Friendship ended with Drumpf. Now: Andrew Yang is my best friend

Author: thett3

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#151
ResurgetExFavilla
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@spacetime
Racial in-group bias hasn't been the predominant 'battle-line' since capitalism created a class divide. Any poor person has much more to gain by eating the rich than by fighting another poor person. This is why the upper class has consistently stirred up trouble and pitted them against one another. This is why our shitty bougie upper class supports more immigration - it means more dividing lines to slam a wedge into. It's why they supported school integration despite studies showing that it had no positive effect on education outcomes - it did cause race riots and a huge amount of resentment between different ethnicities in tight-knit working class communities (contrary to public education propaganda in the US, there was considerable opposition from poor white, Jewish, and black communities in the north towards forced integration). Destabilize those communities which resist your exercise of power and get them to fight one another in one move - brilliant! It's why they support welfare, affirmative action, section 8 housing in suburbs, and every other terrible policy decision - if you define 'terrible' as 'bad for the people whom it purports to 'help'. It's not terrible for the upper class - it serves their interests perfectly. Just look at the anaemic Marxists today - Marxism was once a force to be reckoned with, when poor people had community solidarity and could focus on a struggle for material needs. Not so much anymore; they're afraid to talk about economic injustice today, because if they imply that a poor white person has it bad then a billion high-strung social-striver minorities and barren catladies will be at their throats before you can say 'toss me a crumb from your table if I parrot this absurd grievance narrative, Mr. Capitalist'. So they become mired in petty identity politics and it renders them utterly ineffectual. That's the American dream of our sterile technocratic overlords: a sea of diverse, blank faces, too preoccupied with the Sisyphean task of reinstalling long-demolished community boundaries to fight their material deprivation, addicted to plastic junk and toxic food, working until they're no longer of use; then they can take poison into their veins. Well, a little more poison; they're likely already pumped full of opioids so that their employers could squeeze a few more productive months out of their crumbling bodies. Bread and circuses? We've moved beyond that. It's anaesthesia and the lottery that keeps America the Beautiful ticking along.
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#152
thett3
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@spacetime
I also did a lot of research into the types of jobs where demand for labor is expanding, and it helped me regain faith in the idea that there are more jobs getting created than automated. I know we like mocking the idea of retraining with the "Learn to Code" meme, but I think that's a strawman -- there are more than enough medium-skilled, non-programming jobs that I can easily see former blue-collar workers getting retrained into.

Yeah, but "just go to the trades, man" is a meme too. It's true that there are a lot of technical blue collar jobs that don't have enough people working them and that are unlikely to be automated, but not nearly enough for every trucker, most retail workers, cashiers, etc. 

I agree with you overall but there will be a pretty painful transition. Honestly I think behind the lofty rhetoric what Yang is really hoping to do is to get enough people to drop out of the workforce voluntarily so that there are jobs to go around for the remaining workforce. For example, I imagine a lot of married couples that can't get by on one income right now could do so if both parents brought in an extra $1,000 a month from Uncle Sam. I don't see how Yang hopes to get around the prices for everything just rising when we all get an extra $1,000 a month though...another reason why a negative income tax is better
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#153
thett3
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@Analgesic.Spectre
Personally, I think White Nationalism is the default for most Whites, due to the primacy of race in politics, albeit this is a bit debatable.

I used to be one of those BadWhites. I was raised with all the brainwashing. I believed the 'everyone is equal' lies. You might have, at one stage, been one of those BadWhites, too. Yet I've become a pretty ardent White Nationalist. Some Whites might be genetically incapable of becoming a White Nationalist, but given the right environment, I think most Whites will revert to default White Nationalism.
In isolation, nationalism is going to be the default of any group. But I disagree with you that if we, for example, shut off all television and movies for five years, that most whites would become white nationalists. In a 95% white country, maybe. But not in a 60% white country. The thought of kicking out and/or murdering 40% of the population is way over the line for 99% of white people. How would the US even become white nationalist if all of the whites wanted it? 

It's not the way forward. The way forward for whites (and everyone else) is to find a way to make this society work, and that would result in many overwhelmingly white communities that are allowed to exist unmolested because that's how most whites want to live. Same thing with most other ethnic groups. And people who want to live in multicultural spaces should be allowed to 


Idk if this can be managed with "as little conflict as possible". I think that's what got Whites into this mess in the first place. I'm not saying that we need Christchurch 2.0, but Whites need to start embracing political conflict -- if we get our people in power, we need them to give Whites stuff at the expense of other races. This is precisely what other races do, and it works very well.

