> Civic Science's research is reminiscent of a 2015 survey that found 30 per cent of Republicans supported bombing "Agrabah", the fictional city where Disney's Aladdin is set.
Interesting implication that those 30% didn't even need a specific reason to bomb the city. Apparently it just being Arab was already enough in their mind? (Unless there was additional context in the question that the article was missing out)
My guess would be the only context where they ever heard or thought about a city in the middle east is in context of a US war. If you think the US is only fighting for good and justified reason any city you hear something about is one that is likely full of whatever enemies the US has at that moment. Why else would anybody talk about the middle east? So of course its ok to bomb it if somebody is considering it and the military would do it then the person answering is ok with it.
When Arabic numerals are banned, will Roman numerals be handled as an int or a char? How will floating point numbers be represented, and will they ban the decimal point as well. And without the zero, how will programs indicate successful termination??
I see such questions as a sort of trolling. A question that would be more educational and would result in less click-bait headlines would be to ask people to pick from among a multiple-choice list for the name of the numbers: "Are 1,2,3,4... know as (a) Roman, (b) European, (c) Arabic, or (d) Indian-Arabic numerals?"
> the saddest and funniest testament to American bigotry we’ve ever seen in our data
I feel like we need more data. It is possible that people just saying "No" because they don't know what they are, so assume that they aren't important. What if they asked about "Italian numerals", "Turkish numerals" or "Turtle Numerals"?
Perhaps at least one person was an Indian-American who is annoyed that the numeral system isn't commonly known as Hindu or at least Hindu-Arabic numerals, for nationalist reasons. I've met Indians who have expressed this opinion before.
Yes, stupidity and bigotry are both problems but they are different problems.
It sort of feels like this survey was hunting to find evidence of bigotry and pushed for that narrative. I think it is important that we don't just spin the stories we want out of crappy evidence.
So that nixes an intelligence test like the Jim Crow South.
The ugly truth is that too much democracy always leads to populist dictators. And social media makes manufacturing consent way too easy.
One way around political parties, career corrupt politicians, and charismatic mass murderers is sortition. Directly elect a common legislative body who then set a minimal standard of qualifications for a very large pool of potentual upper echelon public administrators. From these, every X years, say 2 to 4, some people are chosen by lottery to run things. Divide up power a great deal more and never let the rich be in-charge of everything. It's purposefully not anarchistically "democratic" to avoid entire categories of problems that waste energy, treasure, lives, and effort on unmoored, fantastical political factionism will never solve, nor will any temporarily apparently balanced countervailing political status quo. It is utopian and naive to give everyone direct or semi-direct control because people will vote for what is cruel or popular rather than fairest or long-term essential. I'd rather have some semi-disinterested random person like a recently retired airline pilot or an accountant without bought alliances dig into big decisions with data, stakeholder input, and structured decision support.
That's a lot of political opinions there, in the service of "avoiding political factionism".
Another thing: People who propose theoretical systems for governance seem to have a weird fondness of lotteries. I can't really understand it.
Yes, it may be "just" in a mathematical or statistical sense, but it's also maximally intransparent (it's literally impossible to predict who will be chosen, that's the entire idea), so people may view the outcomes as unfair or arbitrary.
It's also easy to manipulate: The people who operate the lottery would be in the best position to become the new power brokers.
Has there ever been any real-life political system that uses lotteries?
Sortition was famously used in classical Athens (~5th C. BC) and a couple other Greek city-states. There were other examples, but I think the big issue with the historical examples is the fact that the eligible parties weren't as broadly defined as we tend to allow these days in our thought experiments.
IOW, nobody was actually selecting purely random members of the populace: there were some pretty significant qualifications needed to become eligible (much like the United States once required of voters).
Make civic duty a component of belonging to various professional classes: professional engineers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, architects, and so on.
Without commonwealth reinvestment and respect for shared burdens, society has no future with a bunch of amoral, anonymous, transient, hyperindividualistic people all trying to climb out of the crab bucket striving to become billionaires and the few actual billionaires believing they can "hide" in their New Zealand doomsday prepper bunkers* and not feel the effects of the bullshit they caused. America has slid since the Vietnam War into becoming much like a "Russia Lite" at the present time. Chalmers Johnson expounds on the sorrows, blowback, and decay of empire in print and in video at length.
* What I do hope is these become Winchester Mystery House-like tourist attractions in 200 years.
> Civic Science's research is reminiscent of a 2015 survey that found 30 per cent of Republicans supported bombing "Agrabah", the fictional city where Disney's Aladdin is set.
Interesting implication that those 30% didn't even need a specific reason to bomb the city. Apparently it just being Arab was already enough in their mind? (Unless there was additional context in the question that the article was missing out)
My guess would be the only context where they ever heard or thought about a city in the middle east is in context of a US war. If you think the US is only fighting for good and justified reason any city you hear something about is one that is likely full of whatever enemies the US has at that moment. Why else would anybody talk about the middle east? So of course its ok to bomb it if somebody is considering it and the military would do it then the person answering is ok with it.
When Arabic numerals are banned, will Roman numerals be handled as an int or a char? How will floating point numbers be represented, and will they ban the decimal point as well. And without the zero, how will programs indicate successful termination??
how would binary representation work with roman numerals ?
As far as the calculations go, the same way. It would be the numbers we put on the screen that would change. It would make ascii numbers difficult.
And it's XI-VIII-MMXXV today, simple.
Splitting bills and calculators will be fun.
Sorry ISO demands this
It is MMXXV-XI-VIII
I see such questions as a sort of trolling. A question that would be more educational and would result in less click-bait headlines would be to ask people to pick from among a multiple-choice list for the name of the numbers: "Are 1,2,3,4... know as (a) Roman, (b) European, (c) Arabic, or (d) Indian-Arabic numerals?"
They weren't hiding it, it was literally in the subheading:
> research designed to 'tease out prejudice among those who didn't understand the question'
The purported aim of the research:
> designed to explore the bias and prejudice of poll respondents.
And the research was from:
> Civic Science, an American market research company
The research worked as intended.
Do you take everything so literally?
I wonder what the result would be if the survey were done in EU.
What do they think about Hindu numerals?
the transition to mathematics with roman numerals would be interesting to say the least.
There is NO concept of zero with Roman numerals.
Billy sorta convinced a Young Sheldon Cooper of the same thing
(2019)
This is one of those meaningless trivia questions.
Its not bigotry nor is it clever. It’s just word play.
> the saddest and funniest testament to American bigotry we’ve ever seen in our data
I feel like we need more data. It is possible that people just saying "No" because they don't know what they are, so assume that they aren't important. What if they asked about "Italian numerals", "Turkish numerals" or "Turtle Numerals"?
Perhaps at least one person was an Indian-American who is annoyed that the numeral system isn't commonly known as Hindu or at least Hindu-Arabic numerals, for nationalist reasons. I've met Indians who have expressed this opinion before.
Known as Hindu-Arabic in my country.
Way outside India's sphere
> What if they asked about "Italian numerals", "Turkish numerals" or "Turtle Numerals"?
None of those are real things. "Arabic numerals" are a fundamental concept that, at one point, were quite clearly taught in schools.
> It is possible that people just saying "No" because they don't know what they are, so assume that they aren't important.
So your argument is that these people aren't bigoted, they're just incredibly stupid?
Yes, stupidity and bigotry are both problems but they are different problems.
It sort of feels like this survey was hunting to find evidence of bigotry and pushed for that narrative. I think it is important that we don't just spin the stories we want out of crappy evidence.
I think it fair to say that if asked, most Arabs, would agree.
> “This kind of blind prejudice can happen on both sides.”
Cancel that man, immediately! /s
The truth of it is most people are too dull and/or ignorant to vote, but we have to let them because the alternative ends up being even worse.
So that nixes an intelligence test like the Jim Crow South.
The ugly truth is that too much democracy always leads to populist dictators. And social media makes manufacturing consent way too easy.
One way around political parties, career corrupt politicians, and charismatic mass murderers is sortition. Directly elect a common legislative body who then set a minimal standard of qualifications for a very large pool of potentual upper echelon public administrators. From these, every X years, say 2 to 4, some people are chosen by lottery to run things. Divide up power a great deal more and never let the rich be in-charge of everything. It's purposefully not anarchistically "democratic" to avoid entire categories of problems that waste energy, treasure, lives, and effort on unmoored, fantastical political factionism will never solve, nor will any temporarily apparently balanced countervailing political status quo. It is utopian and naive to give everyone direct or semi-direct control because people will vote for what is cruel or popular rather than fairest or long-term essential. I'd rather have some semi-disinterested random person like a recently retired airline pilot or an accountant without bought alliances dig into big decisions with data, stakeholder input, and structured decision support.
That's a lot of political opinions there, in the service of "avoiding political factionism".
Another thing: People who propose theoretical systems for governance seem to have a weird fondness of lotteries. I can't really understand it.
Yes, it may be "just" in a mathematical or statistical sense, but it's also maximally intransparent (it's literally impossible to predict who will be chosen, that's the entire idea), so people may view the outcomes as unfair or arbitrary.
It's also easy to manipulate: The people who operate the lottery would be in the best position to become the new power brokers.
Has there ever been any real-life political system that uses lotteries?
Sortition was famously used in classical Athens (~5th C. BC) and a couple other Greek city-states. There were other examples, but I think the big issue with the historical examples is the fact that the eligible parties weren't as broadly defined as we tend to allow these days in our thought experiments.
IOW, nobody was actually selecting purely random members of the populace: there were some pretty significant qualifications needed to become eligible (much like the United States once required of voters).
Make civic duty a component of belonging to various professional classes: professional engineers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, architects, and so on.
Without commonwealth reinvestment and respect for shared burdens, society has no future with a bunch of amoral, anonymous, transient, hyperindividualistic people all trying to climb out of the crab bucket striving to become billionaires and the few actual billionaires believing they can "hide" in their New Zealand doomsday prepper bunkers* and not feel the effects of the bullshit they caused. America has slid since the Vietnam War into becoming much like a "Russia Lite" at the present time. Chalmers Johnson expounds on the sorrows, blowback, and decay of empire in print and in video at length.
* What I do hope is these become Winchester Mystery House-like tourist attractions in 200 years.