ViperMan

I agree it'd be great to have more pilots, and if we could get to a 94% graduation rate, that'd be awesome for us and the taxpayers. But already we're at ~85%. The question I would ask is why is there a need to change the approach to selecting those who attend UPT? The only reason I can think of is because it's not currently working - which it clearly is by any actual metric. So it must be something else. The average US high school graduation rate is about the same (~88%). The average 4-yr college graduation rate is ~33%, and gets up to ~60% after 6 years. Was there a pilot shortage in the 60s, 70s, and 80s? I don't remember and didn't look it up. The bottom line, IMO, is if the USAF really wants more pilots, they need to get serious and open up another UPT base.

I'm intentionally being mildly derisive. I honestly don't really care that she took a knee, as it at least appears to be justified. What I'd rather point at is how such an act would be viewed by the PTB if Michael Jordan did it in game 6 after a poor quarter. Or if Pat Mahomes had done it after throwing an interception in the first quarter of the super bowl. Does anyone honestly think there would be a mass movement coalescing around those individual's decision to "take care of themselves" and throw in the towel? Of course not. Neither of those athletes (and most others at their level) would be given that benefit of the doubt. The would be blasted on ESPN the next day, perhaps rightfully, for not staying on the field of battle. Sports is certainly physical, but playing at any level requires a certain level of mental fortitude - overcoming that is what makes someone great - not quitting. So I just view it as one more example of coddling that is going on. We should be instilling fortitude and an attitude of "never quit." Yeah, this.

Who cares about gymnastics?

Ok, you really made a strong point and focused heavily about certain types of data being excluded being a problem, though - I didn't get much in the way of descriptive vs. predictive modeling. In any case, descriptive models / analysis don't exclude data from a data set - predictive models / analysis do exclude certain data from the model. In a typical case (not sure what the specific split was in this study), the a data set is split 70/30 into a training and a test data set. The model created using the training data is then used on the test data (not present in the model) to predict a certain variable (outcome) - in this case whether or not someone graduated from UPT. So this study is certainly using predictive modelling techniques. To your point about other factors affecting certain variables limiting their value, if there is data that can indicate a true/false or yes/no or 1/0, then machine learning techniques are flexible enough to account for them. If the data isn't present, in many cases, it'll be a wash in the aggregate. But to answer your point directly, having a degree doesn't make you a good pilot, but having a degree is an indicator that you are more likely to graduate from UPT. And further, the more difficult the degree, the higher the likelihood you'll graduate. Though to be extremely clear, this is not shown by the data available, since every USAF pilot has a degree - it's not variable among pilots - but it is well understood to be generally true.

Yep. What this study really says is this: "Hey Air Force, if you adjust the relative weights of the selection criteria you're already using, you could do about 9% better in choosing your pilot candidates. That's a decent improvement." One thing I noticed, though, is that the model was not published, nor was the data. Both would be very interesting to play with and see. They talk a lot about how they used a decision-tree model (which tend to be more explicable). This makes it easier for the Bob's to know what's going on inside the black box.

