state of the onion

Discussion in 'Politics' started by sculptor, Jan 31, 2018.

  1. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    You've yet to demonstrate it as fact. If "racial bias in appraisal" is a long-settled matter of fact, why can't you find anything to back it up?
    Was all evidence wiped from the internet?
    Claiming something is fact just because many people believe it is an ad populum fallacy. You are asserting it as "long-settle matters of fact".
    If you don't want to argue that, quit claiming it. All it seems to highlight is your proclivity for making bare assertions (another fallacy).
    People of African descent live in the US. Why does US slavery only adhere to white Americans, even though the first legally sanctioned slave owner was black, South Carolina alone had 171 black slaveholders, Native Americans held slaves, 3,775 free blacks owned 12,760 slaves, and Africans, just like the rest of the world, had been enslaving others for thousands of years? https://www.snopes.com/facts-about-slavery/
    You have been arguing racism. Remember?
    But do you understand how that study failed to account for this?
    No, the null hypothesis is only one form of a causal hypothesis.
    Statistical inference begins by recognizing that research questions can be stated in terms of a choice between two very clear and mutually exclusive options. One option holds that the predicted difference between comparison groups does not exist out in the real world (the population). The only reason that the two group means are different from each other is chance. This first option is known as the null hypothesis. The other option is that the predicted difference does exist out in the real world. There is a reason (other than chance) why the two group means are different from each other. This second option is known as the alternative hypothesis.
    (PDF) http://www.radford.edu/~tpierce/610...gists/Independent samples t-test 10-02-09.pdf

    The default is that no causal relationship exists. Only chance correlations. This is the null hypothesis.
    The alternative hypothesis is that a causal relationship exists in the real world.
    The alternative hypothesis is the assertion, and the null hypothesis is the default assumption the assertion needs to refute to be valid.

    I'm making the null hypothesis (no causal relationship), you are making the alternative assertion (causal relationship), except also trying to shift the burden.
    Still avoiding whether poverty precludes morality and responsibility?
    So victims of racism can't be moral?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Racism would be the big one.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Can you quantify that in any way? Or is it just a guess?
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    I'm not interested in rehashing long settled matters of common knowledge every time I'm making some other point.
    The studies, plural, did not fail to account for that. And there are many others.
    This is not really a controversial matter: segregation and racial oppression was and has been enforced by all US industry, but the financial industry has been playing a disproportionately large role - including in the Crash of 2007.
    Not very many. Even the black people are largely of American descent.
    Unless you are focused on skin color, of course. Many black people in the US got their skin color from African ancestors.
    Nobody said it did.
    That's not why I claimed it as a fact. The concurrent, additional circumstance that it's common knowledge among many people is what highlights your bullshit quotient, but that's not what established it as fact.
    No, you aren't. You're asserting a null hypothesis for some different (and in this case long settled) argument, not the one I'm making.
    So you were confused about my argument, about what causal relationships I was arguing, when you got the null hypothesis wrong. That's one thing. But why did you reject my corrections? That's a different thing. Do you imagine I don't know what I'm arguing?

    Or is it that you mean to post bullshit, regardless, as a tactic supporting some ulterior agenda?
    That has evidence to back it - for example:
    Putting question marks on lies and bullshit does not convert it into questions.
     
  8. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Seems you're not interested in support much of anything you say.
    Just noise. Oo, oo, oo!
    More baseless noise. If there are studies beyond the one you've posted, put up or shut up.
    This just sounds like moving the goalposts. You were talking about one particular study you posted until just a moment ago.
    Really? There are blacks with nothing but American lineage? Wouldn't that make them Native American?
    How far back do you think genetic heritage just up and stops?
    You did here:
    Sounds like your bullshit, since you refuse to even attempt to establish it as the "fact" you claim.
    You've offered nothing but "everyone knows".
    You obviously don't understand what a null hypothesis is.
    ME: The default assumption is that there is not causal relationship between certain beliefs about Obama and racism.
    YOU: There is a causal relationship between certain beliefs about Obama and racism.
    You're making the alternative hypothesis. Just because you call it the "default situation" doesn't mean it is not asserting a causal relationship. Namely between "birthers" and "bigots" and "secret Muslim beliefs" and "racism".

    So what causal relationship do you imagine I am asserting?
    That "some birther or collection of birthers is not racially bigoted"? That is a null hypothesis. No causal relationship between birtherism and bigotry.
    If you were arguing for ANY causal relationship, you weren't making the null hypothesis. Simples.
    You do seem to forget what you've argued:
    If it's a lie, you should be able to show where you answered the question.
    This was a new question you avoided answering.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    I didn't post that study.
    You still haven't figured out what the null hypothesis is for my argument. Odd. It's not rocket science.
    Maybe this is the problem:
    It is an extraordinary claim. And I'm not arguing about it.

