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Starmer extends his approval lead over Sunak – politicalbetting.com

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  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,571
    Having had Covid doubles the risk of Type 1 diabetes in children.

    https://twitter.com/michael_hoerger/status/1660731088761761795
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    kinabalu said:

    ping said:

    kinabalu said:

    ping said:

    Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.

    It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.

    I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.

    I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
    If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
    Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. And use their media allies to go hard on corbyn.

    It didn’t have to be Johnson.

    There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
    Ah ok so that makes logical sense of your statement then. I disagree though. I think another leader (Hunt say) could have won but not by as much. Quite a few people in key seats considered they were voting 'Boris' rather than Tory in 2019. Also the election itself was forced by Johnson, in the process creating the People v Parliament and Get Brexit Done dynamic which proved so potent. I hated it but at the same time recognize it as a truly brilliant political coup. And ok, Cummings was the brains but Johnson had to execute and front it. The Cons were in deep shit when he took over in July 2019. Hung parliament and behind in the polls. Five months later he delivers a landslide. An amazing achievement.
    A not small part of the reason the Conservatives were deep in the shit was Johnson himself.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    @PippaCrerar
    Friends of Boris Johnson say he is “seriously considering” legal action against Cabinet Office, adding it is “seriously defamatory” to suggest he had further breached lockdown laws @MailOnline


    GO FOR IT !!!
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited May 2023
    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    Except most of the tweeters are still liberal left
    Everyone is liberal left from where you stand
    In every recent UK general election a plurality of tweeters tweeted pro Labour statements and only a minority pro Tory but the Tories won.

    Trump's Truth Social network is the real Far-Right Social Network
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Scott_xP said:

    @PippaCrerar
    Friends of Boris Johnson say he is “seriously considering” legal action against Cabinet Office, adding it is “seriously defamatory” to suggest he had further breached lockdown laws @MailOnline


    GO FOR IT !!!

    I have an open mind here that Boris might have a point. This was looked at before by lawyers and cleared. Nor do I think this is United Tory Party versus a civil service Blob this week, the civil service, the cabinet office, would not act on this to this extent without knowledge or nod of their political masters.

    It’s clearly blue on blue week. Those around Rishi panicking, I think needlessly about the weakness of his position. It’s Oliver Dowden who will go if this backfires, in order to shield Rishi Sunak. I think this particular sneak attack on Boris might backfire. They’ve over reached. I think Dowden is about to lose his job.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,152
    Anyone expecting CPI to go below 9% tomorrow?
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    edited May 2023

    ...

    eek said:

    Via Guido

    **Statement on behalf of Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP**
    **for immediate use, attributable to his office**

    The assertion by the Cabinet Office that there have been further Covid rule breaches is totally untrue.

    Lawyers have examined the events in question and advised that they were lawful.

    No contact was made with Mr Johnson before these incorrect allegations were made both to the police and to the Privileges Committee. This is both bizarre and unacceptable.

    For whatever political purpose, it is plain that a last ditch attempt is being made to lengthen the Privileges Committee investigation as it was coming to a conclusion and to undermine Mr Johnson.

    Mr Johnson’s lawyers have tonight written to the police forces involved to explain in detail why the Cabinet Office is entirely wrong in its assertions.

    The events in question were all within the rules either because they were held outdoors or came within another lawful exception. They include regular meetings with civil servants and advisers.

    It appears some within government have decided to make unfounded suggestions both to the police and to the Privileges Committee.

    Many will conclude that this has all the hallmarks of yet another politically motivated stitch up.

    -- So Bozo won't admit to be wrong even when lawyers know things are as dodgy as f***

    "Mr Johnson's lawyers"? Oh please, They're our lawyers. We are paying for them. They are a gift from the nation to Mr Johnson.
    The irony seems to be that the Chequers shenanigans were discovered from Johnson's own diary, which was used as evidence for the defence against other Covid spreading jollies, but is in the hands of the Cabinet Office because it, or rather us the taxpayer, is the paying client for Johnson's legal case.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.

    Except it does make it true. Because gender is, amongst other things, a legal concept. And it's that legal status you can change.

    Can you change your chromosomes? No. So any definition based on that is immutable. Can you change your legal gender? Yes. So any definition based on that is mutable.

    I have to say, the whole penis/uterus thing is a strange way to think of it. Because as you rightly pointed out, people can lose the penis or uterus without it changing their gender. So by your own hand you're dissociating gender from the presence of reproductive organs.

    So you need a better way of defining "man" or "woman". What's it to be?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    ping said:

    kinabalu said:

    ping said:

    Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.

    It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.

    I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.

    I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
    If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
    Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. And use their media allies to go hard on corbyn.

    It didn’t have to be Johnson.

    There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
    Ah ok so that makes logical sense of your statement then. I disagree though. I think another leader (Hunt say) could have won but not by as much. Quite a few people in key seats considered they were voting 'Boris' rather than Tory in 2019. Also the election itself was forced by Johnson, in the process creating the People v Parliament and Get Brexit Done dynamic which proved so potent. I hated it but at the same time recognize it as a truly brilliant political coup. And ok, Cummings was the brains but Johnson had to execute and front it. The Cons were in deep shit when he took over in July 2019. Hung parliament and behind in the polls. Five months later he delivers a landslide. An amazing achievement.
    A not small part of the reason the Conservatives were deep in the shit was Johnson himself.
    Is that true? I thought the Tories started to stage a revival pretty much as soon as May was replaced by Johnson.
    FWIW, I almost agree with kinabalu, except that I don't think Hunt would have even won a majority - he might, at best, have got back to 2017.
    I may be no fan of Johnson. But for me, he achieved one big thing of note, which was keeping Corbyn out of power. (Of course, this is only an achievement of note if you believe, as I do, though others don't, that Corbyn would have been terrible. I know some hold a different view.)
    Also vaccines, the details of which are, sadly for him, disappearing into the rear view mirror.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    It may or may not be true but that is a weak argument based on those two paragraphs. He says he wants it to be a free speech platform. Is he censoring left wing views he doesn't like? Or does he just allow a free for all?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,916
    Farooq said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @johnestevens

    Tory source: “Sunak is letting Tories get decimated on his watch by the blob.

    “Raab, Suella, now Boris again - when is this crap going to stop? It's time for Sunak to grow some balls”

    Is it possible for a Conservative to have a penis?
    "PBers who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be Tory."
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    I don’t think it’s a personal diary, it will be his PM appointments diary, the details belonging not to him but to official record and TNA.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    ping said:

    kinabalu said:

    ping said:

    Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.

    It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.

    I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.

    I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
    If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
    Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. And use their media allies to go hard on corbyn.

    It didn’t have to be Johnson.

    There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
    Ah ok so that makes logical sense of your statement then. I disagree though. I think another leader (Hunt say) could have won but not by as much. Quite a few people in key seats considered they were voting 'Boris' rather than Tory in 2019. Also the election itself was forced by Johnson, in the process creating the People v Parliament and Get Brexit Done dynamic which proved so potent. I hated it but at the same time recognize it as a truly brilliant political coup. And ok, Cummings was the brains but Johnson had to execute and front it. The Cons were in deep shit when he took over in July 2019. Hung parliament and behind in the polls. Five months later he delivers a landslide. An amazing achievement.
    A not small part of the reason the Conservatives were deep in the shit was Johnson himself.
    Is that true? I thought the Tories started to stage a revival pretty much as soon as May was replaced by Johnson.
    FWIW, I almost agree with kinabalu, except that I don't think Hunt would have even won a majority - he might, at best, have got back to 2017.
    I may be no fan of Johnson. But for me, he achieved one big thing of note, which was keeping Corbyn out of power. (Of course, this is only an achievement of note if you believe, as I do, though others don't, that Corbyn would have been terrible. I know some hold a different view.)
    Also vaccines, the details of which are, sadly for him, disappearing into the rear view mirror.
    What I mean is, Johnson was running around setting fires in CCHQ before he was PM. He was the ringleader of May's tormentors, undermining her because he wanted the job.
    A large measure of the shit they were in before he took over was his doing.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    Except that's nonsense, isn't it?
    It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 2,722

    Anyone expecting CPI to go below 9% tomorrow?

    The Bank of England are: https://www.ft.com/content/219f0b1a-f3ed-43a7-a961-5bc780881a54

    "Bank of England officials hope the ratchet between higher prices and wages will soon moderate as official figures on Wednesday are set to show a large drop in the headline inflation rate.

    The central bank is expecting the annual rate of consumer price inflation to drop almost 2 percentage points from 10.1 per cent in March to 8.4 per cent in April, and decline to its 2 per cent target in late 2024 or early 2025.
    "
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    edited May 2023

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    Come on @MoonRabbit, at least some of the slaves were - presumably - having fun at least some of the time.

    Who's to say that the painter didn't just get lucky?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,614
    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    Except that's nonsense, isn't it?
    It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
    Remember - only the Sith deal in absolutes
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,543
    An article from the year 2000 about suella fernandes, president of the cambridge university conservative association, who was accused of vote rigging and responded with a reassuring “you can’t prove anything”



    https://twitter.com/alexandrakuri/status/1660967887669010435
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,152
    CatMan said:

    Anyone expecting CPI to go below 9% tomorrow?

