You’re leading with two questions, here… and it kind of looks like an attempt to frame this as though I’m the one making assumptions. But I want to backtrack to how we got here, real quick:

Someone: Airbnb makes sense for a lot of people under one roof, like for a family reunion.

You: It’s cheaper to rent an event space.

Yeah, sure, your commentary about sharing hotel rooms and amenities and group packages and blah blah might be relevant, but that’s not what you said. You just said to get an event space. That doesn’t have any information in it about where people are actually supposed to stay and sleep, which is what an Airbnb is for.

The comparison of Airbnb to Event Space doesn’t make sense without all of that other stuff, at which point it all very much depends on all of these other factors like headcounts and group rates, so unless you’re making a bunch of extra assumptions, you don’t actually know which solution is cheaper.

And, the plan for sleeping…?

Reunions often involve travel.

Shit.

That’s super dark and super dystopian… and I feel terrible for chuckling.

A shame that John C Woods isn’t still around.

I’m immune to propaganda because I’m smart.

That’s not how that works. A smart person would recognize that there are degrees of smartness and degrees of immunity. Even if we accept that smarter people are less susceptible to propaganda, there is no threshold of smartness that grants immunity to propaganda.

The most important service one can provide to a kind-of-smart person is to tell them when they’ve said something stupid. I’m happy to provide this service. Please rate 5 stars.

Now that’s what I call Ethos!

Most people can be convinced of something. I have a lot of debates, both in person and online, and I’ve gotten somewhat decent at it. I think the most important thing is setting a realistic goal.

Did I convince a group of young earth creationists that the theory of evolution by natural selection is the best explanation for the diversity of life? No I did not. Did I convince some of them that biologists aren’t a part of a satanic conspiracy, and that they’re just trying to come up with good explanations for the stuff they see? Yes, I think so.

Did I convince a “pro-life” friend that abortion should be exclusively the host’s decision? No I did not. Did I make them recognize that drawing the line on when abortion should or should not be allowed is harder than they had assumed, and that IF the government is going to draw that line, they should at least consult some medical experts? Yes, I think so.

On some level it might feel like it’s not enough… But there isn’t anything better, so I’ll take what I can get. Good luck out there.

Because I would like you to be successful in debating this issue, I need to inform you:

That’s not a very good response. It will convince literally no one. It won’t be convincing to the person you’re debating. It won’t be convincing to people who are observing the argument. It changes absolutely nothing.

The only effective replies are the ones that force people to think deeply:

• What makes this wrong, specifically?

and then, ask them to explain even more deeply every time they respond. e.g., “killing an innocent person is wrong.”

• What makes something innocent? What makes something a person?

If you can get them to at least admit that it’s a gray area, you’ve won.

If you have tools to mitigate the risk, then you eliminate the correlation.

No, only if you eliminate the risk. Smoking is still negatively correlated with life expectancy in Japan. The correlation exists if you only look at the USA. It exists if you only look at Japan. It exists if you look at the global population.

It matters enormously.

Not for the purpose of establishing whether there is a negative correlation between smoking and life expectancy.

Also that comic is saying that adding a third variable does not always make the model better. Also p-hacking is a thing. It’s the opposite of what you’re trying to establish, which is the existence of a third variable which improves the model. And once again, I will say that if you find two correlated variables confusing, adding a third variable is NOT going to help you.

Not relative to a public universal health care system, no.

I’m saying not at all. With public universal health care, without public universal health care… it does not matter. There is a negative correlation between smoking and life expectancy.

If your diagnosis is “we need to cut cigarette use to save lives”,

Yes, that is a conclusion one could draw from this.

but we’re ignoring the…

For the purposes of discussing this correlation, it does not matter. If we have universal health care, then cutting cigarette use will save lives. If we do not have universal health care, then cutting cigarette use will save lives. Conclusion: cutting cigarette use will save lives. That is true. No amount of discussion about unrelated third variables will make that not true.

If a third variable makes the model better, go ahead and add a third variable. But if someone doesn’t even understand the two-variable model, we should make sure they understand THAT model before we add even more stuff that they don’t understand.

Given the global response to the situation, I would bet they probably realize that you don’t think they’re significant.

Then again, there’s a chance they’re just focusing on food and water and shelter and medicine and not-getting-blown-up… rather than worrying about the opinions of people who couldn’t even pretend to be significant.

But we can see very definitively that a higher-than-average rate of education does nothing to increase the partisan character of the voting block.

Mormons have more bachelor degrees than average: Yes.

Mormons are more conservative than average: Yes.

We can see very definitively that a higher-than-average rate of education does nothing to increase the partisan character of the voting block: No.

That’s not what this shows. The two facts, together, are not enough to show a correlation between education and conservatism or to show a lack of correlation between education and liberal/leftist attitudes. To make a claim about correlation, as you are trying to do, you have two options:

1. Show a correlation or lack of correlation within this block,
2. Show a correlation or lack of correlation between average education level and average political leanings, using voting blocks as data points.

I have a perfect analogy:

I claim that smoking will decrease your life expectancy.

You claim that the smoking rate in the United States is 9.6%. The smoking rate in Japan is 16.4%. Life Expectancy in the United States is 79.8. Life Expectancy in Japan is 85.2. Therefore “we can see very definitively that a higher rate of smoking does nothing to decrease the life expectancy of the country”.

No. That doesn’t show that. Because if you look at data within Japan, you will still see a lower life expectancy among the people who smoke, and if you look at data globally, using countries as data points, you will also see lower life expectancy among the countries that smoke the most.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/life-expectancy-by-country

When you take broad averages like this, you very often lose useful information. In this case, just being “educated” in the abstract carries a weak correlation to political beliefs.

That’s true, but unfortunately, once you started trying to create a more complex model, you started making mistakes. And you aren’t even an idiot. Imagine your dumbest neighbors trying to make sense of this conversation.

No. I start off by giving you one variable correlated with one other variable. Once someone understands that, THEN we can start talking about nuance.

Go into a red neighborhood, and the math changes

No, it actually doesn’t. Within a Mormon community, I would wager we would still see that the most educated Mormons are also, ON AVERAGE, the most liberal/leftist Mormons.

Sure, if this is the only thing you knew, there could be a Simpson’s paradox situation, but we already know what the data looks like when we count everyone as one big group. Your “exceptions” can be true, and at the same time, are not evidence against the original claim. Even IF you found that, within EVERY group, education correlates with conservatism… it would just be Simpson’s paradox, because we already know that, on the whole, education is correlated to liberal/leftist attitudes.

Average. On average, people with degrees are more liberal/leftist. As a group. Separate the degrees from the non-degrees, and measure their liberalism/leftism, and find which group has the higher average. Average.

Average.

This idea that earning a MBA or a JD or an MD makes your politics good is completely wrong

Well, on average… it does.

You don’t just take a class and become a liberal Democrat if your grade is high enough.

No, but being intelligent is correlated with both of these things. Dumb people are more easily tricked by right wing talking points. Dumb people also don’t get good grades. Smart people are, for whatever reason, more likely to agree with liberal or leftist talking points. Smart people are also more likely to get high grades.

I’d think that, since this conversation happened on public property, and the conversation was among public servants, the conversation is subject to the same standards as any other public conversation.

Maybe the legal system is too stupid for that, though.