    Or maybe this is:
    No. That's not my argument. I'm not arguing that. I have now corrected you on that exact matter something like five times.
    (Wingnuts: Are they lying, or are they stupid?)

    Those are all lies with question marks on them. Not questions.

    And they all tend to the same end: that white people's racism in the US isn't the serious problem some people - especially its targets - think it is.
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2018
  10. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    The fault within your context is that you aren't attending anyone else's.

    Remember, there are two definitions of ad hominem; the real one, and the one that replaced it because people on the internet weren't smart enough to understand what the real one means.

    The classical definition is a logical fallacy: You shouldn't listen to what someone says about taxes because they put ketchup on their string beans and only commies do that. In this case, the appeal to the man (person) is the presentation of something potentially irrelevant. Neither ketchup on string beans, communism, nor the make-believe connexction 'twixt the two precludes the individual from being corrct in whatever statement about taxes. The person you are appealing to, technically, is the audience.

    The new definition just likes the phrase "ad hom", and uses it to refer to anything that offends someone about how they think others see them. For instance, we had one some years ago when a moderator struck a critical post according to a one-timer rule that says describing an argument as racist is itself ad hom because it insults the person denigrating all hispanics. (The rule was never applied again, but, like pretty much all of our one-timer rules, it was invented in the moment to a protect supremacism at Sciforums; when given over to the Administration, the problem wasn't the supremacism or the customized one-and-done rule itself, but that the staff disagreed about policy.)

    Now, then, let's back up and consider some things you apparently can't be bothered with:

    See #82 above↑, which checks in on on a post from Spidergoat:

    If we count back three or so days↑, we find Vociferous responding to Iceaura's↑ point about murders "directly by white supremacists explicitly so motivated" by pointing to general crime statistics.

    Thirty-two posts and three days stalled out without actually addressing the maneuver equals some pretty successful trolling. Notice how the lack of any resolution about anything just keeps the discussion wandering off through whatever distractions he comes up with. And if we follow it back yet another day↑, we find Vociferous interjecting with fallacy. Four days and forty-five posts later, the mistake seems to have something to do with regarding his posts as genuine, or as good faith, or some such.

    Part of what we're looking at is just a long digression, and its point of focus is apparently to recycle racist tropes. And the thing is that we can observe the failure to apply these tropes to any coherent argument. Thus people criticize:

    Iceaura: "Your posting was racist - standard, boiler-plate, seen it a hundred times, run of the mill US racism." (#78↑)

    Iceaura (again): "This entire argument of yours is standard, boilerplate, KKK level racism." (#92↑)

    And, certainly, once can try bawling about ad hom↑, but that's the thing: The arguments against the argument are not ad hominem by the prior, classical definition; it is a candidate for the new definition only if we declare preclusion according to inseparability of argument and arguer.

    One of the really fun parts in this is that DaveC↑ is among those making the obvious point about ad hominem; his post at #75↑ treads closest to the line, but attending the manner of specificity many require when threading needles at Sciforums, we can also note that—

    Aaaand that's what racism looks like, folks.

    —is easily construed as a description of the argument; consider the difference 'twixt —ism and —ist, which, in turn, makes its own point in the context that this is where the discussion finds itself. Still, though, we have before us a proposition (#101)

    Only if you want to play the dubious game that morally reprehensible arguments reflect nothing on the arguer.
    Are you really claiming such arguments could be made by a non-racist?

    —erasing that very distinction.

    Furthermore—

    Just because it occurs in a demographic does not mean that particular trait of the demographic is the responsible factor. Racists never seem to get that.

    —DaveC is actually precisely correct on both counts.

    (At this point, the question becomes what one considers reasonably common knowledge↑ or reality↑, and that brings us back to questions of good faith↑; we see a lot of this behavior over time, and it seems the whole point really is just to waste everybody's time. Think of it this way: There is an argument he cannot win, and therefore simply stalls out.)​

    Consider, please, the idea of explaining such a basic idea in such practical detail. If you're following the discussion, it's a pretty straightforward point: It ain't ad hom if it's true.

    By the way, have you ever noticed, Magical Realist, that bit people do about how they're just exploring an important question and so you need to lay off the -ism talk? We now have before us the same basic -ist arguments presented under the opposite circumstance: Instead of complaining that one is bound as such to their argument, one complains that one cannot be separated from it.

    I think there are a few reasons why it is very difficult for people to explain these things to others: This pertains to obscure deviations from behavioral norms and most people aren't behavioral scientists. The arguments, such as Vociferous has given, and inquiries, such as yours, are so polymerized and stamped as to offer nothing identifiable to address. (It is, actually, a quiet specialty of Sciforums, to ask people to tell you something↑ in order to complain about what they say.) The players involved make their points, as such; what makes you think people want to waste how much time accommodating deliberate pretenses of such ridiculous ignorance? Either they will believe the stupidity is genuine, or respond as if it was deliberate provocation and trolling.

