Рубрика "наука и война"

Этот пост - рассказ коллеги Д.Р (источник здесь) про организацию опроса в РФ.

НАСТОЯЩИЙ МАТЕРИАЛ (ИНФОРМАЦИЯ) ПРОИЗВЕДЕН, РАСПРОСТРАНЕН И (ИЛИ) НАПРАВЛЕН ИНОСТРАННЫМ АГЕНТОМ АЛЕКСАНДРОЙ СЕРГЕЕВНОЙ АРХИПОВОЙ, СОДЕРЖАЩЕЙСЯ В РЕЕСТРЕ ИНОСТРАННЫХ АГЕНТОВ ЛИБО КАСАЕТСЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ИНОСТРАННОГО АГЕНТА АЛЕКСАНДРЫ СЕРГЕЕВНЫ АРХИПОВОЙ, СОДЕРЖАЩЕЙСЯ В РЕЕСТРЕ ИНОСТРАННЫХ АГЕНТОВ 18+

Просто прочитайте до конца:

"Помогал на днях свои бывшим студентам готовить анкету для массового опроса в одном из удаленных от Москвы регионов. Обычная оперативная диагностика социального самочувствия. Банальная задача. Но ребята с этой темой раньше не работали, попросили помочь для подстраховки.

Среди прочего заказчик хочет понять ответ на проблемный вопрос: ощущают ли люди, что начало войны повысило конфликтность в обществе. Очевидную формулировку "Ощущаете ли Вы, что после начала войны с Украиной окружающие Вас люди стали чаще конфликтовать друг с другом?" отметаем сразу. Ибо явная крамола для опроса внутри России. Заменяем ее политкорректным вариантом: "Ощущаете ли Вы, что после начала СВО окружающие Вас люди стали чаще конфликтовать друг с другом?". Ребята отравляют заказчику на согласование.

Через день студенты пересылают ответ: анкета классная, но вопрос про СВО не нравится. Не надо, мол, упоминать СВО в анкете, это опасно сейчас. На удивленный вопрос о том, как полагается выяснять столь нужное ему влияние СВО на жизнь самих людей без упоминаний самой СВО, заказчик отвечает: ну Вы что-нибудь придумайте, такое, чтобы люди поняли, а придраться не к чему было. Хорошо, не такие задачи решали. Снова садимся за креатив. Придумываем формулировку: "Ощущаете ли Вы, что после 24 февраля 2022 года окружающие Вас люди стали чаще конфликтовать друг с другом?". Отправляем.

Снова ответ. Снова не нравится. "24 февраля" - плохо, слишком очевидно указывает на начала СВО, проблемы могут быть. Такой же ответ приходит на предложение спросить: "Ощущаете ли Вы, что после февраля 2022 года окружающие Вас люди стали чаще конфликтовать друг с другом?". Тоже, мол, слишком явный намек. Сходимся на уже совсем некорректной, но уже, похоже, безальтернативной формулировке: "Ощущаете ли Вы, что после начала 2022 года окружающие Вас люди стали чаще конфликтовать друг с другом?". Опять отправляем.

Приходит новое замечание. К формулировке "...С начала 2022 года..." замечаний уже нет. Теперь заказчика напрягает слово "конфликтовать". Слово, мол, явно негативное по смыслу, упоминать его в контексте "с начала 2022 года" нельзя: всем будет сразу понятно, что мы допускаем, что люди могут видеть у СВО негативные последствия...

В итоге после недели переписок в печать уходит вариант анкеты с дивным вопросом от кота Леопольда: "Ощущаете ли Вы, что после начала 2022 года окружающие Вас люди стали более дружными?". Именно ему теперь поручена миссия выявить ощущаемое влияние войны на степень конфликтов в обществе.

Заказчик доволен. Бывшим студентам рекомендовано увольняться и уезжать куда-то подальше от этого дурдома. Занавес" (c) Д.Р.

(Two for one special today since I haven’t written since last week.)

My virtual German buddy Eugyppius has a fascinating Stack today on a paper showing smart people were more likely to take the mRNA jabs.

The study drew on 750,000 Swedish men who were tested for their intelligence as part of their mandatory military service. The findings are clear: “The smarter participants had higher uptake and they got vaccinated more quickly.”

