Currency vs Brexit: GBP Losses

[Buzz201]

If you don't read the newspaper your uninformed if you do read it your misinformed - Denzel Washington

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

I take all my political advice from Denzel.

God knows what he was trying to tell me with The Taking of Pelham 123 though...

 

[kuuderes_shadow]

2010:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 421

2011:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 640
Running total: 1061
Number of reported rapes: 6532
Number of reported sexual molestations: 7762

2012:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 7814
Running total: 8875
Number of reported rapes: 6324
Number of reported sexual molestations: 7607

2013:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 16317
Running total: 25192
Number of reported rapes: 6017
Number of reported sexual molestations: 8797

2014:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 30583
Running total: 55775
Number of reported rapes: 6697
Number of reported sexual molestations: 9643

2015:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 51338
Running total: 107108
Number of reported rapes: 5918
Number of reported sexual molestations: 8840

2016:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 5457
Running total: 112555
Number of reported rapes: 6560
Number of reported sexual molestations: 10500

For rape there is effectively no correlation whatsoever. The comparison between the number of sexual molestations reported and the cumulative refugee figure gives a correlation so weak it probably doesn't exist, but let's look into this anyway. The higher the refugee figure in a given year, the higher the number of sexual molestations were reported, yes. However, as the refugee figure rose, so did the population, and an increase in the raw number of people would be expected to increase the number of sexual assaults even if the rate stayed the same. So a comparison between the proportion of the population that is a Syrian refugee and the rate of rape in the population is a better measure. On doing this not only does the correlation drop still further, but the apparent impact drops as well. The net result is that the correlation is weak enough for it to be genuinely laughable to claim that Syrian refugees has driven up the rate of rape in the country, and that even if you do claim this, then you can still only claim for every 1% of the population that are Syrian refugees, the rate of sexual molestations per person will increase by 0.000155.

It is also essential to note that the more stories about sexual assault are in the news, the more likely people are to report it. In 2016 such things were in the news far more often than in previous years. This is almost certainly a far bigger factor than the number of Syrian refugees in the country, if the latter is a factor at all, which it probably isn't.

Assumptions made include that there were no Syrian refugees before 2010 (this has no impact on the result given above as it would increase the number of refugees in every year), that no Syrian refugees left the country (in reality this would not be zero, and the more who left, the weaker the figures become, so the above actually gives a better case for your claim than what would be reality) and that the estimated number of reported rapes and sexual molestations for 2016 will prove accurate.

Here's the graph for the strongest case for your argument:

Incidentally, for rapes the R squared value is 0.15, and the correlation negative - in other words, the more Syrian refugees there were in the country in a given year, the fewer rapes there were per person.

 

[Watanabe Ken]

2010:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 421

2011:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 640
Running total: 1061
Number of reported rapes: 6532
Number of reported sexual molestations: 7762

2012:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 7814
Running total: 8875
Number of reported rapes: 6324
Number of reported sexual molestations: 7607

2013:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 16317
Running total: 25192
Number of reported rapes: 6017
Number of reported sexual molestations: 8797

2014:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 30583
Running total: 55775
Number of reported rapes: 6697
Number of reported sexual molestations: 9643

2015:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 51338
Running total: 107108
Number of reported rapes: 5918
Number of reported sexual molestations: 8840

2016:
Syrian asylum applicants received: 5457
Running total: 112555
Number of reported rapes: 6560
Number of reported sexual molestations: 10500

For rape there is effectively no correlation whatsoever. The comparison between the number of sexual molestations reported and the cumulative refugee figure gives a correlation so weak it probably doesn't exist, but let's look into this anyway. The higher the refugee figure in a given year, the higher the number of sexual molestations were reported, yes. However, as the refugee figure rose, so did the population, and an increase in the raw number of people would be expected to increase the number of sexual assaults even if the rate stayed the same. So a comparison between the proportion of the population that is a Syrian refugee and the rate of rape in the population is a better measure. On doing this not only does the correlation drop still further, but the apparent impact drops as well. The net result is that the correlation is weak enough for it to be genuinely laughable to claim that Syrian refugees has driven up the rate of rape in the country, and that even if you do claim this, then you can still only claim for every 1% of the population that are Syrian refugees, the rate of sexual molestations per person will increase by 0.000155.

It is also essential to note that the more stories about sexual assault are in the news, the more likely people are to report it. In 2016 such things were in the news far more often than in previous years. This is almost certainly a far bigger factor than the number of Syrian refugees in the country, if the latter is a factor at all, which it probably isn't.

Assumptions made include that there were no Syrian refugees before 2010 (this has no impact on the result given above as it would increase the number of refugees in every year), that no Syrian refugees left the country (in reality this would not be zero, and the more who left, the weaker the figures become, so the above actually gives a better case for your claim than what would be reality) and that the estimated number of reported rapes and sexual molestations for 2016 will prove accurate.

Here's the graph for the strongest case for your argument:

Incidentally, for rapes the R squared value is 0.15, and the correlation negative - in other words, the more Syrian refugees there were in the country in a given year, the fewer rapes there were per person.

That's mainly because they don't record the race of the offenders so they don't differentiate between non western immigrants and Swedish nationals the later has been decreasing for years due to how they broadly characterise rape. Just look at Norway who do record the attackers race 100 percent of assault rapes between strangers in Oslo are committed buy immigrants of non western origins Culture Crisis: Norway Tackles Muslim Immigration - World - CBN News - Christian News 24-7 - CBN.com there's also been a rise in other crimes to I don't think it's as bud as the right wing media make out but the Swedish government are not helping buy pretending nothing's wrong.

 

[kuuderes_shadow]

No, nothing I posted there has anything to do with them not recording the race of offenders whatsoever.

And the sample size for the Oslo case is five people. Five. People. For one, carefully selected, year*. That's so far off being of any statistical significance whatsoever that it's hardly surprising that the list of sites that reported it reads like a list of the worst offenders in publishing fake news.

*Which was ALSO before the start of the Syrian refugee crisis.

 

[Watanabe Ken]

No, nothing I posted there has anything to do with them not recording the race of offenders whatsoever.

And the sample size for the Oslo case is five people. Five. People. For one, carefully selected, year*. That's so far off being of any statistical significance whatsoever that it's hardly surprising that the list of sites that reported it reads like a list of the worst offenders in publishing fake news.

*Which was ALSO before the start of the Syrian refugee crisis.

Sweden and Norway have been taking in refugees as far back as the Iraq war and both have seen an increase in crime where's country's who did not take in said refugees have seen there crime rates plumet. I must also mention the rise antisemitism hate towards Jewish people in Malmo it's not the native sweds burning down Synagogues is it also this so called fake new is attempt buy the left to Holt the spread of populism they only mentioned it after Donald Trump won the election if warmonger Hillary had won they you'd never had heard of it

 

[Rui]

Why are we all suddenly obsessed with Sweden, anyway? They accept a lot of undesirable people - good - and apparently don't sensationalise non-issues like rape figures not especially rising in correlation to the levels of immigration - good. There are also questionable elements like politicians and newspapers glossing over inconvenient issues - frustrating, but normal. I feel like it needs simplifying more. Is it just that white people are inherently good and less-white people are inherently bad?

People are talking about this stuff because it is directly affecting them. It would be less of an issue under Hillary because her strategy wasn't to divide and conquer every community in America by playing up this narrative of foreigners being somehow less worthwhile than American-born people (unless their parents were foreign, in which case screw 'em too). We have the same narrative in the UK and it's being fanned by rabble-rousers at every opportunity.

I feel there is some underlying narrative canon which fills in the blanks which I'm missing out on by not having drunk the same Kool Aid that's going around here. I Googled synagogue attacks and saw a bunch of stuff relating to the conflict in Israel; lashing out at Jews over this is of course reprehensible but not exactly a massive trend out of nowhere, and as a society our own hands aren't clean. There's a massive amount of antisemitism in the US/UK too, mostly from people who have no knowledge of the Israel situation at all but subscribe to strange conspiracy theories about Jewish people controlling society. Shall we single out the spiteful attacks on Polish communities by self-proclaimed native Brits after the Brexit vote and use that as a sign that all British-born people are evil and should be sent to Syria or something? Singling out one-off events doesn't prove anything about anyone.

I don't get why we have to discriminate on a person's race, sex, religion or ethnic background. It's all so arbitrary. I don't like the way people make things about 'them' and 'us', because who defines which traits put any given person in which category?

R

 

[kuuderes_shadow]

There is a concept known as Otherness, whereby we form a perspective of our own identity and social group by defining it in contrast to those who do not conform with these ideals, and excluding them and looking upon them as subordinate or inferior. Often the identified differences are entirely imaginary, and even if real they are usually not actually of any real importance.

