Interesting Links for 14-10-2013

[andrewducker]

• Labour will be tougher than Tories on benefits
  (tags: politics welfare labour )
• I am quite glad I never sent one of these to an ex
  (tags: relationships )
• Dating tips for the feminist man
  (tags: feminism advice relationships )
• On Labour's plans for unemployment (and why they are not a good idea)
  (tags: politics welfare labour )
• This is how you

Comments

[gonzo21]

Labour really are turning into a disaster zone, it's not policy direction to basically respond to every evil thing the Tories do by jumping up on a seat and shouting 'That's nothing! We'd do that Plus One!'

I'm not sure why people still try to pretend they are a party of the left.

[andrewducker]

Well, they do believe more in distribution than the Conservatives do. But they are no less authoritarian in their approach.

[gonzo21]

Arguably more authoritarian, they are the ones who introduced all of this anti-terror legislation, promising us NOBODY would EVER abuse these powers.

And sure enough here we are with a Tory government that is cheerfully abusing every single one of the powers in all of the ways that we were most worried about.

[danieldwilliam]

I wonder if this is a case of “Listen to what I say, don’t watch what I’m actually going to do.”

One could read those comments as a promise of full employment driven by both demand and supply side interventions.

And bear in mind that long term unemployment is very highly correlated with the economic cycle.

[avva]

> Want To Read Others' Thoughts? Try Reading Literary Fiction

The study is junk.

[andrewducker]

While I agree that it's dubious, I dislike the examples that are used there - which imply that only 3 test subjects were used. When actually, there were 90 of them. (Edit: Between 90 and 456 of them, depending on the test.)

I agree that the results are open to interpretation though.

[avva]

As Liberman emphasizes in comments, "the point at issue is not a small or subtle or sophisticated one: if you want to claim that a large and diverse set X in general has more effect on Q than a large and diverse set Y does, you can't call it "science" when you test the hypothesis using three exemplars of set X and three exemplars of set Y, which you've hand-selected so as to demonstrate the effect

[andrewducker]

To test whether X affects something differently to Y they need to choose objects without reference to whether they are X or Y?

I'm clearly missing something, because that doesn't seem right to me.

If I was testing whether Cats were better for you than Dogs then I wouldn't do so by choosing a variety of different animals without reference to what species they were - surely I'd assign 50% of the population to the Cat group and 50% to the Dog group and see which group was happier afterwards?

Quite Glad I Never Sent One of These to an Ex

[danieldwilliam]

You may have saved my blushes twice today.

Well done.

[nancylebov]

As noted in the comments to the Dating Tips articles, this level of attentiveness and respect is good advice for everyone, and needed for many women as well as many men.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. I've actively come around to the idea that "Dealing with other people in a respectful manner" should be taught in school...