Whites are just too diverse of a group to think this way, imo. In 2016 middle aged, non-college educated whites DID vote as a block and enough of these people flipping from Obama to Trump is what won him the election. However you had other groups of whites swing left...and Spacetime is right that the primary cause of political instability in the US is conflict between whites. Frankly you're missing the key point here, which is that it is very difficult to convince a majority population to vote as a block. Why? Because most of the zero sum gains/losses of politics come from others within their own racial group. You can promise to give blacks (11% of the population) something at the expense of whites (~65% of the population), but giving something to, for example, non college educated whites without it coming at least partially from college educated whites would be impossible. It's just numbers.

Whites do vote as a block sometimes...when they are a minority. There are congressional districts in Texas where whites are in deep minority status that are kept red because those whites vote as a block and the hispanic majority doesn't (heres an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_23rd_congressional_district) 

Minorities vote as ethnic blocks, majorities don't.

I don't want just a functional economy. I want my in-groups to be catered to by the government. Wanting anything else puts you at a disadvantage.
What if fellow whites are a big part of your out group? How do you convince those people to vote with you in a block? 
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#154
thett3
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@Yassine
- The most promising candidate so far. It would be interesting to live in a world where the leaders of the two superpowers are Chinese... Could be awkward too...

I hadn't actually thought of that angle. I wonder if it would hurt or help relations with China
#155
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@thett3
Help definitely.

Asian culture is superior. If I'm going to lose my ancestral culture no matter what, I would much rather live under Asian culture than 2nd world Latino culture or 3rd world African.

I took a year of college Chinese anticipating this future.

Ni hao!
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#156
thett3
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@Greyparrot
sino futurism is lame tho if we have to get dominated by an asian power it should at least be glorious nippon
#157
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@thett3
I agree with you overall but there will be a pretty painful transition. Honestly I think behind the lofty rhetoric what Yang is really hoping to do is to get enough people to drop out of the workforce voluntarily so that there are jobs to go around for the remaining workforce. For example, I imagine a lot of married couples that can't get by on one income right now could do so if both parents brought in an extra $1,000 a month from Uncle Sam. I don't see how Yang hopes to get around the prices for everything just rising when we all get an extra $1,000 a month though...another reason why a negative income tax is better

This is why a VAT is good. If it were a sales tax, the company could raise prices and not pay the taxes on the units which aren't sold. With a VAT, the taxes are put on the product pre-retail, so there is much more pressure to sell because you are 'out' the VAT tax money if a product sits on the shelf. This puts power in the hands of consumers, and discourages rising prices because those lead to overstock and loss of VAT taxes on all product not sold. This especially goes for perishable items like food. The influx of cash will also lead to a flourishing of smaller local businesses, so any attempts to jack prices up will be met with competition. People buy from big box stores because its cheaper; raising the prices destroys the only advantage that they have at a time when local businesses will be getting a steroid shot and will be better positioned to lower prices if their competitors raise them. The VAT also punishes longer supply chains, so if you have people trying to jack prices up at every stage of production it will just cripple large companies who are competing with more lean mom and pop shops.
#158
Tejretics
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@ResurgetExFavilla
It's why they supported school integration despite studies showing that it had no positive effect on education outcomes
Wait, really?

I dunno about specifically desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education, but the majority of research that I've seen indicates that schools with more heterogeneous demographic composition tend to have better academic outcomes. These are the studies on this issue that I have bookmarked, that I just dug up:


To be fair, I did just did a Google search and found some studies that found no positive effects or mixed effects of school desegregation:


But there certainly seems to be debate in academia about this, at least. 

#159
Analgesic.Spectre
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@spacetime
On what basis do you continue to assert that? Neither of the two largest racial groups in the U.S. (whites and latinos) demonstrate any consistent sense of solidarity in their voting patterns. The evidence simply doesn't support the narrative that racial in-group bias reigns supreme.
The most important personal-identifier graph was a good start. Both Whites and Latinos voted race/ethnicity as most important. You've ignored it twice.

The 2012 U.S. General Election was an excellent example of Blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, voting based on their racial in-group bias. You had both groups' Conservatives voting for Obama, overall.

I'd also argue that certain policies are racial, given that genes determine culture/ideology, and race is basically a cluster of similar genes. In other words, race is highly correlated to determining culture/ideology.

