US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4548

On November 07 2024 01:37 Timebon3s wrote:
Now that the dust has settled and Trump won by a landslide, why wasn’t there more voters in favor of him here on this forum? Is this a very left-leaning forum, or are people simply afraid of saying they support Trump?

Mabye it won’t be as bad as people think.
As far as Europe is concerned, he actually made NATO stronger, which is good for my country at least.
He’s also said he will try to stop the war between Ukraine and Russia. If that means Ukraine need to give up territory to Russia, and then get membership in NATO, that sounds like a good long term solution.

And he also managed to get a dialogue going with North Korea.

Let’s hope for a positive future instead of only focusing on the negative.

On November 07 2024 01:39 Zambrah wrote:


I remember when people thought the justice system would play out over time, I wonder how those people feel now lmao

To anyone who wasnt down with me when I said to prosecute him and the insurrectionists ASAP I'm gonna take this moment to I-Told-You-So at you

On November 07 2024 01:47 r00ty wrote:


How is Trump in any way responsible for Norway joining NATO? He gets credited for so much stuff he doesn't have anything to do with or even counteracted against. If he would be have been at the helm when Putin invaded we would be in a very different world. He basically wants to abolish NATO to get better deals i guess?

Dialogue with North Korea? Are you kidding?

On November 07 2024 01:49 Timebon3s wrote:

He isn’t responsible for Norway joining nato.
But he made the members of NATO pay more money to NATO.

Peace begins with dialogue. At least he’s trying.

On November 07 2024 01:37 Timebon3s wrote:
Now that the dust has settled and Trump won by a landslide, why wasn’t there more voters in favor of him here on this forum? Is this a very left-leaning forum, or are people simply afraid of saying they support Trump?

Mabye it won’t be as bad as people think.
As far as Europe is concerned, he actually made NATO stronger, which is good for my country at least.
He’s also said he will try to stop the war between Ukraine and Russia. If that means Ukraine need to give up territory to Russia, and then get membership in NATO, that sounds like a good long term solution.

And he also managed to get a dialogue going with North Korea.

Let’s hope for a positive future instead of only focusing on the negative.

On November 07 2024 01:15 Jealous wrote:



Disclaimer: This is going to be a big block of text and it's barely relevant to the topic at hand (election), so if you're not interested in following this line of discussion, just scroll down now.

A lot of what I'm going to be writing about in this post is based on my experience in the field of psychology. While I absolutely think that research in psychology is usually a science (as in, adhering to the scientific method), there are also situations where I believe it is not a science so it may not be the best fit for this line of discussion opened by @Ender. However, enough people believe in the validity of the field without digging into whether a "consensus" is reached through scientific or unscientific means, and I will be providing some examples which apply to the sciences at large.

I would also like to disclose that I absolutely have a chip on my shoulder about how research is conducted in certain areas of psychology and how conclusions within those fields are arrived at, but I will try to present my position as objectively as possible.

---

1. Grievance studies affair


2. Sokal affair


3. Elite researchers in China say they had ‘no choice’ but to commit misconduct


Based on my personal experience, this issue is definitely not exclusive to China or Chinese researchers. I could speak about this topic at length but the TL;DR here is that there are situations where social, societal, hierarchical, professional, and financial pressures all lead to "bad" science. "Bad" science here being research done in bad faith, more specifically methods which reject data that goes against a hypothesis that is socially beneficial to espouse.

4. Highly cited researcher banned from journal board for citation abuse


As mentioned above, there is a lot of politics and ego involved in science, because science is conducted by humans who are often bound by politics and ego. This isn't as egregious as submitting entirely fake research and having it published, but it is still a factor in terms of what gets published, who gets published, etc.

5. As Uldridge mentioned, there is also the Replication crisis, which basically infers that a lot of the research we have been relying on for decades has been tainted by the aforementioned "bad" science.


6. At this point I'll go into one of the areas of psychology/psychological research which I was most familiar with due to my work as a research assistant within it. It is also what exposed me to the aforementioned elements of politics, ego, personal sentiment, social pressures, etc. being involved in science.

This was shortly after the reclassification of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) into Gender Dysphoria (GD). I was conducting literature analysis on the presentation of GID and GD in new editions of textbooks in order to determine whether they have changed structurally in order to accommodate this reclassification. In short, my research was inspired by what I would consider to be a "pro"-trans position held by the head researcher, as it sought to evaluate whether the stigma of their condition being a "disorder" was appropriately being mitigated. This is something that I was on board with, because I believe that textbooks should present the most accurate and up-to-date information. For example, if one textbook simply changed the title and text of the subchapter GD without moving it out of the "Disorders" chapter, or if GD was squished firmly between the topics of drug addiction and gambling, then perhaps that publisher is not doing their best in understanding and presenting this change from GID to GD.

At some point, a question arose in my mind: "Why was this change made in the first place?" While the explanation offered by one of the people who was allegedly on the board* which made this decision does a great job of outlining the logic behind it, the under reason is even more simple reason: it offended people.

*I did some cursory research to try to see if I can conclusively place this person on the DSM panel which made this decision, but was unable to do so. However, this is because I'm not finding any comprehensive list anywhere. As it stands, I am inclined to believe that this person was indeed on this panel.

It should be noted that the person who posted this is transgender, which may present a conflict of interest, but it's not a claim I will try to argue here. For example, I'm not sure that we should bar people who have an anxiety disorder from doing research on anxiety disorders. However, when it comes to classification and the writing of definitions, I think that there may be a greater possibility of bias seeping in.

Anyway, from Natalie Walker's explanation, emphasis mine:


On the surface, this seems very much in line with the removal of homosexuality from the DSM back in 1973. I could discuss the differences between these two decisions, but this is not the crux of the issue for me. The crux of the issue for me is that because the old classifications offend people, they are changed. What were the studies conducted to support this outcome? I can't imagine that there were any real experiments being conducted (due to obvious ethical restraints). As such, I find this to be - within the context of this discussion - not scientific.

Yet, research within this field seems to be at least somewhat curated by the governing bodies that be. In other words, if your research goes against the grain of the consensus, that research might not be supported by your university, funded, or published. Even if it is published, it may then be removed or censored. In my personal experience, even broaching the topic of conducting research on what may be a sensitive topic for the transgender community can at the very least be heavily discouraged by your research advisors.

For an example beyond my own experience, this article was written by a researcher whose research was allegedly censored because it went against the narrative. Naturally, this is a first-hand source and is thus almost assuredly biased, but I wanted to provide one concrete example within this specific field of research.

I'm not saying that research on these topics doesn't happen. After all, there have been some incendiary studies published which report on the prevalent comorbidity of narcissism and GID, as well as some research looking into the hypothesis that there is a prevalent comorbidity with autism (and thus that autism may be a contributing factor to GID). My point is that this type of research is difficult to get off the ground, raises eyebrows, and can receive significant negative backlash. I believe it was Uldridge that mentioned that publishing certain kinds of research can end a person's career. There are many self-reported cases of "blackballing" in various fields of academia for this very reason.

I want to be clear that this is not exclusive to the hot button issue of GID and transgender rights. For example, studies on the performance of women vs. men in various disciplines are also affected. I can't find the article now, but one researcher had their research approved for publishing but then the governing body retracted it before publication, meaning that the researcher cannot publish it in a different journal and that no one can read it, either. The were then fired from their position at a western university, which they alleged was because female researchers at their university went on a warpath against them. Why? Because they went against the currently established narrative that women are equal to men in all ways, and thus any findings which purport that women might perform worse in math-related subjects is seen as actively harmful to women, and thus the research has effectively been sealed. I wish I could find this article but I have to head out soon and am running out of time; I'm sure I have it saved somewhere, so if I run into it later I will add it here.

Now, I'm not saying that I believe that men are superior to women in math. I just find it unscientific that research which supports this position doesn't see the light of day due to politics and individual feelings, while research supporting absolute equality is incredibly well-represented. Science, in my opinion, should not be constrained by optics.

Anyway, I'll circle back to ask: why is GID present in the most up-to-date DSM while something like Body Identity Dysphoria/body integrity identity disorder - roughly, the desire to have a limb amputated - is not? Why do we perform gender-affirming surgeries on people and give them hormone treatments, while the idea of operating on someone with BID/BIID generally dismissed? Representation, politics, and bias are almost certainly contributing factors - and this is almost assuredly the case in other areas of academia as well.

On November 07 2024 01:23 Vindicare605 wrote:


No see this is the part the Democrats don't understand. Republicans already have a lock on the party of liars. They're in bed with the Christian Right. They will NEVER lose that block of voters ever as long as they continue to promise to promote conservative judges. That's the only thing the Christian Right needs to keep voting for them forever.

Democrats need to be the party that explains things, that makes them make sense. If they are just the guys shouting bullshit to counter the Republicans' bullshit then that causes voter turn out among moderates and more educated liberals to crater.

Democrats need to win the game correctly. It's difficult but it's the only way they will ever win. Getting into mud throwing contests with the Republicans benefits them and ONLY them.

On November 07 2024 01:27 NewSunshine wrote:

Democrats need to 1000% embrace the Republican tactic of using whatever you can find to bludgeon the other party over the head at all times, regardless of the hypocrisy or the facts. Don't give them room to breathe. The only reason R's get any airtime when they bang on about hypocrisy is because we let them. Jump down their throats and don't let them breathe in the rhetorical space. Democrats have policy that makes things better and they know it. But people don't give a shit about policy, they respond to charisma and "fight". Democrats have been so scared of looking like they might be fighting back that they left the floor open to Trump. They should be rallying and holding addresses to the nation on a weekly basis. Call Republicans out for the fucking spineless cowards they are and stand up on their own two feet as a party.

But also, they should've been doing this since January 2021. If we forget about January 6th it's because the Democrats decided it wasn't that big of a deal.

Fuck.

On November 07 2024 01:30 Uldridge wrote:
A race to the bottom is not how it should go imo.

On November 07 2024 02:01 Zambrah wrote:


Yes

On November 07 2024 01:49 Netto. wrote:


The forum is a left wing echo chamber. Any indication of being pro-Trump results in being attacked by multiple people. Trump is insulted here on regular basis, so if you are a Trump supporter there is no meaningful discussion to be had here.

On November 07 2024 02:02 WombaT wrote:




I’m with Vindicare here. Trump’s own party can’t replicate his shtick, hence him trouncing primaries, the Dems have even less chance.

As you all know I rarely use analogies, but I’m quite a reserved, deadpan, sarcastic kinda guy. One of my best friends is Mr Extrovert, could arrange a date in the 5 minutes he meets some girl at a bus stop etc etc.

He may have had more luck with the ladies, and a totally different kind than kinda my type, but hey I have a niche and did alright. If I had started emulating him, it would have been a disaster as it’s not my manner, and the kinda girls I like also don’t really like the whole ‘alpha male’ shtick either.

I think you can go on the attack, but in a different style.

We need Bernie Sanders to run again. That’s my plan.

Not Bernard Sandals specifically, I kid but that for me is the vague model.

1) He didn’t pull punches
2) He attacked the problems that many people suffer from, but crucially in a more systemic, non-personal fashion
3) He directly linked his critiques with easy to understand solutions
4) Not 100% effectively, but he largely sidestepped too much ‘culture war’ stuff
5) People liked him, or, at least considered him a decent or principled bloke

You can still maintain a passion, some moral outrage that resonates while not diving headfirst into the same sty as a Donald Trump.

On November 07 2024 02:04 r00ty wrote:


Making my point. That wasn't him. It was Russia attacking Ukraine causing this.

On November 07 2024 01:52 Luolis wrote:
Depressing world to wake up to, but i think ill just embrace the chaos. I'll simply just laugh at every news article of Trump suppoeters being hurt by his policy. America made it's bed and now they will lie in it.

On November 07 2024 01:49 Netto. wrote:


The forum is a left wing echo chamber. Any indication of being pro-Trump results in being attacked by multiple people. Trump is insulted here on regular basis, so if you are a Trump supporter there is no meaningful discussion to be had here.