I've noticed that many people, including boxers, have commented on the difference between the boxing ability of boxers and the boxing ability of mixed martial artists (for those who are unaware, mixed martial arts is the form of combat practiced in the UFC and other leagues).

By pointing out the superior boxing ability that boxers have, it appears that many are attempting to brand the mixed martial artists as second class; a notch below them.

The problem with that argument is that it's just plain wrong.

It's actually to be expected that MMA fighters would have poorer boxing skills, and here's why:

Boxers have a greater population from which they select their fighters, so it's to be expected that they'd find more highly skilled boxers.

Mixed martial artists have a smaller pool of people to draw from, because they've already dwindled the population down to those who also have others skills, such as wrestling and ju jitsu.

Let's say you start with 100 people. 15 of them may be fantastic boxers, but the number who may be good (but not excellent) boxers as well as good wrestlers and good ju jitsu fighters may be only 2 or 3. Of the 15 fantastic boxers, none of them may have competent enough wrestling and ju jitsu skills.

So, the next time you're watching UFC and someone tries to denigrate the boxing skills of mixed martial artists, perhaps you should denigrate them instead: their mind.

In the past I didn't have any strong opinions about whether abortion was right or wrong.  I hadn't thought about it much.

I now believe one could make a strong argument that abortion is wrong. Why? Logic. Let me examine some arguments.

If a woman has an unwanted baby, and decides to keep it, it's very true that her life will be altered radically.  Proponents of abortion may mention this.  Hence, in this sense, an abortion could be a benefit to the mother.  But benefits don't always outweigh the costs.

But what are the costs?  Well, the main cost is that the fetus dies, through no choice of it's own.  And the choice then becomes this: you either complicate the life of a mother who may have only 60 years more to live, or you end the life of a human that has their entire life to live. Using only this logic, I don't see how abortion could ever be justified, unless you strongly value the life of the mother over that of the baby.

I find it interesting that people often speak about older people sacrificing for the young, perhaps since the young have longer to live (the idea of a parent jumping in front of a bullet heading for their child).  But if that belief is commonplace, why don't I ever hear a parallel argument that one should sacrifice for the life of the fetus?  You'd think that the latter would be an even stronger argument than the former, since a fetus will have more time to live than a child will.

Other proponents of abortion will tell you that a mother has a right to have an abortion since it's her own body.  I rarely hear people discuss just how weak this argument is. It's quite weak.

The fetus is in the mother's body simply because that's where the birth process dictates that it be. If abortion is wrong, should a mother have the right to have an abortion simply because the wrongdoing would occur in her own body?

Well, if you believe crime is wrong, is it OK for someone to commit murder in their own car or home simply because they own that car or home? Of course it's not OK.  Is it OK for someone to inject illegal drugs simply because they are injecting it into their own body? Of course not.

If unplanned pregnancies weren't sometimes avoidable, perhaps abortion would be justified.  Unplanned pregnancies are not unavoidable.  Yes, accidents do happen, and perhaps exceptions could be considered in those circumstances, but an adult is an adult.  It shouldn't be difficult to prevent unplanned pregnancies with birth control.  However, I agree that many people may have limitations that make it more difficult for them to use birth control.

And what about the all-important question: is the fetus a person?  Well, I think the best answer is this: yes it is. It is a human.  It is no longer a sperm or egg...it's a developing human being.  Why should it matter whether the human being is in the womb or whether the human being has left the womb? After all, the only thing separating the fetus from being a newborn is time.

Time is the only thing separating the fetus from developing into an adult. That's it! There are no significant structural changes that need to occur to change the fetus into a baby. Nothing.  Just time. The human being has already been created.

If you believe that humans shouldn't be killed, I really don't see how abortion could be logically justified, since time is the only barrier between a fetus and a baby.

I'm not suggesting that a woman that has an abortion is likely to be evil.  That's hardly the case. Myself, I was undecided on this topic until recently.  It's a complex topic in the following sense:

I think that a significant problem is one of perception.  People don't perceive a fetus as a baby, a human, so they have less difficulty aborting it.  What's out of sight is often out of mind. 

Look at gamblers.  It's easier to give away money in the form of poker chips, right? And why is that?  Because it doesn't look like money. Do you think people would throw away as much money if the poker chips were actual bills? No, they wouldn't.

And when people have abortions, the idea of the fetus as a human being is often out of sight and hence out of mind.  I understand why people have that perception, but perception isn't always accurate.

After all, time is the only thing separating a fetus from becoming an adult.

I haven't yet stated whether evidence tends to favor conservatism or liberalism.  The evidence, however, greatly favors one of the two ideologies over the other.  Once I've made enough posts on this blog, the answer should be clear.

In the meantime, let me say this:

I find it disturbing that I often hear liberals described as progressive, yet I don't hear conservatives described as progressive.

How can this be?  I don't feel that there is anything about liberalism that makes it the exclusive domain of progressiveness.

The literal definition is this: to be progressive means to advance, to improve things.  To improve things means to improve existing policies or select new policies that are supported by the bulk of the evidence.

Such policies could be either liberal or conservative, depending on which topic you investigate. Liberals don't have a monopoly on progressiveness.

Perhaps those who call liberals progressive aren't using the literal definition?  If you were to instead define progressive ideology as the ideology that is least applied throughout American government (meaning its use would be considered a progression away from the current dominant ideology), that would be conservatism.  There is no doubt that liberal ideology permeates government policies.

So, as you see, there is no reason liberals should be automatically described as progressive. My blog will periodically examine just how "progressive" liberalism is.

Is it just me, or does it bother anyone else when they see groups of people being described with hyphenations?

African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, etc.

I suppose such terms came about as a result of political correctness, although I don't see their benefit.

What was the point of using hyphenation? Was it an idea that the term "blacks" didn't provide them with an American identity?  Was it the idea that "African-American" is supposedly more patriotic? Perhaps that was the idea.

In reality, the term is very condescending and damaging. Here's why:

To call someone African-American implies that they aren't really an American.  If they were, why wouldn't you just call them an American?

And listen, I get the idea that some groups seem more American than others, based simply on how much their values are in accord with traditional American (primarily white) founded values.  And there is nothing wrong with saying groups tend to have different values.  To claim otherwise would be to claim that cultures are equal in every way.  But blacks have been in America a very long time.  They have a long tradition.

The idea of political correctness is typically a liberal idea.  And liberals typically claim to believe in things like treating people equally, ending discrimination etc.

Well, it would seem to me that one way to minimize discrimination would be to minimize, not promote, the differences between people!  And using hyphenated descriptions promotes differences between people.  That is not good.

When I think of the word "diversity", I think of the word "divide".  I argue that dividing a country is often not a good thing. After all, do people tend to choose as their friends and partners people who are similar to them, or dissimilar? Similar, I would think.

Blacks are already different from other groups based on their skin colour alone.  So if liberal political correctness was the cause of the hyphenation, why would they further separate blacks from others by calling them African-Americans? It seems bizarre, especially from a traditionally liberal standpoint.

And how about the fact that ethnic white groups are often not hyphenated? The relative infrequency of use of use terms such as English-American and German-American implies that whites do not need to be hyphenated because they are more American than the hyphenated groups are.

And the thing is, regardless of whether whites tend to espouse more traditionally American values than other groups do, why would it be a positive to promote such differences by using hyphenation?

And the choice of "African" as the hyphenated word is even more bizarre, since it refers to their ancestral heritage, further highlighting division between blacks and others!

It's just not right.

I believe that gays should be allowed to have unions and have all the benefits that heterosexual couples would otherwise have.  And why shouldn't they? Granted, I haven't seen any studies on the topic, but I think you could argue that something as basic as legal recognition of their union is, for lack of a better term, a human right.

I used to think that even though gays should have a right to a union, a strong argument could be made that their union should be called something other than "marriage".

After all, isn't one of the demons of a politically correct society the fact that some call for the actual change in definition of words? Isn't it wrong to change society so drastically? Of course it is.