So, not only do you have people's in-group heuristical bias towards their own racial group, but you have their ideology/cultural notions clustering quite nicely.

I think your objections extend from a dichotomous conception of race and culture. That's why I was able to severly undermine the first source you gave me. You need to start thinking of race as determining culture, and then culture potentially determining racial attributes by selecting or rejecting certain traits. It's a feedback loop that race starts.

#160
RationalMadman
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@ResurgetExFavilla
Your take on VAT is the first time I have admired your intellect in a long time.
#161
Analgesic.Spectre
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@thett3
In isolation, nationalism is going to be the default of any group. But I disagree with you that if we, for example, shut off all television and movies for five years, that most whites would become white nationalists. In a 95% white country, maybe. But not in a 60% white country. The thought of kicking out and/or murdering 40% of the population is way over the line for 99% of white people. How would the US even become white nationalist if all of the whites wanted it? 
It might take longer than five years, but the Progressive narrative is just wrong, so if discourse isn't filtered through the Progressive agenda (or, more accurately, the Progressive authoritarian jam-down), then the narrative will die.

Also, you don't have to murder or kick out anyone. Impose a non-announced White only policy for immigration. Give further tax breaks to people who know a certain amount of English words. Pay people with 130 I.Q.+ to have children. Devise a tricky citizenship test. You'll have a combination of less non-Whites entering and less non-Whites choosing to stay. Those are things I've thought of off the top of my head.

It's not the way forward. The way forward for whites (and everyone else) is to find a way to make this society work, and that would result in many overwhelmingly white communities that are allowed to exist unmolested because that's how most whites want to live. Same thing with most other ethnic groups. And people who want to live in multicultural spaces should be allowed to 
It's already been tried. We're currently dealing with the consequences of this attempt. Multiculturalism doesn't work.

Whites are just too diverse of a group to think this way, imo. In 2016 middle aged, non-college educated whites DID vote as a block and enough of these people flipping from Obama to Trump is what won him the election. However you had other groups of whites swing left...and Spacetime is right that the primary cause of political instability in the US is conflict between whites. Frankly you're missing the key point here, which is that it is very difficult to convince a majority population to vote as a block. Why? Because most of the zero sum gains/losses of politics come from others within their own racial group. You can promise to give blacks (11% of the population) something at the expense of whites (~65% of the population), but giving something to, for example, non college educated whites without it coming at least partially from college educated whites would be impossible. It's just numbers.
Historically, this is precisely how Whites have thought. Again, it's only due to the authoritarian jam-down of the left, the story about racist oppression and whatnot, that has all of these Progressive types voting against their racial group. The Jewish legacy media, the Progressive schools, the anti-racism laws, the black-balling of scholarly opposition to the narrative etc.-, they have to have virtually an ideological stranglehold on most institutions just to maintain the narrative. These Progressive Whites are abnormal, brainwashed people.

Think about it. What kinds of people do you get on the Progressive left? Is bright purple hair normal? Is tattoos everywhere normal? Is calling people who disagree with you literally Hitler a normal thing to do? What about dozens of random piercings? What about furries? Bronies?

Sure, it's hard to get people to vote as a block, but getting them *not* to vote as a block is even harder. Sure, you'll get some collateral damage. But people's intention is to vote for their racial in-group, and there will be the odd exception (unless brainwashing is involved, as is the case with Progressives).

Whites do vote as a block sometimes...when they are a minority. There are congressional districts in Texas where whites are in deep minority status that are kept red because those whites vote as a block and the hispanic majority doesn't (heres an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_23rd_congressional_district) 

Minorities vote as ethnic blocks, majorities don't.
Okay, you found an instance wherein what you are saying appears correct. But how about nation wide? Again, the top personal identifier, out of all racial groups (including Whites), is race/ethnicity (albeit for millennials). Please explain to me, because you'd be the first person on this site to even address it, how people could rate race as their most important personal identifier (by an overwhelming margin for most races), and then not vote based on it?

What if fellow whites are a big part of your out group? How do you convince those people to vote with you in a block? 
We need to destroy the narrative that keeps them Progressively conditioned. It worked for me. I've seen it work for other people. Sure, it may not work for all Progressives, but if we get the majority on board, then we've won.





