neutrinosalad

I'm in the same boat when it comes to internet over TV. I'm a millennial though, so the history channel has been about pawn shops for most of my life. My biggest thing though is that when it comes to learning about more complex subjects like learning about physics (general relativity, quantum mechanics) through reading, I feel like I am only gaining the ability to regurgitate information rather than actually understand the subject.

\We can agree to disagree on this one. A lot of this is driven purely by perception. One thing here though is, I believe in equal opportunity, but I do not believe in equality of outcome. overtone, I don't have an answer for you. I need to do more research. *EDIT: overtone, I have started reading the CONSAD report and most of your questions are actually answered in the report. It is a 95 page slog. I might put down some information that I glean from it that assesses your questions.

I went through and read every single article in your second link. Two of them relied on the raw wage gap, so they can be ignored as they are purposely obfuscating data to push a political agenda. The Bloomberg study did not, but within the article they admitted that they did not know whether or not it was discrimination driving the difference in pay. The solutions presented in your first post only address the 5-7% difference in pay that occurs between men and women within the same positions. What I am asking you to address is the 15-16% difference within the raw wage gap that occurs because men filter into higher paying occupations than women. You have only presented one solution in your first post, which was raising the minimum wage. None of your other solutions address the 15-16% difference in the raw wage gap that occurs because men filter into higher paying occupations than women. If you don't want to address it that's okay, what I am trying to point out here is that it is disingenuous to say that the wage gap is 22-23% when in fact there is only a 5-7% difference when you compare men and women side by side within the same occupation. Edit: I cleaned up my post.

Nope, I am recognizing that there are two different goal posts. One goal post is the raw wage gap, 22-23% difference in overall pay. 15-16% of this is driven by the fact that men filter into higher paying occupations. This 15-16% can only be solved by ousting men from construction and STEM jobs and replacing them with women on the basis of sex and not their respective ability to perform the job, which would have a significant negative effect on society. 5-7% difference in the raw wage gap is due to men and women being paid differently for doing the same job. This can easily be solved through compensation calibration, which I agree with. I have to ask, in order to solve the final 15-16% of the raw wage gap which is driven by men and women filtering into industries that pay differently, are you okay with forcibly removing men from higher paying STEM and construction jobs and replacing them with women on the basis of sex in order to solve this proposed "problem"?

I made a mistake there, luckily iNow added an explanation. I would be able to support a change like this. You could even test it. Have one state add this rule and apply it to all businesses. Track the economic effects of the change in law. If the it has neutral or positive economic effects, begin broadening the law to the surrounding states until it becomes universal. It is not irrelevant because we are talking about 22-23% (raw wage gap) vs 5-7% (same job but different pay rate). I can support calibration sessions because that sounds reasonable and it appears like it could resolve that last 5-7% disparity. On the other hand, I cannot support any effort to have equality of outcome in terms how men and women filter into different job markets, which affects the raw wage gap.

The 22-23% disparity and the 5-7% disparity comes from the same data. Let's make that clear. The 22-23% gap is the raw wage gap, which is an obfuscation of data used to push political agenda. That 22-23% difference comes from the fact that men filter into higher paying markets like STEM and construction at far higher rates than women. Women dominate lower paying markets like office management and publishing. The set of skills that men appear to be wired for like increased physical strength and stamina due to higher testosterone levels that lead them into the construction market are in higher economic demand than being a book publisher (book publishing is 78% women). I agree that a 5-7% drop is unfair, but the people who study this difference do not even fully understand why there is a persistent 5-7% difference once you are looking men and women in the same jobs side by side. This quote is taken from what was written in the article immediately after my original quote. They don't even know if it is due to discrimination or if women are simply choosing not to ask for a pay raise. How do you solve the "problem" of women being less aggressive about getting pay raises? How do you solve the "problem" of men and women having different sets of abilities and interests and naturally filtering into different markets (which pay differently) at different rates as a result?

All of those links are focused on cross-occupational pay gap aka "the raw wage gap", which is known to be misleading. Luckily, I don't have to put forth a rebuttal as the Department of Labor has already done this for me: Source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/jul/15/politifact-sheet-gender-pay-gap/ I'm repeating this part of the quote because it's my favorite part. The Department of Labor thinks that there are people out there using the raw wage gap to mislead people as a way to push a political agenda.

