# Qin Shi Huangdi - please, stop demonstrating your woeful ignorance about the real world **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 4, 2012, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690 "2012-03-04T00:47:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/81 "2012-03-06T17:21:24Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > …you are so utterly, helplessly **wong** , and refuse to admit it. He’s Chinese, now? I thought he was Korean? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2012, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/82 "2012-03-06T18:47:13Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > He’s Chinese, now? I thought he was Korean? 😕 And the admitting it part just sounds weird… ---
**Author:** ![florez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@florez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/florez)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2012, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/83 "2012-03-06T18:55:23Z")
He cannot be pitted for being Wong, even if he does refuse to admit it, since he is utterly helpless about it, as pointed out. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/84 "2012-03-07T00:12:44Z")
> [@Illuminatiprimus](#): > > [Except that that’s completely wrong](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14833466&postcount=14), and I’m astonished you can even argue that. From one of the quoted articles: > [@](#): > > However, 81% described themselves as out in their professional lives and 94% said they did not conceal their sexuality to fellow performers. Do you think 94% of gay people are out in general? ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/85 "2012-03-07T06:56:28Z")
> [@Illuminatiprimus](#): > > Is anyone arguing that there weren’t famines in the USSR? Or that it was a less shitty place to live than the US? Did you even read the post you linked to? This is what he responded to, and both him and **Little Nemo** are correct on this point: > [@](#): > > the system did prevent people from being homeless, hungry, etc. … more than you can say for capitalism in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/86 "2012-03-07T14:26:33Z")
I’m surprised no one has pitted Illuminatiprimus yet. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/87 "2012-03-07T14:52:31Z")
> [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](#): > > I’m surprised no one has pitted Illuminatiprimus yet. Then why don’t you get your shit together? ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/88 "2012-03-07T16:34:57Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > Then why don’t you get your shit together? And then start flinging… ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/89 "2012-03-07T18:10:29Z")
> [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](#): > > I’m surprised no one has pitted Illuminatiprimus yet. Why bother, when _this_ one is going so well for him? ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/90 "2012-03-08T14:44:13Z")
For a brief moment, average lifespan was higher in the USSR than the US. Then they massively overspent on weaponry, embraced Lysenkoism instead of Gouldism and Lewontism and there was turmoil everywhere (this is skipping over the earlier suppression of religion and unions). Then, Capitalism was introduced and they underinvested even more in healthcare, male life expectancy tanked by a further six years and only began to increase during Putin’s reign. Not that I’d prefer to live under Putin than Cameron. As a side note, I’ve been posting on the internet since 9 (with the same handle for the past eight years) and my earliest recorded postings are literally incomprehensible. Here’s one from when I was [14](http://forum.runescape.com/forums.ws?13,14,147,2045743,&showuser=Gamerunknown). In comparison, he’s a sage. Oh, another tangent: I thought there were more conservatives posting here than not. Perhaps I was mistaken and there a greater number of Libertarians? It could just be my impression when viewing the US spectrum, which is usually to the right of the UK. I can identify with the Rand statement: after reading Atlas Shrugged I described myself as a “Utilitarian Objectivist” once… Imagine my horror at reading [this](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/02/981501/-Ayn-Rand-Eugenics-and-Lesser-Breeds-). That said, it’s unfortunately the case that very few people deviate to a great degree from the political positions of their fathers (or parents, but I recall that wives tend to deviate towards [their husband’s views](http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/127/the-effect-of-marriage-on-political-identification)).\* The one distinction I can make with my own father is that he wouldn’t advocate gay marriage or contraception and I would. \*Spotlight fallacy and unrelated to the thread as a whole, but I walked out on a girl last month after she quoted Mein Kampf and I revealed I had recently read Capital. Strange, no? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2012, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/91 "2012-03-08T14:50:56Z")
Speaking as a liberal, there are a lot more liberals than conservatives here, but the conservatives make up for their lack of numbers with an exceptionally high volume of certainty. As does the OP, who is perhaps our youngest conservative. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/92 "2012-03-12T00:43:10Z")
