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The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

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Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#71

Post by meelash »

superk wrote: post #56
aristus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it seems to agree with those studies. But let's suppose that the religion vs word length chart is a valid measure of intelligence. Are you then prepared to defend the same conclusion about the race vs word length chart? Or will you start looking for confounding factors, eg, Latinos trend Catholic? If so, think about why you accepted the religion claim on its face, but examined the race claim more carefully.

Because religion is a choice based on personal beliefs and/or reason (but usually the former). Race is a state of being. I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get at.

He's saying that if you consider the race results as a control of sorts, and you operate under the assumption that there is nothing inherent in race that would create the results shown, it is obvious that the variable being measured is not well controlled, and there is plenty of noise in the results.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#72

Post by dnautics »

xiongchiamiov wrote: post #59
dnautics wrote: post #13

It's interesting, I am asian, like soul food, but it's not something that would occur to me as putting on my profile. Similarly, I would write sashimi (if I ate it anymore) versus sushi, and I suspect that non-asians like sashimi just fine but wouldn't know to put it on... So the statistics point to self-cultural broadcasting, I think, more than preferences.

I didn't know what "soul food" meant until I just looked it up on Wikipedia. Looking over the list[0], I see a number of things I greatly enjoy, but I'd normally just call it "food", or possibly "Southern food". I'm from the lower part of California's central valley, which has a distinctly Southern influence due to the dustbowl migration. My town is roughly 40% Hispanic, 45% White, and 5% Pacific Islander, so if the…

the term is widely used among the population, not just the black population, in the mid-atlantic up to new york, chicago, and the south.

Sometimes soul food is conflated with Jamaican food (jamaican soul) but for the most part when I think soul food, I think, okra, ham hocks/hambacks, collard and turnip greens, fried chicken, catfish, biscuits, gravy, cornbread, etc. I can't vouch for all the stuff in that wikipedia list, some of it I thought huh?

Since I stopped eating meat except for one day a week, a lot of that has gone out the window.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#73

Post by _delirium »

Perceval wrote: post #54
tuesdays wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I was thinking the exact opposite, since those bars are all super annoying.

I'm the same way. Whenever I encounter one, I tool around in AbBlock Plus for a while until I find the appropriate scripts to block.

They're one of the factors finally pushing me towards just a default-block policy (the other factor is sites that pop something up when you mouseover a link). I've tried really hard to start with a blank adblock list and individually block sites that have particularly egregious stuff, but the whack-a-mole is getting ridiculous. Haven't quite given in yet, but if I don't reach a fixed point soon where I can stop adding 5 new things a day, I'm just going to subscribe to a blocklist.

I wonder how hard it'd be, alternately, to write a heuristic to block absolutely-positioned top/bottom bars. May play around with that a bit.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#74

Post by _delirium »

aristus wrote: post #23
superk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientifically proven with a reading test based on the lengths of words, and metrics I just made up Actually they're using the Coleman-Liau Index, a computer readability formula going back to 1975.

The metric about adherence was made up and without explanation of how they categorized people. The Coleman-Liau Index is based on lengths of words, which proves... what, exactly? Many of the "most" religious people scored higher than the ones rated "meh". Also, agnostics are in the middle of the pack. So what does this chart predict? That certain self-selected religious categories in their dataset correlate with word…

You can take the data without the commentary, though. The results actually fit nicely with a "pseudointellectual, tries to sound smart" stereotype I have about internet atheists. (I'm an atheist myself, but can't stand reddit.com/r/atheism types.)

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#76

Post by lurchpop »

powrtoch wrote: post #19

On the proper use of this data: Perhaps the easiest way to think of it is that the phrases are predictors for the race/sex, not the other way around. For example, you shouldn't expect every white male you meet to like Van Halen. However if someone says to you "I have a friend who's a big Van Halen fan", you're pretty safe in assuming that the friend is a white male. Likewise, it might be that only 10% of blacks like…

a commenter on there made a good point about the "soul food" term, where that's also the name of a movie, book and tv series so it ends up being 3 (probably black) data points all counting towards 1.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#78

Post by sesqu »

haroldp wrote: post #39
oiuygtfrtghyju wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to http://www.armyg1.army.mil/HR/docs/demographics/FY05%20Army%... Army: White 63.9%, Black 19.0%, Hispanic 10.3%, Asian 3.8% USA: White 75%, Black 12%, Hispanic 15%, Asian 4% So hispanic is underrepresented in the army and black over represented - of course you would have to balance these by age profile for each group and also consider US overseas territories that can join the army.

Maybe we looked at the wrong service, since the latino profile also mentioned "marines": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HispanicMilitary.jpg

According to this 2007 report on marines: http://www.cna.org/documents/D0016910.A1.pdf

Young blacks became underrepresented after the Iraq wars, but high NCO ranks are still heavily overrepresented. Conversely, marine accessions are on the rise for young hispanics, and they are now slightly overrepresented. High NCO ranks are underrepresented, but diminishingly so.

So this is definitely a trend, but not a major one. Those mentions may have more to do with what contributes to the trend than be caused by it.

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#79

Post by eru »

oiuygtfrtghyju wrote: post #29
dnautics wrote: post #13

It's interesting, I am asian, like soul food, but it's not something that would occur to me as putting on my profile. Similarly, I would write sashimi (if I ate it anymore) versus sushi, and I suspect that non-asians like sashimi just fine but wouldn't know to put it on... So the statistics point to self-cultural broadcasting, I think, more than preferences.

On the other hand this is a data point. Knowing that the stuff you like with fish is called "sashimi" and the rice stuff is called "sushi" is a good indicator that you are asian. Just like knowing that different types of cheese should actually taste different is a good indicator that you are european.

Continental European. (OK, the British have Stilton.)

Re: The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

#80

Post by eru »

aristus wrote: post #37
moron4hire wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you've kept up with this OkCupid series, but there has always been an undercurrent of snide commentary towards Christians specifically and religious people in general. I especially "enjoyed" the break down by race. They admit that the site is primarily American in demographic, but there is no accounting for language proficiency being a barrier to entry to the site for users from non-English speaking c…

Si -- they should have corrected for second languages and proficiency, if they were serious. My big beef is the implication that word length obviously correlates with intelligence instead of, say, pretention.

Word length also correlates well with being German or Dutch.
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