    And the problem is that pretty much everyone can see what happens if these arguments offer up anything particular and substantial: The pretense of not -ist evaporates. One of the reasons it's hard to think of examples is that so many of them just seem so stupidly extreme that pretty much anybody can resent being compared to that other occasion, over there. I can think of a couple examples I still recall, from over the years, that will eventually have some effect, but I couldn't tell you whether who will finally get the point compared to declaring it some manner of new Godwin corollary; the better thing, for these advocates, is to offer nothing and just keep asking questions as if stalling for the clock, except there is no buzzer coming to save them.

    I don't dispute your point↑ about a more classical consideration of ad hominem, but that is not the application in effect, or as DaveC↑ explained, "it was attacking the things the poster actually posted i.e. the argument".

    Which also reminds the other question about your context:

    There is something about the way you are applying the word "supports" that makes more sense to you than it does to me: How is what he said supposed to "support" the statement you were debating?
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    A loose end:
    If you are talking about genetic heritage as far back as you can trace, everybody in the US is of African descent - including the red folk.
    If you are honestly trying to make sense, most black folk in the US are of American descent - speaking American English, raised in an American culture, part of American life for generations now.
    It's likely that - on average - individual black Americans have a longer lineage in America than white Americans. African immigration* was sparse after about 1860. The waves of white immigrants between 1850 and 1950 had no counterpart of black immigrants.
     
  12. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    True. But that's the only one you've cited/argued, until moving the goalpost to multiple, unnamed "studies".
    So you've posted zero studied to buoy this argument of yours. Or is this suddenly not an argument either?
    Have one of your friends try to explain null hypothesis to you. Maybe they'll have better luck.
    What is your argument then? I quoted you on these, so maybe you could manage to quote or repeat your actual argument.
    Maybe you're just trolling.
    If you can't answer simple questions, that's on you. No matter what excuse you make up.
    Most educated people understand that descent usually goes back until noted adaptations that distinguish one population from their previous lineage. For example, after some people migrated north from Africa, they took on adaptations of less skin pigment, making them clearly distinguishable from their former geographical lineage due to their new geographical and reproductive isolation from the former. This is why "African-American" is synonymous with "black American." And though rarely used, "European-American" is synonymous with "white Americans."
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    No.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    As I reminded you above, after three repetitions of that you are lying.
    Although the stupidity possibility has been resurrected:
    Maybe you really can't follow my argument, no matter how many times it's laid out for you. As noted, it's not rocket science - but it's still, like, reasoning from evidence and stuff.
    So almost all black Americans are of American descent, like I said (the adaptations involved in enslavement and life on a different continent being quite notable). Settled.

    Or so one would assume, except for this one other niggling possibility:
    And we see that you are, as I speculated above ("Unless you are focused on skin color, of course. Many black people in the US got their skin color from African ancestors.") talking about skin color.
    So you are now ignoring culture completely, and claiming there is no such thing as - for example - Irish vs English descent among Americans.
    We really are going to get the entire Book of the Klan from you, aren't we.
    It's not. It's synonymous with black American descended from those enslaved in America. The point - the meaning, originally - is that they had no community, culture, ethnicity, or even country, of origin, no heritage as other Americans had; it had been taken from them, leaving only a continent.
    There's an ongoing conflict in my town between those black Americans and others with - for example - more recent lineage in Somalia and the Horn generally, that sometimes pivots on that term.

    Which brings around the state of the onion - Somalia, and the Chinese expansion of influence into Africa generally, is involved.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2018
  15. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    Exactly. There are cultural differences that account for the discrepancy.
    If you can't even define your argument, there's little chance of anyone understanding it.
    Repeatedly saying what your argument is not, does not tell anyone what your argument actually is.
    What noted adaptation distinguishes them from Africans?
    No, you're just conflating two different arguments. Crime discrepancies between equally situated populations is cultural.
    But when you try, as you did here, to affix US history on only white Americans, it is YOU making it about skin color. Hence my digression into lineage.

    Again, you must have intimate knowledge of this supposed "Book of the Klan" you keep citing.
    There's no talking someone out of that level of denial.
     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    You cherry picked out one state, but if you look at the whole country, the crime rate is significantly higher for blacks. Why would conditions change dramatically in one state where the crime rate is a little lower? We have a prevailing condition, almost a parallel society, created by segregation, which will take a century or more to overcome. If we work on it and don't just blame the victims. Epigenetics also show that the effects of extreme stress can be passed on to subsequent generations. Your attitude is both scientifically ignorant and not helpful.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Now that's interesting - your posts are heedless reactions. You didn't even stop to think for a sec.
    Here's Wiki:
    In case you missed it: Only those strongly influenced by racism in the US, people who have inculcated into their view of the world US white racial bigotry against black people, think "African-American" refers to all black Americans.
    After the first three repetitions of this tactic, as noted above, you are lying.
    1) Which "Africans"?
    2) The same kind that distinguish the Irish from the English - only considerably more obvious and radical and so forth.
    I can't even tell if that makes sense enough to be a repetition of your earlier falsehood around the word "only". I'm thinking not. "Affix" US history?
    And cultural differences between US populations are strongly influenced by racism.