#162
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@Tejretics
I was talking about forced integration, not desegregation. In the north, this was a very different debate than it was in the south. Schools in the south were de jure segregated, while in the north segregation was de facto. School districts overlayed neighborhoods, which were largely ethnically homogenous; this meant that most schools were majority Irish, majority black, majority Jewish, etc. The segregation wasn't absolute either, there were typically small numbers of other groups in each neighborhood school. Before forced busing occurred there were also voluntary busing programs put into place.

Studies which try and test a general hypothesis like 'diversity is good for education' will always be trash because there's no way to ethically eliminate the confounding variables during experimentation. You get much better results when you test the implementation of a specific policy at a specific time and place and then draw limited conclusions from it. Busing was tested before it was implemented in Boston, and the results were not good. Then they moved on to forced programs, which were absolutely disastrous for all parties involved and promoted a powerful backlash from the working class communities. Then the policy was enforced universally and there were riots, racial tensions shot through the roof, and the police brutally cracked down. The people implementing these policies commissioned the studies. They knew that they had no real effect on academic achievement and that they increased racial tensions; those were the results of the efficacy studies which they commissioned. And then they implemented the policy anyway.

This is a great deep dive into the history surrounding busing policy in Boston: https://devinhelton.com/busing-in-boston

The excerpt on the testing:

And keep in mind, that race relations worsened even though this was a voluntary program. According to surveys, students and families at the white suburban schools were initially very favorable toward the program. This was not a busing program that was forced upon them.

Overall, David Armor concludes:
The available evidence on busing, then, seems to lead to two clear policy conclusions. One is that massive mandatory busing for purposes of improving student achievement and interracial harmony is not effective and should not be adopted at this time. The other is that voluntary integration programs such as METCO, ABC, or Project Concern should be continued and positively encouraged by substantial federal and state grants. Such voluntary programs should be encouraged so that those parents and communities who believe in the symbolic and potential (but so far unconfirmed) long-run benefits of induced integration will have ample opportunity to send their children to integrated schools. Equally important, these voluntary programs will permit social scientists and others to improve and broaden our understanding of the longer-run and other consequences of induced school integration. With a more complete knowledge than we now possess of this complicated matter, we shall hopefully be in a better position to design effective public education policies that are known in advance to work to the benefit of all Americans, both black and white.
Thus, by 1972, the idea that integration was the fix for education had already been contradicted by the available evidence. If there was anything to the idea of integration, it would require more study to determine the circumstances where it might be a helpful policy.3

In a sane world, if you have a radical social policy idea, you try a small experiment first, and only enlarge it once you prove the experiment works.

In Boston, the experiment was tried and it did not work. Yet, two years later, a federal Judge would force the policy upon a half-million people.




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#163
thett3
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@Tejretics
Not to be “that guy” but I looked through your first four sources and only one actually talked about the effects and it said exactly what i would’ve expected—it talked about the performance on poor/minority students. The biggest problem with black/hispanic school performance is poverty (some people in this thread would argue that IQ is a big issue too and they’re not entirely wrong, but let’s just talk about poverty for now) 

For your average poor student going from a poor to a rich school helps a great deal. But it’s a very fine line to walk because once you reach a critical mass of poor/minority students in a school rich/white parents will freak out and pull their kids out, sending them either to private school or moving. And suddenly it’s no longer a rich school district so your poor student is in the exact same position as before. The truth is that more than anything, good students make good schools, and if enough of them leave it’s no longer a good school. 

And don’t underestimate how important people value “good schools”,  PM me and I can show you how houses where I live in an excellent school district are twice as expensive as the ones where I work 25 minutes away that are in a horrible school district. 

But anyway this is all not that relevant. The real history is that school integration in the US was literally forced upon the population at gunpoint. This article explains what it was actually like: https://devinhelton.com/busing-in-boston

An excerpt: 

“When teacher Allan Cohen returned from summer vacation for the start of the 1968-1969 school year, he was shocked both at the school’s new racial composition and the behavioral changes in the students he had known the year before. From the first day of school it was clear that the teachers had lost control. Veteran teachers stood in silent shock as young blacks raced through the corridors trying out the black power slogans they had learned over the summer. The overall student body had shrunk to 754 students, of whom 32 percent were white. It had seemed, over the summer, that the great Lewenberg promise of integration had shattered. Drugged students fell off their chairs and were carried to the nurse’s office. White students huddled together for protection against roving extortion rings; fifty cents was the going price to avoid a beating. The largely inexperienced faculty and its principal, Luke Petrocelli, were at a loss. Of fifty-eight teachers, thirty-nine, including Cohen, had not taught long enough to receive tenure from the Boston School Department; nine faculty members were in their first year of teaching. Throughout that winter an average of nine teachers called in sick each day. Without teachers, students often sat all day in the auditorium and watched movies. In one fifteen-day period alone, school administrators counted 718 tardy students; average absenteeism was 178 students each day, roughly one out of four. Like the panic selling in the center sections of Mattapan, these disruptions defied explanation.”