    The Bank of England are: https://www.ft.com/content/219f0b1a-f3ed-43a7-a961-5bc780881a54

    "Bank of England officials hope the ratchet between higher prices and wages will soon moderate as official figures on Wednesday are set to show a large drop in the headline inflation rate.

    The central bank is expecting the annual rate of consumer price inflation to drop almost 2 percentage points from 10.1 per cent in March to 8.4 per cent in April, and decline to its 2 per cent target in late 2024 or early 2025.
    "
    TY @Catman I think it will be 8.5 let's see
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    Except that's nonsense, isn't it?
    It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
    Quite

    The Woke Left is so used to having Twitter as a nicely regulated safe space for itself, that when rightwing or simply non-approved voices are heard, it SEEMS like a babel of Nazis, because it is so unexpected and unusual

    The irony is that Twitter is still fairly leftwing, it's just somewhay more diverse now. Diversity is strength
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    This is a dreadful article. It is just a rant by someone who seems to hate Elon Musk. Why does it get published in the Atlantic? it adds no value.

    Perhaps it alternatively reveals despair on the part of the 'woke left', because they can no longer cancel right wing ideas by getting people banned on Twitter - a trick that worked very well for about 5 years. The cultural impact of this is massive - the 'woke' are now in retreat. People hear other perspectives and find themselves agreeing with them.

  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
  • RattersRatters Posts: 756
    ping said:

    I notice Gilt yields are continuing to creep up….

    Yes. You can now lock into a return of inflation +1% over 20 years by just buying an inflation-linked government bond.

    Some of the rise in yields takes its lead from the US, but the cost of UK borrowing is rising much quicker again.

    There is a lot of gilt issuance this year, and there is some concern that UK DB pension funds don't need to buy much more, the Bank of England is selling rather than buying and other investors aren't of the same scale.

    The period of cheap government borrowing may be at its end. That will make politics tricker.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    edited May 2023
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork

    "IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576

    "An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."

    "People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    Farooq said:

    kinabalu said:

    ping said:

    kinabalu said:

    ping said:

    Lovely to see all the people who said Johnson was a superb PM whilst he was ahead now saying he is a disgrace.

    It was obvious before he was PM this would happen.

    I think the tories were idiots to make him PM. And idiots to get rid of him.

    I accept, I’m probably the only person in Britain with this view…
    If the criteria is party prospects at the next election I agree they probably should have kept him. But if you go with that criteria why do you think they were idiots to make him PM? Because that's exactly why they did it. They picked him to win the next election and he duly delivered.
    Any competent Tory leadership candidate, back in ‘19 could have beaten Corbyn and won back their majority. They just had to loosen up on austerity and follow the midlands and north electoral strategy that was obvious, post 2016. And use their media allies to go hard on corbyn.

    It didn’t have to be Johnson.

    There were better candidates. Johnson’s flaws were so damn obvious.
    Ah ok so that makes logical sense of your statement then. I disagree though. I think another leader (Hunt say) could have won but not by as much. Quite a few people in key seats considered they were voting 'Boris' rather than Tory in 2019. Also the election itself was forced by Johnson, in the process creating the People v Parliament and Get Brexit Done dynamic which proved so potent. I hated it but at the same time recognize it as a truly brilliant political coup. And ok, Cummings was the brains but Johnson had to execute and front it. The Cons were in deep shit when he took over in July 2019. Hung parliament and behind in the polls. Five months later he delivers a landslide. An amazing achievement.
    A not small part of the reason the Conservatives were deep in the shit was Johnson himself.
    Well yes. If he and the ERG had supported Mrs May and her Brexit deal the impasse might have been avoided and then who knows how things might have panned out. Instead, as always, he did what furthered his own interests. He didn't throw away the 2015 Con majority though. She did that. In that sense she put herself behind the 8 ball.
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    edited May 2023
    @rcs1000

    You might know the answer to this.

    Is the Sonia swap rate a decent real-time reference for uk residential mortgage rates?

    Eg;

    https://www.chathamfinancial.com/technology/european-market-rates

    Or is there a better real-time reference that I can follow?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415

    Anyone expecting CPI to go below 9% tomorrow?

    Yes I am - all indicators are pointing to it. 8.7 I think. 🙂

    That’s still a high rate of continued increase in prices though. Strikes are not going away, but government not in any position to settle them, and that in turn hits NHS promises.

    Inflation Down to 5 by eoy maybe, and then down to 2 before next years general election, no chance. And the longer it stays as a player, and I would call 4% in play, is bad news for UK debt not just cost of living crisis and income erosion, nest egg erosion, and personal borrowing and debt, it’s doing all that on macro level too.

    Lady Thatcher used recession and money tightening to kill off the scourge of inflation, so unexpected growth and avoiding recession might not be such a good thing this year if it comes with sticky inflation, government debt problems, longer fiscal tightening, and I personally think but not reading it anywhere, threat of property price and stock price corrections.

    Politically, Pre election tax cutting would look awful when there’s debt to be cleared first.

    Fun fact - did you know Hunt had a say in the wording IMF said about us today? “Clear debt before cutting taxes” might even have been a line he put in.
  • eek said:



    There are no shops on my estate, but there are shops I can drive to, so problem solved. New or old housing, I've never lived on an estate with a supermarket within the estate come to think of it.

    Not exactly a well planned estate then. Ideally you should have a shop within walking distance as otherwise you are restricting those houses to multiple car households.
    Its a very well planned estate, every house has a driveway or a double driveway. And we even have an electric car charger built in as standard too. 👍

    We have both a Co-op and a bus stop within walking distance. They don't need to be on the estate to be in walking distance. I drive to the supermarkets because - well why wouldn't I? But if my wife who doesn't drive wants to get something herself via walking, she's able to do so.

    Shops will get built organically and expand or close depending upon customer demand. No need for "planning", we don't and shouldn't live in a communist planned economy.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,231

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    I read some of the Fleming Bond books as a child, and probably too young for them, and was quite disappointed they were not like the movies. But one thing I did take away was that Felix Letter was out-and-out racist: there's a passage in one of the books where he complains about politically correct speech, saying "you can't even order a jigger of rum any more, it has to be a jegro". It took my far-too-young brain some months to work out what he meant.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,152
    Ratters said:

    ping said:

    I notice Gilt yields are continuing to creep up….

    Yes. You can now lock into a return of inflation +1% over 20 years by just buying an inflation-linked government bond.

    Some of the rise in yields takes its lead from the US, but the cost of UK borrowing is rising much quicker again.

    There is a lot of gilt issuance this year, and there is some concern that UK DB pension funds don't need to buy much more, the Bank of England is selling rather than buying and other investors aren't of the same scale.

    The period of cheap government borrowing may be at its end. That will make politics tricker.
    No chance of interest rates falling below 4.5% until 2025+. We are entering into the era of reverse low rates ie possibly real interest rates 2025+.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    FF43 said:

    An article from the year 2000 about suella fernandes, president of the cambridge university conservative association, who was accused of vote rigging and responded with a reassuring “you can’t prove anything”



    https://twitter.com/alexandrakuri/status/1660967887669010435

    Am I posting in an old thread?
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,005

    Ratters said:

    ping said:

    I notice Gilt yields are continuing to creep up….

    Yes. You can now lock into a return of inflation +1% over 20 years by just buying an inflation-linked government bond.

    Some of the rise in yields takes its lead from the US, but the cost of UK borrowing is rising much quicker again.

    There is a lot of gilt issuance this year, and there is some concern that UK DB pension funds don't need to buy much more, the Bank of England is selling rather than buying and other investors aren't of the same scale.

    The period of cheap government borrowing may be at its end. That will make politics tricker.
    No chance of interest rates falling below 4.5% until 2025+. We are entering into the era of reverse low rates ie possibly real interest rates 2025+.
    We've been through a strange period of commodity price shocks and currency devaluation. Inflation could come right down in the medium term.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    edited May 2023
    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
    Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward.
    Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
    And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
    And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.

    *Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,231
    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    Except that's nonsense, isn't it?
    It used to be the case that Twitter suppressed far right voices (and also some perfectly unremarkable vaguely right of centre voices) in a way it clearly did not with the far left. Now it doesn't. But that doesn't make it far right.
    He does think that George Soros is an enemy of humanity
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    edited May 2023
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    Come on @MoonRabbit, at least some of the slaves were - presumably - having fun at least some of the time.

    Who's to say that the painter didn't just get lucky?
    Possible I suppose.

    A lot of the art of the time was posing on the estate, in front the house, with the prize winning pig, or the trophy wife. Spin and lies of where and how the wealth was coming from, slots very neatly into the politics going on, in this world of art.

    And that’s even before we come onto the brazen misogyny, in that world of art.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    edited May 2023
    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork

    "IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576

    "An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."

    "People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
    And that article contradicts the one about the Northwestern University study that claimed American IQs were going down. Your second article claims the problem has not been observed in the US. Notably, the period studied in the first ends (2018) before the second article was published (2019). So it sounds like not a lot of people are looking at this, or the "OMG IQs are dropping!" studies are cherry-picked from a range of studies saying different things.