    Thus we arrive at the thread topic: the state of the onion includes serious and deeply influential racism, personal and institutional.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2018
  18. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    I picked the state with the most similarity between white and black poverty. But even there, the black murder rate was significantly higher. I only picked that state because you seemed to want to equate poverty with criminality, and that was the best apples to apples comparison. Has nothing to do with any one state.
    Murderers are victims? Are they too inferior to be held as morally accountable as anyone else?
    As far as I've read, epigenetics has only shown avoidance behaviors being passed on. That's pretty far from murder.
    That, or black Americans have generally been referred to as African-Americans in both the media and racial surveys for decades.
    Maybe you shouldn't cherry-pick your citations.
    African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans[3]) are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa.[4][5] This term may also be used to include only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans
    If you're too afraid to just repeat your argument, I'm not sure why it matters.
    If you can't back up your accusation, you're just slinging poo. Oo, oo, oo!
    Which? What do you think? The white south Africans who immigrated back there from Europe?
    Aside from an obvious redhead, you can tell a person of English descent from one of Irish descent? Good on you, I can't.
    There's a reason Europeans are collectively called such.
    Did I miss where you admitted that blacks were also slave traders in Africa and slaveholders in the US?
    Yet those who don't see themselves as victims do succeed.
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    It's also related to historical poverty. The big picture is that blacks have largely been left out of the American Dream. Improvements since the civil rights era of the 1960 haven't erased this completely. And what was it that erased blacks from public life in the South? It was murderous whites usurping the rule of law. Everything in America was designed to make blacks turn against each other. The north wasn't that much better. And when groups came together to prevent this, like the Black Panthers, Nixon conspired to destroy them by any means necessary. So bemoan lawless culture as you will, but the lawlessness and immorality started with people like you.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2018
  20. Vociferous Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,046
    There is generational poverty. What do you think is the largest driver of that?
    Since civil rights in the 60's, black single-motherhood has increased from around 20% to about 70%.
    Did slavery or racism really change in the 60's? And if so, why for the worse? Jim Crow ended in the 60's, right?
    Did racism break apart the black family? How?
    Once all black families were poor, single-parent or not. Now only 30% are.
    The Black Panthers never fought each other?
    The party [Black Panther Party] was also involved in many internal conflicts including the murders of Alex Rackley and Betty Van Patter.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party
    Murderous whites in the South were Democrats. Welfare and abortion activists, that disproportionally impact black families, are Democrats.
     
  21. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    That's not going to work. We know southern democrats before 1964 were segregationists. Welfare and abortion have positive economic effects.
    I don't know exactly. But there is generational privilege. I was born middle class, well educated, never unemployed, always had an economic safety net. I can't imagine having to start from scratch, it must be very hard.
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    So? Almost all of them are, and the reference "generally" would be accurate - almost every time.
    You wouldn't even have to invoke the obvious racism of "general" American media feeds, to explain the correct use of standard terms since Jesse Jackson's famous imprimatur.
    I didn't. Maybe you should read yours with comprehension.
    After three repetitions of this tactic on the same exact matter, you are lying.
    You don't have any idea, is what I think.
    Question marks do not convert lies into questions.
    Red hair wouldn't do it.
    And yet they exist, these people who are of Irish descent and definitely not English descent, and vice versa. They are very common, in my town. And they never, to my knowledge, identify themselves as European-Americans.
    And a reason people of Irish, Finnish, Russian, or Armenian descent are not normally identified as "European-American" without explicit inclusion - and almost never by themselves.
    Some do. Unusually talented, determined, and lucky people can overcome quite a bit of adversity. So?
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Racially biased drug war legislation and policing played a very large role, which was the intent of it - Nixon is on tape somewhere explaining that directly.
    Racially biased governance in such as welfare rules and healthcare policy and schooling of children played a large role.
    Racial bigotry in unions and other workplace manifestations played a large role.
    And so forth.
    The same capitalist corporate pressures that broke increasing numbers of white families were applied to black ones, but the black ones had less to cushion the blow - because of racism, past and present.

    Jim Crow practices and influences lasted far beyond the late 60's removal of the specific laws, and some (the mortgage industry practices fueling the Republican Bubble&Bust in the 00's, say) still exist. The effects of Jim Crow will of course be with us for at least the lifetime of the children of the last generation subjected to the laws themselves - they are in their teens and twenties now, so another fifty years or so. Minimum.
     

Share This Page