Busing destroyed communities and made the US population distributed in an extremely inefficient way. Probably the worst policy of the last century tbh 


#164
Greyparrot
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@thett3
Money isn't the problem. Many "failing" schools in poor districts get more money per student than others. A culture that demotes education is to blame partly. The other part is a lack of discipline and structure at home as 70% of the students have no fathers in the home. School can never replace the home, no matter how many dollars are thrown at it. If you want to make the case that poverty leads to fatherlessness, then maybe you have a case. But I can guarantee you that I can pick many eras of American history when poverty was extremely high, yet fathers remained in the home.
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#165
thett3
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You know, I wonder how much of the achievement gap is simply down to learning style. Our modern society can’t accept the fact that people are different. Our educational system of “sit down for 8 hours and shut the fuck up” seems to work well for white girls but it goes over like a lead balloon for so many boys that millions of them have to be drugged to cope with it. I seriously doubt it is very effective for most black people. People learn differently. But to acknowledge that the difference would cluster in groups: DAS RACIST 
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#166
thett3
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@Greyparrot
yea when I say poverty I mean the culture associated with that. Ultimately good students make good schools, not the other way around and if we want to change the outcome of many people it involves changing the culture 
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#167
thett3
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@ResurgetExFavilla
Studies which try and test a general hypothesis like 'diversity is good for education' will always be trash because there's no way to ethically eliminate the confounding variables during experimentation

Most research on diversity, or any social science research in general, is so political that if it isn’t completely fraudulent it’s at the very least intellectually dishonest. This is why there is a huge replication crisis in social science. More rigorous research that looks at specific groups of people in specific times and places and how they react to change paints a very different picture of diversity than all the rosy “studies”. It also paints a picture consistent of what actually happens (like white flight) 
#168
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@thett3
Yeah 'science' is becoming less reputable, not more. It probably has something to do with its biggest defenders being a bunch of uneducated, condescending neckbeards who treat a process for testing claims like an institutional, magisterial authority.
#169
Tejretics
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@ResurgetExFavilla
Will read it by the end of the week, looks interesting. 
#170
Tejretics
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@thett3
Most research on diversity, or any social science research in general, is so political that if it isn’t completely fraudulent it’s at the very least intellectually dishonest.
The research on diversity I tend to read is from economists, who are generally pretty moderate and includes loads of people who are both center-right and center-left, so I wouldn’t say it’s politically motivated. And some of the research that’s based on big data and thorough evidence collection—Harvard’s Raj Chetty comes to mind—is pretty good, from what I’ve seen. 

#171
Tejretics
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@thett3
And to be clear, the research on diversity is in dispute—both in schools and outside. Consider, for example, Robert Putnam’s research on diversity’s effects on trust within communities and on social capital.
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#172
thett3
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@Tejretics
point me to some of it. I looked up Raj Chetty and the first thing I found was about socioeconomic status more than race but i didn’t research much at all. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if there actually were benefits. I believe that multicultural spaces have their place and should exist, I just don’t think it’s a viable model for entire countries/societies. The world is so complicated, I tend to trust the things I can “see” (like looking at migration patterns such as white flight) over studies that simply can’t account for all the variables 
#173
Polytheist-Witch
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@bsh1
This is why this site is joke. 
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#174
thett3
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@Polytheist-Witch
how so? This thread probably has some of the best discussions this site has had in weeks 
#175
Tejretics
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@thett3
I wouldn’t be surprised if there actually were benefits. I believe that multicultural spaces have their place and should exist, I just don’t think it’s a viable model for entire countries/societies.
As I pointed out, the research is mixed on whether there are benefits. I tend to side with the view that multiculturalism is a good model for entire countries, but I don't really feel like arguing about that.

You can find most of Raj Chetty's research here: https://opportunityinsights.org

One fun study: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/129/4/1553/1853754 (This study isn't specifically about diversity, but one of its findings is that high-mobility areas tend to be diverse racially.)




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#176
thett3
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@Tejretics
Thanks Tej, your linked study will be a lot of food for thought. You might not know this but economic mobility is something that interests me a lot. I’m at work (but Friday’s here are very slow) so I was only able to skim a bit of your study but here’s one excerpt that made me question some of the findings. 

For example, the probability that a child reaches the top quintile of the national income distribution starting from a family in the bottom quintile is 4.4% in Charlotte but 12.9% in San Jose
San Jose is right in the middle of Silicon Valley so obviously there is a ton of true opportunity there...but the cost of living in the US varies substantially. Being in the top quintile of the national income distribution means a very different lifestyle in Charlotte than in San Jose, where a modest 3 bedroom house costs over a million dollars. If your dad made an inflation adjusted $50,000 a year when houses in your area were $200,000, and you make $100,000 when houses are $1,000,000, are you actually better off? I would say no, but the studies would say yes. So this is just one example of how you have to be very careful of these things!
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That’s fair.

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Actually, as per section V, they’re using real income measures, which are adjusted for inflation (though not necessarily purchasing power parity.

However, the sentence immediately after the sentence you quote is: “The CZ-level mobility statistics are robust to adjusting for differences in the local cost of living, shocks to local growth, and using alternative measures of income.” This suggests that they’re adjusting for cost of living as well.
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that makes a huge difference then...I didn’t pick the best example since it’s hard to imagine Silicon Valley not offering quite a bit of upward mobility. 

You get the point though right? Check out the graph in this article (which vastly underestimates the run up in housing prices imo because jobs are increasingly consolidating in the places where homes are expensive and leaving the places where they are cheap) https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4111845-careful-wish-inflation-much-higher-advertised

Things like education, childcare, housing, and health care are more expensive inflation adjusted than 20 years ago. Cars, clothes, cellphones, electronics...these are cheaper. One group of these is vastly more important than the other. Talking about “inflation adjusted” incomes without taking this into account is foolish. I really do think that living standards have declined as a “middle class” lifestyle becomes less and less attainable 

^this all is way more of a rant about something that’s been bothering me than it is a reply to anything you said, btw
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One fun study: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/129/4/1553/1853754 (This study isn't specifically about diversity, but one of its findings is that high-mobility areas tend to be diverse racially.)
But which causes which? American economic mobility is high extractive; it tends to siphon off the upper layer of skill and intelligence from poor communities ('human capital' as they say; I find the phrase horridly dystopian) and funnel them into upwardly mobile urban economic areas. That doesn't mean that the diversity is causing the upward mobility; it means that when you take a cross-section of the upper wing of America's IQ bell curve and canalize it into an artificial community, then that community is likely to be diverse and successful. Unfortunately, this often leaves poor areas drained of the very expertize and intelligence that they need to succeed, deepening their economic depression. The heritability of IQ means that this even causes a generational dysgenic slip in intelligence.

This is the exact opposite of the policies which originally caused America to flourish, which focused on incentivizing capital to move to the peripheries, which invested in infrastructure in mid-sized towns in order to build the groundwork for economic flourishing, and which sought to generate thriving communities (mostly of white people). Nowadays it seems like all poor communities are getting the historically black treatment (drug trafficking into neighborhoods, no investment, brutal oversight). On top of this, the smartest bunch are bustled off to rapidly gentrifying cities while the children of the shrinking, stratospherically wealthy upper classes get free tickets to the 'smart kids club' due to their status. This is what I was talking about when I said that I don't take these studies seriously: it's all correlation. It's not scientific because you cannot study the effects which variables have in isolation. It has the trappings of a scientific rigor which it is impossible to ever fully enforce, and so you can give a sheen of data-driven significance to anything at all.

Belloc wrote a pretty hilarious essay which started with him describing the conditions of a city after the death of a politician. It was very sterile and clinical, he documented the moments of silence, how long each man sat perfectly still, the lack of economic activity. After reading these few paragraphs, you had this vivid mental image of a shocked city, deep in mourning. While all the information was technically true, including the timing, what he left out was that the data was collected in the wee hours of the morning, and most people were asleep. The essay went on to describe data obsession as a sort of mad blindness which had lost the ability to understand the very epistemology which underpinned science and limited its purview. It denies the validity of the simple, integrative leaps in logic which underpin all human knowledge, including the foundation of science itself. That study really, really reminded me of his parody because it missed such essential pieces of the puzzle.