Survivorship bias doesn't have anything to do with the criteria being used in an evaluation - it has to do with the "subset" of data points included in the analysis. See the small section about "missing bullet holes" in the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias. It's an interesting and counter-intuitive discussion about how our intuition works and how easily our "reasoning" can be led astray by invisible and incorrect assumptions. In that situation, the mistake the military made was to only look at bombers that returned from combat - not bombers that didn't make it back (i.e. the ones that were shot down). That led them to draw wildly wrong conclusions about where to armor up the bomber fleet. By way of analogy, this study includes UPT graduates (bombers that "make it back") and UPT washouts (bombers that "don't make it back") - it doesn't include intel school washouts and/or AFIT graduates because that isn't going to tell you anything about graduating from UPT. It didn't make sense to include data where P-38s were or weren't getting shot up because it was a study focused on bombers. It's not survivorship bias, you're advocating for using more dimensions of data - which is fine. A few things. First, any prediction that is going to be made, will by definition, be "backwards looking" since there's no such thing as future data. And while there definitely may potentially be better predictor variables out there, the difficulty will be to capture them in a consistent and reliable way across a large population which is distributed across multiple communities and multiple time spans - not an easy challenge. Maybe if we could somehow capture those students who used to "bullseye womprats back on Tatooine" we could enhance our process...it's challenging to get to that level of fidelity though. Already, the fact that > 85% of UPT candidates make it through provides a high level of confidence that UPT selection criteria are pretty good - squeezing out the last few percent becomes increasingly hard in any endeavor. Any average high school varsity basketball player is in the top 1% of all basketball players on earth. Though we all know there is an enormous difference between that kid and Michael Jordan... And finally, this is not like saying women can't be pilots. No scientific researcher looking at that data and looking at how people were selected for pilot training back in the 80s would ever draw that conclusion. I get your point about the insight gained being limited by the data, but then so is everything else because we don't have perfect measurement for anything. In any case, all the data used in this study included women. Correct. Though I would say the model "includes" the unsuccessful events in order to learn from them. Not emphasizes. So is your suggestion to include people not selected for UPT and then measure how the do in UPT? Or is it to just lump random people into the study who didn't go? I'd pay to see the first executed. If you're suggesting the second, then I think all that study will conclude is that being selected for UPT is the most important data point in determining who graduates from UPT - not exactly a ground-breaking research. The point is that a study like this is not the same as a vaccine trial. You are already selecting from a group that self-selected and there is nothing you can do as the researcher to affect the outcome you want to examine (UPT graduation) from a group of people that doesn't want to be military pilots.

No. "Otherwise illegal" is talking about the government, not Facebook. i.e. it is illegal for the government to prohibit speech (generally). It is still illegal when they induce a company to do it on their behalf - that's where the 1st amendment violation comes in. *If* Facebook or Twitter took it upon themselves to censor that speech, without government intervention, they are 100% free to do so. As you say, Facebook is not a public space - problem is, it doesn't have to be for a first amendment violation to take place when the government intervenes. For example, the government can't censor your speech on a public sidewalk, why would they be able to censor it in your private home? Ok, so now expressing skepticism over getting a vaccine is akin to yelling 'fire' in a movie theater? I think the difference is that one of those acts is capable of causing acute, immediate panic which leads to injury or death - I'd be interested to see that case made in court, re: COVID vaccines. I fully grant that herd immunity is of public health interest. In any case, are you familiar with the Thalidomide tragedy? What if people had expressed 'doubt' about taking Thalidomide back in the 50s? How would they have fared in our current environment? Point being, the government or PTB don't always know what is best, and mistakes get made. There is no long-term data on COVID-19 or on the side-effects of the vaccine - none. And I think, generally, people can tell the difference between complete and utter BS, and actual healthy skepticism. For example, I got the vaccine - full believer in modern medical tech. Yet simultaneously, I find it much more credible to consider the lab-leak hypothesis for the origin of the virus than I do the zoonotic origin - yet I would be labelled 'conspiratorial' in many circles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide Well, as a matter of legal fact, it doesn't have to block anything directly. Merely inducing, promoting, or encouraging, is enough to constitute government intervention and a violation of individuals' rights.

Well, I asked specifically "apart from what we think is happening in society right now" to help us get somewhere with this argument - that you stuck to how it applies here feels like a further attempt to side-step the actual issue at hand. I don't think there's anything wrong with lawmakers voicing their opinions! Jeez, that's a fundamental aspect of our system. But your misrepresentation of the issue is a dodge - the problem isn't with "voicing opinions" - the problem is when the government induces, encourages, or promotes action or policy out of a private entity that would be otherwise illegal for them to do. That is happening when congressional committeemen (who can call on the likes of Jack Dorsey and Mark Z to testify at their behest) and presidential administrations publicly state their desire that the company had best comply with their dictates, lest they suddenly find themselves being legislated. I wasn't really paying attention to that, honestly. But to answer your question, I think libel laws are probably ok as they are. But I frankly know nothing about them. BTW, I'm no Trump apologist.