    Even if all these doubts can be made to go away and you really do think that IQ tests are getting lower scores, so what? We all know IQ tests are seriously limited.

    And even if you want to say, "no, it still means something," then your inference that didacticism in art is the diabolical result of this stupidification is... well, stupid. Art has been didactic from the time that art crawled out of the cave. Art has always been a vehicle for expressing view not just of beauty but of right and wrong. When Wilde wrote that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
    Books are well written, or badly written.
    he was leaving out an important truth: artists pour their moral views into the pages or canvases they work on. From Plato to Murdoch, from van Gogh to Beremboim, art communicates perspectives of right and wrong. It's nothing new.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Well we have both explained two very contrasting views on exactly the same thing. I’m sure the Tate’s delighted in that. 🙂
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    FF43 said:

    An article from the year 2000 about suella fernandes, president of the cambridge university conservative association, who was accused of vote rigging and responded with a reassuring “you can’t prove anything”



    https://twitter.com/alexandrakuri/status/1660967887669010435

    Am I posting in an old thread?
    Every thread is exactly the same as all the others. I'm surprised you haven't noticed this before.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork

    "IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576

    "An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."

    "People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
    And that article contradicts the one about the Northwestern University study that claimed American IQs were going down. Your second article claims the problem has not been observed in the US. Notably, the period studied in the first ends (2018) before the second article was published (2019). So it sounds like not a lot of people are looking at this, or the "OMG IQs are dropping!" studies are cherry-picked from a range of studies saying different things.

    Even if all these doubts can be made to go away and you really do think that IQ tests are getting lower scores, so what? We all know IQ tests are seriously limited.

    And even if you want to say, "no, it still means something," then your inference that didacticism in art is the diabolical result of this stupidification is... well, stupid. Art has been didactic from the time that art crawled out of the cave. Art has always been a vehicle for expressing view not just of beauty but of right and wrong. When Wilde wrote that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
    Books are well written, or badly written.
    he was leaving out an important truth: artists pour their moral views into the pages or canvases they work on. From Plato to Murdoch, from van Gogh to Beremboim, art communicates perspectives of right and wrong. It's nothing new.
    The more recent article references a more recent study, in America: a study which now confirms the trends identified in the older article - which talks of these trends being observed outside America. This is not hard to work out

    What is new in art is the passivity of the consumer, the gallery goer. Content to be spoon fed trite opinions they already know by heart, anyway. Absolute hallmark of intellectual mediocrity

    I don't believe Tate Britain would have got away with this dreary box-ticking bullshit in a more creatively vigorous and philosophically combative era. Like, say, the 1990s
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426
    edited May 2023
    darkage said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    This is a dreadful article. It is just a rant by someone who seems to hate Elon Musk. Why does it get published in the Atlantic? it adds no value.

    Perhaps it alternatively reveals despair on the part of the 'woke left', because they can no longer cancel right wing ideas by getting people banned on Twitter - a trick that worked very well for about 5 years. The cultural impact of this is massive - the 'woke' are now in retreat. People hear other perspectives and find themselves agreeing with them.

    "Now" in retreat? What was the "woke" take on that mass house arrest thingy of 2020-22? Y'know, where you weren't allowed to go within 2 metres of anyone and had to stay in your home except on trips to Tesco's etc.? Stupid question? Sure. But if there's no answer to it then "woke" doesn't exist - at least not on the major historical questions of the day.
  • Stark_DawningStark_Dawning Posts: 9,232
    edited May 2023
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
    Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward.
    Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
    And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
    And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.

    *Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
    Not so. 'Gender' was a term (borrowed from grammar) introduced by anthropologists in the 1970s to distinguish those (and they were observed throughout the world and throughout cultures) whose psychological assessment of themselves as a man or a woman within that culture differed from what the culture itself dictated on purely biological terms. So sex/gender is quite a useful distinction, and there's nothing remotely new here.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Westie said:

    darkage said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    DeSantis to announce his run for the Presidency on Wednesday in an interview with Elon Musk

    https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1661102736740597760?s=20

    Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
    … In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

    Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry——to Musk’s platform.…


    This is a dreadful article. It is just a rant by someone who seems to hate Elon Musk. Why does it get published in the Atlantic? it adds no value.

    Perhaps it alternatively reveals despair on the part of the 'woke left', because they can no longer cancel right wing ideas by getting people banned on Twitter - a trick that worked very well for about 5 years. The cultural impact of this is massive - the 'woke' are now in retreat. People hear other perspectives and find themselves agreeing with them.

    "Now"? What was the "woke" take on that mass house arrest thingy of 2020-22? Y'know, where you weren't allowed to go within 2 metres of anyone and had to stay in your home except on trips to Tesco's etc.? Stupid question? Sure. But if there's no answer to it then "woke" doesn't exist - at least not on the major historical questions of the day.
    Woke seemed pretty keen on that, as I recall.
    Twitter and facebook certainly seemed pretty keen on censoring any alternative views.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,152

    Anyone expecting CPI to go below 9% tomorrow?

    Yes I am - all indicators are pointing to it. 8.7 I think. 🙂

    That’s still a high rate of continued increase in prices though. Strikes are not going away, but government not in any position to settle them, and that in turn hits NHS promises.

    Inflation Down to 5 by eoy maybe, and then down to 2 before next years general election, no chance. And the longer it stays as a player, and I would call 4% in play, is bad news for UK debt not just cost of living crisis and income erosion, nest egg erosion, and personal borrowing and debt, it’s doing all that on macro level too.

    Lady Thatcher used recession and money tightening to kill off the scourge of inflation, so unexpected growth and avoiding recession might not be such a good thing this year if it comes with sticky inflation, government debt problems, longer fiscal tightening, and I personally think but not reading it anywhere, threat of property price and stock price corrections.

    Politically, Pre election tax cutting would look awful when there’s debt to be cleared first.

    Fun fact - did you know Hunt had a say in the wording IMF said about us today? “Clear debt before cutting taxes” might even have been a line he put in.
    Absolutely no chance 2% before next GE. More chance of Watford going unbeaten next season.

    Could KEIR be on for unprecedented LAB 300 majority? Even broad centre moderate CON supporters like me are not happy with the government at the moment.

    Still Ashes soon we will give it a go. Good to see positive outlook in England camp. I have raised concerns over our slow scoring in tests for decades and we are now addressing it. AUS have lots of top players and it will be really tough but I think we can win 3-2 👍.

  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    edited May 2023

    Ratters said:

    ping said:

    I notice Gilt yields are continuing to creep up….

    Yes. You can now lock into a return of inflation +1% over 20 years by just buying an inflation-linked government bond.

    Some of the rise in yields takes its lead from the US, but the cost of UK borrowing is rising much quicker again.

    There is a lot of gilt issuance this year, and there is some concern that UK DB pension funds don't need to buy much more, the Bank of England is selling rather than buying and other investors aren't of the same scale.

    The period of cheap government borrowing may be at its end. That will make politics tricker.
    No chance of interest rates falling below 4.5% until 2025+. We are entering into the era of reverse low rates ie possibly real interest rates 2025+.
    We've been through a strange period of commodity price shocks and currency devaluation. Inflation could come right down in the medium term.
    Alternatively, if it’s a period of instability, up one minute, down the next, up again, for both inflation and growth, I’m pretty sure no government budget, BOE or IMF report will ever accurately forecast such a period of up and down instability. But such periods do happen.

    One of the lessons to be learned here is how the shocks to the system, covid in particular, and everything to do with rebooting the world economy, was so hopelessly forecasted.

    I think bankers and civil servants lack imagination, that’s their Achilles Heel responsible for so many rubbish forecasts.
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    "STEM" is an ideology. It's not an object like a mountain. It became widespread about 20 years ago and is based on wrong ideas about education.

    Clue: question stuff.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
    Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward.
    Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
    And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
    And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.

    *Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
    This is the view that 'gender' (as something separate to biological sex) is a nonsense and therefore 'transgender' people don't really exist. Their whole identity is a self-deluding sham. You say we all know this but in fact it's quite an extreme reactionary view. Although it is held more widely than the other extreme of believing gender identity is paramount and biological sex a matter of next to zero importance.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
    Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward.
    Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
    And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
    And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.

    *Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
    Not so. 'Gender' was a term (borrowed from grammar) introduced by anthropologists in the 1970s to distinguish those (and they were observed throughout the world and throughout cultures) whose psychological assessment of themselves as a man or a woman within that culture differed from what the culture itself dictated on purely biological terms. So sex/gender is quite a useful distinction, and there's nothing remotely new here.

    But Cookie's essential point is right. Until about a decade ago everyone accepted that babies were born girls or boys, depending on the tackle - apart from a vanishingly tiny number of hermaphrodites or whatever

    Now suddenly babies can be any of 189 "genders" and just because you have a penis does not mean you are a "boy". What?? Where did that idea come from?

