The Nehor Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 They have had scandals before and survived them. These people sleep well at night on piles and piles of Canadian Dollars.Isn't that like sleeping on a bed of Monopoly money?
KevinG Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 (edited) As I said earlier. Using per capita numbers in Salt Lake City I can easily prove Utah has a very high rate of citizens who fart in church. (And SLC is 45% Mormon- who knows the percentage of active Mormon or Mormons who oppose gay marriage). Edited August 21, 2015 by KevinG
KevinG Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 Isn't that like sleeping on a bed of Monopoly money? Given the state of the US Dollar I'd be a hypocrite for saying that.
Popular Post The Nehor Posted August 21, 2015 Popular Post Posted August 21, 2015 Here's a recommendation....instead of demanding all members give all of their time, talent and efforts to fighting things like gay marriage rights, because of it's supposed threat to family values and the very fabric of the nuclear family, why doesn't the church instead focus that all time, talent and efforts getting their own houses in order with regard to family values. Looks like instead of spending time organizing to rally against other's people's marriage rights, in the effort to "preserve the family," members might be better served attending some couples counseling or marriage therapy to work on their own marriages.This may come as a shock to you but it is technically possible for humans to support multiple causes at the same time. 5
jkwilliams Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 Given the state of the US Dollar I'd be a hypocrite for saying that. I lived through Bolivia's "hyperinflation" period, wherein inflation in one year was 24,000% (that's not a typo). The peso devalued from 1,500 to the dollar to 2,500,000 to the dollar in just over a year. So, by comparison, the US dollar is doing just fine.
ttribe Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 As I said earlier. Using per capita numbers in Salt Lake City I can easily prove Utah has a very high rate of citizens who fart in church. I am only willing to accept the stats if your study also includes a measurement of "stink" and you are the primary nose measuring said "stink." 1
KevinG Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 I am only willing to accept the stats if your study also includes a measurement of "stink" and you are the primary nose measuring said "stink." My first calling in the church was the new primary class. After that I raised 7 children and changed my share of over 35,000 diapers. I KNOW stink. But let's trust self report on this one. 2
ttribe Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 My first calling in the church was the new primary class. After that I raised 7 children and changed my share of over 35,000 diapers. I KNOW stink. But let's trust self report on this one. But, your expertise in this area is without peer! I, for one, defer to you in this area...wholeheartedly. 1
Mola Ram Suda Ram Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 (edited) I bring it up because I am tired of Mormons who blame gays for "destroying marriage". I think we should be working on our own marriages rather than telling other loving couples that they shouldn't be allowed the privilege. Does this Ashley Madison info tell us a whole lot? No. But it is one data point.I actually think this is a non sequitur. You are trying to make a point but you are using something totally unrelated. Furthermore no one condones the actions of those that go on to AM. Edited August 21, 2015 by Mola Ram Suda Ram 2
JulieM Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 (edited) I tend to put these stats in the same category of those showing Utah as being the top state for women on antidepressants or for Utah being the #1 state for porn subscriptions. There always is more to it than what the stats show and they can't just be taken on face value. Are they of interest? I guess. Edited August 21, 2015 by JulieM 1
rockpond Posted August 21, 2015 Author Posted August 21, 2015 Please elucidate... why does this one number about an affair website subscription rate in Utah upset you? You have given me the impression that you blame Utah citizens who support heterosexual monogamy with hypocrisy over this issue. I'm not sure that is a safe conclusion given the paucity of data. And instead of continuing to say "answered" could you actually answer one of my questions about your statement? Utah has a majority LDS population (over 60%). I think we should, if we're living our religion, rank much lower in the cited data.
thesometimesaint Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 I tend to put these stats in the same category of those showing Utah as being the top state for women on antidepressants or for Utah being the #1 state for porn subscriptions. There always is more to it than what the stats show and they can't just be taken on face value. Are they of interest? I guess. It is always a stretch to go from the general(state) to the specific(individual).
The Nehor Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 I tend to put these stats in the same category of those showing Utah as being the top state for women on antidepressants or for Utah being the #1 state for porn subscriptions. There always is more to it than what the stats show and they can't just be taken on face value. Are they of interest? I guess.My response to the antidepressant stat is "Good, it shows that many here are trying to take active steps to improve their mental health. What is wrong with the people in your state?" 2
KevinG Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 I tend to put these stats in the same category of those showing Utah as being the top state for women on antidepressants or for Utah being the #1 state for porn subscriptions. There always is more to it than what the stats show and they can't just be taken on face value. Are they of interest? I guess. Those discussions have been on here too. High numbers of antidepressants are still lower than the Western States in general, and can be explained somewhat by the lower rate of self-medication with alcohol and other recreational drugs. I would also be willing to bet that high expectations of perfection among LDS women contributes to reported depression rates. Pornography subscriptions may be similar to the Ashley Madison numbers where people are engaging in behaviors anonymously rather than in a community where they are publicly opposed. I'm not saying that the Saints don't have issues with these things, and topics of General Conference talks show that we do... but we should be careful drawing conclusions about human behavior based on second tier statistics. 1
KevinG Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 Utah has a majority LDS population (over 60%). I think we should, if we're living our religion, rank much lower in the cited data. The data was from Salt Lake City (45%) and not the state in general. See BD post.
jkwilliams Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 My response to the antidepressant stat is "Good, it shows that many here are trying to take active steps to improve their mental health. What is wrong with the people in your state?" Indeed. I would likely be dead without antidepressant medications and psychotherapy. 1
KevinG Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 It is always a stretch to go from the general(state) to the specific(individual). Even trying to go from state to church is problematic.
Buckeye Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 I don't have much to say about the state rankings, but I have found two silver linings to the recent Ashley Madison affair (yes, pun intended). First, data protection is critical for such a business model. This breach will prove very detrimental to all such businesses. Second - and probably equally detrimental to the business - the data shows that the vast majority (90%+) of users are male. I'm not saying that gender matters in the abstract (affairs are bad regardless of who does it), but just as with dating sites, the affair sites need to keep some balance in the genders to be effective. It looks likes AM struggles with that. I wonder how many of the male users knew that they were competing in such a weighted game.
Popular Post smac97 Posted August 21, 2015 Popular Post Posted August 21, 2015 It's not schadenfreude, just commenting on the scent of hypocrisy in the air. "It's not schadenfraude?" This from the guy who just said: "Way to go Utah! Outspoken protectors of the sanctity of marriage."? The article itself recognizes a number of flaws in its analysis, such as the small sample size, the poor quality of the data, the cross-state duplication of names, likely false addresses given in association with users who paid with gift cards, the large number of "clearly ... made-up addresses in the data," and so on. But hey! The article is worth a good drive-by slur aimed at the Mormons, so it's all good! According to Rockpond's reasoning, all Mormons are hypocrites because some of them are. And all Muslims are terrorists, because some of them are. And all men are wife-beaters, because some of them are. All homosexuals are pedophiles, because some of them are. And on and on and on. Not the most sound reasoning, I think. Also, a potentially significant flaw in the article's analysis is that it appears to conflate percentages of AM users over a period of many years (from 2008 to present, IIRC) with the populations of states in a single year. In other words, the .66% number attributed to Utah apparently represents paying users spread out over several years. That seems like a rather significant error because it scoops together seven years' worth of AM users, then juxtaposes that figure with the overall population of the state. That would seem to result in a significant exaggeration in the number of AM users as a percentage of the state's population. Let me illustrate: Let's say I am discussing the number of rapes in Utah, and I do so by citing crime statistics going back 7 years (much like the article did in analyzing the number of paying AM users). Let's look at forcible rape statistics for 2007 to 2013 (from here):2007: 908 2008: 916 2009: 941 2010: 9832011: 9012012: 9752013: 994TOTAL: 3853 Now, if I understand things correctly, statisticians would not use the above total, 3,853 forcible rapes in Utah over a seven-year period, to calculate a per-capita rape statistic for the state because juxtaposing a 7-year total with a single year's population seriously distorts the prevalence of rape. For example, the above link states that the incidents of forcible rape in Utah in 2013 amounted to 34.3 persons per 100,000 of the population, based on the figure given for that year (994). However, if we replace that figure with the cumulative figure based on seven years of rapes (3,853), and then us that number to calculate incidents of rape per 100,000 of the population, then the figure becomes staggeringly higher. It would make Utah look like the rape capital of the west. So through error, or perhaps sleight-of-hand, this appears to be what was done in the article gleefully linked to by Rockpond, and used by Rockpond (who, I understand, claims to be LDS) to denigrate and defame the entirety of the active adult LDS population in Utah. And then we still have all the other problems with the data (duplicative data, large numbers of made-up addresses, etc.). But Rockpond, in his zeal to slur his fellow Latter-day Saints, apparently didn't stop to consider any of this. Instead, we end up with a (highly problematic) statistic showing that .66% of Utah's over-18 population, which itself is teeny-tiny portion of the population. So let's play along with Rockpond's reasoning (such as it is): First, remember that Mormons make up 60.7% of Utahns, with 41.6% of Utahs being active members (see here). The article, of course, doesn't take this into account, and instead impliedly suggests - as Rockpond did - that 100% of the .66% of paying AM users are active, observant Latter-day Saints. The population of Utah as of 2014 was estimated to be 2,942,902. Of these, 1,850,474 are adults over 18. As noted above, 41.6% of these would be active LDS, or 769,797. If we assume - as you clearly intended to imply - that pretty much every single AM user with a Utah address is an active, faithful Latter-day Saint ('cuz otherwise you would not have come to a heavily LDS board and, with glee and gusto, thrown around snide accusations of hypocrisy), then the article's .66% statistic attributed to Utah would work out to about 5,080. Let's round that down to 5,000, just to keep things simple. How many of these purported "paying users" can be attributed to bogus addresses? What is the actual number of paying AM users as a percentage of the population (without resorting to the statistical sleight-of-hand discussed above)? It's impossible to say (except that the article says there are a lot of them), and Rockpond doesn't care. He just wants to make the LDS Church and its members look bad. At the end of it all, we are left with a statistically tiny sampling of the online behavior of people living in Utah. The analysis of this tiny sampling is based on bad data and bad presumptions (like impliedly suggesting that of the tiny percentage of paying AM users with Utah addresses, 100% of them are active Latter-day Saints). Nevertheless, here comes Rockpond, trumpeting the apparent misconduct of .66% of adult Utahns (of which only 41.6% of which are LDS) as evidence of a "scent of hypocrisy" of active LDS Utahns ("Utah ... outspoken protectors of the sanctity of marriage"). If a person were to attribute the misconduct of .66% of a given group to the group as a whole, and if that person were to then pubicly slur that entire group as hypocrites because .66% of have misbehaved, I think that person would be roundly criticized for fomenting bigotry and bearing false witness. And if the target group were a minority in terms of ethnicity or religion or national origin, such a person would likely also be accused of mongering hate and animosity. But remember, folks: Accusing the entire active adult LDS population of Utah of "hypocrisy" due to the alleged misconduct of a tiny percentage of them is not schadenfreude! I'm glad Rockpond cleared that up for us. Thanks, -Smac 8
smac97 Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 Schadenfreude aside, I wonder what the factors are that determine whether someone is going to sign up and pay for that service? Obviously, marital dissatisfaction is the likely reason people sign up for such things, but then, as the Alabama example shows, it's likely disposable income that determines whether one pays for it. So, marital dissatisfaction is not far from average among Utahns, but disposable income may be higher, at least among those who would likely sign up for Ashley Madison. Those other factors don't matter. Mormons are hypocrites. All of 'em. Based on what a tiny percentage of Utahns purportedly did. That's Rockpond's point. Don't clutter the matter up with other "factors." Thanks, -Smac 2
jkwilliams Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 Those other factors don't matter. Mormons are hypocrites. All of 'em. Based on what a tiny percentage of Utahns purportedly did. That's Rockpond's point. Don't clutter the matter up with other "factors." Thanks, -Smac Well, seems like an exaggeration of his point. 1
smac97 Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 What? That it went to hell when all the Califoricators moved in. Or perhaps that the LDS Church doesn't control all of its citizens like robots? Just what conclusions can you draw from the number of pay for adultry website members of any given state? Rockpond's conclusion is that LDS Utahns are hypocrites. Thanks, -Smac
smac97 Posted August 21, 2015 Posted August 21, 2015 (edited) I've drawn one conclusion. The one that I stated in the OP that is factually supported with the data. The rest is discussion. So accusing your fellow Saints of "hypocrisy" was not a "conclusion?" Right. Just like your OP does not reek of schadenfreude. But hey! It's all good! This is all just "discussion." Thanks, -Smac Edited August 21, 2015 by smac97 1
rockpond Posted August 21, 2015 Author Posted August 21, 2015 The data was from Salt Lake City (45%) and not the state in general. See BD post. Please link to the BD post (or give a number). The data cited in the OP is from the state.
rockpond Posted August 21, 2015 Author Posted August 21, 2015 So accusing your fellow Saints of "hypocrisy" was not a "conclusion?"Right. Just like your OP does not reek of schadenfreude.Thanks,-Smac I didn't accuse my fellow saints of hypocrisy.
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