I guess I'll just ask it simply, apart from what we think is actually happening in society right now: do you think that when the government pressures a company to do what it otherwise cannot, there is a potential violation of the constitution? i.e. do you think Norwood v. Harrison was correct? "It is “axiomatic,” the Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-tech-11610387105 May not induce, encourage, or promote...what do you think that means? Must there be legislation in your view for there to be a problem? Because if so, that's not in accordance with established legal precedent in our country. That is to say, I'm fine if it's your opinion that you think that case was decided incorrectly, or that the concept itself is wrong. That said, from a legal standpoint, from a constitutional standpoint, there needn't be any legal action or legislation in the works to constitute a violation of the constitution. Which is why the argument you're making is a straw man. It's not necessary for there to be legal action. You're cherry-picking a single example. What about the others? i.e. members of Congress calling for legal action, etc? Nadler, etc? i.e. encouraging and promoting...

https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/white-house-flagging-posts-for-facebook-to-censor-due-to-covid-19-misinformation/ Also, see the removal of the ability to post about the Hunter Biden laptop from Twitter and Facebook. Is legislation necessary in your view? Or are the threats levied against these companies (previously cited) enough? What about the fact that it is actually happening? Like, right now. Again, there is established legal precedent that has found that the government threat of legal action against a book publisher constituted a violation of the first amendment. Now, back to my question. Do you understand the distinction being made?

So long as Facebook and Twitter are acting independent of government imposition, you are correct. Once they begin acting on behalf of the government, however, that makes things different.

With your construction of the issue, you're right - just because something is online does not make it a public space. No one is making such a simple argument, though. You're holding a strawman. When the government compels a private company to act on their behalf, that changes things, and it's no longer an issue of it simply being online. When Facebook begins censoring messages on behalf of the government, they have now become a de facto arm of the government. *If* the messages being censored would *otherwise* be constitutionally protected, *that* is now unconstitutional. See the distinction?

I agree - it's my responsibility. I understand your point. There will always be dumb people. Is your view, though, that if we limit false information everyone is going to have the same set of thoughts and internal representation of how the world is? This is a more complex issue than just saying we need to limit the propagation of bad information. Viewing it as that simple is seductive because it seems like a silver bullet that will just solve the problem in one fell-swoop. I'm saying that the German people didn't just simply "believe a lie" - it was far more complex than that. If the government intervened and outlawed the view that the Earth is flat, would that action create more or less flat Earthers? Since obviously it's not flat. What about no gold at the end of a rainbow? More or less leprechauns?

Let me ask you this: why do you think was Hitler able to convince the Germans that the Jews would be an effective scapegoat? Was he just that powerful an orator? Or were there perhaps some other conditions within Germany that enabled messaging like that to take hold? Would a Hitler have been able to exist without the economic policies instituted after WWI? Using Hitler as an example of why we need to limit free speech is a pretty one-dimensional reading of how the Nazis came to power. I think we collectively over-estimate how permanent recent history is vs. ancient history. Does anyone remember how prevalent European slaves were in Africa re: Barbary pirates? Maybe some do. I don't think that's how Northern Africa is really thought of today, however. A fair reading of American history would also be how we fought a war ending slavery whose casualties outstripped the combined totals of WWI and WWII. Not many other countries have gone to that length to end such an institution.

