Yes. — fdrake

I urge caution. Start with two cohorts, one lower than the other, and then reduce that inequality, and it can be said that the other cohort is "falling behind". Especially when the two cohorts exhaust the population.

For Gregory I feel pity actually. — Tobias

Me, not so much. A recent discussion on Mathematics showed that he had a very poor grasp of some basic concepts, together with an unwillingness to learn. That attitude was apparent here, as well. And the selfie taken from the vicinity of his groin was just weird.

Sure, all that, more or less.

Boys outperformed girls in mathematics by 11 score points; girls outperformed boys in reading by 22 score points in Australia. Globally, in mathematics, boys outperformed girls in 40 countries and economies, girls outperformed boys in another 17 countries or economies, and no significant difference was found in the remaining 24. In reading, girls, on average, scored above boys in all but two countries and economies that participated in PISA 2022 (79 out of 81). — Gender differences in performance

Mixed results. But...

In Australia socio-economically advantaged students (the top 25% in terms of socio-economic status) outperformed disadvantaged students (the bottom 25%) by 101 score points in mathematics. — PIZA results

11 points, 22 points... and 101 points. Which should be our primary concern?

My critique of Reeves is the common one that he is blaming schools for general societal problems. It's a strategy adopted by folk - politicians - so they can ignore the actual issue by blaming the teaching profession.

Shouldn't this be in the Lounge?

If you need folk to genuflect, then I do agree that the US was a great civilisation.

The issue in this particular thread is, what next? Especially for us, in our parochial Dow Nunder considerations.

Tim Tams aren't American — frank

Indeed, famously Australian, but Arnott's were purchased by the US corporate Campbell's Soup in 1997. There followed an explosion of varieties in the crass US tradition, including of all things a cheese variety for the Indonesian market.

Divided loyalties.

responsibilities? :chin: — frank

Yes, responsibilities - things the US undertook to do, then backed out of.

China can't be trusted. — frank

Nor can the USA, as it turns out.

Do you think you might be a little bemused? — frank

I hope I would be aghast.

I would limit purchases from the US — frank

Such purchases are very few.

...you didn't read my post — frank

I think I did, but you didn't like the response.

Do you know the expression "Cutting off your nose to spite your face"? — Banno

But thanks for boosting this thread.

US postal rates are so much higher than other regions - Canada, for example - that again, we don't make such purchases.

Again, the point MAGA misses is that the US has no monopoly on production. If you make it harder to buy or sell into the USA, we will buy or sell elsewhere.

Do you know the expression "Cutting off your nose to spite your face"?

The USA can do as it pleases. But having said that it would provide aid, defence materials and so on, and then having rapidly and unilateral backed out out of those undertakings, others will respond appropriately. Again, since the USA has shown itself to be unreliable, why should we do business?

There are other places to buy things.

(Indeed, I contemplated a personal ban on buying US produce, only to realise that extended as far as the occasional TimTam.)

...the US never had any responsibilities — frank

One example: the US said it would provide aid, then reneged. Hence, it is unreliable. See What Trump's USAID freeze means for the rest of the world

The Washington-based Malaria No More says new modeling shows that just a year of disruption in the malaria-control supply chain would lead to nearly 15 million additional cases and 107,000 additional deaths globally. It has urged the Trump administration to “restart these life-saving programs before outbreaks get out of hand.” — The Independent

A "hinge proposition", if ever there was one.

Kind of in the same way China can't be trusted. — frank

...and that neither can be trusted shows us what?

The point being made is that the USA was reliable, and now it isn't. So why do business with them?

What MAGA misses is that the USA is not the whole game; indeed, it's not even the main game any longer, and it is actively working to decrease it's influence.

"Here is a hand" is a proposition. It is not justified by some other proposition. It is a hinge proposition, one on which other propositions may turn.

That other propositions are dependent on hinge propositions is a piece of the puzzled that must not be lost. A hinge that is not a hinge proposition cannot fulfil this role.

The traitor-in-chief is actively, if not directly, killing millions word wide. Yep, the USA in the last month or so has reneged on responsibilities undertaken over the last eighty years.

Militarily, can Australia expect support under AUKUS and even ANZUS, given that NATO is on thin ice?

The present US administration has shown that it cannot be trusted.

Cheers.

That girls are doing well in PISA only matters if one supposes that it ought be boys that are doing well. Why not just say "good on 'em!"?

Why restrict ourselves to raising boys or girls when we can raise children?

Rather than ask why boys are not doing as well as they might, ask why some kids are not doing as well as they might. I've some professional familiarity with the PISA results and can assure you that differences between genders are far outweighed by differences in family income.

Seems to me the question in the OP is about preferred leadership styles. The present move away from cooperative leadership is... regrettable.

Alan Kohler, again: We're at a turning point in world history but our leaders are distracted

Given that our great and powerful friend has abdicated it's responsibilities and handed management of the world over to China, this forthcoming election has some import.

But we are stuck with mediocre leadership. And a potato.

Japan, South Korea, India and Indonesia are now those to whom we need to tie our wagon.

It doesn't much matter for the purposes of the discussion if masculinity and femininity match biological gender. Margaret Thatcher comes to mind.

My question to is more about the listed characteristics being consistently found in individuals. Do we know that ego oriented, economic growth high priority, conflict solved through force, import of religion, traditional family structure and seeing failing is a disaster are characteristics found together in some individuals, while others work in order to live, negotiate to solve conflicts, accept women priests and don't mind when boys cry? Or is this an expectation brought to the table by the theories? Is someone who doesn't see women as managers more likely to give economic growth a higher priority than the environment?

And it doesn't matter that it might be otherwise in some cultures, since the topic is our own culture.


Hofstede’s dimensions originated in a study of IBM workers, using factor analysis. Other studies have supported and extended the four original dimensions. So to answer my own question, it does have an empirical base and across various global samples.

Here are a few of the papers found:
Relationships Between Response Styles and the Hofstede and GLOBE Dimensions of Culture in a Sample of Adolescents From 33 Countries

The Correlation between Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions and COVID-19 Data in the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic Period

The effect of the dimension of culture masculinity/femininity in communication in multinational projects

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory & Examples

Apparently the masculinity/femininity dimension is now referred to as the "Motivation Toward Achievement and Success dimension", which alleviates some of my concern.

The third of these papers might give some insight into why those with a "high" motivation toward "achievement and success" dimension appear to summarily reject the content and thrust of the discussion in this thread. Of course, the sample here is pretty small...

So having established the viability of the masculinity/femininity dimension, and since it is pretty clear that the movement in the politics of the USA is towards the masculinity end of the scale, my next question concerns why we should have a preference for one dimension over anther - why not allow a "movement" towards the masculine end? Consequentialism would seem to provide a useable answer here - given the present environmental crisis, this is precisely a time in which cooperation is needed.

My apologies - to all, but especially . The temptation was to great.

Excellent thread, Tobias. Gotta love Hegelian analysis. The definition of masculinity and femininity has me puzzling. Is there anything more to it than stipulation - perhaps a study that shows the traits in the table coinciding statistically, or other empirical support?

Hmmm

Is the Dark Triad Really Attractive? A Review of the Literature

Nuclear an expensive threat to Queensland's drinking water and communities

Nuclear Power – Research Summary: Department of the Premier and Cabinet

:lol:

it was an environmental group claiming that a reactor would need a thousands times the available water it there was danger of a melt down, complete with Liberal excuses.

Might look for another version...

...who can keep them in fear/the dark of his (Dutton's) capabilities... — kazan

He has capabilities??

Shame there aren't more Clives running political campaigns with the same finesse. — kazan

This thread is doing OK, but we all seem to basically agree... it really needs some conflict.

Wonder if we can get Clive on the forums?

You have 26, 563 posts on a philosophy forum and you don't even know what philosophy is about. — Gregory

Yeah, but at least I'm learning...


