James Garfield posted:

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1753180214077620728

Oregon senate Republicans did another walkout after they passed a ballot initiative to ban walkouts and found out.

Wahhabi Lobby posted:

https://x.com/sprinter99800/status/1751093240021815444?s=46

Google Jeb Bush posted:

if they're planning to revisit the schedule again this is probably a really good year to attend your local/state dem conventions, tbh

aside from all the stuff state parties do, that's (generally) how dnc members get elected

Gyges posted:

What kind of idiot makes it all the way to AI being able to manipulate videos, and doesn't remember that people can do it by digital hand?

VikingofRock posted:

This is probably my biggest complaint about the NHTSA: their car safety regulations often ignore pedestrians / bicyclists / people in other cars. Car safety tests are all about how well your car protects you from death, not about how well it prevents death in general, so we get a ridiculous car size arms race. When giant SUVs and pick-ups are rated as "safe", it's because our concept of car safety is "kill the other guy".

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

My favorite mini-storyline of NYC politics is that a Republican mayoral candidate promised to kill a cat if he had to make a choice on whether to kill a cat or slow down a MTA train.

After he lost, Curtis Sliwa was the next Republican nominee and he owns 17 cats, was almost unable to vote for himself because he brought one of his cats to the polling station and threatened to fight the poll workers when they wouldn't let him bring the cat inside the booth, and got hit by a taxi.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/nyregion/curtis-sliwa-cat-voting.html

His Divine Shadow posted:

I'm hearing in local news that Biden is getting real confused and it seems if I am hearing this from the local news that are to the left of most american outlets, with examples from the last few days. Then it's not really just fox news propaganda.

poo poo, Trump's gonna win isn't he?

volts5000 posted:

I’m always keeping the post-2016 election results in my mind. That right there should be proof enough. But the vibes can be overwhelming. I’m taking my mom to the dentist and all I’ve heard is “Biden is so feeble! Do you see the way he walks! Just like my mom when she had dementia! The report said he didn’t even know what year it was! Makes you wonder who’s really running this country! It’s someone we didn’t even elect!” It sucks because I know there are more people like her who have been mainlining Fox News 24/7. It’s loving depressing.

FizFashizzle posted:

Of course verbal fluency is a measure of cognition and history of gaffs aside, Biden’s presentation over the past four years is concerning. Biden’s (handlers are) smart enough not to come out and state he went 0/5 on delayed recall like Trump did, but it just how Biden acts when he’s speaking extemporaneously is obviously not just “slowing down.”

And the whole stutter thing has never been very convincing to me. This only became an issue during Iowa where he was very clearly struggling to keep it together. The stutter was never a problem when he was burying Paul Ryan on live television. Ot was never mentioned during the other two times he ran for president.

Biden can’t complete sentences later in the day and all of a sudden it’s a stutter.

Riptor posted:

Is it?

FizFashizzle posted:

Literally part of the moca.

Certain dementias present with communication deficits early.

Primary progressive aphasia (what Bruce Willis has) presents very early with inability to make or understand speech.

Classic Alzheimer’s presents early on with inability to recall names and other word finding difficulty, due to asymmetric atrohpy of the hippocampi

Vascular dementia (or small vessel disease depending if you’re in neuro or psych) can present in any which way depending on where the infarcts are located. Not uncommon at all to have cognitive deficits.

Speech deficits can be:

Receptive - don’t understand speech
Expressive - can’t make it. This can be due to infarcts anywhere in the brain, or in specific language centers. Sometimes patients can’t make words or sometimes they can’t use the right word.

There are dozens of modifiers for speech patterns when you’re diagnosing communication deficits.

FizFashizzle posted:

Well gently caress me id never seen that.

FizFashizzle posted:

Increased risk of CVA happening in the future, though long enough out that risk starts to decline.

possible change in the brain parenchyma that can be exacerbated during atrophy that occurs normally secondary to aging.

Increased risk of seizure.

I am clearly talking about symptom presentation in a politician who has had a noticeable decline in language ability and processing speed. I am freely admitting i hadn’t known the stutter was brought up in 2007 and am owning that.

I’ve said nothing about the neuro linguistic etiology of a stutter and have flatly said I am not an ST.

You are conflating me responding to a poster asking if fluency is a part of a cognitive exam (which it is and you as evidenced above and you clearly don’t have experience with) and just giving about other things as if I’m saying Biden has all of those. He does not.

Maybe you and I are taking past one another.

