Techniques to learn from Ben Shapiro

[thekev]

People with college educations might be less likely to fall for the tricks of Shapiro and his ilk. I don’t have proof of that, but education level is a pretty good predictor of voting behavior.

In 2016, 72% of white men without a college degree voted for Trump.

America Is Divided by Education

The gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.

www.theatlantic.com

First, don't cherry pick statistics. Second, that number does not appear to be present in your article. You cannot arrive at a joint statistic for race and education level from the individual summary statistics by simple arithmetic. These are not probabilities, just percentages based on survey data. Those aside, people have come up with all kinds of cross-sections of this stuff just for the purpose of writing an article. It doesn't make for a particularly informative analysis though.

 

[Thomas Veil]

It’s fairly accepted now that less educated white people vote for Trump, especially males. The article is only one of many we’ve seen over the last few years to bring up that point.

I’m not one to lean on anecdotal evidence, but every Trumper I personally know is a carpetlayer, steel maker, machinist or some similar occupation.

That’s not completely indicative, of course. (The number of MDs who support Trump is unnerving.) Still, it seems to be a good rule of thumb.

And as far as teaching you to think critically and exposing you to new people with different ideas, college certainly doesn’t hurt.

 

[SuperMatt]

First, don't cherry pick statistics. Second, that number does not appear to be present in your article. You cannot arrive at a joint statistic for race and education level from the individual summary statistics by simple arithmetic. These are not probabilities, just percentages based on survey data. Those aside, people have come up with all kinds of cross-sections of this stuff just for the purpose of writing an article. It doesn't make for a particularly informative analysis though.

I forgot to source the 72% data:

Here's a break down of how men voted in the 2016 election

The 2016 presidential election, many hoped, would be a historic occasion where Hillary Clinton would be declared the first female president of the United States. Instead, we're now gearing up for the impending inauguration of Donald Trump. While…

www.mic.com

I certainly don’t want to be considered cherry picking. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten any pushback on the claim that Trump is popular with white people, men, or people without a college degree. I picked a number that combined those two groups. But here is a larger subset of data. The full data is linked in the above articles, but here’s another link just in case:

https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls

From 2016 CNN exit polls (linked within above articles)

Trump 2016
men 52%, women 41%
white men: 62%, white women 52%
Bachelor degree: 44%, graduate degree: 37%, No degree: 51%

There have been many analyses of the 2016 (and 2020) elections. Do you care to share one that you find to be “particularly informative” since this one from the Atlantic didn’t meet that threshold for you? I thought it was a good article but I’m not a political scientist.

 

[thekev]

I forgot to source the 72% data:

Here's a break down of how men voted in the 2016 election

The 2016 presidential election, many hoped, would be a historic occasion where Hillary Clinton would be declared the first female president of the United States. Instead, we're now gearing up for the impending inauguration of Donald Trump. While…

www.mic.com

Hey, thanks.

https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls

From 2016 CNN exit polls (linked within above articles)

Trump 2016
men 52%, women 41%
white men: 62%, white women 52%
Bachelor degree: 44%, graduate degree: 37%, No degree: 51%

There have been many analyses of the 2016 (and 2020) elections. Do you care to share one that you find to be “particularly informative” since this one from the Atlantic didn’t meet that threshold for you? I thought it was a good article but I’m not a political scientist.

Yeah I saw that breakdown, but I was confused as it didn't numbers split along (Sex, Education, Race), comparing (Male, No degree, White).

Spoiler

the ordering of those categories was intentional.. I am easily amused

 

[User.45]

It’s fairly accepted now that less educated white people vote for Trump, especially males. The article is only one of many we’ve seen over the last few years to bring up that point.

I’m not one to lean on anecdotal evidence, but every Trumper I personally know is a carpetlayer, steel maker, machinist or some similar occupation.

That’s not completely indicative, of course. (The number of MDs who support Trump is unnerving.) Still, it seems to be a good rule of thumb.

And as far as teaching you to think critically and exposing you to new people with different ideas, college certainly doesn’t hurt.

Voting GOP and believing BS aren’t the same though. If you look at the breakdown of MDs voting trends, they clearly demarcate by salary, generally those making >250K leaning right, whereas those who deal with complications of poverty (and paid lower) lean left. In our group, the medical people are liberal, the surgeons lean conservative. Yet when it came to Trump, everyone had been rolling their eyes.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Voting GOP and believing BS aren’t the same though. If you look at the breakdown of MDs voting trends, they clearly demarcate by salary, generally those making >250K leaning right, whereas those who deal with complications of poverty (and paid lower) lean left. In our group, the medical people are liberal, the surgeons lean conservative. Yet when it came to Trump, everyone had been rolling their eyes.