The best counter to disinformation is truth. The suggestion you're making, that the government should control what people read, hear, or see, is control that isn't possible, and will only serve to undermine and erode further trust in it as an institution. Do you not see that? That is an inherent part of the US system of liberal government. Every rose has it's thorn. The US is full of dumb people, but so is every other country. And the proposition that because a certain group of people exists (i.e those who are unintelligent or uninformed), should somehow affect the information other people are "allowed" to consume is anti-American. Messages that are provably false stop themselves. Duh. You nailed everyone's main concern about determining what truth is, however, but your idea that there should be an attempt to stop the flow of information vs providing the truth is not a viable solution.

You are declaring this as if it were fact, in the face of actual legal jurisprudence that has been quoted for you in separate posts in this thread. You aren't arguing in good faith, and in fact, you're just plain wrong, from a legal standpoint. You're side-stepping the fact that our government - through the court system - has determined that governmental "persuasion" of private entities to enact policy or act on their behalf to accomplish "things" that the government couldn't do on its own otherwise (because constitution), makes that action governmental (not private). Read: When the government pressures a company to do something, it is government action - directly. Let's get to your question. It was Cedric Richmond and Jerry Nadler in April 2019. Another poster quoted Diane Feinstein for you. Here's the source (https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-tech-11610387105). In any case, here's another quote for you to ignore, or call an echo chamber or whatever. Not expecting actual engagement: "In April 2019, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond warned Facebook and Google that they had “better” restrict what he and his colleagues saw as harmful content or face regulation: “We’re going to make it swift, we’re going to make it strong, and we’re going to hold them very accountable.” New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler added: “Let’s see what happens by just pressuring them.” Hopefully you can let this one rest.

Precisely. Because what tech companies give a fuck about absolves the government from adhering to their constitutionally mandated restrictions. /S And just because you can "go to a different platform" doesn't mean you're not being censored. There is a difference between censorship and silencing.

It's a pretty shallow analysis to say that because Facebook (et al) are private companies, when they censor speech, it's not the government doing it. In fact, however, there is established legal precedent which (time and again) has determined that when government pressures or otherwise incentivises a company to act on their behalf, that action has become a de facto governmental action. The reason for this is simple. If it was just as simple as saying "hey private company, restrict this speech we don't like so it's not us doing it and we'll hook you up in some way," would free speech really mean what we all think of it as? Of course not, which is why there have been numerous court cases which have decided that the government cannot use private companies as a proxy to accomplish what they are otherwise forbidden from doing. Which, in this case, is restricting speech. https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-tech-11610387105 For example: "For more than half a century courts have held that governmental threats can turn private conduct into state action. In Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963), the Supreme Court found a First Amendment violation when a private bookseller stopped selling works state officials deemed “objectionable” after they sent him a veiled threat of prosecution."

Asking if that was sarcasm (or not) was RACIST.

In the end, our problem was how we defined "victory." We never should have been attempting to make Afghanistan a 1st world country with western values. We should have openly stated we would be content with a couple of permanent drone operating bases backed up by a few hundred/thousand personnel to drop Hellfires on them for the next 1000 years. No intention ever stated of "winning" anything. Just being a forever thorn in their side to prevent their state's use as a training base.

Interesting video - got me going down the rabbit hole a good bit. Here are some interesting tidbits from one paper (published in May '20) in particular that really stood out to me. In short, when we first noticed SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) it was already highly adapted to humans. This pattern is divergent from that of our earlier experience with SARS-CoV, wherein that virus underwent rapid and dramatic evolutionary change in the early (~3 month) phase of that outbreak. This is important because in the early stages of an outbreak a novel disease has very high "evolutionary pressure" to adapt to a new host, which results in rapid genetic change. "Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV." "There is no evidence of a more virulent strain of SARS-CoV-2 emerging despite passage through more than 3 million human hosts by the time of this analysis." No other "progenitors" of SARS-CoV-2 have been found, nor have their been large populations of Chinese found in Wuhan that have antibodies against such a virus that would indicate a previously undetected outbreak that could represent the missing phase of the outbreak. "To look for clues regarding intermediate hosts, we analyze recent key findings relating to how SARS-CoV-2 could have evolved and adapted for human transmission, and examine the environmental samples from the Wuhan Huanan seafood market. Importantly, the market samples are genetically identical to human SARS-CoV-2 isolates and were therefore most likely from human sources." What probably happened? China collected samples of Bat CoV viruses in the wild back in 2012 and were conducting research on them to understand their danger to humans. This virus (or viruses) adapted to humanized mice during testing and somehow escaped into the wild. Blaming it on the wet market was a convenient cover for the CCP while they tried to control it and stop the spread. Note, also, that the WIV deleted a database of genomic data that contained ~8 other genomes for CoVs. My money is on the notion that the genome for SARS-CoV-2 is in that database which is why it was taken down and is why it's not being shared. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1.full.pdf It's also totally possible that the early part of the outbreak was just missed, and that a new CoV just happened to coincidentally infect the major city where CoV research is conducted.