    To most people it sounds mad yet this is now, abruptly, the correct opinion to have

    Like @Cookie I am genuinely intrigued as to the provenance of this ideology and how it has advanced with such stunning speed in the face of common sense
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    edited May 2023

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    I'm inclined to think the internet has opened up a very large range of information to people which means we have a corresponding diversity of modes of thinking. IQ tests are an old technology and perhaps measuring proxies for intelligence instead of intelligence itself. Cultural proxies are useful in times of cultural stability, but can mislead at other times.

    To use a tortured analogy, it's like trying to measure the horsepower of an engine by measuring how loud it is. Could be a pretty useful proxy, until the electric car turns up and buggers everything up. And if you fail to account for an underlying change, you end up publishing "cars are getting less powerful!" and looking like a twat when someone later works out what you did wrong.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,231
    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines. Recall and assessment is done by Google, research by Twitter. There's a philosophical concept called a p-zombie, a person whose every word and reaction is a conditioned reflex and consciousness is entirely absent: the human equivalent of a Chinese Room. The more we subcontract our thinking to machines, the more...absent we become. Asking an AI what your thoughts are is philosophical suicide.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415

    Anyone expecting CPI to go below 9% tomorrow?

    Yes I am - all indicators are pointing to it. 8.7 I think. 🙂

    That’s still a high rate of continued increase in prices though. Strikes are not going away, but government not in any position to settle them, and that in turn hits NHS promises.

    Inflation Down to 5 by eoy maybe, and then down to 2 before next years general election, no chance. And the longer it stays as a player, and I would call 4% in play, is bad news for UK debt not just cost of living crisis and income erosion, nest egg erosion, and personal borrowing and debt, it’s doing all that on macro level too.

    Lady Thatcher used recession and money tightening to kill off the scourge of inflation, so unexpected growth and avoiding recession might not be such a good thing this year if it comes with sticky inflation, government debt problems, longer fiscal tightening, and I personally think but not reading it anywhere, threat of property price and stock price corrections.

    Politically, Pre election tax cutting would look awful when there’s debt to be cleared first.

    Fun fact - did you know Hunt had a say in the wording IMF said about us today? “Clear debt before cutting taxes” might even have been a line he put in.
    Absolutely no chance 2% before next GE. More chance of Watford going unbeaten next season.

    Could KEIR be on for unprecedented LAB 300 majority? Even broad centre moderate CON supporters like me are not happy with the government at the moment.

    Still Ashes soon we will give it a go. Good to see positive outlook in England camp. I have raised concerns over our slow scoring in tests for decades and we are now addressing it. AUS have lots of top players and it will be really tough but I think we can win 3-2 👍.

    My dad said it’s good the Ashes are back in the middle of summer this time, not crammed into the back end of summer into dodgy September weather. The warm up test against Ireland is a week on Friday. First test is in June.

    3.2 is a bravely accurate call. I would give it to Australia by a margin of two tests. England would need a good run of fitness and form to make it ultra competitive. Shame about Archer, and Anderson’s and Stokes injuries too.
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426
    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
    Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward.
    Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
    And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
    And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.

    *Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
    This is the view that 'gender' (as something separate to biological sex) is a nonsense and therefore 'transgender' people don't really exist. Their whole identity is a self-deluding sham. You say we all know this but in fact it's quite an extreme reactionary view. Although it is held more widely than the other extreme of believing gender identity is paramount and biological sex a matter of next to zero importance.
    Reactionary means opposed to progressive reform in such a way as to push things in the other direction. There's nothing progressive about believing a bloke who thinks he's a girlie has a right to be called a girlie.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines. Recall and assessment is done by Google, research by Twitter. There's a philosophical concept called a p-zombie, a person whose every word and reaction is a conditioned reflex and consciousness is entirely absent: the human equivalent of a Chinese Room. The more we subcontract our thinking to machines, the more...absent we become. Asking an AI what your thoughts are is philosophical suicide.
    I wonder if the apparent intelligence of GPT4 and Bing (before they were nerfed) proves that humans are p-zombies. Free Will is an illusion. We are simply autocomplete machines, with a sequence of reflex reactions

    If that is the case then an AI based on autocomplete will very easily appear human - then superhuman - once it masters language, which it is doing
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines. Recall and assessment is done by Google, research by Twitter. There's a philosophical concept called a p-zombie, a person whose every word and reaction is a conditioned reflex and consciousness is entirely absent: the human equivalent of a Chinese Room. The more we subcontract our thinking to machines, the more...absent we become. Asking an AI what your thoughts are is philosophical suicide.
    Certainly my IQ has dropped in recent years. I think it's because I'm less tolerant of stress as I age and thinking is stressful.
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426
    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    I'm inclined to think the internet has opened up a very large range of information to people which means we have a corresponding diversity of modes of thinking. IQ tests are an old technology and perhaps measuring proxies for intelligence instead of intelligence itself. Cultural proxies are useful in times of cultural stability, but can mislead at other times.

    To use a tortured analogy, it's like trying to measure the horsepower of an engine by measuring how loud it is. Could be a pretty useful proxy, until the electric car turns up and buggers everything up. And if you fail to account for an underlying change, you end up publishing "cars are getting less powerful!" and looking like a twat when someone later works out what you did wrong.
    IQ is total crap, but the above is a totally crap and confused critique of it. Try this: there is no such thing as "general intelligence", therefore such a thing is not normally distributed, and it is not differentially inherited either.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
    Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward.
    Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
    And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
    And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.

    *Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
    This is the view that 'gender' (as something separate to biological sex) is a nonsense and therefore 'transgender' people don't really exist. Their whole identity is a self-deluding sham. You say we all know this but in fact it's quite an extreme reactionary view. Although it is held more widely than the other extreme of believing gender identity is paramount and biological sex a matter of next to zero importance.
    I don't think you can really call it an extreme reactionary view when this view was almost unquestioned about 15 years ago.
    Even today, I think this is what the majority of people think.

    I no more think you can be a man in a woman's body than you can be a bear in a human's body. (And there are people who believe this about themselves, too, though they don't tend to go having medical intervention to make the physical reality match the mental reality).

    Why should, say, a girl have to change her sex if she doesn't like doing stereotypically girly things? Why not just let her play in the mud/take an obsessive interest in fighter planes/drink 15 pints and assault a policeman? This ideology is weird, and I don't believe more than a fringe few sincerely believe in it.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork

    "IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576

    "An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."

    "People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
    And that article contradicts the one about the Northwestern University study that claimed American IQs were going down. Your second article claims the problem has not been observed in the US. Notably, the period studied in the first ends (2018) before the second article was published (2019). So it sounds like not a lot of people are looking at this, or the "OMG IQs are dropping!" studies are cherry-picked from a range of studies saying different things.

    Even if all these doubts can be made to go away and you really do think that IQ tests are getting lower scores, so what? We all know IQ tests are seriously limited.

    And even if you want to say, "no, it still means something," then your inference that didacticism in art is the diabolical result of this stupidification is... well, stupid. Art has been didactic from the time that art crawled out of the cave. Art has always been a vehicle for expressing view not just of beauty but of right and wrong. When Wilde wrote that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
    Books are well written, or badly written.
    he was leaving out an important truth: artists pour their moral views into the pages or canvases they work on. From Plato to Murdoch, from van Gogh to Beremboim, art communicates perspectives of right and wrong. It's nothing new.
    The more recent article references a more recent study, in America: a study which now confirms the trends identified in the older article - which talks of these trends being observed outside America. This is not hard to work out

    What is new in art is the passivity of the consumer, the gallery goer. Content to be spoon fed trite opinions they already know by heart, anyway. Absolute hallmark of intellectual mediocrity

    I don't believe Tate Britain would have got away with this dreary box-ticking bullshit in a more creatively vigorous and philosophically combative era. Like, say, the 1990s
    Apparently it is hard (for you) to work out. You've just touched on exactly the point without realising it. The earlier article (2019) claims this is not yet an American phenomenon. The later article says a study (2006-18) it is also an American phenomenon.
    Now I can excuse the 2019 article not being aware of the 2006-18 study. I suspect it wasn't yet published. But that means that other studies for similar periods had not picked up on this, or that there WERE no studies covering similar periods. Which means either: cherry picking or paucity of evidence.

    You're putting way too much stock in something that is dubious if real, and possibly not even real. You only like it because your personal bias is towards alarmism and drama, and your ideology is to hype decline and degeneracy.
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426
    edited May 2023
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
    Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward.
    Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
    And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
    And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.

    *Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
    This is the view that 'gender' (as something separate to biological sex) is a nonsense and therefore 'transgender' people don't really exist. Their whole identity is a self-deluding sham. You say we all know this but in fact it's quite an extreme reactionary view. Although it is held more widely than the other extreme of believing gender identity is paramount and biological sex a matter of next to zero importance.
    I don't think you can really call it an extreme reactionary view when this view was almost unquestioned about 15 years ago.
    Even today, I think this is what the majority of people think.

    I no more think you can be a man in a woman's body than you can be a bear in a human's body. (And there are people who believe this about themselves, too, though they don't tend to go having medical intervention to make the physical reality match the mental reality).

    Why should, say, a girl have to change her sex if she doesn't like doing stereotypically girly things? Why not just let her play in the mud/take an obsessive interest in fighter planes/drink 15 pints and assault a policeman? This ideology is weird, and I don't believe more than a fringe few sincerely believe in it.
    It's like under Stalin when there were meetings at which loyal party members were afraid to stop clapping for fear of the secret police and they clapped and clapped until the leaders on the stage said okay, that's enough. Anyone with a todger down his pants is a bloke. I couldn't give a toss whether he thinks otherwise, except insofar as he needs psychological help and he should get it if he realises he needs it. If he's got a crazy view that he's really a girlie then it ain't a valid view.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    Anyone expecting CPI to go below 9% tomorrow?

    Yes I am - all indicators are pointing to it. 8.7 I think. 🙂

    That’s still a high rate of continued increase in prices though. Strikes are not going away, but government not in any position to settle them, and that in turn hits NHS promises.

    Inflation Down to 5 by eoy maybe, and then down to 2 before next years general election, no chance. And the longer it stays as a player, and I would call 4% in play, is bad news for UK debt not just cost of living crisis and income erosion, nest egg erosion, and personal borrowing and debt, it’s doing all that on macro level too.

    Lady Thatcher used recession and money tightening to kill off the scourge of inflation, so unexpected growth and avoiding recession might not be such a good thing this year if it comes with sticky inflation, government debt problems, longer fiscal tightening, and I personally think but not reading it anywhere, threat of property price and stock price corrections.

    Politically, Pre election tax cutting would look awful when there’s debt to be cleared first.

    Fun fact - did you know Hunt had a say in the wording IMF said about us today? “Clear debt before cutting taxes” might even have been a line he put in.
    Absolutely no chance 2% before next GE. More chance of Watford going unbeaten next season.

    Could KEIR be on for unprecedented LAB 300 majority? Even broad centre moderate CON supporters like me are not happy with the government at the moment.

    Still Ashes soon we will give it a go. Good to see positive outlook in England camp. I have raised concerns over our slow scoring in tests for decades and we are now addressing it. AUS have lots of top players and it will be really tough but I think we can win 3-2 👍.

    My dad said it’s good the Ashes are back in the middle of summer this time, not crammed into the back end of summer into dodgy September weather. The warm up test against Ireland is a week on Friday. First test is in June.

    3.2 is a bravely accurate call. I would give it to Australia by a margin of two tests. England would need a good run of fitness and form to make it ultra competitive. Shame about Archer, and Anderson’s and Stokes injuries too.
    Can't disagree with much of that. Though I don't see Archer as a test match bowler, tbf. His short spells are just too short. Fun to watch, but not, in my opinion, a massive loss for England. Anderson and Stokes are of more concern (though surely the fact that Anderson is still bowling at all is remarkable.)
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    edited May 2023
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork

    "IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576

    "An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."

    "People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
    And that article contradicts the one about the Northwestern University study that claimed American IQs were going down. Your second article claims the problem has not been observed in the US. Notably, the period studied in the first ends (2018) before the second article was published (2019). So it sounds like not a lot of people are looking at this, or the "OMG IQs are dropping!" studies are cherry-picked from a range of studies saying different things.

    Even if all these doubts can be made to go away and you really do think that IQ tests are getting lower scores, so what? We all know IQ tests are seriously limited.

    And even if you want to say, "no, it still means something," then your inference that didacticism in art is the diabolical result of this stupidification is... well, stupid. Art has been didactic from the time that art crawled out of the cave. Art has always been a vehicle for expressing view not just of beauty but of right and wrong. When Wilde wrote that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
    Books are well written, or badly written.
    he was leaving out an important truth: artists pour their moral views into the pages or canvases they work on. From Plato to Murdoch, from van Gogh to Beremboim, art communicates perspectives of right and wrong. It's nothing new.
    The more recent article references a more recent study, in America: a study which now confirms the trends identified in the older article - which talks of these trends being observed outside America. This is not hard to work out

    What is new in art is the passivity of the consumer, the gallery goer. Content to be spoon fed trite opinions they already know by heart, anyway. Absolute hallmark of intellectual mediocrity

    I don't believe Tate Britain would have got away with this dreary box-ticking bullshit in a more creatively vigorous and philosophically combative era. Like, say, the 1990s
    Apparently it is hard (for you) to work out. You've just touched on exactly the point without realising it. The earlier article (2019) claims this is not yet an American phenomenon. The later article says a study (2006-18) it is also an American phenomenon.
    Now I can excuse the 2019 article not being aware of the 2006-18 study. I suspect it wasn't yet published. But that means that other studies for similar periods had not picked up on this, or that there WERE no studies covering similar periods. Which means either: cherry picking or paucity of evidence.

    You're putting way too much stock in something that is dubious if real, and possibly not even real. You only like it because your personal bias is towards alarmism and drama, and your ideology is to hype decline and degeneracy.
    Jesus F Christ. The recent study is of various American IQ scores from 2006 to 2018 and was only published this May-June in the journal Intelligence. See here:


    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156

    "Intelligence
    Volume 98, May–June 2023, 101734
    Intelligence
    Looking for Flynn effects in a recent online U.S. adult sample: Examining shifts within the SAPA Project"

    Given that it has just been published in May 2023 it is unsurprising it is not mentioned in an article written in 2019


    As for your claim there are no other studies:

    "Mirroring these estimates, research and meta-analyses over the last two decades suggest that the Flynn effect had already stagnated or begun to reverse. In a meta-analysis examining IQ scores across 31 countries from 1909 to 2013, Pietschnig and Voracek (2015) found that the magnitude of higher IQ scores observed for newer cohorts has declined. Dutton and Lynn (2013) found Finnish IQ scores had differed −2.0 IQ points (0.13 SD) from 1997 to 2009, while French IQ scores differed −3.8 IQ points (0.25 SD) from 1999 to 2009 (Dutton and Lynn, 2015); for these studies, more recent samples had lower IQ scores than previous samples. In a meta-analysis examining nine original studies that observed a reverse Flynn effect, differences ranged between −0.38 IQ points (0.03 SD) and −4.3 IQ points (0.29 SD) per decade (Dutton, van der Linden, and Lynn, 2016). Recent evidence within German-speaking countries, also suggests that the magnitude of higher visual-spatial ability scores in newer cohorts could be declining across certain regions of Europe (Pietschnig and Gittler, 2015)."

    And so on, and so forth
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    Completely OT.

    Just got back from the cinema where I had the absolute delight of watching Local Hero on its 40th anniversary release. Still a stunningly great film with magical performances, a brilliant script and one of the best soundtracks in cinema history.

    If it didn't make me feel so damn old it would be perfect.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,231
    edited May 2023



    Westie said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    "STEM" is an ideology. It's not an object like a mountain. It became widespread about 20 years ago and is based on wrong ideas about education.

    Clue: question stuff.
    STEM graduates are obviously highly intelligent and far smarter than law, humanities and arts people. And surprisingly modest in a fetching manner, combined with devastating attractiveness. And with enormous [that's enough - Ed]
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Westie said:

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    I'm inclined to think the internet has opened up a very large range of information to people which means we have a corresponding diversity of modes of thinking. IQ tests are an old technology and perhaps measuring proxies for intelligence instead of intelligence itself. Cultural proxies are useful in times of cultural stability, but can mislead at other times.

    To use a tortured analogy, it's like trying to measure the horsepower of an engine by measuring how loud it is. Could be a pretty useful proxy, until the electric car turns up and buggers everything up. And if you fail to account for an underlying change, you end up publishing "cars are getting less powerful!" and looking like a twat when someone later works out what you did wrong.
    IQ is total crap, but the above is a totally crap and confused critique of it. Try this: there is no such thing as "general intelligence", therefore such a thing is not normally distributed, and it is not differentially inherited either.
    Yes, well, I accept there might not be such a thing as general intelligence.
    I was soft-pedalling the criticism of IQ tests by not critiquing the underlying idea of general intelligence because honestly I've written a fucking essay's worth in the last half an hour and I doubt many people are even bothering to read. So yes, I accept the concept itself is extremely dubious.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415
    Farooq said:

    FF43 said:

    An article from the year 2000 about suella fernandes, president of the cambridge university conservative association, who was accused of vote rigging and responded with a reassuring “you can’t prove anything”



    https://twitter.com/alexandrakuri/status/1660967887669010435

    Am I posting in an old thread?
    Every thread is exactly the same as all the others. I'm surprised you haven't noticed this before.

    . .
  • WestieWestie Posts: 426
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines
    Westie said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    "STEM" is an ideology. It's not an object like a mountain. It became widespread about 20 years ago and is based on wrong ideas about education.

    Clue: question stuff.
    STEM graduates are obviously highly intelligent and far smarter than law, humanities and arts people. And surprisingly modest in a fetching manner, combined with devastating attractiveness. And with enormous [that's enough - Ed]
    STEM is still an ideology. Why not put pure maths in with poetry? Whatever it is, it's not a science.
  • CorrectHorseBatCorrectHorseBat Posts: 1,761
    This is a party so clearly out of ideas.

    Call a general election.
  • CorrectHorseBatCorrectHorseBat Posts: 1,761
    edited May 2023
    Leon has an IQ of 0. Weird for him to get on the train
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    OK let's call this a wrap

    Me and @Cookie are right about everything and the rest of you are weirdos or halfwits

    Sorted! Goodnight and peace to all
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork

    "IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576

    "An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."

    "People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
    And that article contradicts the one about the Northwestern University study that claimed American IQs were going down. Your second article claims the problem has not been observed in the US. Notably, the period studied in the first ends (2018) before the second article was published (2019). So it sounds like not a lot of people are looking at this, or the "OMG IQs are dropping!" studies are cherry-picked from a range of studies saying different things.

    Even if all these doubts can be made to go away and you really do think that IQ tests are getting lower scores, so what? We all know IQ tests are seriously limited.

    And even if you want to say, "no, it still means something," then your inference that didacticism in art is the diabolical result of this stupidification is... well, stupid. Art has been didactic from the time that art crawled out of the cave. Art has always been a vehicle for expressing view not just of beauty but of right and wrong. When Wilde wrote that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
    Books are well written, or badly written.
    he was leaving out an important truth: artists pour their moral views into the pages or canvases they work on. From Plato to Murdoch, from van Gogh to Beremboim, art communicates perspectives of right and wrong. It's nothing new.
    The more recent article references a more recent study, in America: a study which now confirms the trends identified in the older article - which talks of these trends being observed outside America. This is not hard to work out

    What is new in art is the passivity of the consumer, the gallery goer. Content to be spoon fed trite opinions they already know by heart, anyway. Absolute hallmark of intellectual mediocrity

    I don't believe Tate Britain would have got away with this dreary box-ticking bullshit in a more creatively vigorous and philosophically combative era. Like, say, the 1990s
    Apparently it is hard (for you) to work out. You've just touched on exactly the point without realising it. The earlier article (2019) claims this is not yet an American phenomenon. The later article says a study (2006-18) it is also an American phenomenon.
    Now I can excuse the 2019 article not being aware of the 2006-18 study. I suspect it wasn't yet published. But that means that other studies for similar periods had not picked up on this, or that there WERE no studies covering similar periods. Which means either: cherry picking or paucity of evidence.

    You're putting way too much stock in something that is dubious if real, and possibly not even real. You only like it because your personal bias is towards alarmism and drama, and your ideology is to hype decline and degeneracy.
    Jesus F Christ. The recent study is of various American IQ scores from 2006 to 2018 and was only published this May-June in the journal Intelligence. See here:


    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156

    "Intelligence
    Volume 98, May–June 2023, 101734
    Intelligence
    Looking for Flynn effects in a recent online U.S. adult sample: Examining shifts within the SAPA Project"

    Given that it has just been published in May 2023 it is unsurprising it is not mentioned in an article written in 2019


    As for your claim there are no other studies:

    "Mirroring these estimates, research and meta-analyses over the last two decades suggest that the Flynn effect had already stagnated or begun to reverse. In a meta-analysis examining IQ scores across 31 countries from 1909 to 2013, Pietschnig and Voracek (2015) found that the magnitude of higher IQ scores observed for newer cohorts has declined. Dutton and Lynn (2013) found Finnish IQ scores had differed −2.0 IQ points (0.13 SD) from 1997 to 2009, while French IQ scores differed −3.8 IQ points (0.25 SD) from 1999 to 2009 (Dutton and Lynn, 2015); for these studies, more recent samples had lower IQ scores than previous samples. In a meta-analysis examining nine original studies that observed a reverse Flynn effect, differences ranged between −0.38 IQ points (0.03 SD) and −4.3 IQ points (0.29 SD) per decade (Dutton, van der Linden, and Lynn, 2016). Recent evidence within German-speaking countries, also suggests that the magnitude of higher visual-spatial ability scores in newer cohorts could be declining across certain regions of Europe (Pietschnig and Gittler, 2015)."

    And so on, and so forth
    Yes, why are you finding it so hard to understand this? The American study wasn't published (a possibility I acknowledged) meaning the earlier article made a statement that is later contradicted [this phenomenon hasn't been seen in America].
    You can't contradict that by throwing a whole bunch of, let's see... Finland... France... German-speaking... Europe at the problem.

    The two articles contradict one another. That calls into question the reliability of the narrative.

    You need to learn to think a little more critically about these things.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Leon said:

    OK let's call this a wrap

    Me and @Cookie are right about everything and the rest of you are weirdos or halfwits

    Sorted! Goodnight and peace to all

    I've always thought of myself as both
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,851
    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    Farooq said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Why do politicians keep being asked about penises?

    Can't we mature the debate a bit?

    Because politicians keep saying that women have them.
    They keep being ASKED if they do, Ed Davey didn't bring it up.

    How would you field this question? How would you feel if you were a trans person who really felt they were a woman with the way they are talked about? Why can't we have a more mature conversation and look at this with some kindness and sympathy.
    Davey (and Starmer) knows he’s going to be asked the question, and has known for years that he’ll be asked the question.

    Yet he still doesn’t have anything close to a coherent answer on the subject.

    If and when he has a straight answer, the line of questioning would stop.
    I’ve some sympathy for them. It’s a hideously divisive and thorny topic. But then it’s their own mad woke identity politics that have led them here so that sympathy is limited
    It's not really, though, is it?

    Women don't have penises.
    Sir Ed Davey assured me on Nick Ferrari's show that they do. So who do I believe you or Ed Davey? A Knight of the Realm or some herbert who posts on PB.
    One the sauce tonight? Why are you talking shite or are you on a wind up?
    No I don't really drink. Davey has made a nuanced case.

    I do accept concerns with women only spaces and that needs to be addressed.

    Fair play to Davey he answered the question directly. Something that Ferrari reminded us Starmer couldn't bring himself so to do.
    There aren't really nuances though, are there?

    Granted, some unfortunate men might not have a penis. They might have lost it in an unfortunate accident.
    But no women have penises.
    Men who are planning to undergo a sex change have a penis. But they're not women until they get it removed - i.e. have the operation. They might be 'living as women'. But they aren't women.
    Come on, we all know this is true. It might make some men sad to tell them they're not actually women. But that doesn't change the truth of it.
    None of this would have been at all controversial 12 years ago. What has changed?
    In terms of legally defined gender, there are women with penises and men with uteri. That's because you can change your legal gender without having surgery.

    So yes, men can have uteri and women can have penises. Don't like that? Get the law changed. Til then, tough luck.
    You could make a law declaring the sky to be green or abolishing the law of gravity. Wouldn't make it true though.
    Not a good comparison because those are factual matters. There is no agreed truth governing the relationship of gender to biological sex.
    Yes, but there was complete consensus until about 15 years ago, and there only is any ambiguity at all, I strongly suspect, because of some weird academics trying to be awkward.
    Basically gender = sex. Gender was a word for people too squeamish or polite to use the word 'sex'. There was an agreed truth that your gender was your sex. You could behave how you wanted, but, if you had a penis, you were a man; if you didn't, barring accidents, you were a woman.
    And then - let's be charitable, and say that it was to make those few people on the path to changing sex but not actually there yet - some sort of ambiguity was introduced.*
    And somehow this concept was introduced that you have a gender separate from your sex which is somehow innate and only you can know what it is. But it's nonsense, isn't it? We all KNOW it's nonsense. Don't we? We've tiptoed around the issue so as not to cause offence, but there is no such thing as gender, apart from biological sex. And you can choose whichever way to behave you want; you can like fighting or sewing or football or crafts or musical theatre or crawling through mud and firing machine guns. But that isn't gender, that's personality.

    *Why? Fuck knows. To increase book sales? Some Chinese plot to destabilise the west? Because sex-change clinics are very profitable? Because it will annoy people? Because some people like being victims? Because people need a tribe to belong to and no-one is interested in what sort of music you like any more?
    This is the view that 'gender' (as something separate to biological sex) is a nonsense and therefore 'transgender' people don't really exist. Their whole identity is a self-deluding sham. You say we all know this but in fact it's quite an extreme reactionary view. Although it is held more widely than the other extreme of believing gender identity is paramount and biological sex a matter of next to zero importance.
    I don't think you can really call it an extreme reactionary view when this view was almost unquestioned about 15 years ago.
    Even today, I think this is what the majority of people think.

    I no more think you can be a man in a woman's body than you can be a bear in a human's body. (And there are people who believe this about themselves, too, though they don't tend to go having medical intervention to make the physical reality match the mental reality).

    Why should, say, a girl have to change her sex if she doesn't like doing stereotypically girly things? Why not just let her play in the mud/take an obsessive interest in fighter planes/drink 15 pints and assault a policeman? This ideology is weird, and I don't believe more than a fringe few sincerely believe in it.
    I don't know where you're getting all this from. The girl in your example does not have to change her sex. Or gender for that matter. But she might. It's neither compulsory nor forbidden. Why should it be if we aspire to be a free and tolerant country?

    Transgender people have existed for a long long time and since 2004 have been legally recognized in the UK and granted certain rights. Saying it's all bollox IS an extreme and reactionary position to take. Of course it is.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    The evidence of Reverse Flynn is plentiful, around the western world. It's not "one article", you gormless dork

    "IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity"

    https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576

    "An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy."

    "People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline."
    And that article contradicts the one about the Northwestern University study that claimed American IQs were going down. Your second article claims the problem has not been observed in the US. Notably, the period studied in the first ends (2018) before the second article was published (2019). So it sounds like not a lot of people are looking at this, or the "OMG IQs are dropping!" studies are cherry-picked from a range of studies saying different things.

    Even if all these doubts can be made to go away and you really do think that IQ tests are getting lower scores, so what? We all know IQ tests are seriously limited.

    And even if you want to say, "no, it still means something," then your inference that didacticism in art is the diabolical result of this stupidification is... well, stupid. Art has been didactic from the time that art crawled out of the cave. Art has always been a vehicle for expressing view not just of beauty but of right and wrong. When Wilde wrote that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
    Books are well written, or badly written.
    he was leaving out an important truth: artists pour their moral views into the pages or canvases they work on. From Plato to Murdoch, from van Gogh to Beremboim, art communicates perspectives of right and wrong. It's nothing new.
    The more recent article references a more recent study, in America: a study which now confirms the trends identified in the older article - which talks of these trends being observed outside America. This is not hard to work out

    What is new in art is the passivity of the consumer, the gallery goer. Content to be spoon fed trite opinions they already know by heart, anyway. Absolute hallmark of intellectual mediocrity

    I don't believe Tate Britain would have got away with this dreary box-ticking bullshit in a more creatively vigorous and philosophically combative era. Like, say, the 1990s
    Apparently it is hard (for you) to work out. You've just touched on exactly the point without realising it. The earlier article (2019) claims this is not yet an American phenomenon. The later article says a study (2006-18) it is also an American phenomenon.
    Now I can excuse the 2019 article not being aware of the 2006-18 study. I suspect it wasn't yet published. But that means that other studies for similar periods had not picked up on this, or that there WERE no studies covering similar periods. Which means either: cherry picking or paucity of evidence.

    You're putting way too much stock in something that is dubious if real, and possibly not even real. You only like it because your personal bias is towards alarmism and drama, and your ideology is to hype decline and degeneracy.
    Jesus F Christ. The recent study is of various American IQ scores from 2006 to 2018 and was only published this May-June in the journal Intelligence. See here:


    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156

    "Intelligence
    Volume 98, May–June 2023, 101734
    Intelligence
    Looking for Flynn effects in a recent online U.S. adult sample: Examining shifts within the SAPA Project"

    Given that it has just been published in May 2023 it is unsurprising it is not mentioned in an article written in 2019


    As for your claim there are no other studies:

    "Mirroring these estimates, research and meta-analyses over the last two decades suggest that the Flynn effect had already stagnated or begun to reverse. In a meta-analysis examining IQ scores across 31 countries from 1909 to 2013, Pietschnig and Voracek (2015) found that the magnitude of higher IQ scores observed for newer cohorts has declined. Dutton and Lynn (2013) found Finnish IQ scores had differed −2.0 IQ points (0.13 SD) from 1997 to 2009, while French IQ scores differed −3.8 IQ points (0.25 SD) from 1999 to 2009 (Dutton and Lynn, 2015); for these studies, more recent samples had lower IQ scores than previous samples. In a meta-analysis examining nine original studies that observed a reverse Flynn effect, differences ranged between −0.38 IQ points (0.03 SD) and −4.3 IQ points (0.29 SD) per decade (Dutton, van der Linden, and Lynn, 2016). Recent evidence within German-speaking countries, also suggests that the magnitude of higher visual-spatial ability scores in newer cohorts could be declining across certain regions of Europe (Pietschnig and Gittler, 2015)."

    And so on, and so forth
    Yes, why are you finding it so hard to understand this? The American study wasn't published (a possibility I acknowledged) meaning the earlier article made a statement that is later contradicted [this phenomenon hasn't been seen in America].
    You can't contradict that by throwing a whole bunch of, let's see... Finland... France... German-speaking... Europe at the problem.

    The two articles contradict one another. That calls into question the reliability of the narrative.

    You need to learn to think a little more critically about these things.
    They don't contradict. The 2019 article says the Reverse Flynn Effect has been seen around the world but not in the USA as of YET, the 2023 article says Hey actually we just found it in the USA as well

    You're welcome
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,231
    edited May 2023
    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?


    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on

    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines. Recall and assessment is done by Google, research by Twitter. There's a philosophical concept called a p-zombie, a person whose every word and reaction is a conditioned reflex and consciousness is entirely absent: the human equivalent of a Chinese Room. The more we subcontract our thinking to machines, the more...absent we become. Asking an AI what your thoughts are is philosophical suicide.
    I wonder if the apparent intelligence of GPT4 and Bing (before they were nerfed) proves that humans are p-zombies. Free Will is an illusion. We are simply autocomplete machines, with a sequence of reflex reactions

    If that is the case then an AI based on autocomplete will very easily appear human - then superhuman - once it masters language, which it is doing
    The question on whether a person has a soul is distinct from whether that person's soul is in the driving seat. I know there is a "me", but the degree to which my thoughts and actions are driven by me or merely observed by me is difficult to tease out. I hope I am not a reality-trained machine-learning neural network housed on jelly hardware with the consistency of firm blancmange, constantly updating an autocomplete response model, but I don't know how to prove it. I certainly found it easy to empathise with the AI text reproduced on PB. Perhaps in the end Dick was right: the only way to distinguish the people from the machines is empathy
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 6,760
    Nigelb said:

    Having had Covid doubles the risk of Type 1 diabetes in children.

    https://twitter.com/michael_hoerger/status/1660731088761761795

    Firstly it’s a 1.8x increase not “doubling”. Secondly the p-value is only 0.004 so marginally significant

    Plus there were weaknesses noted in the data collection if you read the comments

    And the absolute risk is still low
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 18,231
    [I'm on the tablet and so cannot easily delete large blocks of text. Apologies for any text walls.]
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines
    Leon said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines. Recall and assessment is done by Google, research by Twitter. There's a philosophical concept called a p-zombie, a person whose every word and reaction is a conditioned reflex and consciousness is entirely absent: the human equivalent of a Chinese Room. The more we subcontract our thinking to machines, the more...absent we become. Asking an AI what your thoughts are is philosophical suicide.
    I wonder if the apparent intelligence of GPT4 and Bing (before they were nerfed) proves that humans are p-zombies. Free Will is an illusion. We are simply autocomplete machines, with a sequence of reflex reactions

    If that is the case then an AI based on autocomplete will very easily appear human - then superhuman - once it masters language, which it is doing
    The question on whether a person has a soul is distinct from whether that person's soul is in the driving seat. I know there is a "me", but the degree to which my thoughts and actions are driven by me or merely observed by me is difficult to tease out. I hope I am not a reality-trained machine-learning neural network housed on jelly hardware with the consistency of firm blancmange, constantly updating an autocomplete response model, but I don't know how to prove it. I certainly found it easy to empathise with the AI text reproduced on PB. Perhaps in the end Dick was right: the only way to distinguish the people from the machines is empathy
    We won't be able to distinguish between them, I fear

    And yes, we cannot "know" if we are reflexive zombies or soulful creatures of the wild
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    This is awful;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65691643

    I don’t recall reading it, on the bbc website when it happened. There is an article, available through search, on the day after.

    Must have been buried somewhere insignificant.

    This is what happens when that family have editorial control over our BBC.

    Nasty fuckers.

    RIP. In a saner world she’d still be alive.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    Completely OT.

    Just got back from the cinema where I had the absolute delight of watching Local Hero on its 40th anniversary release. Still a stunningly great film with magical performances, a brilliant script and one of the best soundtracks in cinema history.

    If it didn't make me feel so damn old it would be perfect.

    Oh, lovely. That's definitely one of my top three favourite films.
    The ending always makes me cry. It's not immediately obvious why, because the themes are not necessarily obvious; but I think it's because the themes are of home, and of belonging; themes which are hard wired into most of us in a way we find hard to articulate, but we recognise.

    It's also so beautifully understated. No great shouting or set-tos. And therefore much more relatable.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Cookie said:

    Completely OT.

    Just got back from the cinema where I had the absolute delight of watching Local Hero on its 40th anniversary release. Still a stunningly great film with magical performances, a brilliant script and one of the best soundtracks in cinema history.

    If it didn't make me feel so damn old it would be perfect.

    Oh, lovely. That's definitely one of my top three favourite films.
    The ending always makes me cry. It's not immediately obvious why, because the themes are not necessarily obvious; but I think it's because the themes are of home, and of belonging; themes which are hard wired into most of us in a way we find hard to articulate, but we recognise.

    It's also so beautifully understated. No great shouting or set-tos. And therefore much more relatable.
    The only problem with the film is that it ends rather abruptly. You expect it to go on for another 30 minutes or so.
  • Richard_TyndallRichard_Tyndall Posts: 30,846
    Cookie said:

    Completely OT.

    Just got back from the cinema where I had the absolute delight of watching Local Hero on its 40th anniversary release. Still a stunningly great film with magical performances, a brilliant script and one of the best soundtracks in cinema history.

    If it didn't make me feel so damn old it would be perfect.

    Oh, lovely. That's definitely one of my top three favourite films.
    The ending always makes me cry. It's not immediately obvious why, because the themes are not necessarily obvious; but I think it's because the themes are of home, and of belonging; themes which are hard wired into most of us in a way we find hard to articulate, but we recognise.

    It's also so beautifully understated. No great shouting or set-tos. And therefore much more relatable.
    Agree with every word of this. It is in my top three as well, along with Bladerunner and Casablanca which also both have that effect on me. The order varies but the three films stay the same.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Westie said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines
    Westie said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    "STEM" is an ideology. It's not an object like a mountain. It became widespread about 20 years ago and is based on wrong ideas about education.

    Clue: question stuff.
    STEM graduates are obviously highly intelligent and far smarter than law, humanities and arts people. And surprisingly modest in a fetching manner, combined with devastating attractiveness. And with enormous [that's enough - Ed]
    STEM is still an ideology. Why not put pure maths in with poetry? Whatever it is, it's not a science.
    Pure maths isn't a science?
    Biology is a specific aspect of chemistry, which is a specific aspect of physics. And physics is just a specific aspect of maths. Physics may be the rules by which this universe operates, but maths is the rules by which every universe operates. Pure maths is the purest science there is.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239

    Cookie said:

    Completely OT.

    Just got back from the cinema where I had the absolute delight of watching Local Hero on its 40th anniversary release. Still a stunningly great film with magical performances, a brilliant script and one of the best soundtracks in cinema history.

    If it didn't make me feel so damn old it would be perfect.

    Oh, lovely. That's definitely one of my top three favourite films.
    The ending always makes me cry. It's not immediately obvious why, because the themes are not necessarily obvious; but I think it's because the themes are of home, and of belonging; themes which are hard wired into most of us in a way we find hard to articulate, but we recognise.

    It's also so beautifully understated. No great shouting or set-tos. And therefore much more relatable.
    Agree with every word of this. It is in my top three as well, along with Bladerunner and Casablanca which also both have that effect on me. The order varies but the three films stay the same.
    La La Land
    Oliver!
    Withnail
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 6,760
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    Come on @MoonRabbit, at least some of the slaves were - presumably - having fun at least some of the time.

    Who's to say that the painter didn't just get lucky?
    How much fun are they going to have with $800bn from California tax payers like you?

  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited May 2023

    Completely OT.

    Just got back from the cinema where I had the absolute delight of watching Local Hero on its 40th anniversary release. Still a stunningly great film with magical performances, a brilliant script and one of the best soundtracks in cinema history.

    If it didn't make me feel so damn old it would be perfect.

    I had no idea this was being rereleased !

    Marvellous film - although I watched it again a couple of weeks ago, will have to go and see it again on the big screen and take a friend.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Completely OT.

    Just got back from the cinema where I had the absolute delight of watching Local Hero on its 40th anniversary release. Still a stunningly great film with magical performances, a brilliant script and one of the best soundtracks in cinema history.

    If it didn't make me feel so damn old it would be perfect.

    Oh, lovely. That's definitely one of my top three favourite films.
    The ending always makes me cry. It's not immediately obvious why, because the themes are not necessarily obvious; but I think it's because the themes are of home, and of belonging; themes which are hard wired into most of us in a way we find hard to articulate, but we recognise.

    It's also so beautifully understated. No great shouting or set-tos. And therefore much more relatable.
    Agree with every word of this. It is in my top three as well, along with Bladerunner and Casablanca which also both have that effect on me. The order varies but the three films stay the same.
    La La Land
    Oliver!
    Withnail
    Local Hero
    24 Hour Party People
    Dodgeball

    Possibly a less cerebral top three than some.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,239
    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Completely OT.

    Just got back from the cinema where I had the absolute delight of watching Local Hero on its 40th anniversary release. Still a stunningly great film with magical performances, a brilliant script and one of the best soundtracks in cinema history.

    If it didn't make me feel so damn old it would be perfect.

    Oh, lovely. That's definitely one of my top three favourite films.
    The ending always makes me cry. It's not immediately obvious why, because the themes are not necessarily obvious; but I think it's because the themes are of home, and of belonging; themes which are hard wired into most of us in a way we find hard to articulate, but we recognise.

    It's also so beautifully understated. No great shouting or set-tos. And therefore much more relatable.
    Agree with every word of this. It is in my top three as well, along with Bladerunner and Casablanca which also both have that effect on me. The order varies but the three films stay the same.
    La La Land
    Oliver!
    Withnail
    Local Hero
    24 Hour Party People
    Dodgeball

    Possibly a less cerebral top three than some.
    24 Hour Party People is a brilliant movie. Good choice

    TBH I can't remember much of Local Hero (probably saw it stoned) and I've never even heard of Dodgeball

    I will check it out
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    edited May 2023
    ping said:

    This is awful;

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65691643

    I don’t recall reading it, on the bbc website when it happened. There is an article, available through search, on the day after.

    Must have been buried somewhere insignificant.

    This is what happens when that family have editorial control over our BBC.

    Nasty fuckers.

    RIP. In a saner world she’d still be alive.

    Flung FORTY FEET across the road.

    MULTIPLE BROKEN BONES and MASSIVE INTERNAL INJURIES.

    A horrific death and entirely avoidable.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    Westie said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    There is no question. IQs are falling and people are getting dumber. See the NBC article

    The huge recent American study merely confirms that the USA is not immune to a phenomenon already observed in multiple advanced countries. I genuinely believe we are beginning to see the effects of this in our culture. An intellectual passivity, a dumb acceptance of norms, an inability to imagine and a reluctance to entertain new ideas

    Wokeness - where you are instructed what to think about everything, and everyone eagerly agrees - is a potential symptom

    Maybe AI has arrived bang on time, it can do all the thinking for us, from now on
    I think we've subcontracted our thinking out to machines
    Westie said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:
    I think you are being lazy on this one Leon. Yes. There are some very wrong woke ideas out there, rewriting Dahl and Bond or any book from a time, for example (fun fact, both those authors were friends). But - taking “woke” allegations case by case - a painting of plantation slaves having a swell ol time, and a card next to it saying “we know now they weren’t having a swell ol time, it was painted like this so back in Europe people would think they were” I have no problem with. It’s actually educating me with the truth of what is fake in the old painting, and why it was created so. I can see it better with this help. I like that. it’s what I go to art installations for. What specifically do you have a problem with this Tate historical layout?
    It's fucking worthless shite, designed by virtue signalling morons for their imbecile peers. THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST THINK ABOUT THIS. It's no longer art, its earnest lecturing. Why is it all so shite? Because humans are literally getting stupider, and this is the result

    "American IQ Scores Have Rapidly Dropped, Proving the 'Reverse Flynn Effect'"

    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/

    Dworak, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors on the study, is very clear that these results don’t necessarily mean Americans are getting less intelligent.

    It's a real pity, and an irony I won't hammer too much, that you didn't read the article you linked to.
    Well the article is hardly encouraging! It doesn't NECESSARILY mean Americans are getting less intelligent (but it's still quite possible). I was also confused that the Prof mentioned increasing focus on STEM subjects as a possible factor. Weren't they traditionally associated with high IQs?
    "STEM" is an ideology. It's not an object like a mountain. It became widespread about 20 years ago and is based on wrong ideas about education.

    Clue: question stuff.
    STEM graduates are obviously highly intelligent and far smarter than law, humanities and arts people. And surprisingly modest in a fetching manner, combined with devastating attractiveness. And with enormous [that's enough - Ed]
    STEM is still an ideology. Why not put pure maths in with poetry? Whatever it is, it's not a science.
    I've seen come daft posts here before, but claiming pure maths is not a science and should be put in with poetry is one of the most barmy things I have ever heard.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,770
    ping said:

    @rcs1000

    You might know the answer to this.

    Is the Sonia swap rate a decent real-time reference for uk residential mortgage rates?

    Eg;

    https://www.chathamfinancial.com/technology/european-market-rates

    Or is there a better real-time reference that I can follow?

    SONIA is the Sterling Overnight Index. It's an index administered by the BoE, and based on actual transaction data*, for the rate banks pay for borrowing money overnight.

    It's not a great mortgage interest proxy.

    * Allegedly. It's a badly kept secret that banks don't disclose rates that they're embarrassed about.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    New thread.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 6,760
    ping said:

    @rcs1000

    You might know the answer to this.

    Is the Sonia swap rate a decent real-time reference for uk residential mortgage rates?

    Eg;

    https://www.chathamfinancial.com/technology/european-market-rates

    Or is there a better real-time reference that I can follow?

    Sonia is the new Libor. It’s the baseline for a lot of calculations but there will be individual bank creditworthiness and margin targets on top. So I’d look at the trend rather than using it as an absolute reference but it’s not bad and pretty much real time
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited May 2023
    doh wrong window.
This discussion has been closed.