Just yesterday I met a family through work who were Muslim Americans; mom studied biochem and stayed at home w her kid w Autism, dad was an engineer working for the DoD.

At one point the mom was talking about the family she has back in Pakistan; was talking about how dangerous it had gotten and how much she wanted to bring them to the States.

But, she's waiting to see what happens in November first.

Was a reminder that Trump represents so much more to those who aren't white, American born men.

That would have worked pretty well this time, but in general I think barring men from voting would be better.

I'd be willing to give matriarchy a try. They can't possibly do a worse job than the men have.

I ended a friendship today over Trump. Feels weird. Maybe 3rd time in my life I've cut out a former friend.

TBF I haven't seen the guy in years and the friendship was just participating in the political mailing list he started. Also he wasn't just a Trump supporter but was turning into a trolling, winking alt-right racist douchebag. Still feels weird.

That would eliminate more Trump voters than you think.

Uh, no, it really wouldn't.

Surprised to see everyone basically saying "on the whole, things are good."

To some extent that's true, I suppose, but I truly fear humanity is facing somewhat of, if not quite an existential crisis, at least a catastrophic near-term future with respect to the warming of this rock we live on.

And I'm not at all optimistic that anything gets done to address the problem before its too late.

That's the whole point "Is this country on the right track?" is basically the same as saying "What keeps you up at night?". Oh something? Thanks, Obama. Time to roll the dice on a radical change.

I'm fine with rolling the dice for radical change in the abstract. Unfortunately the current real world probabilities kinda suck ass. I need a much better winning payout to take that shot.

Hot Take: South Park could actually influence the Presidential Election.

For those that don't know, the character Mr. Garrison is representing Trump fairly concretely on the show for this season and the season before this one.



Also it appears that Trey and Matt must really hate Hillary Clinton.

Thoughts?

Mods, does this deserve it's own thread?

You're just figuring this out now? South Park has always been middle-right/Libertarian dudebro humor.

Tomdemaine,

Don't worry about Donald Trump. He will suspend his campaign immediately when America remembers its safe word.

Honestly I think he's just completely lying and it's part of his "pivot" to the center before election day. If he wins, on November 9th his agenda will be full-on Heritage Foundation stuff because that's what he'll be able to get through Congress with the least amount of resistance.

On rationality vs. intelligence: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/op...pgtype=article

Apparently this is the test:

Answer:

if they bolded probable you probably would have got it

i have a hard time believing you can extrapolate anything from that kind of test. If they really wanted to emphasize that you were to pick the one which was more probable from a statistical point of view, they should have made that clear.

If you're interested in this kind of stuff, you will enjoy Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow. I think there's a whole chapter on the "Linda" experiment and variations.

I can't think of a single counter argument to this.

It's a natural language issue not an intelligence test.

Many people would both mean and interpret it to mean (A) Linda is a bank tell but not active in the femenist movement.... The people who would interpret it literally would commonly be mistaken and considered pedantic.

Yeah it's very good.

I don't think this is THAT irrational, but more an issue with translating English into math. When you say what is more likely {A} or {A and B} people assume you mean {A and ~B} or {A and B}. They are still probably wrong in the example given, but I could see cases where it would be really a nitty error.

Like saying George is a black guy, is it more likely George is a college graduate or a college graduate who is not sympathetic to the KKK. Alot of times things are implied and not stated in everyday English and there is a pretty heavy implication that the first sentence really means George is a college gradate and sympathetic to the KKK.

You're missing the point that higher intelligence was more likely if anything to contribute to the error in assuming implied things that aren't there. Although easy to make as you say, these false assumptions are still logical errors in the article example and your own example.

That's likely because in real life we have to add in the assumptions most make using natural language. People dont communicate in formal logic.

In general, it's not a mistake at all. The test is tricking people into thinking being tricked is more of a mistake than not being tricked in a case when being tricked is most likely correct.

People are surprisingly shook about word problems.

I read this as "world" problems initially and it worked nearly as well.