FizFashizzle posted:

This was the point I was trying to make and if I was not clear I apologize.

mawarannahr posted:

I am inclined to believe he is using a theatrical manner in pointing things out, and the point he is trying to make isn't the literal one. I have family members, also narcissists, who have always done this. I guess it's a little too subtle for some folks to appreciate, but I don't think Trump's statements on magnets come from a deteriorating state of mind.

mawarannahr posted:

As I already mentioned, it has to be evaluated in the context of his umbrage vis-a-vis the well-known reliability issues for a system that is operating on water.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

are you disputing that Trump does in fact have massive cognitive deficits? Because if you are I have some hydroxychloroquine to sell you

cdc posted:

Because Trump is not talking to you, me or anybody in this thread. Yes, he's got major brain worms, but his message is directed at the chuds and rednecks who go "yeah, tractors and poo poo, oorah. USA! USA!".

They understand tractors and poo poo, but magnets? How do they work?

It doesn't make sense to us, but it makes sense to them. And that is all that matters.

Captain Fargle posted:

I heard there's supposed to be a special election this month to fill the seat vacated by George Santos. How much of a bellweather for the general election in November is it likely to be?

zoux posted:

Hmmm I googled RFK Jr and I got a video of him listing encounters with Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell like Bubba Gump listing types of shrimp

Xombie posted:

Like most vices, banning gambling doesn't actually decrease gambling, it just makes it harder to tax. Legality is not the problem. The problem, as always, is the greed of the leagues (and particularly, the team owners) and broadcasters themselves, who are more than glad to take any amount of dollars to shove sports gambling down the throats of everyone.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Human brains are pretty much physically incapable of understanding probability at an intuitive level. We're just bad at it; our brains are evolved to expect low probability but high magnitude events as disproportionately likely ("what if there is a tiger behind that bush?") and so we are very vulnerable to gambling scams.


It seems to me like just another hollowing out of the commons by capitalism. Any good thing we have, even just the common shared joy of a sports game, capitalism drives to monetize, and we no longer have any other social institutions capable of resisting that pressure.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

It's a third party tax on the vulnerable. Statistically speaking (in every sense), *nobody* understands math. Training the whole population to a standard of math education where they are resistant to gambling scams is akin to proposing we solve traffic congestion by training everyone to grow wings and flap themselves to work every day.

Eric Cantonese posted:

I think you are giving people too much credit on how much they choose to retain from what they are taught in school.

I might be wrong, but I don't think people go into gambling because they think it's a rational way to make money. From my experience, it's more like a mix of desperation and thrill-chasing. All gambling games and activities are designed to be highly addictive too.

It'd be wonderful to give the public a better understanding of probability and call it a day, but in the end, to control the really destructive effects of gambling, I think you have to have measures to limit access, limit the marketing that children can see, or at least cap how much people can sink into this stuff every day. I don't see a way around that.

WarpedLichen posted:

I don't think it's quite this simple - there's a pretty far gap psychologically between mathematical expected value and vibes. Its pretty much the X-Com effect where missing on 95% feels worse than it is but winning on 30% feels amazing and knowing doesn't really change that. The Lotto is still a massive money maker even though everybody knows you're losing money on it.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Look, this is a nice dream, but in practice it doesn't hold up. At best what you're talking about is palliative, partial prevention, not actually addressing the substance of the problem at a societal level.

There's been a lot of studies done of education's ability to prevent people from getting scammed, and it's only partially effective, not least because as the brain ages prior education becomes less effective; there is a reason the elderly are often targeted by scammers, and it's the same reason the elderly fill casinos.

Plus this is ignoring the total destruction and hollowing out of our public education system today. Nobody is even trying to strengthen public education enough for it to function in the manner you're suggesting; rather the political energy is trying to force a collapse so the public system can be replaced by privatized (scammy) alternatives.

Like, perspective: my state established a scholarship program, any high school valedictorian could automatically go to the state university, free ride

There were counties in my state where it took decades for anyone to take advantage of that scholarship. There were plenty of valedictorians. Problem was none of them could break the 800 SAT threshold requirements admission to the state university.

poo poo is *bad*. Pretending we can feasibly do probability education at scale is Pollyannish.

WarpedLichen posted:

I think if that is your criteria for sufficient mathematical education, I'm not sure how you'll ever achieve it. How do you make people understand something at a intuitive level and ignore their gut? There are some things that you can know academically but it still won't feel right in practice.

It would be amazing if you pulled it off though, the rational market that economists love to model with could actually exist.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

No, I'm not "moving goalposts": I'm objecting to the assertion that it is possible to provide enough education about probability to Americans to meaningfully reduce their vulnerability to gambling scams, at a societal/ statistical level.

I'm not asking you to propose something that would "stop all gambling ever" or whatever; I think your proposal of more education is akin to trying to stop a drought with a water pistol. It's just inadequate to the point of irrelevance.

There have been lots of studies on this (I'd post links but I'm on my phone); thr human brain is bad at probability and remains bad even when educated. A certain minimal amount of prophylaxis is possible but it doesn't work that well and doesn't hold over time.

The actual solution would be legislation outlawing for-profit gambling businesses, period, or limiting the profit they could accrue to minimal.amounts.. They are definitionally scams and should just be prevented.

PharmerBoy posted:

Ultimately I agree with this, and what other posters have put up- I doubt the vast majority of gamblers are doing it because they think it's a money-positive activity for them.

The point of that post was intended to be "why is this discussion about teaching everyone semi-advanced mathematics when you can teach them day one business functions," but ultimately neither are the solution.

Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

on another note, where's your av from?

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

You can research this yourself with a quick Google or I can post links later tonight. Math education simply does not prevent gambling behavior in the fashion you are proposing. People remain irrational even when educated.

Like, the behavioral economics people have studied this stuff. There is data.

PharmerBoy posted:

I'm not going to get super involved in continuing either, mostly because I'm not invested enough to track down the kinds of evidence you're requesting. I only want to note the anecdote (which I bring up because it amuses me, not because I think its representative of anything) that way back in high school my math class did go into probability. If we finished stuff early, our teacher would let us play cards. She would join, and proceed to talk through the probability of us having the cards to beat her (answer: not high enough), which was some excellent sneaky teaching in hindsight.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

You keep overstating my case dramatically; nobody except you is talking about "perfect rational actors"

Past that, ok, literally a three second google found this:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7241280_Does_learning_about_mathematics_of_gambling_change_gambling_behavior

Your proposal is not novel: it has been studied and disproven. (This isn't the only study on point; the topic is also covered somewhere in Ariely's books but he's the subject of a replication scandal right now so I'd need to sit down and actually do a fair bit of work to provide reliable sources past google)Google.

Do you have any specific, relevant data showing gambling education would help reduce gambling incidence?

Civilized Fishbot posted:

Is there proof that there's some subset of people who are not aware that, in general, gamblers lose their money?

I think pretty much everyone knows heroin is bad for your health, gambling is bad for your budget, using your phone all day is bad for your productivity. People do these things *anyway*, not because they don't understand that what they're doing is going to impact them negatively.

Lemming posted:

I'm a little confused, why are you proposing specific concrete, novel changes to math curricula if you *don't* have any relevant studies proving they would actually help? Like, not to say that everything needs to be absolutely proven to the n'th degree, but it feels like this is the kind of thing that a priori seems like it could help, and then after checking it out it just doesn't align with the initial assumptions.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I suspect studies of college students will be the best available data obtainable on this question, given the ethical restrictions on studies involving children.

Civilized Fishbot posted:

This would be a better design for answering the questions being asked in this thread, and it would get past an Internal Review Board:

1. Randomly assign hundreds of students to anti-gambling education or control group.

2. Check back in 5, 10, 20, 30 years later and measure how often they gamble/impact.of gambling behavior on their lives.

This kind of longitudinal work is the only way to measure programs like DARE and what Xiahou Dun is proposing is basically DARE but with gambling instead of drugs.

Civilized Fishbot posted:

Woah, I wasn't trying to upset you and I'm sincerely sorry I did. This is just policy talk, let's chill out.

It sounded to me like you were proposing something very similar to DARE - a program aimed at young students to communicate the plain dangers of addictive and self-destructive behaviors that we know will be advertised them as they get older.

The best way to measure the effectiveness of such a program would be a longitudinal study like what's been conducted for DARE, sex-ed programs, and other interventions aimed at helping students avoid dangers that they're going to encounter as they get older.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

As I went over above, this is because a proposal that relies on massively improving grade level math education in the US is just unfeasible. The American public education system is collapsing as we speak from political attacks; this sort of proposal in thr current political environment is just wishful thinking.

Makes them the most relevant data in the thread, tho.

More to the point, the cited study contained a control group of students who were not in any college level math classes at all. If there is no difference between students who have received the maximum in statistical education, and students who have received nothing beyond the inadequate math education provided by the current pre-college system . . .why would your proposal make any difference?

Your proposal.seems.either untestable (we simply can't reform grade level education at that scale) or to the extent it is testable, already disproven (as college students receiving a maximum amount of statistical education exhibit no difference in gambling behavior from a control group not receiving that maximum).

If you have better data feel free to share but considering all the grandstanding up thread and demands for proof, what do you have to show that's stronger or equal than what I've provided so far? I call.

Bifner McDoogle posted:

The issue is that you are arguing for Gambling Abuse Preparation in Education, but in reality the only way that is better than DARE is the acronym.

MixMasterMalaria posted: