If you have tools to mitigate the risk, then you eliminate the correlation.

No, only if you eliminate the risk. Smoking is still negatively correlated with life expectancy in Japan. The correlation exists if you only look at the USA. It exists if you only look at Japan. It exists if you look at the global population.

It matters enormously.

Not for the purpose of establishing whether there is a negative correlation between smoking and life expectancy.

Also that comic is saying that adding a third variable does not always make the model better. Also p-hacking is a thing. It’s the opposite of what you’re trying to establish, which is the existence of a third variable which improves the model. And once again, I will say that if you find two correlated variables confusing, adding a third variable is NOT going to help you.

Not relative to a public universal health care system, no.

I’m saying not at all. With public universal health care, without public universal health care… it does not matter. There is a negative correlation between smoking and life expectancy.

If your diagnosis is “we need to cut cigarette use to save lives”,

Yes, that is a conclusion one could draw from this.

but we’re ignoring the…

For the purposes of discussing this correlation, it does not matter. If we have universal health care, then cutting cigarette use will save lives. If we do not have universal health care, then cutting cigarette use will save lives. Conclusion: cutting cigarette use will save lives. That is true. No amount of discussion about unrelated third variables will make that not true.

If a third variable makes the model better, go ahead and add a third variable. But if someone doesn’t even understand the two-variable model, we should make sure they understand THAT model before we add even more stuff that they don’t understand.

Given the global response to the situation, I would bet they probably realize that you don’t think they’re significant.

Then again, there’s a chance they’re just focusing on food and water and shelter and medicine and not-getting-blown-up… rather than worrying about the opinions of people who couldn’t even pretend to be significant.

But we can see very definitively that a higher-than-average rate of education does nothing to increase the partisan character of the voting block.

Mormons have more bachelor degrees than average: Yes.

Mormons are more conservative than average: Yes.

We can see very definitively that a higher-than-average rate of education does nothing to increase the partisan character of the voting block: No.

That’s not what this shows. The two facts, together, are not enough to show a correlation between education and conservatism or to show a lack of correlation between education and liberal/leftist attitudes. To make a claim about correlation, as you are trying to do, you have two options:

1. Show a correlation or lack of correlation within this block,
2. Show a correlation or lack of correlation between average education level and average political leanings, using voting blocks as data points.

I have a perfect analogy:

I claim that smoking will decrease your life expectancy.

You claim that the smoking rate in the United States is 9.6%. The smoking rate in Japan is 16.4%. Life Expectancy in the United States is 79.8. Life Expectancy in Japan is 85.2. Therefore “we can see very definitively that a higher rate of smoking does nothing to decrease the life expectancy of the country”.

No. That doesn’t show that. Because if you look at data within Japan, you will still see a lower life expectancy among the people who smoke, and if you look at data globally, using countries as data points, you will also see lower life expectancy among the countries that smoke the most.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/life-expectancy-by-country

When you take broad averages like this, you very often lose useful information. In this case, just being “educated” in the abstract carries a weak correlation to political beliefs.

That’s true, but unfortunately, once you started trying to create a more complex model, you started making mistakes. And you aren’t even an idiot. Imagine your dumbest neighbors trying to make sense of this conversation.

No. I start off by giving you one variable correlated with one other variable. Once someone understands that, THEN we can start talking about nuance.

Go into a red neighborhood, and the math changes

No, it actually doesn’t. Within a Mormon community, I would wager we would still see that the most educated Mormons are also, ON AVERAGE, the most liberal/leftist Mormons.

Sure, if this is the only thing you knew, there could be a Simpson’s paradox situation, but we already know what the data looks like when we count everyone as one big group. Your “exceptions” can be true, and at the same time, are not evidence against the original claim. Even IF you found that, within EVERY group, education correlates with conservatism… it would just be Simpson’s paradox, because we already know that, on the whole, education is correlated to liberal/leftist attitudes.

