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Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? Bernie Sanders wants to know who owns America?

#2961 User is offline   Kaitlyn S 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 14:39

 mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 13:53, said:

You and Kaitlyn do enjoy supporting each other, don't you?
Quite honestly, I don't think I've been all that supportive of JonOttowa and I wouldn't be surprised if he feels the same way. Even though he has been quite supportive of me, I have disagreed with him at least twice.

The main difference is that Jon is more convinced that I was right than I was. An in any conversation, I am stating what I think, but many life experiences have told me that my thoughts have been based on incomplete or incorrect information and I am willing to have my mind changed when someone can convince me that I am either wrong or that I need to look more deeply into the situation. The message I am getting from Jon is that I should not let the rest of you talk me out of what I believe. I am of the opinion that it is okay to let me be talked out of what I believe if what I believe isn't right. However, I should not let myself get talked out of my current beliefs due to peer pressure or because most of the others in the forum believe something different.

However, those who look down on Jon for being extremely confident in his beliefs should look at yourselves as well. I've been here for about 40 pages now and as far as I can tell, the only person who could be convinced to change their opinion about something is me. Now I don't really think that's true, most of us are somewhat open-minded, but I have no evidence to show that it is not true. I've seen many things said that disagree with others, and to date the only one I've noticed bend toward another person's opinion is me.

Your biggest problem with Jon is that his beliefs are different than yours. If he was on a different forum, perhaps half of the people would agree with him. Lord knows that America has very many people that agree with Jon on just about every point. Trump did win the election, after all. On the boardgamegeek equivalent of the Water Cooler, it's probably about 1/3 conservatives, and Jon's points would be quite popular among the conservative posters there. Of course, the other 2/3 would be ripping him apart similar to what you do here.

However, his points aren't even discussed. As soon as he posts, you all jump on him as an uninformed racist. Has anybody really responded to him with anything besides "you aren't worth listening to"? I felt that way myself for a bit but I realized that people have been much kinder in responding to me than to him, actually discussing the points which I bring up. I can understand your reluctance to discuss things with Jon, he has a "I'm right and you're wrong" style and you don't think a discussion will be of any use. However, I have noticed the same "I'm right and you're wrong" style among most of Jon's detractors also. I would like to break that attitude because it stifles truthful conversation. I have tried for about a year on BGG and have found a few posters that it's wroth discussing issues with. Most were of the "I'm right and you're wrong" type there too but a few other reasonable posters and I are making inroads. I have learned a lot and I find it somewhat enjoyable.

Now, put yourself in Jon's shoes for a minute. He's looking at this forum as a way to discuss ideas and nobody will even discuss them with him, preferring to just make a snarky comment or two each time he posts. What is he supposed to think? What I am saying to you is, if he is so obviously wrong to you, discuss with him civilly why you think he is wrong. He may be shocked at first but a real conversation might ensue and perhaps you will find some common ground. I presume there cannot be a total meeting of the minds because there are some fundamental differences in philosophies - the Constitution as written as opposed to a living breathing document for example.
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#2962 User is offline   diana_eva 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 14:41

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-18, 13:57, said:

It looks like someone went through a lot of work to put up that site, with several categories of "news" stories. And as gullible as I am made out to be, I didn't find one headline that looked remotely credible. This is an example for those that don't want to visit the site:


Israel to Resettle 1 Million Palestinians on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch



It's hard to believe that he replaces all that content daily.


You realize that this is a humour site, right?

#2963 User is offline   PassedOut 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 14:48

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-18, 13:57, said:

It looks like someone went through a lot of work to put up that site, with several categories of "news" stories. And as gullible as I am made out to be, I didn't find one headline that looked remotely credible.

Good. Except for complete cynics, I don't think that anyone is completely free of gullibility -- me included. There's not time to fact-check everything, and one tends to take at face value material that matches one's own experience when it comes from a source that hasn't let one down in the past.

Much of business is conducted on trust, and I can say that if I find out another business person has lied to me, that's my last dealing with him or her. Barring a fast retraction and apology, I feel the same way about a news organization that puts out a false story.

Of course, satire is in a different category, and so are opinion shows like Hannity's, the show that repeated out the false story about refugees. No one should expect those shows -- on the right or the left -- to be reliable sources in the first place.
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#2964 User is offline   cherdano 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 15:01

 cherdano, on 2016-November-18, 11:12, said:

Are you celebrating his appointment despite the fact that he has made racist comments, or because of it?
Just curious.

