But still representative of somewhere between two-thirds and four-fifths of Americans. (The computer / webcam part anyhow). Especially with the advent of camera smartphones.
Yet still a far cry from actually representing the 99%.
We have, I suspect, a definition problem. When I state “99%” I am referring to those who describe themselves by that title.
No, you’re not. You’re generalizing from the hundred or so pictures you saw on a single website that’s only tangentially related to the movement. Hence, availability bias.
Yet still a far cry from actually representing the 99%.
99% of what, exactly? Furthermore, if 80% of a population has characteristic X, then interviewing those with characteristic X will yield patterns that would hold, all other things being equal, for 99% of said population as well—to within specific limits. (That’s what the whole notion of “statistically relevant sampling sizes” are about.)
No, you’re not. You’re generalizing from the hundred or so pictures you saw on a single website that’s only tangentially related to the movement. Hence, availability bias.
Who said anything about it being from a single website? Who said the submitters were the ones with the computers?
Furthermore: As I just explicitly stated, by “99%” I refer *solely to those who self-apellate in this manner.
Even, thusly, if we somehow allow for an “availability bias”, the simple fact of the matter is that said bias simply isn’t sufficient to the task of overcoming the fact that I have taken a statistically relevant sampling size of the protestors who self-apellate as “99%”, and found that the overwhelming majority of them exhibit seriously poor economic planning abilities in various ways. (Not a single description on a single sign showed good planning done in by external forces. Not one. Out of one hundred. Of a movement numbered less than one hundred thousand individuals.)
I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to provide better, sounder, reasoning if you expect my beliefs on this matter to be revised in the direction you appear to insist.
I have taken a statistically relevant sampling size of the protestors who self-apellate as “99%”, and found that the overwhelming majority of them exhibit seriously poor economic planning abilities in various ways.
Can I see your data ? I was thinking of collecting some myself, but if I can just piggy-back on your effort, then I don’t have to :-)
Not a single description on a single sign showed good planning done in by external forces...
Well, there’s this one, but it’s just a single random sign off of a front page of one website, so it’s probably not statistically significant all by itself.
Can I see your data ? I was thinking of collecting some myself, but if I can just piggy-back on your effort, then I don’t have to :-)
Only archived in wetware, I’m afraid. Watched enough videos (many I’m sure on youtube) where the signs were legible, and seen enough of the signs via reddit to accumulate to over 100.
Well, there’s this one,
… dude works for 20 years at minimum wage, and then when he gets sick with a non-acute ailment expects everyone to drop their shit and make his life better as a free ride—and that’s an example of “good planning done in by external forces”?
… dude works for 20 years at minimum wage, and then when he gets sick with a non-acute ailment expects everyone to drop their shit and make his life better as a free ride—and that’s an example of “good planning done in by external forces”?
That summary is incorrect. He worked for 20 years at his chosen profession, lost his job, then found work at minimum wage instead of no work at all, then got sick.
Could he have saved more during those 20 years, and therefore done better? Undoubtedly. What size should an emergency fund be? Let’s ask Google:
Though personal finance experts agree emergency funds are necessary, there’s no consensus on how much is enough. Some say you need save a year’s salary. Others believe $1000 is sufficient. Most advice tends to fall someplace in the middle.
… dude works for 20 years at minimum wage, and then when he gets sick with a non-acute ailment expects everyone to drop their shit and make his life better as a free ride—and that’s an example of “good planning done in by external forces”?
He worked in some ambiguous field for 20 years until he lost his job in the economic collapse, then he started working minimum wage, and with the insurance available to him on that job he was unable to afford treatment for cancer. Cancer is among the more acute ailments one might reasonably expect ever to face; if a tumor is malignant, that is, cancerous, then if untreated, it is unusual for it to be nonfatal.
If you start completely mischaracterizing data that is held up as a counterexample to your position, it’s a good sign that you’re being controlled by your preconceptions.
This doesn’t really touch your broader point, but my understanding is that “acute)” refers to the progression of the disease—how quickly it comes on and runs its course—not its severity. Most cancers are highly lethal if untreated, but also long-lasting, making them chronic diseases.
and with the insurance available to him on that job he was unable to afford treatment for cancer.
And then found it surprising that private institutions weren’t paying his way for it, as per his own words.
Cancer is among the more acute ailments one might reasonably expect ever to face; if a tumor is malignant, that is, cancerous, then if untreated, it is unusual for it to be nonfatal.
And then found it surprising that private institutions weren’t paying his way for it, as per his own words.
Common wisdom is that nobody in this country is supposed to get turned away from necessary life saving treatment due to personal inability to pay. I have been told this by EMTs myself. He is testifying that this is, in fact, incorrect.
Common wisdom is that nobody in this country is supposed to get turned away from necessary life saving treatment due to personal inability to pay.
For acute conditions.
I have been told this by EMTs myself.
Yup. It’s the law. No emergency medical establishment can refuse care for someone currently suffering an acute, life-threatening condition regardless of ability to pay.
See, that’s what they mean when they say “necessary life-saving treatment”.
Where people get this notion it applies to cancer therapies, I don’t know—but nobody in the medical industry has ever actually said that. They wouldn’t; it’s not true. It’s also not what the law says.
So do you think that because he was dying of something that was not rapid-onset, and couldn’t pay for treatment because he had lost his job in the economic crash and the job he was able to find in the meantime didn’t give him enough to cover it, he had only himself to blame?
Edit: I also don’t think it makes much sense to blame people for assuming that when they’re told that they won’t be turned away from treatment for necessary life saving procedures due to inability to pay, that it means what it sounds like it means.
As Desrtopa and dlthomas pointed out below, your summary of this guy’s situation is incorrect; I think that your wetware-based data collection policy may have something to do with this.
Speaking more generally, I am not sure I understand your “big picture” view. You say:
...and then when he gets sick with a non-acute ailment expects everyone to drop their shit and make his life better as a free ride...
Does this mean that you’re against the very idea of having a social safety net ? Or are you merely saying that, while a safety net is a good idea, this particular person’s expectations are unreasonable ?
As Desrtopa and dlthomas pointed out below, your summary of this guy’s situation is incorrect;
In that I misread where he stated he was earning minimum wage, yes. I acknowledge this.
I think that your wetware-based data collection policy may have something to do with this.
It’s not exactly as though I planned to publish research papers on this topic. I expect that my own personal observations are replicable but they are not directly share-able.
This is no more unusual a “policy” than for anyone else who uses his or her own direct observations of a class of event to make judgments of said event. Please try not to use such loaded language.
This is no more unusual a “policy” than for anyone else who uses his or her own direct observations of a class of event to make judgments of said event. Please try not to use such loaded language.
Fair enough, you’re right, I shouldn’t have used such a loaded word.
Does this mean that you’re against the very idea of having a social safety net ? Or are you merely saying that, while a safety net is a good idea, this particular person’s expectations are unreasonable ?
I make no statements whatsoever about a social safety net. Which, by the way, according to that same posting has now “caught” him, although it has done so only once he was “officially” disabled. We can talk about the moral justice or expected social utility of that history some other time—because right now, in this world, it is a matter of truth that it is irrational to expect private institutions to pay for your ailments without a vested interest in doing so.
So where, precisely, is his justification for the claim “despite what you were told”? Nobody was saying that.
because right now, in this world, it is a matter of truth that it is irrational to expect private institutions to pay for your ailments without a vested interest in doing so.
I believe that the OWS crowd explicitly wants to change this situation; this is one of their long-term goals. Of course, they would probably prefer it if public institutions achieved this task, not private ones. We could argue whether this is a worthy goal or not, but hopefully we can both agree that it’s an achievable one, at least in principle.
So where, precisely, is his justification for the claim “despite what you were told”? Nobody was saying that.
There’s a general perception in our culture that hospitals are obligated to heal the sick (I used to believe it myself until relatively recently), and that the churches provide charity and support for the same purpose. In fact, churches actively market themselves based on this latter notion.
