this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023

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EXCLUSIVE: In the ’80s, Joe Biden Speculated to Israel’s PM About Wiping Out Canadians (jacobin.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Biden’s comments were offensive, Begin said. Suddenly he [Biden] said: “What did you do in Lebanon? You annihilated what you annihilated.”

I was certain, recounted Begin, that this was a continuation of his attack against us, but Biden continued: “It was great! It had to be done! If attacks were launched from Canada into the United States, everyone here would have said, ‘Attack all the cities of Canada, and we don’t care if all the civilians get killed.’”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It seems really clear it was an argument against using an absurd example.

According to upvotes - many people only read the headline.

Never forget: 50% of the population have below average intelligence, by definition.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Nitpick, but that'd be the ~~mean~~ median, not average. Say intelligence is a scale out of 10, and we have a population of 4, that have intelligences of 2, 4, 5 and 10. The average would be (2+4+5+10)/4=5.25. 75% is actually worse than average. Extreme values mess with averages a lot - that 10 pulled up the average much higher than . The ~~mean~~ median would be (4+5)/2=4.5, which lines up with that statement, as it's by definition the dead center of all the values in a statistical population.

Edit: median, not mean

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I see your nitpick and raise you a nitpick - what you're thinking of is median.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

True. Legitimate ESL mistake haha

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is the problem with small sample sizes, which is why we have standard deviation. Given that IQ is on a normal curve (it is) and we have a large sample size (we do), the deviation is going to be very small.

So, very very close to 50% of the population is below average intelligence.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Let's keep in mind modern IQ tests scores are normalized to a normal distribution with a mean of 100 and some fixed standard deviation on purpose (15? can't remember), so of course they'll fit a normal curve, they are literally made that way.

I'm also admittedly extremely skeptical of IQ as a measure of general intelligence. It's not like we have a shortage of high IQ morons out there. It's a decent estimate of relative intelligence in certain areas, most notably of logical thinking, at best.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I'm in no danger here: I'm safely in the dumb 50%.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Biden was telling them to chill out, because he was worried it would lead to less aid for Israel...

He wasn't trying to call for peace, he was asking for less obvious war crimes.

Without quoting any of his specific comments, Troy says that Biden warned Begin that “eroding support for Israel” might endanger future US aid. Begin seems to have taken this as a threat to cut off aid if Israeli policy didn’t change, and Troy quotes him railing that Israel would “stand by” its “principles . . . with or without your aid.”

Honestly, though, everything we know about the way Senator Biden positioned himself on the issue at the time makes it more likely that he was speaking as a supporter of US aid worried that he and his friends wouldn’t be able to deliver it in the future. But what exactly was his concern?

Now that it's 40 some years later and he's a party leader and president (also, 40 fucking years older) I guess he's not as worried about how Israel's war crimes might result in less aid to Israel.