In which a certain shop owner is reviled.

[Kid_A_1]

@Small British Shop Owner

…or a deficiency in national character.

Let me understand this…a 50/50 split of men and women in Parliament is sign of deficiency in national character?

You’re a bloody loon.

[Small_British_Shop_Owner]

@Alessan

Why is electing a lot of women a “deficiency in national character”?

Because an ideal government should be the elite: representatives are supposed to represent, not be representative!

Men tend to show greater standard deviation, as a population, than women. So it follows that the elite should be primarily men. As should the dregs, hence my question to Zoe about prisons.

[Bridget_Burke]

@Kid_A

Let me understand this…a 50/50 split of men and women in Parliament is sign of deficiency in national character?

You’re a bloody loon.

The eternal question: Loon or Troll?

[carnivorousplant]

@Small British Shop Owner

Because an ideal government should be the elite: representatives are supposed to represent, not be representative!

An interesting concept. It sounds rather British.
How does the House of Commons fit into that? Are they not representative of the regular citizen?

[Small_British_Shop_Owner]

@carnivorousplant

An interesting concept. It sounds rather British.
How does the House of Commons fit into that? Are they not representative of the regular citizen?

No, nor are they supposed to be. They are supposed to represent the average citizen (subject).

That said, they do a crap job of that too!

[Acsenray]

@Small British Shop Owner

No, nor are they supposed to be. They are supposed to represent the average citizen (subject).

Hmm. I seem to recall several British members of this board taking pains on several occasions to remind us that “subject” is incorrect as a term for a British citizen. Here we have a suggestion that it is an acceptable synonym.

[Small_British_Shop_Owner]

@acsenray

Hmm. I seem to recall several British members of this board taking pains on several occasions to remind us that “subject” is incorrect as a term for a British citizen. Here we have a suggestion that it is an acceptable synonym.

Seems as though you’ve been right for twenty five years. It’s hard to explain why this upsets me, but it does. But then I pine for empire.

[carnivorousplant]

@Small British Shop Owner

They are supposed to represent the average citizen (subject).

I am offended by the concept, although “my” senators seem to support it in their “I know better than you” replies to my infrequent letters.

[garygnu]

Further evidence of trollish behavior, he’s started a thread advertising his other threads.
I’ve been around long enough to have seen types like SBSO come and go. Some manage to stop being jerkish and just be strange, like Autolycus, but I’ve never seen a “Hey look at my other threads!” thread.

[Small_British_Shop_Owner]

@carnivorousplant

I am offended by the concept, although “my” senators seem to support it in their “I know better than you” replies to my infrequent letters.

I’m not sure what else they can do. They can hardly put forward both your viewpoint and ones of people who are completely at odds with you.

I would be quite happy to see the end of political parties, however.

[mhendo]

@Small British Shop Owner

Because an ideal government should be the elite: representatives are supposed to represent, not be representative!

I can accept an argument that we are better off when our political leaders demonstrate certain qualities in greater proportion than the average person. Even Thomas Jefferson, opposed to old-fashioned aristocracies, still believed in a “natural aristocracy” that would demonstrate its worth and rise to the top through individual merit, education, and hard work.

But…

@Small British Shop Owner

Men tend to show greater standard deviation, as a population, than women. So it follows that the elite should be primarily men. As should the dregs, hence my question to Zoe about prisons.

First, do you have any evidence that men tend to show greater standard deviation than women, either in general, or in terms of the specific qualities needed to be a political leader? Or is this another “statistic” you pulled out of your ass, like your expert opinion on missiles and battleships?

Second, even if you could demonstrate that men tend to show greater standard deviation than women, you still have to demonstrate:

a) that the men currently dominating most national governments are part of the outlying group (i.e., that they do, in fact, represent the elites in their societies) and could not be replaced by similarly-qualified women,

and

b) that the number of elite women is, in absolute terms, insufficient to fill half of the government positions.