Presumably these people started out as speaking for 99% of Americans, but now that the movement has gone international, that no longer makes sense. It’s the nature of this beast to be slightly incoherent.
Who said anything about it being from a single website? Who said the submitters were the ones with the computers?
You originally linked to a website called “We are the 99%”, which I had alluded to earlier. You didn’t say anything about looking at other websites, so what else was I supposed to assume?
While it’s true that they themselves may not directly own the computer, merely having access to the Internet is something that many poor people in the United States simply don’t have. That “those who describe themselves as the 99%” do not actually represent “99% of Americans” or “99% of people” is orthogonal to my point about availability bias.
I have taken a statistically relevant sampling size of the protestors who self-apellate as “99%”, and found that the overwhelming majority of them exhibit seriously poor economic planning abilities in various ways.
To estimate any scalar quantity from a population size of even 50,000, at 95% confidence, with a 5% margin of error, one would have to sample around 380 people. You’re not even doing anything as rigorous as statistics. Nevermind that your criteria for judging “seriously poor economic planning abilities” is likely ad-hoc.
Conversely, if you want to convince anyone else about your beliefs regarding the protest movement, you’ll just have to provide actual evidence.
Yet still a far cry from actually representing the 99%.
No, you’re not. You’re generalizing from the hundred or so pictures you saw on a single website that’s only tangentially related to the movement. Hence, availability bias.
99% of what, exactly? Furthermore, if 80% of a population has characteristic X, then interviewing those with characteristic X will yield patterns that would hold, all other things being equal, for 99% of said population as well—to within specific limits. (That’s what the whole notion of “statistically relevant sampling sizes” are about.)
Who said anything about it being from a single website? Who said the submitters were the ones with the computers?
Furthermore: As I just explicitly stated, by “99%” I refer *solely to those who self-apellate in this manner.
Even, thusly, if we somehow allow for an “availability bias”, the simple fact of the matter is that said bias simply isn’t sufficient to the task of overcoming the fact that I have taken a statistically relevant sampling size of the protestors who self-apellate as “99%”, and found that the overwhelming majority of them exhibit seriously poor economic planning abilities in various ways. (Not a single description on a single sign showed good planning done in by external forces. Not one. Out of one hundred. Of a movement numbered less than one hundred thousand individuals.)
I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to provide better, sounder, reasoning if you expect my beliefs on this matter to be revised in the direction you appear to insist.
Can I see your data ? I was thinking of collecting some myself, but if I can just piggy-back on your effort, then I don’t have to :-)
Well, there’s this one, but it’s just a single random sign off of a front page of one website, so it’s probably not statistically significant all by itself.
Only archived in wetware, I’m afraid. Watched enough videos (many I’m sure on youtube) where the signs were legible, and seen enough of the signs via reddit to accumulate to over 100.
… dude works for 20 years at minimum wage, and then when he gets sick with a non-acute ailment expects everyone to drop their shit and make his life better as a free ride—and that’s an example of “good planning done in by external forces”?
I think not, sir.
That summary is incorrect. He worked for 20 years at his chosen profession, lost his job, then found work at minimum wage instead of no work at all, then got sick.
Could he have saved more during those 20 years, and therefore done better? Undoubtedly. What size should an emergency fund be? Let’s ask Google:
says GetRichSlowly
says LifeHacker
says About.com Financial Planning
says Investopedia
says… um… nowhere, as far as I can tell.
This seems to leave you more vulnerable to many biases.
I don’t disagree.
He worked in some ambiguous field for 20 years until he lost his job in the economic collapse, then he started working minimum wage, and with the insurance available to him on that job he was unable to afford treatment for cancer. Cancer is among the more acute ailments one might reasonably expect ever to face; if a tumor is malignant, that is, cancerous, then if untreated, it is unusual for it to be nonfatal.
If you start completely mischaracterizing data that is held up as a counterexample to your position, it’s a good sign that you’re being controlled by your preconceptions.