I agree that whatever information that I present is not more valid than other information. I did paint with a broad brush for the sake of brevity. The real goal here is to present contrary evidence in order to bring a greater level of nuance to how we should resolve these issues. The link I presented was to make a point. You can actually go through all of the cities of the US and begin to see a large variance in murder rates. The website is here: http://www.city-data.com/and they have data for large swaths of cities throughout the US. I am not going to go out and collect a bunch of links to make this point. It is in that website. The CIA, FBI and other government databases have a lot of the same information. And I will repeat, if you go through city data or any other database, you will see a large variance in homicide rates from city to city. This variance cannot be ignored and it is important to the gun control debate as it calls in a variety of factors affecting homicide rates that are currently being left out of the discussion. These two statements contradict each other. Losing steam at this point. I will repeat that I do support an increase in background checks and increasing research into how we can implement a variety of legal methods to prevent guns from getting into the hands of mentally ill people and non-law-abiding citizens. Just here to offer up some ideas and I apologize to anyone who found my broad brush strokes about gun control ideology insulting.

I understand that the government needs to evolve. When demographics, technology, and social mores change, so too does the government have to change. But here is the thing, most of the amendments created and evolution of the government was to open up civil rights to more people. One amendment, the 17th amendment, was created to prevent the fragrant abuse of the government because as the time it was created multiple corporations had abused a weakness in the government that had essentially allowed them to bring in reps for their companies and turn them into senators. There was also the 18th amendment, prohibition. I think we all saw how removing the right to purchase alcohol turned out. To remove a civil liberty from people, like the right to bear arms, would be reversing the trend of opening up more and more rights to more and more people, and it is a slippery slope and it does have unintended consequences. And to that extent, I agree with you and what Thomas Jefferson said, but here is my question why do people believe that the 2nd amendment is no longer necessary? Why should people be denied the right to bear arms? Because they are dangerous? There may be cases of mass shootings, but these cases fall well outside of the realm of day to day life as is evidenced by the overall reduction in homicides and gun ownership over time in the United States. Data supports this. Also, people have a tendency to focus purely on obscure cases in order to make a point, rather than focusing on large scale trends in order to form the basis of their beliefs. One thing I have not seen brought up here is how homicides due to guns are largely localized events. There are certain communities driving this homicide number up. Why are we not looking into these communities and their overarching values and find localized solutions to prevent gun crimes? You should look into this, the data on increased homicides in certain communities is interesting. Why are we extrapolating from localized data and using that as an argument for how we should enforce rules upon the entire society? And I will restate that I agree with increasing background checks in order to ensure that the mentally ill and non-law-abiding citizens do not get guns. I also agree with allowing longitudinal studies that go over how we can implement background checks and control private sales in order to ensure that mentally ill and non-law-abiding citizens do not get guns as Obama mentioned in his State of Union. I am not open to things beyond that scope, and I believe that law-abiding citizens still have the right to have access to, store, and bear arms. By many, there were two that I had in mind when saying that. One of them I won't go into, but the other is gun rights in Europe itself. In certain areas of Europe, gun ownership is suppressed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation. You can look through the list and see the variance in liberty and suppression. I don't own any guns and I will probably never own a gun in my lifetime, but I have the right to go out and buy a gun. This is the point I am trying to make here. Could it be that they are safer for different reasons? If you look at localized data of gun homicides, you will see that certain communities in the US have almost zero gun homicides on a year to year basis. Ex: http://www.city-data.com/city/Irvine-California.html. In 2008, Irvine, California had 1 murder per 100,000 people in 2008. Also, I agree that there is a lot of right-wing craziness that is why I am purposely avoiding using apocalyptic language and focusing on facts in order to make an argument.

Exactly. I love the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because they formed the basic governing architecture that allowed the United States to grow both economically and in power into the leading country that it is today. As a United States citizen, I am glad that so many other people in this country protect those "pieces of paper" so fervently because they have granted us inalienable rights that few countries in the world have today. Even large swaths of Europe lack many of the basic rights that United States citizens have today. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Also, I want to help clarify things for people here who are interpreting the 2nd amendment granting rights strictly to well-organized militias. Here is the 2nd amendment in full: It says clear as day that people (individual, law-abiding citizens) have the right to bear arms. The sentence is split up syntactically to make this clear. Also, I get the feeling that gun control advocates on here are ideologically driven. Statistics can be created and studies can be performed that twist reality in order to support an ideological desire to change something in the world. So I want to offer up some information that goes against some of the beliefs here: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/21/gun-homicides-steady-after-decline-in-90s-suicide-rate-edges-up/ This is data collected by pew research that shows that the number of firearm deaths per 100,000 people has gone down by half between 1993 and 2014 and has recently stabilized. This is statistically a drop from 7 in 100,000 to 3.4 in 100,000 on a year to year basis. Also, gun ownership in the US has declined steadily since the 1970's: http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf In 1973, the % of households with guns was 47%. In 2014, the % of households with guns was 31%. That is a 16% drop in household gun ownership over a 41 year period. I agree that we should strengthen background checks in order to ensure that guns do not get into the hands of non-law-abiding citizens and the mentally ill, but beyond that I will not budge.