Still waiting for a reply to this one. If you are unable to use Google to find the quotes, I am happy to provide them.
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#2965 User is offline   Kaitlyn S 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 15:01

One of the highlights of a successful conversation is mutual respect. I happen to believe all of you are somewhat decent bridge players and therefore capable of some logical thought. That is my starting premise. Given that, I'm going to respect your opinion whether I agree with it or not. When it differs greatly from mine, and it's not based on some fundamental belief, I feel like there should be a reasonable chance of figuring out why we think differently, and come to some resolution which may be agreeing to disagree, or one side or the other coming closer to the other side's position.

Now, while I am giving you my respect, I also expect you to respect me in turn. There is no point in engaging when I am not respected because the other side's argument is going to be condescending at best. In most cases, I think I have some degree of respect.

This might be where the discussions with the left-leaning posters and Jon are breaking down. I think there is a mutual lack of respect which needs to be removed before real conversation can happen. Jon - I'm going to appear to not support you a third time now, but "mutual" means both ways. You need to respect them too. I realize this is hard to do when all they do is call you an uninformed bigot, but right now some of them aren't even reading your posts. Both sides would do much better to be less confrontational.
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#2966 User is offline   Kaitlyn S 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 15:03

 diana_eva, on 2016-November-18, 14:41, said:

You realize that this is a humour site, right?
Of course. It's funnier than Saturday Night Live.
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#2967 User is offline   hrothgar 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 15:22

FWIW, The New Republic has a good (although somewhat dated) description why it was that a Republican dominated judiciary committee refused to appoint Sessions to a federal judgeship because he was considered to be too racist.

https://newrepublic....closed-sessions
Alderaan delenda est
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#2968 User is offline   jonottawa 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 15:26

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-18, 14:39, said:

Quite honestly, I don't think I've been all that supportive of JonOttowa and I wouldn't be surprised if he feels the same way. Even though he has been quite supportive of me, I have disagreed with him at least twice.

The main difference is that Jon is more convinced that I was right than I was.


I agree, you haven't been particularly supportive, but I'm a big boy. B-)

I'm actually not convinced at all that you're right fwiw. You've said some things I disagree with. But my sense of you is that you're a fundamentally decent person trying to carry on an honest conversation & to figure out what the right thing is. I AM convinced that you shouldn't back down from bullies, and that the behavior of (most of?) the folks on the other side has been shameful. But it's like with the Soros riots, I think their behavior just turns off anyone who hasn't already made up their minds, so in that sense it's helpful.

Posted Image
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#2969 User is offline   jonottawa 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 15:45

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-18, 15:03, said:

Of course. It's funnier than Saturday Night Live.

That's a pretty low bar. Is that like being more moral than Anthony Weiner? Or less corrupt than Hillary?

Good quote partially explaining (but not excusing) the incoherent rage directed at us:

Posted Image
"Maybe we should all get together and buy Kaitlyn a box set of "All in the Family" for Chanukah. Archie didn't think he was a racist, the problem was with all the chinks, dagos, niggers, kikes, etc. ruining the country." ~ barmar
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#2970 User is offline   Kaitlyn S 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 15:51

 hrothgar, on 2016-November-18, 15:22, said:

FWIW, The New Republic has a good (although somewhat dated) description why it was that a Republican dominated judiciary committee refused to appoint Sessions to a federal judgeship because he was considered to be too racist.

https://newrepublic....closed-sessions
Wow, the employees in the DOJ are going to be quite confused when they worked for Holder (blacks good, police bad) and now they're working for Sessions.
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#2971 User is offline   PassedOut 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 15:56

 jonottawa, on 2016-November-18, 15:26, said:

But it's like with the Soros riots, I think their behavior just turns off anyone who hasn't already made up their minds, so in that sense it's helpful.

Probably shouldn't ask, but this piqued my curiosity. Just what are the "Soros riots?"
The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists — that is why they invented hell. — Bertrand Russell
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#2972 User is offline   mikeh 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 16:46

 jonottawa, on 2016-November-18, 14:26, said:

"Kaitlyn, it's also worth noting that by Mike's own definition, he is a racist. I'm confident that he favors discriminating against whites in hiring or in university applications. I'm confident that he supports racially/religiously polarizing organizations like La Raza & Black Lives Matter & the Muslim Brotherhood. I'm confident that he hasn't spent a minute of his life advocating for more 'diversity' in China, or in Africa, or in India, or in Japan, or in Israel, or in Vietnam, or in Afghanistan, or in Bangladesh, or in South Korea."

"Just to be clear, I am NOT calling Mike a racist. I am saying that Mike, if he were being intellectually honest and consistent, would call HIMSELF a racist. :P"

Now Mike, here's how an intellectually honest person would reply to my argument:

Either deny that you favor/support the things that I say I'm confident you favor/support.

OR

Explain how favoring/supporting those things doesn't constitute having "opinions of or behaviours towards people [that] are influenced by the race of such people."

Here's how YOU replied:

IQ differences!
I'm amused at being called a racist!
I'm going to keep misusing the word bigot no matter how many times you post its definition!
You're a white supremacist!

Shame on you, sir.

Posted Image

Ok.

Favouring affirmative action is a complex issue, and not prone to simple binary views, in which favouring it is seen as racial discrimination against whites or men.

Understanding the arguments for affirmative action requires more than knee-jerk name-calling.

The arguments that I would advance include:

Cultural values evolve slowly

role models are important

For virtually all of recorded history various forms of prejudice influence life in all cultures. I happen to have an interest in the history of science as well as the evolution of life in general and human life in particular, so I have read extensively, albeit as a layperson with no particular training.

Read anything written 100 years ago...or 150...or....and you will see discrimination that forms part of the background to the story. It is so omnipresent that it seems that the writer and intended audience weren't even aware of the biases, in much the same fashion that allows Kaitlyn to repeatedly protest that she isn't at all racist.

Thus how many female astronomers had doctorates 80 years ago? How many women were medical doctors in the 1950's. How many were lawyers?

Ask the same question about blacks, or latinos. Look back at history and find when the first Jewish member of Parliament was elected in the UK. Heck, I belong to a club here in Victoria that only voted to admit women some 20 years ago....fwiw, I refused invitations to join until that was rescinded.

When I was in Engineering, more than 40 years ago, there were no more than one or two women, and the undergraduate society was openly sexist: at one 'smoker' the class president screwed a hired hooker on stage.

So as a young woman, back in the 1950s or 60s or earlier, when deciding what career to choose...it took a lot of independence even to think of a career other than finding a husband.

As a young black, whether male or female, but of course twice as difficult for a female, what career could one look towards?

It wasn't and isn't merely the resistance that some professions put in the way. It is also about the examples in one's life.

I do a lot of work that involves the assessment of possible career paths that would have been followed by young people who have now been disabled by accidents. So I deal with experts in this area all the time, and myy understanding is that children generally, though by now means always, tend towards careers similar to thise followed by older family members. I stress that this is only a generalization and by no means even close to being 'more likely than not'.

However, I know many lawyers who have at least one parent as a lawyer, and the same for doctors, accountants, carpenters, electrcians and so on.

We rely on role models.

So imagine that as a society we have decided that the prejudices of the past are unfair, and we want or professions to more accurately reflect a fair and just society?

We could take the long road and not touch the old boys prejudices....let the old boys die off, and hope that as the generations pass, we see a slow increase in the participation of women or blacks or...


Or we could say: one good way to make young people realize that they can in fact hope to become a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer, is to confer advantages on those people, until such time as it becomes as easy for a woman or for a black man to aspire to become a lawyer, etc as it has been for a white.

Bear in mind that the oppressed (and I know that term will drive jon nuts), continue, usually, to suffer from ongoing discrimination. Affirmative action isn't imposed on a level playing field. Were it to be so imposed, then I would be opposed to it. It would be unjustifiable.

But despite the mistaken beliefs earlier espoused by Kaitlyn, discrimination is rampant, and so too are the effects of socio-economic disparities, that are themselves both causes and results of generations of systemic discrimination.

The playing field remains tilted against those favoured by affirmative action, so the discrimination created by affirmative action serves to offset, and only partially offset, the background bias.

Affirmative action is a form of discrimination as a response to a problem, and not a goal of its own. That is the difference between supporting affirmative action on the one hand, and engaging in voter suppression (as did many Republican States) on the other, or of electing only white males to office.

Btw, for anyone interested in how racial prejudice impacts bright African-americans, read Neil deGrasse Tyson's stories about the obstacles he had to overcome to be an astrophysicist.

I don't 'support' La Raza, altho the limited information I have on that suggests that it is not engaged in promoting race divisions or hatreds. Whether I would endorse amy of it aims would depend on what they were. BLM: from what I have heard, it seems to have some fairly cogent things to say about the state of race relations in the US. I don't know much about it, and it may or may not be that I would approve some, all or none of its stated agenda.

Do I think that there is compelling evidence that blacks are disproportionally wrongly shot by police in the US? Yes, I do.

Do I also accept that the proportion of citizen-police interactions that result in the police killing an unarmed or surrendering or fleeing suspect is roughly the same for whites and blacks? I am uncertain because I haven't read the paper that apparently suggests this to be the case, and I know, from having looked into internet references to 'sources' that not all sources are reliable and not all papers are valid. However, I am willing to entertain the notion, while still noting that blacks are proportionately far more likely to be confronted by armed police than are whites, thus generating a far higher per capita rate of shootings.

The problem, iow, isn't that police kill blacks who they have stopped far more frequently than they kill whites they have stopped. It is that they stop, and thus create high risk encounters, blacks far more often than whites, based on population statistics.

As for the Muslim Brotherhood: again I have limited knowledge. I do not 'support' entities whose beliefs or practices are unknown to me. If they advocate, for example, the peaceful interaction of peoples without regard to religion, then I'd likely support them, but I have a sneaking hunch that at least some of the members don't think that way. In addition, and as a general but nout universal bias, I think that anyone whose prime identifier is their religious belief is delusional. Organized religion, in my opinion, is on balance, a terrible force for evil. There are notable exceptions: Mycroft, as one example, and I have profound differences about religion but I have great admiration for what I know of Mycroft's character. So, I suspect I would not support the MB were I to be bothered to learn more about it.

I have already addressed the silly points about my lack of advocacy on issues arising in and affecting other areas of the world. I tend to form and express opinions about subjects where I have some understanding of the issues. Unlike many right wingers, I am very comfortable with acknowledging that opinions should be based on evidence, not belief. Belief flows from considering the facts. The facts are not the result of the belief. Had Kaitlyn understood that, many of her more offensive posts would not have been written.
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#2973 User is offline   cherdano 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 16:55

Jon, I am still waiting for your answer. Are you excited for Sessions' appointment because of his past of racist comments, or despite them? I should say, from your posts it is easy to get the impression that it is the former - so I wanted to give you the opportunity to clear up a possible unfortunate misunderstanding.

 hrothgar, on 2016-November-18, 15:22, said:

FWIW, The New Republic has a good (although somewhat dated) description why it was that a Republican dominated judiciary committee refused to appoint Sessions to a federal judgeship because he was considered to be too racist.

https://newrepublic....closed-sessions

The easiest way to count losers is to line up the people who talk about loser count, and count them. -Kieran Dyke
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#2974 User is offline   Kaitlyn S 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 17:52

 mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Had Kaitlyn understood that, many of her more offensive posts would not have been written.
While many of my posts were based on incomplete information, I thought of my posts as an intellectual exchange of ideas and would only be offensive to someone so sensitive that they don't belong in the Water Cooler. If I had any idea that someone who thinks they belong here would be offended by my posts, I wouldn't have posted them. Being intentionally hurtful is evil and I try to avoid that when possible.
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#2975 User is offline   jonottawa 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 18:17

Good news. This makes confirmation a virtual lock.http://www.washingto...article/2607811Posted Image
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#2976 User is offline   mikeh 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 18:30

n

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-18, 17:52, said:

While many of my posts were based on incomplete information, I thought of my posts as an intellectual exchange of ideas and would only be offensive to someone so sensitive that they don't belong in the Water Cooler. If I had any idea that someone who thinks they belong here would be offended by my posts, I wouldn't have posted them. Being intentionally hurtful is evil and I try to avoid that when possible.

You take internet rumours that are, despite your protestations to the contrary, racist, and you post them here as fact. You didn't post the socialism meme basd on 'incomplete information'. You didn't post the 'reporters won't report bad things about muslims because of death threats' based on incomplete information. You didn't post that 'blacks face problems with being hired because businessmen have a reasonable fear that a black person would make a bogus discrimination claim' based on incomplete information.

Your beliefs, your racist musings, and the acceptance by you and your friends of internet myths posted on alt.right websites do not constitute 'incomplete information'.

In some cases you formed and posted your thinking without ANY information at all....you said so with respect to the litigation fear nonsence. You made up an idea out of whole cloth: an information-free fantasy.

The others represented your unthinking adoption of urban myths perpetrated byy rightwing loonies....and you can't even grasp the simple fact that your blind acceptance of these stories was precisely because and only because those fantasies so perfectly resonated with your view of the world. You find simplistic, delusional and racist falsehoods easy to accept because they accord with your bubble-enclosed worldview.

I am not personally offended by what you say. I have known people like you before. We had a tenant once, a wealthy woman from California who rented a suite from us while the home she usually rented for the summer was being renovated. It was in 2008 and she told me, very seriously, that Obama was a socialist and that she would move to BC if he got elected.

I bit my tongue. I resisted the temptation to ask her how she saw BC. In our Province, a right wing populist, 50 years ago, nationalized the electrical company (BC Hydro). We have a Province wide, Province owned Ferry system. Virtually ALL of our drinking water (other than areas with no access to municipal water) is state owned. We have nationalized, single-payer health care. Our mandatory auto insurance is provided by a Provincially owned insurance company.

In short, we are closer to being a worker's paradise than anything Obama has ever dreamed of creating!

You are a perfect example of the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year: post-truth. Facts are far less important compared to how something makes you feel.

I find that attitude not merely offensive but incredibly dangerous. You are insignificant, as am I. But the notion that there are millions of you and that your mindset now controls the entire federal government apparatus in the US terrifies me. When facts take a back seat to belief, and when you have a Donald Trump in charge of executive action, up to and including use of nuclear weapons, with no constraints, surrounded by advisors whose prime qualification is a willingness to say 'yes' to everything he spouts, then I am terrified, and I am offended by everyone who represents what created that terror.
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#2977 User is offline   Kaitlyn S 

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Posted 2016-November-18, 18:31

 barmar, on 2016-November-17, 10:47, said:

Maybe we should all get together and buy Kaitlyn a box set of "All in the Family" for Chanukah. Archie didn't think he was a racist, the problem was with all the chinks, dagos, niggers, kikes, etc. ruining the country.
I don't believe that Archie ever used the word "nigg*r" in All In The Family.
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#2978 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2016-November-19, 09:47

To Trump supporters.

Trump has advanced the name of Michael Flynn for National Security Adviser. Flynn has stated in a tweet that "Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL", and in a speech that "Islam is a political ideology…it definitely hides behind this notion of it being a religion. It’s like cancer…a malignant cancer in this case.”

Do you agree with Flynn?
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#2979 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2016-November-19, 10:12

 mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 18:30, said:

You are a perfect example of the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year: post-truth. Facts are far less important compared to how something makes you feel.

I find that attitude not merely offensive but incredibly dangerous. You are insignificant, as am I. But the notion that there are millions of you and that your mindset now controls the entire federal government apparatus in the US terrifies me. When facts take a back seat to belief, and when you have a Donald Trump in charge of executive action, up to and including use of nuclear weapons, with no constraints, surrounded by advisors whose prime qualification is a willingness to say 'yes' to everything he spouts, then I am terrified, and I am offended by everyone who represents what created that terror.


Along the same line, in the past 15 years or so there have been numerous studies done comparing intuition to data-driven decisions with the results overwhelmingly finding intuition an unreliable method for decision-making.

Quote

A 2000 paper surveyed 136 studies in which human judgment was compared to algorithmic prediction. Sixty-five of the studies found no real difference between the two, and 63 found that the equation performed significantly better than the person. Only eight of the studies found that people were significantly better predictors of the task at hand. If you’re keeping score, that’s just under a 6% win rate for the people and their intuition, and a 46% rate of clear losses.
source: https://hbr.org/2010...decision-making
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Posted 2016-November-19, 11:20

For foreign diplomats, Trump hotel is place to be

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In interviews with a dozen diplomats, many of whom declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak about anything related to the next U.S. president, some said spending money at Trump’s hotel is an easy, friendly gesture to the new president.

“Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’ ” said one Asian diplomat.

Guests at the Trump hotel have begun parking themselves in the lobby, ordering expensive cocktails, hoping to see one of the Trump family members or the latest Cabinet pick. One foreign official hoped Trump, famous for the personal interest he takes in his businesses, might check the guest logs himself.

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