It seems that when people reach a certain income or wealth level they start believing the main thing that is keeping them from getting ahead is taxes. Whether they actually need that extra money or what it’s going towards is irrelevant. Not to mention, "live within your means" isn't just a problem of poor people. But they don't see their extravagant spending as an issue. It's all taxes.

 

[SuperMatt]

It seems that when people reach a certain income or wealth level they start believing the main thing that is keeping them from getting ahead is taxes. Whether they actually need that extra money or what it’s going towards is irrelevant. Not to mention, "live within your means" isn't just a problem of poor people. But they don't see their extravagant spending as an issue. It's all taxes.

I see that as well. Some rich folks are very stingy, but in weird ways.

I know a woman who worked as a Secretary/assistant to a wealthy couple a couple days a week (she did similar work for other clients too). She got paid around $50 an hour, (maybe more?) I don’t know the exact amount. More than once they would task her with calling companies to challenge charges on bills that they didn’t think were right.

I recall one time she told me she spent a good 2 hours trying to get a $10 charge reversed from the company that handled the trash pickup. Pay your assistant $100 to save $10? But these folks always thought people were trying to rip them off because they were rich… so they wanted to make it clear to anybody they paid that they would go after them if they overcharged them….

She showed me their monthly bill for jet fuel once (yes a private jet)… the amount was astronomical. I cannot believe they would squabble over $10 from the trash company, but I guess they thought they should embrace the Scrooge stereotype 100%.

 

[User.45]

It seems that when people reach a certain income or wealth level they start believing the main thing that is keeping them from getting ahead is taxes. Whether they actually need that extra money or what it’s going towards is irrelevant. Not to mention, "live within your means" isn't just a problem of poor people. But they don't see their extravagant spending as an issue. It's all taxes.

Nah, that's not what they think at all. They think that if they work 60 hours a week, they want to get paid about the same pay for the extra 20 hours of work rather than getting into a higher tax bracket and get paid half for the extra work. They are pragmatic.

 

[SuperMatt]

Nah, that's not what they think at all. They think that if they work 60 hours a week, they want to get paid about the same pay for the extra 20 hours of work rather than getting into a higher tax bracket and get paid half for the extra work. They are pragmatic.

It’s a bit of a fallacy though. If somebody is making $160K (individual) for 40 hours they are paying 24% on about half of that, and a slightly lower rate on the rest. Those extra 20 hours would be another $80K, right… and on that extra 80K they’d be paying 32% instead of 24%. It only affects the extra income. So instead of keeping just over 60K of that extra money, they will keep about 54K of it. Is it worth fighting over the $6K out of $240K?

 

[User.45]

It’s a bit of a fallacy though. If somebody is making $160K (individual) for 40 hours they are paying 24% on about half of that, and a slightly lower rate on the rest. Those extra 20 hours would be another $80K, right… and on that extra 80K they’d be paying 32% instead of 24%. It only affects the extra income. So instead of keeping just over 60K of that extra money, they will keep about 54K of it. Is it worth fighting over the $6K out of $240K?

Your calculus would be realistic more at the 400-500K scale, and there are a lot of extra taxes stacked on, but you're right. It's more or less a fallacy. I'll also admit, I've never done the math because I've chosen mission over money at every single step of my career.

 

[thekev]

It’s a bit of a fallacy though. If somebody is making $160K (individual) for 40 hours they are paying 24% on about half of that, and a slightly lower rate on the rest. Those extra 20 hours would be another $80K, right… and on that extra 80K they’d be paying 32% instead of 24%. It only affects the extra income. So instead of keeping just over 60K of that extra money, they will keep about 54K of it. Is it worth fighting over the $6K out of $240K?

If it's salaried, they don't get time and a half. In this maybe they would prefer jobs that go closer to forty hours. Based on past experience, working sixty or more hours per week for a while gets old. Even right at sixty, if you need eight hours of rest and the commute + getting ready for work / bed requires two hours daily, you have already allocated all but two. If anything diverges, you end up short on sleep.

 

[User.45]

If it's salaried, they don't get time and a half. In this maybe they would prefer jobs that go closer to forty hours. Based on past experience, working sixty or more hours per week for a while gets old. Even right at sixty, if you need eight hours of rest and the commute + getting ready for work / bed requires two hours daily, you have already allocated all but two. If anything diverges, you end up short on sleep.

Don't worry. A few slides on sleep deprivation will fix that

(the way ACGME handles this issue)

 

[SuperMatt]

Your calculus would be realistic more at the 400-500K scale, and there are a lot of extra taxes stacked on, but you're right. It's more or less a fallacy. I'll also admit, I've never done the math because I've chosen mission over money at every single step of my career.

I was going off this chart:

2022-2023 Tax Brackets & Rates For Each Income Level

Tax rates for individuals depend on their income level. Learn which bracket you fall into and how much you should expect to pay based on your income.

www.debt.org

What are the extra taxes stacked on?

 

[thekev]

Don't worry. A few slides on sleep deprivation will fix that

(the way ACGME handles this issue)

I get the impression you too have gone through this, presumably for longer stretches than me. I have dealt with things like early morning deadlines involving people on the east coast and having to actually send stuff via messenger as a result, and I do not miss it.

I was going off this chart:

2022-2023 Tax Brackets & Rates For Each Income Level

Tax rates for individuals depend on their income level. Learn which bracket you fall into and how much you should expect to pay based on your income.

www.debt.org

What are the extra taxes stacked on?

Note state taxes do factor in. California, for example, has progressive rates, similar to federal. The amount to which these reduce federal liability was capped during Trump's administration.

 

[SuperMatt]

I get the impression you too have gone through this, presumably for longer stretches than me. I have dealt with things like early morning deadlines involving people on the east coast and having to actually send stuff via messenger as a result, and I do not miss it.



Note state taxes do factor in. California, for example, has progressive rates, similar to federal. The amount to which these reduce federal liability was capped during Trump's administration.

State taxes affect most people, not just the rich. As for taxes on spending, those impact the poor more than the rich because the poor have to spend nearly all their income to survive while the rich have to spend very little, percentage-wise, to do the same.

 

[Huntn]

I think the video above is worthless unless you want some tips for your high school debate team.

First, if somebody gets upset at you, it doesn’t mean you are “winning” the debate. You could just be a jerk.

Ben’s debating style is about sounding smart and appearing to win an argument. If pissing everybody off and acting smug is what you’re going for, then I guess his style is good? And it convinces a LOT of people who are intellectually lazy. They see his debate tricks as detailed in the above video, and assume he’s just right about everything.

When Ben faces off with somebody that sees through his bullshit, he is sad and pathetic. There is no substance, and at some point in life, people have moved beyond winning with your 9th grade debate team.

Sounding smart seems to be what the narrator wants to do, and that is Shapiro’s wheelhouse… sounding smart, especially to people with little or no knowledge about the topic being discussed. I see similarities between him and some famous Christian apologists such as Ravi Zacharias. If you are clueless, you can watch Ravi and by the end of his talk, you could be convinced he is right. It’s effective, but it‘s really just a magic show. When you look closer, you can see through the barely-concealed stage props and see these techniques for the tricks they are.

Here’s Ben talking to somebody who isn’t buying his BS. Shapiro has a total meltdown.



I appreciate you sharing the video… it kind of shows you how Shapiro’s shtick is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

However, the guy narrating the video really comes across as a douchebag who wishes he was Ben Shapiro. His other YouTube videos seem to be about projecting false confidence to get hot girls to like you….? Hmmm…

First, if somebody gets upset at you, it doesn’t mean you are “winning” the debate. You could just be a jerk.

But often people who lose their cool are not as effective making arguments. The calm person has an inherent advantage in many/most cases.

 

[thekev]

State taxes affect most people, not just the rich. As for taxes on spending, those impact the poor more than the rich because the poor have to spend nearly all their income to survive while the rich have to spend very little, percentage-wise, to do the same.

Oh, I was referring to the interaction between state income tax and federal policies regarding state and local tax. I'm not referring to really wealthy people here, just the higher earners who still derive the majority of their income through sources reportable as income rather than capital gains and the like.

Note that I'm saying it "may" make them prefer positions with less stressful schedules over ones where they're expected to work long hours in some cases.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

First, if somebody gets upset at you, it doesn’t mean you are “winning” the debate. You could just be a jerk.

But often people who lose their cool are not as effective making arguments. The calm person has an inherent advantage in many/most cases.

Outside the debate world, this also got me to thinking about our legal system where the facts are almost inconsequential. It comes down to which side has the better lawyer and that can come down to which is the better speaker.

A lot of times there is some logic behind the views we don't agree with. They just need to marginalize or block out any information that contradicts their view.