The notion probably originates as a method to form your personal identity, and identify and strengthen bonds within a social group, at the expense of generating dislike and dismissiveness towards those outside of the group. Applied too strongly, though, this can lead to hatred, beliefs of superiority, and thus violence and warfare. As such it is the stem of so many of the world's wrongs. Social alienation is entirely this. Imperialism used it heavily, and racism and cultural phobias (including sexism, xenophobia and homophobia) are usually based on it. Heck, even our narcissistic view of human exceptionalism and destruction of ecosystems and other species that it brings comes in part from this concept. It generates hatred and feeds off the hatred it generates in a vicious spiral. Probably the majority of wars in the history of the human race have it as a primary cause.

And there are various individuals and groups who use or have used it to foster hatred and/or social division deliberately in order to further their own cause. From school bullies, to participants in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, to the Apartheid regime in South Africa or the slave trade in America, to the more extremist groups in the conflicts in Israel and the Palestine, to North Korea's regime, to the Nazis, to Al Qaeda: the extent of the damage varies greatly, but overall the outcome is always a negative one. And it is this that the Alt Right, whose propoganda Watanabe Ken is happily spewing here with scant regard for any consistency of narrative or understanding of statistical significance, use as their main weapon.

It is a weapon of division and hatred, and often also of violence and suppression, it is quite possibly the most evil thing in the world, and throughout much of the world it is a force that is growing stronger with each passing year.

You know what? That scares me.

Several edits: fixing typos. The post's core contents were not changed.

 

[Watanabe Ken]

There is a concept known as Otherness, whereby we form a perspective of our own identity and social group by defining it in contrast to those who do not conform with these ideals and excluding them and looking upon them as subordinate or inferior. Often the identified differences are entirely imaginary, and even if real they are usually not actually of any real importance.

The notion probably originates as a method to form your personal identity, and identify and strengthen bonds within a social group, at the expense of generating dislike and dismissiveness towards those outside of the group. Applied too strongly, though, this can lead to hatred, beliefs of superiority, and thus violence and warfare. As such it is the stem of so many of the world's wrongs. Social alienation is entirely this. Imperialism used it heavily, and racism and cultural phobias (including sexism, xenophobia and homophobia) are usually based on it. Heck, even our narcissistic view of human exceptionalism and destruction of ecosystems and other species that it brings comes in part from this concept. It generates hatred and feeds of the hatred it generates in a vicious spiral. Probably the majority of wars in the history of the human race have it as a primary cause.

And there are various individuals and groups who use it to foster hatred and/or social division deliberately in order to further their own cause. From school bullies, to participants in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, to the Apartheid regime in South Africa or the slave trade in America, to the more extremist groups in the conflicts in Israel and the Palestine, to North Korea's regime, to the Nazis, to Al Qaeda: the extent of the damage varies greatly, but overall the outcome is always a negative one. And it is this that the Alt Right, whose propoganda Watanabe Ken is happily spewing here with scant regard for any consistency of narrative or understanding of statistical significance, use as their main weapon.

It is a weapon of division and hatred, and often also of violence and suppression, it is quite possibly the most evil thing in the world, and throughout much of the world it is a force that is growing stronger with each passing year.

You know what? That scares me.

Are you implying I'm a Xenophobic Sexist homophobic Nazi sympathizer because I criticized the Swedish Government/Media

 

[kuuderes_shadow]

Are you implying I'm a Xenophobic Sexist homophobic Nazi sympathizer because I criticized the Swedish Government/Media

Of course not. Nothing I said in any way even remotely suggests that either. You're just being ridiculous now.

 

[Just Passing Through]

It's just nature. Nature acts to limit overpopulation, whether it's through scarcity of food, predation, or illness. There aren't many predators chewing down on humans these days, while we've got food mostly handled. We can throw tonnes of it away a year in the '1st world', but let the little brown and black babies starve to death. population's on a Malthusian curve anyway, so a few million dead each year isn't going to make a difference to the 10 billion overall. As for illness, just when we get a handle on that, some disease develops a resistance to medicine, and we'e back to square one, but it doesn't look like any epidemic will cull the herd.

So all that's left is Hell's Kitchen. Let the scrawny little apes kill each other off. And we've got the weapons now to do that but good. We're heading for WWIII, no doubt about it. And given what I've seen of this world the last 15 years, the kind extremist crap that's being spouted on all sides. The absolute toe-rags that get elected into power in all countries. As a species we're better off extinct. I just hope my parents get to live out their lives in peace. I know I won't. I give it another ten years before we can kiss it all goodbye, and welcome our cockroach overlords.

But hey, will you check that out. $1.30 to the pound. I'm gonna buy some anime and bury my head in the proverbial sand.

 

[Watanabe Ken]

Of course not. Nothing I said in any way even remotely suggests that either. You're just being ridiculous now.

You said I was spewing alt right propaganda and compared it to the methods of the Nazis and north koreans

 

[kuuderes_shadow]

You said I was spewing alt right propaganda and compared it to the methods of the Nazis and north koreans

I brought up a concept, explained why I thought it was evil, expressed a long list of negative things that can stem from that concept and groups that have attempted to create this for their own gains, and associated you with one (and ONLY one) of them. To suggest from this that I was claiming that you are all the things I listed is, as previously stated, ridiculous.

 

[Watanabe Ken]

And the lack of consistency and narrative is probably from my dyslexia

 

[Watanabe Ken]

I brought up a concept, explained why I thought it was evil, expressed a long list of negative things that can stem from that concept and groups that have attempted to create this for their own gains, and associated you with one (and ONLY one) of them. To suggest from this that I was claiming that you are all the things I listed is, as previously stated, ridiculous.

I'm not Alt Right either I'd like to think I'm in the libertarian movement

 

[kuuderes_shadow]

I'm not Alt Right either I'd like to think I'm in the libertarian movement

Your average libertarian wouldn't spend several pages of forum threads attacking refugees based on spurious data which was initially spread by alt right news sources, and trying to blame them for something which is predominantly down to the comparison of statistics that are not truly like-for-like, and then selectively ignoring facts that go against them (like the fact that every other sort of rape in Oslo, most of which are far more common, is predominantly carried out by Norwegian nationals, as is the sort that you bought up in every single other year, or the fact that refugees in Germany* - or the UK for that matter - are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators of it**, although less likely to report crimes that they are victims of). Those on the alt right most certainly would do this.

Incidentally, to clarify further, I didn't even actually state that you are alt right either, although I did associate you with them by stating that you were "spewing" their propoganda. I see no reason to retract that claim.

*I've no idea if this holds true in Sweden. It's true that helping refugees become productive members of society reduces the amount of crime they commit, and that Sweden is not very good at doing this.
**although there are a few crimes that go in the other direction or where refugees even increase the crime rate to a ludicrously small extent such as burglary where the arrival of a refugee population of 1% of the total population would lead to slightly less than a 0.1% increase in the burglary rate per capita. For a crime that can see 30% shifts from one year to the next, a 0.1% increase spread over several years (at the rate that Sweden is taking them in) or decades (at the rate that we are) is completely immaterial.

 

[Watanabe Ken]

Your average libertarian wouldn't spend several pages of forum threads attacking refugees based on spurious data which was initially spread by alt right news sources, and trying to blame them for something which is predominantly down to the comparison of statistics that are not truly like-for-like, and then selectively ignoring facts that go against them (like the fact that every other sort of rape in Oslo, most of which are far more common, is predominantly carried out by Norwegian nationals, as is the sort that you bought up in every single other year, or the fact that refugees in Germany* - or the UK for that matter - are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators of it**, although less likely to report crimes that they are victims of). Those on the alt right most certainly would do this.

Incidentally, to clarify further, I didn't even actually state that you are alt right either, although I did associate you with them by stating that you were "spewing" their propoganda. I see no reason to retract that claim.

*I've no idea if this holds true in Sweden. It's true that helping refugees become productive members of society reduces the amount of crime they commit, and that Sweden is not very good at doing this.
**although there are a few crimes that go in the other direction or where refugees even increase the crime rate to a ludicrously small extent such as burglary where the arrival of a refugee population of 1% of the total population would lead to slightly less than a 0.1% increase in the burglary rate per capita. For a crime that can see 30% shifts from one year to the next, a 0.1% increase spread over several years (at the rate that Sweden is taking them in) or decades (at the rate that we are) is completely immaterial.

I wasn't attacking the refugees I was criticizing Sweden's piss pore attempt at integrating them there's literally nothing for them to do all day hardly surprising some of them turn to crime. It not there fault Our government and America are bombing there homes.

 

[ayase]

I don't get why we have to discriminate on a person's race, sex, religion or ethnic background. It's all so arbitrary. I don't like the way people make things about 'them' and 'us', because who defines which traits put any given person in which category?

I've always considered religion to be rather different from the other things you've mentioned, because it's a belief someone chooses to hold rather than something they're born with. I feel like if it's okay to bash someone for a political viewpoint they hold, it's okay to do the same regarding their religious beliefs. This idea religion is not to be criticised because it's somehow "above" other beliefs has always seemed really stupid to me. Having a debate over the merits of Christianity/Islam/Atheism is no different than having a debate over Lib Dem/Tory/Labour party platforms to me. All are just belief systems someone has chosen to opt into, and should be open to having their mind changed through debate and questioning of those values.

You can't be convinced into becoming black or white, male or female or straight or gay, but people can and do change their minds about politics and religion because they're not determined by genetics. I can't silence people criticising Jeremy Corbyn by claiming they're committing a "Labourphobic" hate crime, yet if a national newspaper ran the kind of critical articles they do about him about say, Jesus or Muhammad or Moses, it would probably be classed as hate speech. I don't think religion in any way deserves the kind of special protection it gets. Criticising someone because of factors of birth I do think is horrible, taking issue with religious beliefs I think is entirely another.

I hope you know me well enough to know I'm not a racist Rui, this isn't in any way an excuse to bash say, Muslims in particular, I just dislike religion in general in an old-school "opiate of the masses" way and consider all of them to be divisive control systems and shams that should be able to be criticised without those doing the criticising branded hate mongers. I personally really dislike the mainstream adoption of the term "Islamophobic" because actually, what is wrong with criticising religion? I'd never ever be racist against someone for being Arab or North African, but is it really hateful of me to take issue with the beliefs of Islam just as I take issue with the beliefs of Christianity and Judaism? Even anti-Semitism is about Semitic peoples, their race, not their religion.

 

[Watanabe Ken]

I remember watching this video on YouTube that basically explained that all religions are derived from the worship of the sun it was pretty mind blowing

 

[Rui]

I hope you know me well enough to know I'm not a racist Rui, this isn't in any way an excuse to bash say, Muslims in particular, I just dislike religion in general in an old-school "opiate of the masses" way and consider all of them to be divisive control systems and shams that should be able to be criticised without those doing the criticising branded hate mongers.

Not at all ayase, personally speaking I'm a devout atheist and agree with pretty much everything you just said. I just don't think we've reached the point in our species' emotional development where we can expect a respectful, interesting and most likely wholly irreverent debate to be possible without someone crossing the line into insulting the other's right to choose their own belief system. Since religion is how many people mentally interact with complex issues like death, it's a bit of a touchy subject; I can take you making fun of my view of death (it's very boring, probably much like your own) but my brother would get very upset about it, even though he's ordinarily about as religious as a potato. You also have the intelligence to understand that people are (ideally) free to choose their own belief system. You are in the minority there; for many in every country where organised religion is a thing it seems to preferable to make sweeping assumptions and link belief to race at every possibility.

It's a misappropriation of the debate, but one which feels necessary until people stop raging about brown people and start acting like adults (unfortunately, I feel that isn't happening any time soon and my death isn't getting any farther away). As long as people will tell my British-born Sikh friends to get out of the country and stop dressing their women in burkas (protip for the armchair nationalists: they don't) and drive wedges between perfectly ordinary people who happen to be Muslim and well, everyone else, then I feel a duty to stand up for religious people.

To me it's just a small trait in the complex web that makes up a human being, possibly because I have met Muslim people unlike the hate-fuelled loonies who only read about them from newspapers and Wikipedia articles? I think their beliefs are strange, and they think the same about mine.

In this particular case the people of Syria fleeing war aren't going to be universally orthodox Muslims, and those who aren't Muslim (or who are Muslim, but not psychopath murderers like the minority being painted as the majority) are being lumped together with those who are, just as our fool policitians do with the people of the traditionally Christian western countries (separation of church and state seems to happen very selectively at best). The war on the hijab is just a fancy way of dressing up a good old fashioned universal bout of sexism disguised by the Islam angle. So that's why I include religion. If humans evolve to the point where we can stop fighting to the death over things as personal as beliefs and clothing then I'll gladly stop blending it all together :/

R

 

[Vashdaman]

I love reading your posts, Rui. I always feel I gain a little more eloquence and grace from them, they cheer me up on unhappy days. You're an important person in my life.