I feel pretty foolish in retrospective for this derail, but I think this may be a good example of what I am talking about. Especially since height is a well defined characteristic, a real actual thing, that has non-controversial quantification methods and tons of good data! Here is how the conversation might go:
A: Height is well known to have a normal distribution.
B: no not even close - it has a pronounced left skew, is multi-modal, varies by sex, age, geography and time etc.
A: Ok - how about if we just consider the adult male US population?
B: Well now you are just creating a sample to meet your model, begging the question etc. Also still the answer is no - for sure there will be a left skew at a minimum.
A: Ok, how about middle class US males between the ages of 20-60 who have never been seriously sick, lived in the same house their whole life and have gotten exactly 2000 calories a day on the Mediterranean diet since childhood âŚ
B: What on Earth are we doing here?
I appreciate Devilâs response above, but a lot of this stuff just seems to me a willful misunderstanding of the real conditions of human life; anti-intellectual. My instinctual reaction to dismiss IQ may be misguided, but how? It is clear that the bell curve concept is used to provide ballast to eugenics rhetoric, but what is the benefit that offsets this?
I will try to never broach this topic again btw, apologies again
I disagree in that I think itâs possible at least a few people who donât normally care about politics can be influenced by things they see on the nightly news or whatever. Trump is largely immunized by already being a known scumbag so it wonât be a Comey level thing but even small numbers can be significant.
I swear Iâve seen one with trans illegal immigrant criminal in jail getting taxpayer funded surgery. All that needs to happen next if for that âexampleâ to get out and slaughter a nice white family.
Man, I sure how hope you and whatever youâre reading are right.
I think itâs the other way. Anyone voting mainly for pro-trans was voting Kamala anyway. However, anti-trans could definitely motivate his base and bring in some low info/idiot voters.
Why would IQ being non-normal be a reason to dismiss IQ as a useful metric? Does the fact that height is non normally distributed make height a less useful statistic?
These ads have historically failed to benefit Republican contenders, with the vast majority losing their elections after focusing heavily on this issue. As a result, Democrats have largely ignored the ads, continuing to campaign on their key issues. However, today, the Democratic contender challenging Texas Republican Ted Cruz, Colin Allred, became the first major Democratic candidate in this election cycle to seemingly capitulate to Republican messaging, stating in a new Texas ad that he âdoes not support boys in girlsâ sports,â a common Republican anti-trans dogwhistle.
Some defended Allredâs messaging, suggesting he may be trying to subtly convey that he doesnât support boys in girlsâ sports because he doesnât view trans girls as boys. While this interpretation is possible, the statement is still likely to be heard as an anti-trans dogwhistle in Texas, where nearly every anti-trans ad has framed transgender girls as âboys.â Since Allred had full control over the messaging in the ad, he could have avoided the dogwhistle by being clearer about his views and support for transgender youth.
His decision to include such a dogwhistle is likely ill-advised. A recent Gallup poll shows he is unlikely to gain much support by doing so; among Republicans and Independents who lean Republican, transgender issues rank near the bottom of the list, placing close to dead last among 22 issues they care about. For Democratic voters and Independents who lean Democratic, however, transgender issues rank much higher, even above concerns like immigration, taxes, and trade.
Iâd guess that 2022 voters, and mid-term voters in general, are a bit more high info than 2020/24 voters, and the anti-trans fear mongering is specifically targeting the low info idiots that Trump needs to turn out if he has any shot at winning.
Idk. Some people I know are the exact opposite. They are livid about drag queens in schools, having to define themselves as cis, and trans women in sports. I guess thereâs hate on all fronts weâre battling with