Never can Iran have a Nuclear Weapon

Discussion in 'Middle East' started by Bush Lawyer, Jun 25, 2019.

  1. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Science is institutional. Your little novels written by opinionated conservative mind changers and body snatchers mean little.
    No, I’m to going to read Oprah Winfrey either. L
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  2. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    21,000 children die everyday in poverty. Poverty problem is far from being solved. It’s exacerbated by climate change and is knocking at your door through mass immigration. You haven’t solved anything. Like Trump, you’re just burying your head in the sand.
     
  3. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    San Francisco used to be well managed. Its problems are political. There is no market to discipline the managers of San Francisco, and there is, to discipline the managers of Microsoft ... although its near-monopoly status undermines that somewhat.

    But I agree that you cannot compare businesses, with governments.
     
  4. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, much remains to be done. Everyone knows that. The main problem now is political ... getting decent governments in power in the Third World. But what is remarkable is that even basket-case Africa has experienced some economic growth, although obviously when the civilized countries just walked away and turned the place over to the local kleptocrats, a huge mistake was made.
     
  5. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don't really understand what you're saying. Oprah Winfrey?
    Jonathan Haidt's book is not a novel, and he's not a conservative.
    There are some good novels which give us insights into human nature, though, and into politics and economics.
    If you want to see a detailed view of why full-fledged socialism -- in the old-fashioned sense of the word -- was such a failure at bringing consistent, sustained economic growth, read Francis Spufford's Red Plenty.
     
  6. Badaboom

    Badaboom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You first.
     
  7. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    They’re opinions not based on science. We go through this all the time with conservatives. They look for anyone with credentials who agrees with them, and swallow it hook line and sinker. Science is peer reviewed and institutional which encompasses the study of thousands of pieces of work over time. Science rules simply because it involves fact based agreement by many. Read consensus science articles on IQ and it’s limitations.
    But no. You’ll fall for people whom you agree with and the three of you will curl up in a closet reminding each other how smart you are.....while science plugs along with dependable and fact based work. Science is free.......
    Non science pretending to be true, is a scam.
    IQ numbers are bogus.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  8. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    That's it--the essence healthcare insurance.
    Probably. We can't have people with communicable diseases running around, so some healthcare is necessary.
    One potential expense a lot of people fail to consider is becoming disabled in old age. Medicaid pays, but it strips most of the assets of a healthy spouse. Very few people can afford the $100,000/year of a skilled nursing facility.
    My wife and I went skilled nursing facility shopping for my father and we were grateful to have had the range of choices provided by privatized care. We found a facility and my father spent the last four years of his life in a place where he was remarkably happy. My father paid his own way, but well over half of the residents were helped by Medicaid.
     
  9. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Right-to-work laws have been litigated before SCOTUS.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

    https://employment.findlaw.com/wages-and-benefits/what-are-right-to-work-laws.html

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_v._AFSCME
     
  10. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Interesting ... do you what 'projection' is?
    I don't know how IQ entered the discussion but ...IQ is actually a pretty well-established measure, which empirically correlates with many other measures of cognitive capacity.

    But it's not a straightforward issue. National mean IQ seems to correlate pretty well with national wealth, but ... which is cause and which, effect? Is the very low average African IQ a cause of the general poverty on that continent, or an effect, or both?

    I've read probably most of the popular books on IQ, as it's a particular interest of mine. And that includes the books claiming we can make kids smarter ... I particularly read these books, because I would like to believe it's true. However, although mean IQ has apparently been increasing at about 3 points per decade -- with a recent pause -- no one knows how to cause dramatic increases in IQ in individuals. What we can do is to try to provide an educational environment where young people can learn real knowledge, and make the best of their opportunities, whatever their IQ. Michaela Community School in the UK is an example of that kind of environment, and the teaching methods of Siegfried Engelmann, subjected to empirical test in Operation Follow-Through fifty years ago, are an example of how to get good results with ordinary children. Do note the results for Engelmann's 'Direct Instruction', and a similar 'traditional' method, vs the 'progressive' approaches. The late Marva Collins also showed how to do it.

    I don't get the impression that you are interested in reading anything that does not conform to your own views (thus the remark about 'projection'), but anyone else reading this who is interested in this question, and what the academic consensus actually is, should start with this statement. It's a bit out of date now, as is Ian Deary's Intelligence: a Very Short Introduction, but they're both good introductions to the subject.

    If you're really into the subject, you will want to subscribe to this journal.

    But if you only read one person on this issue, the guy to read is James Flynn. I admire him tremendously. He's definitely a man of the Left, but he is honest, and seemingly impervious to the academic Thought Police. He's the person who discovered 'The Flynn Effect'. Everything he writes is worth reading -- he is the embodiment of the right approach to thinking about controversial issues, the Karl Popper criterion: what evidence would make you change your mind?

    I personally believe that there is still a lot to be understood about the general subject of intelligence, and in particular about how the general social environment -- not the personal environment -- affects its expression. My favorite example is Guatemala: go there today, and it's pretty depressing. The poor oppressed Indians in the countryside don't strike you as intellectual paragons. But ... these are the descendants of the Maya! The people who invented a positional--exponential notation system for numbering, had a sophisticated calendar, did astronomy, built monumental public buildings ... until some as-yet-unknown environmental catastrophe did them in.I doubt the genes have changed, but the social environment has. We can say the same about the Incas and the Aztecs, although there, the catastrophe is all too well known. (As Che Guevara said, they made many discoveries, but, unfortunately, one of them was not gunpowder.)

    In any case, in a few more decades, we'll be choosing the genes of our descandants, so this whole discussion will be moot. Everyone will have a triple-digit IQ, and other cognitively-desirable characteristics as well.

    Anyway, a final question. Sometimes you hear people who know nothing about the issue say that 'IQ tests just measure your ability to score high on IQ tests' or 'IQ is bogus'. Whenever anyone says something like this, just give them this little test:

    You've got to hire a lawyer ...or a doctor. You've got a choice between two people: all you know about them is their respective IQs: one has an IQ of 85. One has an IQ of 145. Now if IQ is bogus, the difference in their IQs should make no odds. Just flip a coin, and if you get the person with an IQ of 85, it should make no difference.

    But of course -- unless your own IQ is extraordinarily low -- you will choose the one with the IQ of 145.

    Because 'IQ is bogus' is just one of those bullshit PC statements that pious liberals pretend to believe, while knowing it's false.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  11. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Yes, and in the context of "hate laws" passed by many countries, what constitutes stoking race hatred?
    Or in this country, that there is more crime in communities with large percentages of some races. We have a difficult time of determining racial identity in the first place.
     
  12. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I agree with everything you say here.
    It's a great pity that American conservatives, alone of all the conservatives in the world, should still, most of them, be captive to this irrational distrust in what should be a proper function of the state. Actually, Libertarianism was never a strong streak in American conservatism, but on this issue, it is.
    The proper role of conservatives in this debate should be to insure that an American healthcare system is soundly financed, and doesn't encourage bad behavior (the 'moral hazard' that insurers talk about). They should study the system of, say, a ferociously-capitalist country like Singapore -- where, i believe, it's illegal to be a liberal -- and take the best parts of that.
    They should do as they did with the welfare system in the 1990s, where they pushed through a welfare reform that was very sensible. But they didn't propose to simply abolish welfare.
    And in fact, the reality is, a large part of the Republican base are not really opposed to a sensible health care plan: one of the big secrets of American politics is that many social conservatives are economic liberals, and vice versa.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  13. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Racial identify is a social construct, on top of a biological reality. Why didn't we think of Obama as white, with Black ancestors, rather than as Black, with white ancestors, since he had both in equal measure. Or as some intermediate 'race'. That's a function of society.

    However, it's a reality, and we must not be afraid to talk about. You can't fix problems if you pretend they don't exist, or blame evil spirits for them.
     
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  14. chris155au

    chris155au Well-Known Member

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    According to what? Why do you keep avoiding this question? Did you just make up this statement?
     
  15. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Sure, but the fraction of economic activity embodied in handling the insurance is a small fraction of providing the service the insurance buys.
     
  16. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Avoiding what question?
     
  17. chris155au

    chris155au Well-Known Member

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    Are you serious? The question that is in the post that you quoted
    in your last reply that I'm now replying to! "According to what?"
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  18. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    Right. Conservatives should be working to make the programs efficient.
    Yes. Trump's support for his healthcare plan was in the mid-teens. Social Security and Medicare are supported by more than 80% of voters.
     
  19. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    It's according to the people in countries who are unwilling to protect what they see as hate speech. I thought that was obvious.
     
  20. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If anyone is interested in the question of IQ, and doesn't have time to read the books I recommended in a previous post, here is a single article that describes The Flynn Effect and the conclusions that might be drawn from it. It doesn't really address all of the arguments of the 'other side' (that IQ is a function of biologically-immutable characteristics that are passed on from one generation to the next), but it makes a pretty good summary of Flynn's arguments, and in any case, shows why we should not, at the present state of knowledge, draw hard conclusions about this subject.
     
  21. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    I guess you don’t know what the term “administration” means.
    Managing the armed forces alone makes him the most powerful and influential person on earth. As long as his decisions are lawful, with the stroke of a pen, he can duplicate and enact any decree equal in power to any legislation passed by congress. He can also veto ANY legislation passed by a non veto proof majority in congress. The power of the president even exists when not the same party as congress, and is amplified dramatically when it is.

    A vagrant with the IQ of an average chimp IS DOING THE JOB AS PRESIDENT.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
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  22. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    The monies payed by Medicare alone, provide the health and well being of 60 million people who could be facing abject poverty without it. People without health insurance face the plausibility of bankruptcy every time they get ill. Your father could afford to pay his own way, because the funds from Medicaid supplements the payment of most healthcare facilities. Without it, it’s likely the Last precious years of anyone’s life would be severely compromised. We owe our elderly the same sacrifices they have provided their entire working lives to others.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  23. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Science says IQ testing is unreliable. That is a polite way of saying that IQ scores are bogus. Pious liberals believe in science ? Guilty as charged. You should be so smart.
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  24. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    It seems every problem is “ political” when in this case, it’s climate change. The inability to work farmlands for food has driven refugees into the cities and financially overwhelming a nation with so few natural resources. They could have the best politics in the wired and without natural resources, the problem is still there.
     
  25. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm afraid you literally don't know what you're talking about.
    The parallel would be a fundamentalist who says that science has proved that evolution is bogus.
    I've given you some sources, books, a journal ... why not comment on them? (Unless you're a rightwinger with a wicked sense of humor, pretending to be a clueless liberal. In which case, te salud! But most liberal's I've encountered are not so ridiculous.)
     

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