Union of a man and a woman has traditionally been the definition of marriage. 

But the question one should be asking is this:

We know gays have been discriminated against for quite a long time.  Is it possible that that when marriage was first defined, discrimination against gays was the reason that they were excluded them from the definition of marriage itself? That is very possible.....

And hence, if the definition of marriage has been discriminatory from the very start, it's very reasonable to consider that a gay union should be called marriage.

Let's say that someone complains about homophobia, and says "You can't blame gays, it's in their genes, their lifestyle is not their choice".

I guess that's an ok thing to say, but the better thing to have said would be: "who even cares if  gays did choose to be gay? It shouldn't be important!"

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the administrations of Presidents Clinton and Bush promoted lending policies with the explicit intent to provide more mortgages to blacks, in order to raise their rate of home ownership.

Who would have thought that during 2010, the government policies would not only fail to raise the rate of home ownership among blacks but they would actually result in a decrease in home ownership among blacks, and an increase in blacks' financial hardship!

Articles often highlight how women are disproportionately represented in senior governmental positions.

For once, I'd like to see a poll ask whether women actually WANT to be in government.  Perhaps, relative to men,  they are more turned off by the corruption, bribery and favoritism endemic in politics.

Perhaps their underrepresentation is mostly reflective NOT of negative forces acting on women, but of women REFUSING to allow themselves to be influenced by negative (governmental) forces.  

Now don't get me wrong. IQ tests are a good measure of intelligence, and linked to many traits.

But there is a flaw with one part of some IQ tests (involving subjectivity). Because it involves subjectivity, they have no correct answer.  There may be an answer that is commonly provided by most intelligent people, but what about extremely intelligent people who may see things differently?

Have you ever seen a question ask something like: "which of the following five animals is most like a dog?".

It then lists 4 animals that don't have a tail, and one with a tail. The correct answer is deemed to be the animal with a tail.

But is the common tail the only thing in common between the animal and the dog? It's doubtful.  You can categorize an item in many ways: it's color, it's height, weight, average number of offspring, number of teeth, claws, average age of reproductive ability...there are many obscure ways to categorize something.  And who's to say which commonality is the correct one? It's subjective, you can't say.  Taking a poll might advance the process, but you can't do that while writing the test.

Perhaps the test writers do their best to minimize this problem and aim to select an animal with few obvious commonalities other than a lack of a tail.

But what if the test taker is a super genius that thinks on a completely different level and is able to determine several commonalities? (a super genius that is as rare as 1 in 10,000, not 1 in 100).  How is he to choose the correct answer? What if the test taker can think of a commonality that the test writer missed?

This is a flaw of some IQ tests.  Perhaps it's not a serious flaw.  The subjective section may still result in providing a relatively accurate score for most test takers, but it may actually reduce the score of high level geniuses who provide a correct answer that is marked incorrect because it wasn't the commonality the test writer was looking for.

How many times has this happened:

You make a comment about some group of people, and an overly sensitive person  replies: "You can't generalize!"

Is that a logical response? Of course not.

People often get defensive when they don't like the claim being made. To hell with whether or not the claim is true or not.

Oftentimes claims are made about groups whereby it should be obvious that the claim isn't meant to describe every single member of that group.

Let's say someone claims that gay men are feminine. Would any reasonable person believe that the speaker meant to claim that every single gay man is feminine? No.  Yet people bizarrely get defensive when such claims are made about certain groups.

However, if one was to make a claim about a less sensitive topic, such as "Men are stronger than women", I bet you wouldn't hear much opposition at all.  It's simply understand that not every single man is stronger than every single woman.

But there's another problem that arises with the argument "you can't generalize". The claim is often made with such authority that it implies that the generalizer is making a claim about every single member of the group. But in actuality, when someone says "you can't generalize", they have themself defeated their own argument! Here's why:

To generalize means something is "generally true", and hence it's implied that it's not always true. So of course you can generalize! This politically correct society has become so bizarre that the literal definition of words has even been lost in some instances!

Maybe the problem with those who dislike generalization is that they are, ahem, generally irrational.