BraveSirZaphod @ BraveSirZaphod @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

Sure thing, here's some random studies.

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/digital-distractions-in-class-linked-to-lower-academic-performance/2023/12

About two-thirds of U.S. students reported that they get distracted by using digital devices, and about 54 percent said they get distracted by other students who are using those resources, the PISA results found.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5648953/

The main findings of the study were that 67% of students were distracted by use of cell phones and 21% of them were extremely disturbed and it affected their learning.

https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1350.pdf

We find that following a ban on phone use, student test scores improve by 6.41% of a standard deviation. Our results indicate that there are no significant gains in student performance if a ban is not widely complied with. Furthermore, this effect is driven by the most disadvantaged and underachieving pupils. Students in the lowest quartile of prior achievement gain 14.23% of a standard deviation, whilst, students in the top quartile are neither positively nor negatively affected by a phone ban. The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of the mobile phone policy. This also implies that any negative externalities from phone use do not impact on the high achieving students. Schools could significantly reduce the education achievement gap by prohibiting mobile phone use in schools.

Students themselves report phones being significantly distracting, including to other people that aren't using them, and there's even evidence that banning phones directly increases student performance, especially amongst low-performing students.

How does this compare against the benefits of exposing teacher bigotry? I won't pretend to know how to quantify that, but I'm not making the positive claim that banning phones is necessarily worth the loss of ability to expose teachers. My only point is that it is plausible that this is the case, and I think I've supplied decent evidence for that. Policy questions very rarely are between "good option" and "bad option", but rather "bad option" vs "worse option".

I don't think throwing any amount of links at each other is a particularly productive way of answering the question. I can just as easily find an equal number of reports from teachers saying how keeping kids off their phones is nearly impossible and makes it much harder to actually teach. Plenty of teachers would strongly disagree that social media is merely a 'potential' harm.

EDIT: I don’t suppose one of the many downvoters would take the time to explain why giving children the ability to expose teachers like this should be taken away from them in the name of getting kids to pay attention.

To give you a genuine response, it is at least conceivable that the potential harm caused by allowing students with adolescent brains constant access to platforms that are explicitly and intentionally designed to be as addictive and distracting as possible is greater than the positive impact of outing the occasional bigoted teacher.

I'm not saying this is definitively the case because I'm neither a sociologist nor a psychologist, but I think it's fair to say that we can objectively state that this is at least possible.

The issue with local policy like that is that school boards or individual teachers are hugely susceptible to parental rage. Countless teachers will talk about how every parent has some reason why little Timmy just absolutely must have his TikTok machine on him at all times, just in case his mom needs to text him and can't be bothered to call the school office.

Having some state-level precedent makes this much easier for local officials, who can just say that they're following state guidelines.

The argument is that there exists some level of regulation by the government at which point you can claim that you functionally do not have ownership of the thing in question.

That bar is definitely very high - consider landmark laws where you can be legally forced to maintain certain aesthetics or can be prevented from knocking down a money pit that you also functionally can't sell - hence this case failing, but it's not an absolutely absurd argument in general principle.

US dollars are a de facto currency in Argentina. You don't hold on to Pesos for long if you can help it.

It's not great.

You should know that on Instacart, workers can see your tip before accepting the order. It's functionally a bid, not a tip. I'm sure they have some algorithm for what value they recommend, but to some extent, this is the workers setting the price of their own labor. If you tip too low, you run the risk of the order not being accepted.

The fundamental situation is that delivery work is not actually that cheap, and especially given that these are lower paid workers, they're also more sensitive to inflation and so you'd expect their cost to rise more steeply than other things.

One big thing I'd mention is that, shockingly, housing costs have a massive impact on homeless rates, independent of other factors that you might think would be more relevant. West Virginia and Mississippi are hardly bastions of economic prosperity or developed social services, and yet, they have some of the lowest rates of homelessness in the country, while California and New York are giant economies with huge social safety nets, and also huge homeless populations.

Why? Because the core reason someone becomes homeless is that they can't afford a home, and even if someone's life is completely unraveling, rummaging up $500 for an apartment in West Virginia is still much much easier than getting the $3000 that the same apartment would cost in New York City. As we've seen rent prices explode in HCOL cities, you see subsequent increases in homelessness. This isn't complicated.

More direct interventions have their place for sure, but the single biggest thing we could do is actually build some god damn housing and not let Karen and Steve veto it because they think the parking lot it'd be replacing has historic significance as a pretense for not liking change or "urban" renters around.

The political problem is that voters who are paying rent tend to be annoyed by the government giving people apartments for free.

Housing first as a model is legitimate and works (at least more than doing nothing or maintaining terrible shelters forever), but the political resentment it builds is a real problem that no amount of finger-wagging makes go away.

If the people in charge have the ability to end democracy, how can democracy be claimed to exist in the first place? Democracy is supposed to be our capability as individual citizens to regulate the people in power, but if they can turn that switch on or off, we don’t actually have that capability except as they choose to allow us to.

The simple answer to your question is by the people taking a person who very overtly says that he has no desire to preserve democracy and in fact has already sought to overturn it once before and then proceeding to return that person to office in order to do just that.

We do have the ability to regulate the people in power by not voting for them in the first place. If we take the ability and use it to give power to someone who wants to do away with democracy, that's pretty much on us.

Ultimately, any frustration with Biden - and I acknowledge that valid ones absolutely do exist - must be squared against the fact that we have to put a candidate up against Trump. Whether Biden is the person with the best odds against him is an objective and empirical one, though also one that's hard to accurately study and answer. Disapproval polls are certainly one source of info, but they do not necessarily mean that any other potential alternative would do better. It is very possible for large amounts of people to disapprove of Biden but ultimately disapprove of Trump even more. We can't actually personify "broadly generic and popular Democrat" into a real human, and even if we could, that's basically Biden, so unless there exists an actual specific person who is both broadly popular and with more political clout than Biden who's also interested in running, the practical choice is Biden against Trump, no matter how much ink people want to spill on the matter.

Edit: On a more pragmatic matter, I absolutely agree that telling progressives to shut up, stop complaining, and vote for Biden is not a particularly effective style of messaging.

Generally not. If someone makes a specific false allegation against you and you can prove it, you can sue for libel or slander, but the burden of proof is quite high.

There is harassment, if someone is continuously following you around to hurl insults at you and generally make your life miserable, but again, the burden of proof is high and it's less the insult itself that's the legal issue and more the disruption to your ability to live your normal life. Making specific threats or calling for violence against a specific person can also be criminal.

But yeah, generally speaking, insults are protected speech. Expressing admiration for Hitler is constitutionally protected. Saying that Jews deserve to die is also probably going to be protected, but context will become relevant. If you continuously do it outside of a synagogue, there may be criminal liability. Saying that some specific Jew walking by should be killed to a crowd of people with the ability and interest to do it is absolutely illegal, full stop. LIkewise, calling someone a braindead waste of oxygen is constitutionally protected, while calling them a criminal pedophile is absolutely illegal (unless you can actually prove that it's true).

Not worrying about elections is how you lose the ability to actually implement any of those things we need because you don't have any political power.

To use a gratuitous MLK quote:

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love

All the good intentions in the world are meaningless if you don't actually have any power needed to implement those good intentions. There's a balance to be struck somewhere.

My apologies, especially since you brought up WMDs in Iraq in just the best of faith.

Best of luck in your political ventures. The rhetorical bravery you've shown here has just been incredibly inspiring.

This conversation is specifically about the Uyghur genocide conspiracy theory.

Weird, I thought it was about Iraq!

The fact that the Iraqi invasion was deeply controversial at the time, and this controversy was able to be loudly expressed, stands in very stark contrast to how controversial topics in China's recent history can be discussed. This is the main point I'm trying to make. I see you follow the lead of the Chinese government by simply refusing to discuss it, and I understand that talking about things that challenge your world view can be uncomfortable, so I'll do you a favor by allowing this conversation to end.

I would just point out, though, that if I had responded to your initial comment about WMDs in Iraq with "Nope, not doing it," you'd probably call me a coward or something.

I mean, yes, Bush lied to the American public. This is not particularly controversial.

And given that the original point was the difference between the ability and willingness of liberals to criticize our own governments relative to tankies, Tiananmen is a perfectly relevant topic, though I'm hardly surprised that you'd clearly like to avoid it. And if randomly bringing up supposedly unrelated topics is something to avoid, might I ask why you brought up WMDs in Iraq in a thread about the Uyghers in the first place?

The Iraq War inspired mass protests immediately that set records in several American cities, but sure.

You are correct though that the narrative has shifted with time. So I take it that this has also happened in China, such that someone could organize a protest on the Tiananmen anniversary, right?

Oh no, President Trump has decreed that the LGBT cult are child abusing Nazis, and thus that anyone putting out LGBT propaganda in the presence of children can be shot on sight.

Due process is good, actually. Or at the least, certainly better than the alternative.

To extend that answer a bit, the Constitution have a strong element of distrust in the government as an institution, which in historical context makes sense given that it arose from a revolt against a literal monarchy.

It's basically a fear of allowing the government to define what kind of speech is so objectionable that it can be suppressed with state force. Because if the government does have that power, what's stopping a future Trump administration from defining, expressing support for trans children, as supremely offensive to the natural order and thus criminal?

Sure, you can hope that you have strong courts that would block that, but ultimately, the institutional American view is that it's generally safer for the government to not have the power at all rather than simply trust that it won't be abused.