Right. You're announcing that people on the L scoff Tucker and people on the R scoff Lemon - no one disputes that, and it wasn't part of my argument even though you're responding to it as though it was. The group of people I'm talking about are those in the "middle" who generally consider themselves disengaged from the world of politics, but who may get brought in to varying degrees depending on what's going on around them (different from those who know they are on the L or R). These are the "most" people (who I was careful to not distinguish by labeling them as R or L) I'm talking about when I quote myself: I'm pointing out that the biased group of people I list above carry a special cloak in relation to the "most" group I'm distinguishing: they work for "legitimate" news sources (CNN/NBC/CBS/ABC/NYT/WaPo) and thus they are not approached with the same suspicion that Tucker Carlson is (by most - not just those on the L). That's the core reason they wield more power than the Tuckers - because they aren't judged as L leaning by most in the same way most can distinguish Tucker as R leaning. They get the benefit of the doubt that being approached by someone looking for "straight news" comes to them with. The net effect is that the mainstream media is L biased, but most people don't see it as so. The dangerous consequence of this is seen by the legacy media establishment's ability to dismiss, outright, a credible hypothesis about the origins of COVID. I would compare and contrast this with the whataboutism that is the discussion surrounding Fox news' "pushing" of Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, or whatever else - the national discussion about prevention/cures didn't shift based on what Fox news was talking about. The national discussion on the origins of COVID did shift based on what CNN/NBC/CBS/ABC/NYT/WaPo were pushing. A simple way for you to tell what group you're a part of: do you consider the group of people I listed above to be as L leaning as Tucker is R leaning?

Well, you missed my point. The point is not that what the President says doesn't matter. Remember, GWB had numerous detractors (including me when I was less than a 2nd Lt); Clinton was impeached for lies about BJs; Obama lost a democratic majority extremely rapidly. So you're right, all those issues (and the lies told around them) matter, and in each of those cases there was vigorous and spirited debate that took place around them. What is novel about the lab-leak theory, and what makes it stand apart from those you listed, is the concerted, direct, and coordinated effort by the media establishment to dismiss the theory outright - without evidence - because it was supported by Trump. There was no debate. That's the point.

The point is that CNN/NBC/ABC/CBS/NYT/WaPo and their pundits are all taken as "legitimate" news sources; no one is confused or doubts that Tucker Carlson provides "news with perspective" or that he happens to have the #1 rated show. Juxtapose this with the fact that most people take Jim Acosta, Jeffery Toobin, Don Lemon, Briana Keilar, George Stephanopolous, Yamiche Alcindor, Brian Stelter, and the rest of the bunch as un-biased, and what's more, they wear the equivalent of "blue check marks" in the news business - they are considered un-opinionated and non-political. How do I know this? No one openly scoffs them. People do openly scoff Tucker. It is the sum total of the above phalanx that has a far, far greater effect on what the nation is aware of and thus who gets to determine the framing of issues in the country than does the Tucker gadfly (and hence the fact that he as an individual happens to have a larger audience is irrelevant).