This is fun!

I also think you don't have the balls to put your name and picture out there like i did — Gregory

He he...

Why do people say, ‘Grow some balls’? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you really wanna get tough, grow a vagina. Those things really take a pounding! — Betty White*

Banno is my name.

But i do think you are an idiot. — Gregory

That's cool, since you are an idiot, and hence your opinion isn't of much consequence.

Are we having fun now?

* But see Snopes...

No, we see that the same. — Hanover

Then where does your emphasis on proscriptions come from.

Yes, there is very much a failure to take responsibility for their predicament in incel thinking, a powerless resentment, to the point of ressentiment.

Astonishment that "Female influence is extremely powerful" - that someone could be surprised that half of humanity has some say in humanity - should be risible; but instead of laughter it invokes pathos.

You see ethics as a set of rules. Better to understand it as a conversation, or as a progression in our acts.

There is something repugnant, something lacking, in those who refrain from stomping on the heads of babies for fun only becasue it is against the law, be that a moral or a legal code.

We have a proscription. — Hanover

proscription: from Latin proscriptionem, "a public notice; proscription, outlawry, confiscation," noun of action from past-participle stem of proscribere "publish in writing"

BRIAN: Why aren't women allowed go to stonings, Mum?
MANDY: It's written. That's why.

This by way of trying to show that the premise of your last post, is muddled.

The distinction between ethics and law is only upon where each originated. — Hanover

Well, no.

Are there more of these rules not yet known? — Hanover

Another problem. The presumption seems to be that ethics is about rules. While arguably, morality might be about rules, ethics not so much. In the last page or so it was pointed out that ethics might not be algorithmic, that there might be no rules that suit all situations. Think of it this way: treating a rule as absolute is giving succour to the devil, who will delight in inventing traps in which following the rule leads to cruelty.

So this rule is not from the hand of man. — Hanover

Notice that this doesn't follow? Another use of false dilemma, a pattern in your posts here. It's not that either something is the result of a constitutive rule or it is "not from the hand of man".

So this rule is not from the hand of man. — Hanover

There's a certain obsession with commandments on your part.

Did you decide that baby stomping is a bad thing all by yourself, or did you need help?

Was it just your conscience? Or the hand of man, or of God, that convinced you?

"thou shall not stomp babies for fun." — Hanover

Do you need all your morality in terms of commandments?

The point being made is that, contrary to 's suggestion, social institutions do not rely on faith. They do depend on constitutive rules, either explicitly or implicitly. Murder, being unlawful killing, is a social institution.

Some social institutions have ethical import - one can't steal unless there is the social institution of property, for instance.

The wickedness of stomping of babies for fun is not of this sort.

Murder is unlawful killing. Being against the law is being against a social institution.

So why is murder wrong - becasue is breaches a social institution, or becasue it is a subclass of killing, and all killing wrong?

it's not faith that makes netting a ball a goal, nor faith that makes an unlawful killing a murder.

As trust in the US collapses, leaders in Australia and around the world are frantically recalibrating

The stupidity of AUKUS and the failure of successive governments to grow a strategic reserve will not serve us well. The Liberal party is bereft of any capacity to develop intelligent policy*. The ALP is too scared to do what needs doing. It'll have to be the cross benches.


* Note their failure to notice that Australia does not have much water.

True, that.

I see mathematics is not the only thing you misunderstand.

Apparently the freeze on military support to Ukraine by the Traitor-in-chief has prevented or at least delayed the delivery of superseded M1A1 vehicles from Australia through Poland.

Uncertainty over Australian Abrams tanks donated to Ukraine

More evidence of the unreliability of our erstwhile ally.

Recent years have seen Australia become far too reliant on one supplier for military hardware, a poor strategy.

Believing that putting the ball in the net counts as a goal is not an act of faith but simply to understand how to play football.

Consenting to our social institutions is not an act of faith.

...just like there are numbers that are even and numbers that are prime.

Why is doing more important than saying? — J

Saying is a doing.

I win.

:wink: