariNefas wrote:
Diogenes wrote:Sort of a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument.
Precisely. We are on the same page.
Diogenes wrote:Even so, if "it's hard to make a good case that the evolving religious forms of the west are greatly responsible for this success", what is it easy to make a case for?

Is there a simpler explanation? Occam wants to know! :)
There are a lot of books that put forth explanations. Various things. Metals, climate, whatever. I won't pretend to know which set of explanations is the most parsimonious.

In molecular biology, we deal with complex interactions where a new class of biomolecule (its own form too complex to be modeled with complete certainty) interacts with thousands of other types of chemical species and biomolecules which are known to varying degrees of certainty, in combinations which again have a great degree of uncertainty. When you only have one case study with limited available data, just about any statement you make to describe the role or activity of that molecule is useless. You are overwhelmingly likely to be wrong.

Pet theories are fun. I just find it appropriate, when in a public forum, to point out how very tenuous they are.

It is my standard operating procedure when confronted with anything that I am unfamiliar with, or anything which I do not understand to knock together a tentative theory to explain it. I then file that initial theory in the back of my mind, and regarding all questions concerning aforementioned unfamiliar topic, I will pull out the theory and opine on it. From time to time, I get new data and I either evolve the theory or discard it. In many cases, some of my theories are based on pretty tenuous information, but you have to use what information is available.


In any case, during my internet searching to find articles concerning the Alexandria Library which people are fond of blaming on the Christian, I came across a web site that demonstrates a degree of Scholarly research and thinking regarding the issue of Christianity and the Age of Reason.
Of the essays I have written, the one that has elicited the most response is How Christianity Helped Us Think Straight. While discussing this on the internet I have often come across anti Christians who simply cannot bring themselves to accept that Christianity had anything to do with the development of their beloved science. There are, I think, two reasons for this.

http://www.bede.org.uk/sciencehistory.htm


This is really an amazing website. The articles are well written and insightful. It is a resource that I expect to use quite a bit in the future.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

People are both groups and individuals. They have characteristics of both.
Suppose you choose a group by some criteria and the group has 70% characteristic X. Are we to judge the 30% because of the 70% X?

Not in a Constitutional Republic.

Can you make such judgments as an individual? Why not? Is it a good idea? Sure - if you like identity politics.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:
People are both groups and individuals. They have characteristics of both.
Suppose you choose a group by some criteria and the group has 70% characteristic X. Are we to judge the 30% because of the 70% X?
An interesting point. Given a bell curve distribution, it would be reasonable to think that you would have a 50% representation above and below the average. Were some group to show a 30%-70% deviation from normal, it would behoove everyone to know what it is and why it is.



MSimon wrote: Not in a Constitutional Republic.

Can you make such judgments as an individual? Why not? Is it a good idea? Sure - if you like identity politics.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Judging". In terms of trying to figure out what a "group" is going to do, you need to understand the groups common characteristics. For example, you aren't going to sell many hip hop records to cowboys, and you aren't going to sell many ham sandwiches to Muslims.

If you consider this to be "judging" groups, then it is a process which occurs every day, and is in fact a part of life.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

An interesting point. Given a bell curve distribution, it would be reasonable to think that you would have a 50% representation above and below the average. Were some group to show a 30%-70% deviation from normal, it would behoove everyone to know what it is and why it is.
That question seems to be asked of Jews more frequently of late.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Diogenes
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Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:
An interesting point. Given a bell curve distribution, it would be reasonable to think that you would have a 50% representation above and below the average. Were some group to show a 30%-70% deviation from normal, it would behoove everyone to know what it is and why it is.
That question seems to be asked of Jews more frequently of late.
Chart: Jewish Vote 1972 -2008

Image


Yeah, it's a little skewed. Don't you think it is in the politicians best interest to understand why and seek to capitalize on it?


The people who run/advise campaigns, look at this stuff all the time. It's how they try to build a coalition.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

Markets About to Turn Nasty, Buy Barbed Wire: Advisor






http://www.cnbc.com/id/37549417

choff
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Post by choff »

Diogenes wrote:Markets About to Turn Nasty, Buy Barbed Wire: Advisor






http://www.cnbc.com/id/37549417
Should be classified under 'Motivations for Fusion', a real breakthrough in the next year or two can't come soon enough!
CHoff

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »


Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/i ... php#012636
It's a two by two table. Either Israel takes the first round or strikes first. Either Tel Aviv gets the first BIG hit or Jerusalem. While the obvious scenerio is with Tel Aviv, the market center getting hit, there is far more potency for Iran to strike Jerusalem hard. I'll come back to this later. No one here has any doubt that Iran has a big weapon and that they will use it. To play the American Game (like in 1991) will mean that Israel will have to wait for Iran to fire first. The longer that time plays out, the greater the risk that the first strike will be atomic. A Hiroshima sized weapon will hurt.

For Israel to attack first will immediately set off rocket bombardments from Syria and Hizbullah. The lunatics in Hamastan will also join in but they will be the first to feel the IDF fist. There will be no pulling punches this time. The question is whether the West Bankers will also open fire. The general Israeli feeling, given their training, is that the expectation is that all hell will break loose.

hanelyp
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Post by hanelyp »

There's a site in Jerusalem that Iran probably would prefer to not hit, the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest sites in Islam. The Jews, on the other hand, might be glad if Iran reduced the building to rubble, as long as the surrounding area was unharmed.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

DOOOOOMMMMMMEEEEDDDD I SAAAAAAYYYY !!!



http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/? ... NlOTQxODY=

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