Average. On average, people with degrees are more liberal/leftist. As a group. Separate the degrees from the non-degrees, and measure their liberalism/leftism, and find which group has the higher average. Average.

Average.

This idea that earning a MBA or a JD or an MD makes your politics good is completely wrong

Well, on average… it does.

You don’t just take a class and become a liberal Democrat if your grade is high enough.

No, but being intelligent is correlated with both of these things. Dumb people are more easily tricked by right wing talking points. Dumb people also don’t get good grades. Smart people are, for whatever reason, more likely to agree with liberal or leftist talking points. Smart people are also more likely to get high grades.

I struggle to rationalize this for countries not already in armed conflict.

Legally, practically, or morally?

Practically, armed conflict is way more expensive, and it’s riskier. If you had two strategies for changing someone’s behavior: 1) Punch them until they agree to change, 2) Tell them they can’t borrow any more money from you until they agree to change… you would probably prefer number two because it’s less risky.

Legally… we only have 80 years of precedent for the USD being the world’s reserve currency, amd 50 years of weaponizing that power with the IEEPA. Rules for armed conflicts, on the other hand, are ancient. We have a lot of examples for acts of war in armed conflicts, and we can quickly define them and recognize them. For defining and regulating financial “attacks”… we have basically nothing.

Morally… you and I have different moral systems from the people in charge. People can rationalize some truly heinous shit.

Not absolutely sure… but I’ll take “Probably wouldn’t” over “Definitely already does.”

We would need a LOT of new international guidelines for this.

It’s not clear to me where we would draw the line, since there’s not really an enforceable difference between, “Allowing you to use our financial system is causing us harm, so you can’t do that anymore,” and “You can’t use our financial system until you <insert demands here>.”

While a blockade is recognized as an act of war, an embargo is not. The US sanctions usually operate like a specific, services-based embargo, so there’s no interpretation of CURRENT international law rendering it an act of war. Again, we would need new guidelines to meet your goal.

I think shared ownership goes against human nature

I think the vast majority of things are shared. Air, water, soil… roads, schools… your education… the bathrooms at the supermarket… the murals/sculptures that make your town look less like a shithole…

It’s perfectly in line with human nature, actually, to share things. People who amass hoards of wealth and fight for power and control… those are the weirdos.

I’d think that, since this conversation happened on public property, and the conversation was among public servants, the conversation is subject to the same standards as any other public conversation.

Maybe the legal system is too stupid for that, though.

People, generally, are paranoid morons. Calmly processing the facts and assessing risk are the rare exception. Even people who are good at that kind of thing are first making an irrational decision, and then justifying it after the fact.

The solution isn’t to fact-check them about Flock having no impact on their safety. The solution is to fear-monger even harder about cameras seeing into their houses, and a private company selling their data to telemarketers.

Sure, boomers had puns. So did the silent generation, gen X, and Millennials.

Gen Z also has puns. They’re not the dominant feature… but they’re there.

But China isn’t going to sell my data to Uncle Sam to help deport my family (who are legal citizens). So there’s that.

Yeah, I straight up don’t respond until they’ve asked/said the thing that they’re contacting me for.

Usually they finish their thought without me ever needing to respond. I did have one coworker who just… never said anything else. That’s also a win.

9th amendment.

It’s the best amendment, despite being, legally, the most useless.

I would argue that it was meant to cover the kind of situation where a private company is given government permission to gather surveillance data from the citizenry, in exchange for access to said data.

Show me the counterfactual proving those people would have survived under a non-capitalist system.

Are you going to apply the same standard to your original claim? How many of the alleged 200 million would have survived under a non-communist system?

Data’s messy… I get it. The actual mechanics of tallying all of this don’t matter quite as much as applying those rules consistently. It would be a bit unreasonable for you to ask for a counterfactual tally of deaths under capitalism if you’re unable to provide one for deaths under communism.

Is there one centrist dem a majority of people even like?

Obama.