This doesn’t really touch your broader point, but my understanding is that “acute)” refers to the progression of the disease—how quickly it comes on and runs its course—not its severity. Most cancers are highly lethal if untreated, but also long-lasting, making them chronic diseases.
And then found it surprising that private institutions weren’t paying his way for it, as per his own words.
In medicine, an acute disease is a disease with either or both of: # a rapid onset, as in acute infection # a short course (as opposed to a chronic course).
Common wisdom is that nobody in this country is supposed to get turned away from necessary life saving treatment due to personal inability to pay. I have been told this by EMTs myself. He is testifying that this is, in fact, incorrect.
For acute conditions.
Yup. It’s the law. No emergency medical establishment can refuse care for someone currently suffering an acute, life-threatening condition regardless of ability to pay.
See, that’s what they mean when they say “necessary life-saving treatment”.
Where people get this notion it applies to cancer therapies, I don’t know—but nobody in the medical industry has ever actually said that. They wouldn’t; it’s not true. It’s also not what the law says.
So do you think that because he was dying of something that was not rapid-onset, and couldn’t pay for treatment because he had lost his job in the economic crash and the job he was able to find in the meantime didn’t give him enough to cover it, he had only himself to blame?
Edit: I also don’t think it makes much sense to blame people for assuming that when they’re told that they won’t be turned away from treatment for necessary life saving procedures due to inability to pay, that it means what it sounds like it means.
As Desrtopa and dlthomas pointed out below, your summary of this guy’s situation is incorrect; I think that your wetware-based data collection policy may have something to do with this.
Speaking more generally, I am not sure I understand your “big picture” view. You say:
Does this mean that you’re against the very idea of having a social safety net ? Or are you merely saying that, while a safety net is a good idea, this particular person’s expectations are unreasonable ?
In that I misread where he stated he was earning minimum wage, yes. I acknowledge this.
It’s not exactly as though I planned to publish research papers on this topic. I expect that my own personal observations are replicable but they are not directly share-able.
This is no more unusual a “policy” than for anyone else who uses his or her own direct observations of a class of event to make judgments of said event. Please try not to use such loaded language.
Fair enough, you’re right, I shouldn’t have used such a loaded word.
I make no statements whatsoever about a social safety net. Which, by the way, according to that same posting has now “caught” him, although it has done so only once he was “officially” disabled. We can talk about the moral justice or expected social utility of that history some other time—because right now, in this world, it is a matter of truth that it is irrational to expect private institutions to pay for your ailments without a vested interest in doing so.
So where, precisely, is his justification for the claim “despite what you were told”? Nobody was saying that.
I believe that the OWS crowd explicitly wants to change this situation; this is one of their long-term goals. Of course, they would probably prefer it if public institutions achieved this task, not private ones. We could argue whether this is a worthy goal or not, but hopefully we can both agree that it’s an achievable one, at least in principle.
There’s a general perception in our culture that hospitals are obligated to heal the sick (I used to believe it myself until relatively recently), and that the churches provide charity and support for the same purpose. In fact, churches actively market themselves based on this latter notion.
Presumably these people started out as speaking for 99% of Americans, but now that the movement has gone international, that no longer makes sense. It’s the nature of this beast to be slightly incoherent.
You originally linked to a website called “We are the 99%”, which I had alluded to earlier. You didn’t say anything about looking at other websites, so what else was I supposed to assume?
While it’s true that they themselves may not directly own the computer, merely having access to the Internet is something that many poor people in the United States simply don’t have. That “those who describe themselves as the 99%” do not actually represent “99% of Americans” or “99% of people” is orthogonal to my point about availability bias.
To estimate any scalar quantity from a population size of even 50,000, at 95% confidence, with a 5% margin of error, one would have to sample around 380 people. You’re not even doing anything as rigorous as statistics. Nevermind that your criteria for judging “seriously poor economic planning abilities” is likely ad-hoc.
Conversely, if you want to convince anyone else about your beliefs regarding the protest movement, you’ll just have to provide actual evidence.