HaroldWilson
2yr ago
We are firmly in isolated demand for rigour territory here. Mainstream polls are suddenly not reliable because of some vague and unsubstantiated accusation of bias, but picking comments on social media at random is somehow an acceptable basis on which to assess public opinion.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
They do publish results that show 'victories' for the socially conservative side all the time though. In fact, in a lot of those polls the younger generation are the outliers and the overall results on a number of question show the trans-sceptical side having more support. In the YouGov poll for instance, there was a comfortable plurality against allowing trans women in women's sports, while in the Pew poll there was a narrow plurality in favour of the view that trans acceptance had 'gone too far' against having 'not gone far enough' and a comfortable majority in favour of the view that 'whether a person is a man or a woman is determined by sex at birth'. Plus, pollsters run by right-wingers like Rasmussen don't find terribly different results to the mainstream pollsters.
In any case, the original claim about attitudes towards Gen Z on trans issues was a relative one, and I find it hard to envisage the scenario under which the liberal bias of mainstream pollsters only affects the results of one age cohort.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Well that's what they say they do.
https://www.pewresearch.org/our-methods/u-s-surveys/u-s-survey-methodology/
Of course one can debate how well they do it, but simply saying 'poll respondents aren't representative' isn't a particularly insightful point.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
If as you say you're not alleging some genuine conspiracy to falsify results, then what's the mechanism here for how a liberal bias gets into the results?
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Pollsters are not idiots, they know that such biases can enter polling data, and whether you think their particular methods yield and accurate sample or not it's a damn sight better than picking social media comments at random.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
That's a pretty silly contention if so; however imperfect, a poll which at least attempts to sample a representative cross-section of the nation could hardly have a 'thumb on the scale' to a greater extent that randomly sampling Tiktok comments hither and thither.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
The younger generation appears to be immunized against the transgender movement. The boys do not buy it. Mr Beast is a litmus test because he has a large, diverse fan base in Gen Z, the majority of whom use Tik Tok and have Mr Beast content algorithmically fed to them. These Tik Toks are as close as we will get to a “youth vote” on the transgender issue. They not only don’t buy it, but they think it is immoral and noxious.
The polling does not bear this out at all.
Britain: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/ai3h3xvf7o/Transgender%20data%202020.pdf 18-24 range consistently most pro-trans, though margins aren't huge between them and the 25-49 group.
US: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues Same thing here, 18-29 group most liberal.
Unless you're going to say that for some obscure reason the Gen Z kids not yet of the age to be polled wildly diverge from the clear trend observable in the current data, and in that case you'd need much better evidence than reading comments on social media.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
"please use our pronouns" or "what are your pronouns?"
Well those are different because of the possessives. What are 'your' pronouns unambiguously refers to preferred pronouns, because it couldn't be anything else, whereas 'we don't use pronouns' or equivalent is just a nonsense.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
No-one may have conceived of the notion of gender in the current usage in ages past, but that doesn't mean gender was simply non-existent. Which is to say that retrospectively we can distinguish between sex and gender in history, even if no-one did so then.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Height is arguably the single most important variable for male life outcomes in Western countries
Oh come on. Parental wealth/income surely blows this out of the water.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I mean in that instance I as an atheist do think the polite thing to do is thank them for praying for me or do it as well if they ask. It mightn't mean much to me but it does it him so why not, and the same applies to pronouns.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Pretty misleading article, though to be expected from the Torygraph. Not necessarily saying I'm in favour of the changes that actually are proposed in the report they are referencing, but no-one is going to be jailed for seven years for 'loudly discussing their sexual conquests in public'.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
50.1% of the population may have voted for it. But Anglo democracy scoffs at it, at least most of the time.
Does it? Parliamentary sovereignty is the single most important principle of the Westminster system.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Before you do do that, I should say that I won't regard with much important very niche commentators or outlets making such claims (and I would also still say that the whole line of thinking of AltHypothesis et al. makes no sense - even if I say that someone is dog-whistling, that doesn't have to imply that I think they the dog-whistle really is synonymous with the thing being whistled, if that makes sense).
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
shows immense hypocrisy.
Well you said that hypocrisy arises from the fact that the courts accepted economic damage as a (secondary) justification for allowing the government to break up the protests, but allowed lockdowns to go ahead despite the economic damage they caused; this is only hypocrisy if one thinks that the government taking action to prevent economic damage is an analogous case to taking an action to remedy another ill which unfortunately entailed economic damage, which is silly.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
By that reasoning, action A, itself, should have created an emergency that was suitable to suspend the civil liberties of the politicians, for they had caused far greater damage.
What? You seem to be implying that the exact same strictures should exist on government action and on private action. As I said, that the government took an action that caused B doesn't imply ordinary citizens can also cause B with impunity.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
as if the COVID restrictions weren't causing multiples of that
These aren't analogous. Saying that 'the government has a legitimate interest in taking X action because of the problems caused by Y event' does not imply that the government can't take any action that might cause a problem similar to that one. The court was allowing a government action to go ahead, not attempting to prevent it as it would have been had it taken issue with Covid restrictions'.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
But then boiling it back down to "The government pays you to have children" seems to just assume the government owns all the money and we just borrow it.
There really is a Yes Minister quote for every occasion.
Jim - 5 billion for tax cuts, and what do I find? -
Humphrey- What do you find, Prime Minister?
J- The Chancellor opposes me. A great chance to be popular with the voters and he says no. Doesn't that surprise you? H- No.
J- Why doesn't it surprise you?
H- He's advised by the Treasury and they don't believe in giving money back.
J- It's not theirs, it's the taxpayers'!
H- That's one view, it's not the view the Treasury takes
Having said that, I actually agree with the Treasury here, and it I don't think that's cause for despair. After all, without the state there would be no society at all in which one could earn a living.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I will indeed reply
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I've heard leftists say that opposition to abortion and transgender kids is anti-Semitic
Where?
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Alternative Hypothesis
His tweet is just bizarre.
If you oppose endless wars, that's anti-jewish. If you oppose CRT and black terror, that's anti-jewish. If you oppose kids being brainwashed into castrating themselves, that's anti-jewish.
I have never seen anyone do any of these. Ever.
With 'Wall Street' etc. it's pretty clear that some people do in fact use such terms as a dog-whistle for Jews, but I don't see how criticising that somehow plays into their hands. Saying that someone else is using such terms with antisemitic intent doesn't at all imply that they are correct in viewing the two as synonymous.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
huge black bigotry problem
This poll does not demonstrate that at all, because the slogan in question has become so loaded among people aware of the controversy.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
If someone found a collection of 100 feminist activists and journalists, and 90% of them look like Roxane Gay (who is, as polite as can be on the topic, not within the standard deviation of our culture's beauty standards), would you consider that perhaps the correlation is real, or would you say it was obviously a biased sampling?
Well one would need to parse out correlation and causation here, but yeah if there were a well-designed study that looked at this and found that, yes, feminist activists were considerably more likely to be obese then that would at least be a strong piece of evidence pointing in that direction.
Now, I think it's mostly a set of biases that cause people to think feminist activists and journalists are unusually unattractive; they're likely, as with almost every group not explicitly selected for attractiveness, going to average out to average
Yep, I think this is basically true. Most people look unremarkable so you don't remember them, but the strikingly obese ones will stick in the mind.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
It's also plausible that Democrats suffer more reduced status than Republicans do from being fat so a general attempt to reduce the stigma of being fat benefits Democrats disproportionately.
This is very possibly true, but it rather proves my point
Right, no doubt it's pure coincidence that the RCP average for 2022 generic ballot polls was R +2.5 and the real margin was R +2.8. Those pollsters sure were lucky that their commissioned propaganda happened to average out to an accurate picture of public opinion.
Your comment is just vague and meaningless drivel. If you have a problem with the methodology, make a real and specific criticism not this borderline unfalsifiable crap.
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