[garygnu]

mhendo, you’re missing his point. All things are or are not, and him declaring them so is proof enough. This translates to government, where his ideal government makes the decisions and the subjects rejoice.
He’d like it here in America under this administration, actually.

[Alessan]

@Small British Shop Owner

Men tend to show greater standard deviation, as a population, than women.

I’m sure you can present copious academic research to back this assertion.

Don’t let me stop you.

[Small_British_Shop_Owner]

@mhendo

But…First, do you have any evidence that men tend to show greater standard deviation than women, either in general, or in terms of the specific qualities needed to be a political leader? Or is this another “statistic” you pulled out of your ass, like your expert opinion on missiles and battleships?

See Sex differences in intelligence - Wikipedia for starters

@mhendo

Second, even if you could demonstrate that men tend to show greater standard deviation than women, you still have to demonstrate:

a) that the men currently dominating most national governments are part of the outlying group (i.e., that they do, in fact, represent the elites in their societies) and could not be replaced by similarly-qualified women,

and

b) that the number of elite women is, in absolute terms, insufficient to fill half of the government positions.

a) I don’t see why I have to demonstrate that, unless I had described current national governments as ideal.
b) You are right that it would be possible to fill half the government positions with women, but it would be very unlikely to happen by chance, even with only a tiny difference in standard deviation.

[Small_British_Shop_Owner]

@Alessan

I’m sure you can present copious academic research to back this assertion.

Don’t let me stop you.

There’s loads of evidence, see link above for starters.

[chowder]

The burning question is…will you be selling Bacon Salt?.

We need to know

[mhendo]

@Small British Shop Owner

See Sex differences in intelligence - Wikipedia for starters

First, you would have to demonstrate that IQ is a reasonable measure of a person’s ability to perform legislative functions, especially IQs in the very upper range, where the differences are greatest. Based on IQ alone, do you think that there is any validity for concluding that a man with a 145 IQ would do a better job as a legislator than a woman with a 140 IQ, or vice versa?

Also, the very citation you provide undermines part of your argument, in my opinion. According to your Wiki cite:

A 2001 report by Richard J. Coley of the ETS found that females often outperformed males on various measures of verbal ability, while males tended to outperform females on measures of mathematical and spatial ability.

<snip>

Verbal abilities: a range of differences, some large, favoring females are found in performance on verbal tasks.

It seems to me that the verbal portion of an IQ test is just as likely as the spatial and mathematical portions to correlate with one’s abilities as a legislator, if not more so.

On preview, i was going to erase the above material, but i’ll leave it as my last contribution to the thread. It’s clear you’re a troll, and i told myself that i was not going to encourage trolls, so i won’t be responding any more. I leave you to your ignorance.

[lobstermobster]

My college professors were adamant about never accepting wikipedia as a source so neither should we.

“anyone in the world can write about whatever they want so you know youre getting good information!”

I once noticed on wikipedia that a few years back Samuel L. Jackson won every single academy award in every single category. Good for him.

[guppy]

@lobstermobster

My college professors were adamant about never accepting wikipedia as a source so neither should we.

“anyone in the world can write about whatever they want so you know youre getting good information!”

I once noticed on wikipedia that a few years back Samuel L. Jackson won every single academy award in every single category. Good for him.

While I don’t think Wikipedia is suitable for academic purposes, it’s certainly good enough for a message board. It’s about as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.

[mhendo]

@guppy

While I don’t think Wikipedia is suitable for academic purposes, it’s certainly good enough for a message board. It’s about as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.

Actually, that Nature article comparing Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica has been subjected to some pretty serious criticism of its own.

But Nature sent only misleading fragments of some Britannica articles to the reviewers, sent extracts of the children’s version and Britannica’s “book of the year” to others, and in one case, simply stitched together bits from different articles and inserted its own material, passing it off as a single Britannica entry.

Nice “Mash-Up” - but bad science.

“Almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading,” says Britannica.

“Dozens of inaccuracies attributed to the Britannica were not inaccuracies at all, and a number of the articles Nature examined were not even in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The study was so poorly carried out and its findings so error-laden that it was completely without merit.”

In one case, for example. Nature’s peer reviewer was sent only the 350 word introduction to a 6,000 word Britannica article on lipids - which was criticized for containing omissions.

<snip>

And this evidence raised troubling questions, as Nicholas Carr noted last month. Many publications had assumed Nature’s Wikipedia story was objectively reporting the work of scientists - Nature’s staple - rather than a news report assembled by journalists pretending to be scientists.

And now we know it was anything but scientific.

Carr noted that Nature’s reviewers considered trivial errors and serious mistakes as roughly equal.

Some more extensive quotes from Britannica’s response (pdf):

Articles on Dolly the Sheep and Steven Wolfram reviewed by Nature were taken not from the Encyclopædia Britannica but from previous editions of the Britannica Book of the Year, which are archived on our site and clearly dated and identified. Yearbook authors are often given greater latitude to express personal views than writers of encyclopedia articles. In the Wolfram
article, the Nature reviewer disagreed with Britannica’s author on the phrasing of two sentences in which point of view figured significantly, and on the basis of those disagreements Nature’s editors counted the two points as “inaccuracies” in Britannica. In addition to the fact that reviewing yearbook articles in a study of encyclopedias is inappropriate, these particular judgments were simply unfounded. The reviewer was entitled to his or her opinion about how a point might best be presented, but that opinion did not make our author’s presentation “inaccurate.”

Nature’s comments on the article “ethanol” were based on text not from the Encyclopædia Britannica but from Britannica Student Encyclopedia, a more basic work for younger readers. One of the reviewer’s comments referred to text that does not appear in any Britannica publication.

<snip>

One Nature reviewer was sent only the 350-word introduction to Encyclopædia Britannica’s 6,000-word article on lipids. For Nature to have represented Britannica’s extensive coverage of the subject with this short squib was absurd, and it invalidated the findings of omissions alleged by the reviewer, since those matters were covered in sections of the article he or she
never saw.

Other reviewers were sent only sections taken from longer articles. For example, what the Nature editors referred to as Britannica’s “articles” on “kin selection” and “punctuated equilibrium” are actually separate sections of our article on the theory of evolution, written by one of the foremost experts on evolution in the world. What they claimed to be an “article” on fieldeffect transistors was actually only one section of our article on integrated circuits. For Nature to have excerpted our articles in this way was irresponsible.

<snip>

Nature failed to check the factual assertions of its reviewers. Everyone makes mistakes, even experts, which is why all factual assertions should be verified. Nature, however, decided not to do this; they did not even require reviewers to provide sources for their assertions because “it would have been simply too time consuming.”6 Instead, Nature assumed that what its reviewers said was true and, when it contradicted something in the Britannica, that the reviewer was right and Britannica was wrong. The result was predictable.

<snip>

Nature failed to distinguish minor inaccuracies from major errors. By counting up the alleged inaccuracies for both encyclopedias, Nature treated all mistakes equally and failed to observe that Wikipedia had many more shortcomings of a fundamental kind. Reviewers told the journal that many of the Wikipedia articles were “poorly structured and confusing”—a fact that made those articles resistant to basic fact checking and thus not suitable for comparison with Britannica—yet the fact was buried deep in the article and its methodological implications ignored.

<snip>

According to the reviewer of the Britannica article “Nobel Prize,” the fact that the 1935 Peace Prize was awarded to Carl von Ossietzky in 1936 should have been stated. We disagree. To raise this minor fact and then be required to explain it would, at that point in the Nobel Prize article, have distracted the reader from the main discussion. This was not an omission; it was an editorial judgment. (N.B.: The fact that the award was conferred in 1936 is reported in Ossietzky’s biographical article, where it belongs.)

There’s plenty more in the report. Of course, amid all the press masturbation about the great Wikipedia, Britannica’s response didn’t gain anywhere near as much attention as the original Nature article.