Apologies for not getting around to this but I’ve been busy for the last week ro so. > [@](#): > > Next, we have [this little gem](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=14783274#post14783274) - out of the mouths of babes and future GOP presidential candidates. Sure, don’t engage with a massive problem in your society, just deny it exists. [This chart shows the level of income inequality in the US verses other countries](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality), you don’t compare well, being in the top quartile of having a high inequality rate using each of the multiple indices/data sets. I’d also invite you to read [this page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States) and consider some of the factors it describes, not least food security where it points out that food insecurity in the US is going up and affects over 10% of the population, something you specifically state is a problem that doesn’t exist. For something a little more scholarly than Wiki I’d point you in the direction of [this book](http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330820867&sr=8-1) which contains a huge amount of data and a very comprehensive set of statistical > conclusions about the negative impacts on high levels of the wealth inequality that you seem so keen to deny or exist or, even better, [believe is actually a good thing](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=14786606#post14786606). I wasn’t denying wealth inequality in either of those statements. I meant in the first statement quite clearly that its far less horrible to be poor in America than in the USSR and in the latter statement I meant that redistributing wealth often does not work. In neither statement did I say wealth inequality does not exist in America nor that it was not a problem. > [@](#): > > I’ll finish with something that I think demonstrates just how impervious to self reflection you really are - [you think atheists have it easy in the US](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=14786609#post14786609). For the record, atheist I may be, I don’t live in the US, so therefore don’t really have much of a dog in that particular fight. Still, such a statement displays vast ignorance, as well as a desire to make definitive statements based on your own world-view without any real consideration of your ignorance. How many politicians are there in the US that happily admit they’re atheist? Or better yet, how many atheist presidents have there been? But then I guess it doesn’t really matter, because they’re all swearing on the same bible when they take the office, despite the constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state, so they’re upholding religion whether they want to or not. For crying out loud, you’re living in a country that nearly voted a [piece of legislation]([Morning Briefings Archive - KFF Health News](http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/daily-report.aspx#Capitol) Hill Watch-0) that would allow employers to not pay for healthcare for anything they found religiously objectionable - you seriously think that’s not a difficult place for someone of no faith to live? The power of faith over politics is, in fact, so strong that it makes politicians [change their positions](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/21/rick-santorum-abortion_n_1291634.html) to ensure that they can get into power. I said this not out of ignorance but because I know several atheists personally and none of them have any problem saying that they’re atheist whether it be in conversation or say on the Facebook pages. And I wasn’t saying atheists are accepted with open arms by everybody-but I was objecting to the idea of certain people who believe seriously that most religious people can’t wait to begin persecuting nonbelievers-hence why I said “persecuted”. > [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > **Qin** seems like he leads a very sheltered life. But he is trying to inform himself and that is good. > > Some of his responses and attitudes remind me of home schooled students that later enter a general curriculum with a broad range of other students from different back grounds. I work in a training program and see this often. Poor social skills, a tendency to be more comfortable being around and talking to adults rather that their own age group. Lack of exposure to diverse opinions. > > He is certainly getting exposed to diverse viewpoints here, and hopefully he is learning things that will help him as he matures. He is smart and really does seem to be trying to understand things better. > [@septimus](#): > > Qin has posted that he interacts, if poorly, with schoolmates. Was he home-schooled earlier? > > Qin’s posts sometimes irritate me, but his positions seem almost reasonable in the first 3 posts linked by OP. > > One point in Qin’s defense: He’s admitted to being wrong once or twice that I’ve seen. This is one or two more admissions than are ever made by the adult right-wing idiots on this board. I may be wrong, but I think he’s even changed his position on the 2002 Iraq Adventure, now calling it a mistake, at least in hindsight. For the record once again I’ve been to public school since first grade and previous to that I went to preschool and kindergarden in various private daycares and preschools. And yes I do believe in hindsight, the Iraq War was a mistake. > [@Ravenman](#): > > What is truly strange is when he has obviously come to some conclusion on his own, like when he called Vladmir Putin the best world leader. I mean seriously, what the fuck is going through his mind when he put two and two together and came out with that guy as a role model? There aren’t any better leaders in Russia (except maybe now for Prokhorov) and Putin has gotten the economy going again and is not politically crazy or totalitarian. Given what he did in the context of his country, Putin is far more effective than Western leaders who’ve only had to keep the machine going rather than have to fix it. > [@Illuminatiprimus](#): > > 1. My knowledge of world history has led me to conclude that making the world more Christian would not make it better by my entirely subjective (but I think quite fair and something like the UN could get behind) standard of more equitable, better social outcomes, tolerance for others and less violent. America is an overwhelmingly Christian country and has been involved in around [20 separate wars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States) in the last 100 years (not including the world wars). China, a non-Christian country and the subject of that debate has been involved in 3 international wars since the current country’s inception in 1949. So there’s one metric where Christianity fails miserably. If you want to try and argue highly Christian countries (like most of southern Africa) are nice places then by all means do so, and I’ll be happy to tell you why I think you’re wrong. You are ignoring in that comparison the fact that United States was a global superpower which naturally made it intervene in numerous wars and the fact that China was involved in internal problems even after the establishment of the Maoist regime and lacked force projection capabilities. I said this because individual dignity of all human beings was first codified into law in Christian societies and you can’t just change a government, you must change individuals in a society first before society and government can change. > [@Dissonance](#): > > He’s started a good number of pit threads. One amusing time was when he used to start a new thread pitting the lowest hanging fruit he could find seemingly every time the last one had dropped off of the front page. > > [Soldier Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians For Sport](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=631024) > [Pitting the National Socialist Underground](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=631818) > [Man Beats Six-Year Old Stepson To Death](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=633401) > [Good Riddance Warren Jeffs](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=619859) > > Nothing says you’ve got balls of brass like pitting Nazis. I wasn’t doing this to prove I had “guts” but because these people deserved pitting. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Say, is or is not **Qin** the flaming fucktard who originally usernamed himself after George Wallace’ 1968 presidential running mate [Curtis LeMay?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Lemay) Obviously I didn’t pick LeMay’s username because he was a saint but because he was a badass like say Patton. Not to mention that LeMay only supported Wallace because he thought Nixon’s nuclear policy was a bad idea. > [@gamerunknown](#): > > For a brief moment, average lifespan was higher in the USSR than the US. Is there a cite for that? ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/93 "2012-03-12T00:51:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Is there a cite for that? Yap, [this article](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/yeltsin-healthier-than-the-average-russian-1365525.html) in the Independent, which I found from [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#cite_ref-40). I’m not sure where the journalist got his figures from though. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/94 "2012-03-12T01:03:03Z")
I for one support the practice of parading one’s ignorance in place where one will be smacked down and learn from it. Part of growing up. I’ve said some daft things on this board over the last decade, and I do learn, really. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2012, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690/95 "2012-03-12T03:01:32Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > There aren’t any better leaders in Russia (except maybe now for Prokhorov) and Putin has gotten the economy going again and is not politically crazy or totalitarian. Given what he did in the context of his country, Putin is far more effective than Western leaders who’ve only had to keep the machine going rather than have to fix it. And if a few eggs get broken in the process – like a free press and fair elections – I guess that’s the price that has to be paid to sell nuclear reactors to Iran, invade neighboring countries, sell billions in weapons to Syria and Venezuela, and ordering a few assassinations of critics. Yeah, that’s a great record he’s racked up, you ignorant little amoral child. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/qin-shi-huangdi-please-stop-demonstrating-your-woeful-ignorance-about-the-real-world/614690.md?page=4)