But the study has one fascinating hole. It shows smart people were more likely to take the jab - but not that the smartest people were. As Eugyppius notes, the top group represented

The equivalent of an above-average university student – the kinds of people who work as doctors and lawyers. We hardly needed a study to tell us that the most enthusiastic vaccinees are to be found precisely in this population.

Yep.

—

What the study really explains, Eugyppius argues, is why near-compulsory mRNA jabs became national policy in wealthy democracies. In those countries, this smart-not-smartest group dominates politics and most businesses (if not startups).

He draws on a 1985 paper called “Intelligence and personal influence in groups” to argue that the most intelligent people cannot argue down persuasively and so have limited influence.

Instead, people who are somewhat smarter than average, with an IQ of about 120 (I’d go slightly higher, to 125-130), dominate debate. They can understand - if not formulate - somewhat complicated ideas and still argue them in ways less intelligent people can follow. The smart-not-brilliant range also contains enough people to form powerful and reinforcing social networks. The very top definitionally does not.

As Eugyppius writes:

Ours is therefore an IQ 120 midwit society; it could not be any other way… since our midwit rulers are cognitively better endowed than probably 90% of the whole population, it’s easy for them to overlook the rare 10% of people who are smarter than they are. Accordingly, they throw all of their opponents into the same basket of intellectual deplorables…

The ideas which dominate our world are… those ideas which appeal to people whose intelligence is above average if less-than-phenomenal, and whose other personality traits optimise their institutional influence. They have the brains of upper middle-class professionals, and they’re also much more extroverted, conscientious and conformist than the broader population. [emphasis added]

I would add that though the paper was written in 1985, the increasing feminization of the media, academia, and medicine has likely accelerated this trend. I am surprised Eugyppius did not raise this issue, given his past comments about “head girls.” Maybe E is not in the mood to cause trouble today; I apparently am.

(Want to read the trouble I’m in the mood to cause? Subscribe to find out. You won’t regret it, though I might…!)

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If you mirror the priorities of the Left, then you can do whatever you want. As long as you’re not caught on camera, you’re fine. If you look at the disparate consequences for public figures ranging from people like Russell Brand to people like Howard Stern, the public consequences are quite disparate.

Russell Brand has been accused by four separate women of actions ranging from sexual assault to rape to sexual harassment. Whether the allegations are true or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know is that at this moment, they’re just allegations. There has been no actual criminal indictment brought against him. He’s certainly not been convicted of anything. But YouTube has suspended Brand from making any money on its platform only days after that report broke from Channel 4 and BBC, outlets that used to pay Brand while he was in the midst of his most flagrantly vile behavior.

So if there are serious allegations made against you of any sort, all of your videos immediately get demonetized. (Which is going to be very bad news for a significant number of actors and half the rappers on the block.) That’s a horrible standard. You’ve now created a massive incentive structure for people to make allegations against people, true or false, in order to destroy their careers.

I’m not saying the women who have made allegations about Brand are lying. I don’t know whether they are or not. I do know, at this point, I have no idea how YouTube could possibly uphold such a standard. Does it have something to do with the fact that Brand is a heterodox political thinker, somebody who says things YouTube doesn’t like very much?

WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show

Then there’s Howard Stern. Stern has been making headlines the last couple of days by pushing very loudly to the Left. He spent virtually my entire life — from the time I was a teenager — being an absolute deviant and a degraded person beyond all measure. The kinds of behavior that Stern has regularly engaged in publicly throughout his career are nothing short of disgusting. They are disreputable. They are vile toward women; he had women in his studio sit on vibrators so he could record their reactions and blast them out to millions of people in his audience.

But now, Stern is apparently one of our moral exemplars. Over the last couple of days, he ripped into Lauren Boebert, who engaged in what I think is disgusting behavior; he referred to her in vile ways.

How is Howard Stern able to get away with all this? He gets away with it because he mirrors the political priorities of the Left. You be as gross as you want to be so long as you mirror the political priorities of the Left. Stern has discovered the magic elixir that wipes away all of your past and present sins, and that is to be far enough to the Left. He’s saying all the nostrums everybody on the Left really wants to hear, and that means it’s fine for him to do all this.

