ta_donk_gt

Call it whatever you want, but you know you are only distracting from the point of comments like these. That point is that you need to be consistent. If you have a problem with some behavior on the other side, then you also need to have a problem when the same behavior happens on your side. If you are ok with one, you must be ok with the other. If you have a problem with one, then you must have a problem with the other. If you want to crucify people on the other side for some behavior, then you must also be okay when that same crucification happens to members of your side. If you write off some behavior when it happens on your side, you must also be willing to write it off when it occurs on the other side.

(Sorry to essentially say the same thing multiple times over, but hypocrisy is so engrained in our dna you need to forcefully call attention to it sometimes.)

Agreed, in a true definition of a conspiracy theory only the last one meets the criteria, though I was trying to match ideas on the other side generally lumped into the conspiracy theory category such as the Podesta brothers are pedofiles (though I know this is a smaller component of a larger actual conspiracy theory).

And agree also on discussion, plenty of conspiracy theories on all sides that are actually probably worth discussing.

Interesting take. Thanks for that.

I think what also contributes is the idea that the brain will twist and contort reality to protect foundational beliefs (beyond my own observation of human behavior, there are a number of studies backing this up). We make decisions based on what we believe to be true, and the more decisions based on and built on a belief, the more foundational that belief is to our life. The more foundational a belief, the harder the brain will work to protect you from facing something that contradicts the belief head on (because directly facing the fact, without being prepared for it, that a significant number of decisions in your life have been based on false information could cause real system damage). Changing foundational beliefs must occur in steps, as you can only move so far from the current belief at once. And in the other direction, we much more readily accept anything that reinforces our foundational beliefs, even more so when being bombarded with ideas that may challenge those beliefs at the same time.

Religion and politics are extremely foundational things for most people, thus people are much more likely to overlook facts contradicting their beliefs and accept irrational ideas that happen to reinforce the belief.

> Since I've learned this...It doesn't make things easier though...

Same.

EDIT: Another complex/interesting idea to think through is that Us vs. Them is baked into human nature. You can change who "us" and "them" are, but I don't think you can change that there is always an Us vs. Them, and that "us" is always the good guys and "them" is always the bad guys.

Initially, the point was that it is only Trump supporters that are uninterested in actual facts, but sure, plenty of conspiracy theories on the left as well (was just trying to keep it clean):

"Trump has had or wants to have sex with his daughter..see, here is this picture of her sitting on his lap when she was 12"

"Trump stayed in a Russian hotel room, found out the Obamas had previously stayed in that room so hired prostitutes to urinate on the bed in front of him"

"Russia sold 19% of their state owned oil company to an unknown party and there is a document 'procured' by the Never Trump movement that says something about 19%, so Russia made a deal with Trump to get him elected and give him 19% of their oil if he would lift sanctions"

"Violence against Trump supporters is justified because he is literally Hitler",

"Even though everyone knew the rules of the game up front, Trump is not actually the legitimate president because his popular vote tally was lower",

"Trump is not a legitimate president because the Russians may have been involved in releasing some 'routine, not interesting' emails",

"Even though the U.S. has interfered in over 80 elections in the last 20 years (including Russia in 1996), and even though a significant percentage of the mainstream media is foreign owned, and even though there is significant foreign money and foreign influence involved in every election, this election is not legitimate because Russia may have helped release some emails",

"Enforcing existing immigration laws (and shoring up abused immigration laws) to protect American jobs and wages is racist"

----

I could go on for days, but the point is that people in general will say and believe a lot of stupid stuff if it helps their team. Pretending only people on the other team do it is pretty out there.

In addition to the other responses here, at the beginning of the year he announced his personal challenge for 2017 was to meet and chat with people in every state. That seemed to get a lot of people talking about the possibility of a 2020 run.

In my opinion, the AMA and the FDA are the main blockers of machines replacing doctors (outside of surgery). Nurses can do, and to a large extent already are doing the majority of the data collection. Beyond that, the doctor's main differentiable skill is pattern-matching and decision making based on experience. Machines with mountains of data generally perform this function much better than humans.

That said, I do agree that we likely won't see the full potential of replacing doctors with machines in the near term simply due to the political and regulatory hurdles, as well as the need to overcome the fear of the public and address the very real and significant privacy issues.

As to anesthesiology, I've actually done some work for a startup in that space working on a system that could very easily move anesthesiologists to a more supervisory role where they would watch (say) 50 surgeries at once (surgeries being handled by software tied into all monitors, as well as EMR systems for history and physical data, and able to dispense chemicals as needed) and step in if and when there was a problem. Technically, there is not much really stopping it, but politics and regulations present significant impediments (and probably rightly so, for now).

You started this thread with "And yet there are enough politicians who reject even those statistics, and that seems like a totally different category of stupidity".

Now you say "I think you are wrong to bring politics into this".

This entire subthread was about politicians' use of this statistic. I've mentioned several times now that the disagreement over the statistic is a disagreement over its use by politicians, not over the accuracy of recording the statistic, and you continue to sidestep this. If that's not trolling, I don't know what is.

Ok, it's clear you are just trolling at this point. It's really not that difficult. In October of 2009 the unemployment rate was 10.0%, and today it is 4.9%.

Democrats use this stat to say "look how many people the administration has put back to work". Republicans then say "easy there, most of this 'improvement' is from people just giving up, not from all of these people finding work".

Nobody is arguing that the stat is being _recorded_ incorrectly. They are arguing that it is being _used_ incorrectly. It is being used to imply that there has been a massive improvement in the availability of work. The other side says this stat does not actually show an improvement in the availability of work. What is meant by "real unemployment rate" is a stat that would better show the availability of work.

If you don't like that name, then name it whatever you want, but don't pretend that you don't know what people are talking about when they use the term. That is the "dangerous" behavior as far as I am concerned.

I think you misunderstood much of my last comment, sorry if it was my fault.

First, none of these are really "my argument", I was just explaining some of the behavior that you are witnessing and didn't seem to understand (the reasoning behind some on the right dismissing the unemployment statistic as well as humans in general dismissing data that causes problems with their foundational beliefs), though I do tend to lean more towards the right's side on this issue.

As to the argument of those who have given up looking for work not being included: whether or not those who have given up looking for work have always been excluded from the unemployment measure is not the point of the argument. What they are saying is "8 years ago (or whenever) when the unemployment rate was (say) 7.9%, the count included a large number of people who have since stopped looking for work..these people now no longer count as unemployed today when the rate is 4.9%, and very significant part of that drop is from people just giving up, and not from an increase in people finding work". You could argue that over any given range new people are entering the unemployed count and people are giving up, and that over a long enough period this behavior is not statistically significant, but the counter-argument is that during this particular period there were massively more people just giving up than at any other time, and so the drop in the rate isn't actually a reduction in the count of unemployed.

As to both the labor participation rate and the unemployment dropping a significant amount during the same period, of course there are conditions that could lead to this, but the point is that it is not intuitive and the causes for it really need to be explained for either of these number to have any real meaning.

Nobody (mostly anyways) is arguing that 4.9% of respondents to a survey didn't actually indicate that they are unemployed. What people are arguing is that the definition of "unemployed" being used doesn't accurately reflect the "real" unemployment rate.

> Specifically with respect to unemployment rates, you and I may simply have been reading different things

Certainly possible, but what I generally see is:

"the unemployment rate is not what [democratic administration] says it is because they redefined the metric to not include those that have given up trying to find work...the labor participation rate has dropped several percent since the beginning of [democratic administration], and the unemployment rate has also dropped several percent in that time, and these cannot both be the case."

Often the sound bytes we're shown only show the "I don't believe it" part, but if you dig a bit, at least I, generally find more context and clarification in other statements from the individual (often in an expanded version of the same quote in the sound byte), showing that the above quote is roughly the thought process of most challenging the unemployment rate statistic.

What the sides are really arguing about, as is the case with most "statistics" used in politics, is what the definition of "unemployed" should be.

Re people dismissing clear facts, again, this is just human nature. The brain finds a way to twist reality around facts that challenge foundational beliefs. The more foundational the belief, meaning the more structure built on top of it and the more decisions you have made based on the belief, the harder your brain will work to twist reality to allow you to dismiss this inconvenient fact. All humans do this, and both political wings in this country do it equally. Somewhat meta, but believing that only the "other side" is victim to this behavior is yet another example of the behavior (and we all do it).

The right tends to prefer to reference labor participation rate, whereas the left tends to prefer unemployment rate. The reason for this is obvious: right now, unemployment rate advances the narrative of the left, and labor participation rate advances the narrative of the right.

The argument from the right is that unemployment rate does not include the very large number of people who have given up searching for work (and have found some other way to survive, be it government assistance, or family, or charity, or illegal activities, etc.). This argues that the economy is actually in much worse shape than the unemployment rate would suggest.

The argument from the left is that labor participation rate does not clearly indicate who really needs or wants to be working, only who is and is not working. This argues that the people out of the work force don't actually need to be in the workforce and therefore the economy is actually fine.

If ever the unemployment rate works out better for the right, and labor participation rate better for the left, you will see the sides switch which metric they prefer to reference. That's how humans work.

Calling those who don't subscribe to your preferred narrative "stupid" and "crazy" is probably not helpful.

Links? Thanks.

This is one thing I still have a hard time understanding about people. I understand that hypocrisy and the like are baked deeply, inextricably into our DNA, but the thing is we've all witnessed this stuff happen time and again and without fail still choose to let it happen again.

People get on board with giving up power because it will work out for their team _this_time_. The thing is, it will absolutely be used against your team in the future. This has been proven time after time after time (just in recent history, not even considering the whole of human history). It will be used against you. It's not like smoking or other unhealthy behavior that will have an effect far into the future but that you can't really grasp fully...you just need to remember all of the other times it has happened in your lifetime to know what it feels like.

While the official war on drugs was started as a means of suppressing and discrediting blacks by the Nixon administration, the reason it won't end any time soon is that it has long been and continues to be both a revenue stream and a tool of political disruption for the CIA and DEA. (Not that this changes the fact that it still today results in the suppression of poor and minorities.)