I am not sure. Maybe I was getting to abstract in my thinking. What I was imagining is that our brains would somehow subconsciously auto-correct the data set to align with a more intuitive understanding of how electrons behave when we consciously knew that there was something watching the electrons pass through the slits. Thinking about it, it does not make too much sense. I was just having trouble picking apart how an observer could alter the behavior of electrons since it would make more sense (to me personally) that electrons would behave independently of the effects of observation.

So I was watching this interesting video of Leonard Susskind: He stated something along the lines of how bits of information can never be lost and how that concept is a part of the foundation of physics. What are bits of information and how do they relate to physics? Edit: grammar

I agree that an observer could be a human or a camera or anything that has the capacity to measure. Without an observer, we recognize that the electrons appear to move in a probabilistic wave like manner, which is unintuitive to the human perception of reality. When an observer is introduced, like a camera, the electrons move through the double slits in a manner which is intuitive to the human perception of reality. What I am wondering is, could it be possible that the electrons behavior is actually the same in both cases (with an observer, without an observer) and the thing that really changes is how we perceive the data that has been collected?

So I was watching this video in an attempt to learn more about quantum mechanics. One thing that I have noticed in this one and in other videos is that they bring up the fact that during experiments the introduction and removal of observers affected the behavior of the electrons in the double slit experiment. What I have been pondering is that if we accept that we are not fully capable of properly perceiving the behavior of electrons due to our brains being wired to perceive reality on the scale that we currently live in, could it be possible that are brains are subconsciously interpreting data differently with the knowledge that we have introduced and removed an observer? What I am trying to get at here is that is it possible that the behavior of electrons does not change with the introduction and removal of an observer, but out perception of how the electrons behave did?

I would agree that in the hunter gatherer stage, we changed our environment. But, you can make the argument that it was not nearly to the extant that we have now. At about 10,000 BC, the world population was estimated to be between 1-10 million. Now it is over 7 billion. The extent to which the environment could be altered with a population of ~5 million vs ~7 billion is on a vastly different scale. I would argue that it is not a petty argument, but an incomplete argument. I have no idea how far neuroscience has gone in charting out the complex chemical response system in our brains in relation to environmental stressors. I only knew of this by reading some of the book: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. I only got through part of it and from what I read, the science had only progressed to the point to recognize that our brains were releasing trace amounts of hormones over microscopic distances that enabled neurons to fire off electrically. The experts here can probably offer up a more nuanced discussion on this than I could any day of the week. As a forward, I would like to ignore ISIS in this case due to the extreme levels of complexity surrounding that group and focus on immigration. What I am trying to say is that our brains are built for us to behave tribalistically, since that is how humanity has been observed to behave pre-agriculture. By tribalistically, I mean people operate through self-selected groups. In the context of immigration, the native group tends to see the immigrants as an external group entering their territory. From what I have observed, if the immigration happens at too high of a rate, this can lead to backlash from the native group. I believe this is due to tribalistic drives, since the native group sees the immigrants as a threat to their territory and resources. This is how preexisting evolutionary adaptations can inhibit society from functioning peacefully and smoothly. Modern Europe is a great example of this. France for example has accepted a rapidly growing number of migrants and now there is a growing backlash from the native population thrusting a nationalistic party to the top of the polls out of the desire of the native population to exclude or remove the migrant population. The same could be observed in the United States. We brought in an African population for the purpose of cheap labor, then enacted controls on the population to subdue their political presence within the country. Once they were free citizens, there was a huge backlash in the South due to the new threat that the African population presented to the social hierarchy and access to resources. Not only were there abuses towards the African community, they actually had to fight for their rights to have access to the same government and societal benefits as the Europeans, which ultimately culminated in the Civil Rights Movement. The Mexican population that immigrated here also were treated as a lower caste of citizens relative to the European population and they too had to fight for their rights through the Chicano Movement in California. These are all due to the effects of tribalism from what I have observed. The effects can still be observed within modern America. Europeans still have the easiest time getting a loan from a European run bank, especially relative to African-Americans. Here is an article on it: http://la.curbed.com/archives/2015/02/white_people_are_far_more_likely_to_get_a_loan_and_own_a_home_in_los_angeles.php. The graph in the middle with the red bar highlighting the key statistic is the most important part of that article. The United States is a great example of how to handle tribalism though. There seems to be an underlying tenet of society where we exalt overarching societal values and behaviors over our own ethnic and racial backgrounds. This belief system seems to be the best way so far of getting large scale heterogenous society to work smoothly in the face of now obsolete biological adaptations.

If you think about it, agriculture started 11,500 years ago (found this through wiki) in the fertile crescent. Agriculture was also started in the America's separately, but I would like to focus on the one out of the fertile crescent for the sake of keeping it simple. Before 11,500 years ago our evolutionary adaptations were driven purely by changes in the environment. People worked in small groups of hunter gatherers. We can even call these small groups "tribes". Once agriculture came along, it gave humanity the ability to change their environment to fit their own needs and that is where the problem starts. Over these 11,500 years, agriculture has allowed the population to expand until people were able to move from tribes of 80-150 people to societies of hundreds of thousands even millions. With population expansion in parallel with technological progress we have changed the environment that we live in so rapidly that our biological adaptations no longer align with the environment. This is especially true in the societies created following the industrial revolution. When you look at it, the technology has changed, the demographics have changed, but our own biology is largely the same. A key piece of this biology is our brains. Our brains have these complex stress-response systems built inside of them. When we identify an outside stressor (something potentially harmful or dangerous) our brain responds by releasing chemicals. The release of chemicals drives our behavior. Now if you accept that our biology is almost the entirely the same as it was 11,500 years ago, you would see that we have a serious problem on our hands. Our brains are constantly identifying stressors and releasing chemicals in response to them based on a hunter gatherer, tribalistic model that is now obsolete. Part of this response system is identifying people who are in and out of the group (tribe). This is where I believe a lot of conflict is coming from. We can talk about this more, but I am not an expert on the subject nor am I a neuroscientist so I can only say so much on the topic and I do not make any guarantees on how accurate or correct I will be. I was watching that video for a bit yesterday, probably going to finish it up today. Thank you for linking it. Edit: Just wanted to add that I used "in and out groups" in my response thanks to your video Willie. Also, I wanted to note that I am specifically using tribalism over racism due to the fact that tribalism has a lower level of emotional connotation to it. I believe that this reduced level of emotional connotation allows us to talk more rationally about the subject.

I reviewed your initial article some more and I will agree that there is more meat to the shooting than what I had initially assumed. Planning attacks in 2010 and 2012 along with Marquez being the initial partner, sheds the attack in a different light. The compartmentalization of the same behavior across different groups of people is something that adds a level of nuance to the topic that should not be ignored. Thugs vs mental health problems vs radicalized terrorists suggests the affects of group dynamics in how the same behavior can be seen in different lights. Why do they use different words? The media in the US is run by Western Europeans and that has a significant affect on how the news is presented. Sometimes I watch Al Jazeera news, which is run out of Qatar in order to see the other line of thinking. The rhetoric has a significant shift and it is interesting to see. I still believe that tribalism and the affects of evolutionary adaptations to our environment which affect the chemistry of our minds has a significant affect on the behavior of people and their perception of things in large scale politics. It would be a mistake to forgot our biological history. While things like religiosity and tribalism can be reduced in people's behavior through education and an excess of wealth that does not completely stop the emotional functions of our own minds. This is why government and the delegating body needs to account for this maladapted trait that works well in small groups, but inhibits the healthy functioning of a highly urbanized heterogenous society. I am running out of steam at this point, so I am just offering this up as food for thought.

This is interesting. I think the relationship between US and Saudi Arabia may have been economically beneficial at first, but now I am doubting the benefits that the US is gaining out of the relationship. Honestly, European involvement in the region due to a desire for oil to drive economic growth in the homeland has driven a lot of strife in that region. One of biggest things that France and British leadership did was cut up the Ottoman Empire into random pieces post WWI without accounting for the preexisting groups of people and how they were managed within the Ottoman Empire. The strife that is happening there right now has probably been building up to this for a century now. I personally feel that those motivated people are important to the long term economic prosperity of a country as a whole. My grandfather immigrated here from Argentina following an "economic restructuring" following decisions that the Perone's made. A variety of poor economic and international decisions led to the overall brain drain of Argentina and this has had some pretty severe repercussions on the country. I watched a documentary on Che Guevara and it was interesting to learn how post overthrow of the Cuban government, Fidel Castro performed his own "economic restructuring" that led to the mass exodus of the aristocracy to Florida. I think it will be interesting to see how Cuba fares economically after being reintroduced to the international markets without the leadership that lived there pre-Fidel days.

It is the Bush dynasty that drives this alliance. I don't like our alliance with Saudi Arabia either. Check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Bush,_House_of_Saud and this article: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-tangled-web-of-us-saudi-ties/ President Bush's decisions regarding going into the Iraq war and many of the absurd decisions that the US makes in the Middle East all start to make sense when you realize that there is this underlying relationship. It is difficult to underestimate the amount of overall power and influence the Bush dynasty and their circle have over this country. Edit: I also just want to say that I agree with a lot of your guys ideas. I think I am just frustrated with an overall sense of powerlessness when it comes to the political realm. It is why I personally tend to go through long periods of time where I avoid thinking about politics. The main reasons why my interest was renewed recently was due to a couple of international events that caught my eye.

Ok, here is a statement from the video in the link you posted: "The FBI says her thoughts about jihad were already contained within private messages she shared with Farook." (said at 1:20) Let's move beyond ISIS here, how would you interpret that statement? I get the feeling that your use of the word "Christian terrorism" is a contortion of those acts in order to conflate internal conflicts in the US with external conflicts, both of which have different implications to the US population at large. The 14th amendment was created in order to turn the ex-slave population into citizens of the US, post civil war. The flaw in the language was abused by our bordering Mexican citizenry for monetary gains. I am sure that if the senate and house knew at the time they were drafting the 14th amendment that it would be abused so heavily by a population of people immigrating here illegally 120-130 years down the road, they would have worded it differently. Okay, I will agree, but how do you feel about Saudi Arabia financing the creation of Wahhabi mosques around the world. Wahhabi mosques are known to be hotbeds for the spread of radical ideas among the Muslim population. Here is an article: http://www.mintpressnews.com/time-of-looking-away-over-germany-warns-saudi-arabia-to-stop-funding-radical-islamists/211859/

In what way is wanting controlled immigration with certain checks to ensure that ISIS supporters are not brought in with the Syrian refugee population the same as killing large amounts of innocent civilians with assault rifles due to being radicalized by ISIS ideals? You called them Christian terrorists, so I would like an explanation on how those two behaviors equivalent.

John Oliver summed it up pretty well: It is a pretty one-sided representation of the problem, but he did highlight a key issue behind it. Private corporations hijacked standardized testing and warped it to reap loads of money. If standardized testing was not warped by the private companies behind it, it probably would be a pretty useful school program.

Thank you for posting the link to the article. I just wanted to see how the conclusion that the graph was displaying was sourced.

What data did they use to create that chart? What constitutes a lie and what constitutes a truth?

Charon, I will agree with you. What I said is hyperbolic and is essentially a "doomsday scenario". I have thought about it and halting or reverting these demographic changes are nigh impossible, which is why I can understand why society has to collectively embrace them to some extent. I will also admit that my thoughts do not have a high level of in-depth thought of context. I do not constantly seek out news articles or am deeply involved in political discussions or reading up on current world events, so I rely heavily on random pieces of information I pick up and use that to construct a worldview that is influenced by a conservative bias. The problem with this is that our behavior in large groups is influenced by varying levels of tribalism. Whether or not it has been proven yet that the human mind is hardwired through a genetic basis to self-select into tribes, you have to admit that this kind of behavior can be observed in people on a day to day basis. Culture, ethnicity and race tend to meld together and form a basis for the "tribe" that we as individuals see ourselves as collectively being a part of. This meld influences hiring decisions, relationships, the ability to progress within society among many other things. How do you suggest that we abate this natural tendency to self-select into these various groups? The US to this day still has a problem resolving the population's tendencies to behave tribalistically. One of the long standing issues has been the biases that have been negatively enforced upon the African-American/black community due to the color of their skin. Even to this day getting a loan or a professional job is more difficult for an African-American person due to these biases. If the US could not resolve these biases in the 50 years following the civil rights act, how will the European leadership resolve these biases against the Muslim community now? It is hard to compare these two things directly, but the point I am trying to make is the problem that tribalistic behavior presents in the face of large scale immigration from an external group. I will agree with you on your point with Iranians. I have met highly educated Iranians in college and found them to share a similar set of values to American people. I even befriended a couple. Maybe I need to meet people from the rest of the Muslim world to change my mind. I will admit that some of my thoughts are fueled to some extent by fear. The European people appear to be in a state of decline in terms of population and a stagnating economy. Living in a time where it can be readily observed that the Europeans are moving from a waxing stage (capturing territories, growing population and wealth) to a waning stage (losing some territory with a declining population and stagnating economy) makes me afraid.