So why is this important?

Because when you have a class of people who are immunized by their association with certain Left-wing causes, it incentivizes bad behavior by those people. It also creates a massive double standard: If you are heterodox, you can expect to be targeted, but if you are orthodox in your practice of leftism, you can expect you’re going to be given an enormous amount of breathing room.

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JPMorgan Chase admitted to pressuring the financial software company Intuit into preventing gun sellers from using the company’s payment processing services, according to a letter Sen. Ted Cruz sent Monday after looking into the policy. Bank of America, meanwhile, denied pressuring Intuit into banning gun manufacturers from using its famous QuickBooks software.

“Woke big banks are increasingly weaponizing their power to cut off law-abiding businesses from accessing banking services,” Cruz, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal in an email statement Monday.

“The American people and small businesses must be protected from this discriminatory overreach,” Cruz added. “We cannot allow giant corporations to get away with punishing customers who do not fall in line with the Left’s political whims and leanings.”

Intuit, the financial software company best known for producing QuickBooks, had adopted an acceptable use policy previously listing “guns and firearm manufacturing” as one of the business types prohibited from using payroll services. Intuit also listed “firearms and weapons sales” as a business type prohibited from using payment processing services.

Intuit removed its prohibitions on payroll and payment processing for gun manufacturers and firearm sellers Aug. 1, following Cruz’s investigation of the company. The Texas Republican thanked Inuit in his letter Monday.

Cruz learned about the issue after Intuit withdrew its services from Dawson Precision, a Texas company that manufactures firearm parts. Intuit gave Dawson Precision no warning and simply refused to process payroll. Intuit later notified Dawson Precision that the software company had canceled the manufacturer’s account because Intuit’s acceptable use policy excluded firearm manufacturers.

When Dawson Precision explained that it manufactures only parts for firearms, not firearms themselves, Intuit directed the company to lodge a complaint with a third party that had flagged it. The third party didn’t respond to Dawson Precision’s attempts to appeal the decision.

Intuit also stopped processing credit card payments for the Arizona company Gunsite Academy, citing Intuit’s ban on companies that engage in gun sales that aren’t face to face. After Gunsite Academy explained that it legally shipped firearms to local dealers rather than directly to consumers, Intuit refused to reverse the decision.

When Cruz’s staff approached Intuit about its firearm policies, the company said its banking partners, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, demanded the policies. Specifically, Intuit said Bank of America required it to prohibit gun manufacturers from using QuickBooks and JPMorgan required Intuit to prohibit gun sellers from doing so.

JPMorgan admitted its role in the policy, but Bank of America denied that it ever gave Intuit any instructions about firearm companies.

This doesn’t mark JPMorgan’s first foray into cracking down on bank accounts associated with conservative causes.

In May 2022, Chase Bank (a division of JPMorgan Chase) closed an account for the National Committee for Religious Freedom, an organization founded by Sam Brownback, a former Kansas governor and President Donald Trump’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

Brownback, along with conservative organizations, suggested that Chase closed the account for religious or political reasons, which Chase denied. The bank said it closed the account because it needed more information about donors and recipients than the nonprofit provided.

Chase also closed accounts associated with the Arkansas Family Council and Defense of Liberty in 2021.

The threat that conservatives may face blacklisting from banking services extends beyond JPMorgan Chase.

Far-left groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center have pressured donor-advised funds to cut off charitable donations to conservative organizations that the SPLC brands “hate groups.” The left-leaning group SumOfUs also pressured Mastercard to refuse to process any credit-card transactions for “hate groups.”

As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it had used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents. In 2019, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that led the SPLC to fire its co-founder, a former employee came forward, calling the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.”

In his letter, Cruz wrote that “Intuit did the right thing regarding its payroll and payment services.”

“I encourage other companies to follow your company’s lead and take note that banning customers from using their products due to political differences is not good business,” the senator’s letter concludes.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. 

The post JPMorgan Admits Pressuring Intuit Into Cutting Off Gun Companies appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Удивительное рядом. Государство хочет иметь часть прибыли с каждой моей сделки, если есть доход. А если убыток, почему-то вообще не хочет принять участие.