Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 December 1

= December 1 =

good place to find election and polling results?
Is there a good place to find election results and exit polls (demographics etc.) about the 2016 US presidential election? Not too concerned about pre-election polls, but want stuff like state-by-state results for both the primaries and the general, with info like "how much of the under-30 Hispanic vote did Trump get in the Illinois primary" and stuff like that. I can generally find individual statistics like that in news reports with a search engine, but ideally I'd like a single site or database with everything, so I can crunch numbers without having to constantly search around. I can access some commercial databases through my local libraries if that helps, but probably not the really good ones. Thanks. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 02:00, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * FiveThirtyEight.com has switched over from predictions to post-election analysis articles. See  where they have several articles on analysis of the post-election polling data.  -- Jayron 32 02:06, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that looks helpful. I'm still looking for raw numbers rather than analysis, but this is a start. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 02:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Data.gov is a clearinghouse for all kinds of data goodies related to the USA, they should have more coming online soon, but at present you can get some pretty good info on the 2016 elections . ANES data center may also be of interest. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:56, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

What is the name of the fallacy that works like this?
What is the name of the fallacy that works like this?

One example:

X and Y are Z.

X and Y are legal.

W is Z.

PS:W is illegal.

We must make W be legal.

Another example:

W is Z.

W is illegal.

X and Y are Z.

PS:X and Y are legal.

We must make X and Y be an illegal thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.92.128.26 (talk) 11:14, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think that's the fallacy of Affirming the consequent. -- Jayron 32 11:45, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not a formal fallacy but an informal fallacy. Consider the same thing rearranged, minus the normative statement at the end.


 * Cats and dogs are mammals.
 * Cats and dogs live all around the world.
 * Howler monkeys are mammals.
 * [Implied first conclusion] Mammals share each others' characteristics.
 * Therefore, Howler monkeys live all around the world.
 * I think you're looking at a matter of hasty generalization here. It makes me think of the commutative property of mathematics: it's seemingly equating W, X, Y with Z (making them identical to each other) instead of properly making them subsets of Z.  This works when W, X, and Y indeed are equivalent to Z, but not when they're just subsets.  Nyttend (talk) 15:18, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's certainly a generalisation error, or arguably a hidden case of inductive reasoning. One can also see it as a case of false analogy. Just because X and Y are Z does not mean that all Z share all properties that X and Y share. 10 is a number. 10 is greater than 9. 15 is a number. 15 is greater than 9. (Unsound inductive step: Therefore all numbers are greater than 9).  5 is a number. Hence 5 is greater than 9...oops. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:52, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Of the formal fallacies, illicit minor fits this situation - we're going from a valid syllogism (Darapti) to an invalid one, by changing "some" to "all" in the conclusion. Tevildo (talk) 17:17, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

A more specific example of what I am talking about: 1-Cigars and alcoholic drinks are as addictive as weed.

2-Cigars and alcoholic drinks are legal.

3-So, we must make weed legal.

So, here he assumed that since those 3 things are equal, they should share the same rules, BUT, he automatically implied they should it should follow the cigar and alcohol rules, without telling why something that share this specific characteristic (being this addictive) should be legal instead of being illegal. 177.92.128.26 (talk) 10:50, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * As Nyttend mentioned above, this is hasty generalization (or secundum quid if you prefer the Latin names for this sort of thing). "Drugs A and B are legal, therefore all drugs are legal." Tevildo (talk) 17:12, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This may also be a case of unstated assumption (our article is not really very good): "(Unstated: Drugs are forbidden because they are addictive) - Cigars and alcoholic drinks are as addictive as weed - Cigars and alcoholic drinks are legal - hence we should make weed legal as well". Or, with a bit more convolution, an Ad hominem, per "People claim that weed should be illegal because it is addictive. But those same people accept cigars and alcohol as legal, although they are also addictive. Therefore these people are evil hypocrites and wrong, and we should make weed legal just to show them". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:43, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This is not hasty generalization, because the example is assuming alcohol is equally as bad as weed. The point of what I am talking about is not the fact he say alcohol and cigars are as equally as bad as weed, is the fact he is telling all those 3 things should be legal, instead of telling they should be legal because of reason W.

So, they say if X (cigars and beer) are Y (legal), so Z(weed) should be Y (legal). The thing is, why this is a more valid argument than saying that, if X (weed) is Y (illegal), so Z (cigars and beers) should be Y (illegal). The exact same kind of logic used to produce the same argument produced the second, yet he selected the first argument.

The non fallacious argument he should use is, weed, cigars and beers whould be legal because X OR weed, cigars and beers whould be illegal because X.201.79.60.129 (talk) 16:39, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In effect, the argument is that they should have equal legal status, whatever that status might be. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:56, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Let me try to understand this. You (201) are not concerned with the unsoundness of the deduction ("X has property A, Y has property A, X and Y both have property C, therefore Z, which also has property A, should also have property Z"), but (simplified) you are concerned with an argument "X and Y are equal with respect to Z, therefore both should have property Z", as opposed to "X and Y are equal with respect to Z, therefore  both should not  have property Z", when logically we can only infer "X and Y are equal with respect to Z, therefore  both should have the same state of property Z". Both the first and the second of these arguments are, in general unsound unless one again adds an unstated assumption (E.g. "We have tried abolition for alcohol, and it does not work. Therefore alcohol should be legal").  In a real discussion it usually is useful to employ intellectual charity, i.e. not to build and refute a straw man, but to first understand the argument of the opponent (including unstated assumptions) before addressing it. This can often lead to a shared understanding of the conflict, and thus to compromise. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:01, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Round world in art
What's the oldest known (surviving) artistic depiction of a spherical world? Our article on Christ in Majesty observes that the image sometimes depicts Christ sitting on a spherical world, but it gives no dates, and since we know that the concept of the spherical world was known among the Greeks for some centuries before Christ, and since lots of ancient Greek artistic works have survived, I'm guessing that these images postdate the oldest surviving artistic depiction of a spherical world by several centuries. Presumably the polemic scientific works of men such as Aristotle and Eratosthenes included spherical-world depictions, but I'm particularly interested in artistic depictions without a scientific purpose. Note that a Google search wasn't particularly useful; its top hits were pages such as our article on Eratosthenes, which doesn't answer my question. Nyttend (talk) 14:56, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Would something like the Farnese Atlas be helpful? -- Jayron 32 17:02, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Crates of Mallus may also lead you places. -- Jayron 32 17:03, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Historiae Mundi: Studies in Universal History (p. 136) says that a globe appears on a Roman coin of 76 of 75 BC (perhaps this one?). It also gives as an example of a Roman globe in Commodus as Hercules, which is a bust supported by a globe and the signs of the Zodiac at the base, although our article says "The meaning behind these symbols has been somewhat debated since the discovery of the sculpture". Looking at the image in the article, it doesn't look terribly Earth-like to me, but I'm no expert. Alansplodge (talk) 17:29, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The globe on the Commodus statue is likely celestial sphere as seen in the Farnese Atlas I cited above; notably while it is a spherical map, it is a spherical map of the heavens and not of the earth, and thus not a "Globe" -- Jayron 32 17:59, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You may well be right, but the source I linked suggests that the author believes it to be a terrestrial globe. It looks to me as though it's decorated with flowers, so I'm not wholly convinced that it's either. Alansplodge (talk) 22:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The two interpretations in the article suggests it's either a terrestrial globe with zodiacal figures indicating a significant month (in which case the flowers might represent terrestrial plant life, but why no animals or fish?) or a celestial globe with zodiac, in which case the "flowers" might be symbols for stars. At the sculpture's scale, more realistic star representations would likely be indiscernable: also, neither the artist nor its commissioner may have been particularly knowledgeable about astronomy. (As a possibly relevant aside: I'm short sighted, and without spectacles stars and other distant lights look to me like chrysanthemums, which are part of the Family Asteraceae, whose name is probably not a coincidence.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.248.159.54 (talk) 22:44, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Just a thought, what is the earliest depiction of the Greek god Atlas, for whom the representation of the map of the world was named? (Atlas had to carry the world on his shoulders, and all the depictions I've seen of him depict the world as a globe.)--TammyMoet (talk) 11:35, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No, Atlas (mythology) had to carry the sky on his shoulders, which is usually depicted as the celestial sphere. Some of the later depictions of Atlas show him carrying the Earth, but these are not accurate representations of the original Greek myth.  Atlas was made to support the heavens.  The name of Atlas for the book of maps comes from Atlas of Mauretania, who is a legendary (i.e. probably not-real) Philosopher-King who is credited with as the father of Astronomy, and for whom Gerardus Mercator named his book of maps in 1595.  The oldest still existing statue of Atlas holding the heavens up is the Farnese Atlas, cited above, but that is a 2nd Century AD Roman copy of a much older (now lost) Greek statue.  -- Jayron 32 12:58, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Is there a name for the concept where?
The government has no population-based components above the state/province level. Each state gets equal vote(s) in the executive council or electoral college, or it's a parliament system, the legislative branch has equal seats per state, and the other branches are similar or chosen by one of the above. Not that I think it'd be a good idea, I just want to read our article on it. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:39, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd say its one extreme case of a Federation - and the article is decent. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:57, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's a confederation. You've just described the Congress of the Confederation, the supra-state body of the United States under the Articles of Confederation; different states had different numbers of seats, but the number didn't matter, because the delegates voted as states instead of voting as individuals.  Nyttend (talk) 20:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * But the CSA Congress had unequal delegation sizes. Did they vote as states? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:53, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The name isn't particularly relevant. Canada is a confederation, yet the federal government has more power versus the provinces than the US federal government has versus the states.  The CSA's constitution was largely that of the USA, with some changes, most of which removed barriers to states' power (e.g. bordering states didn't need congressional approval for interstate compacts related to navigation) and a few of which either didn't directly relate to states' power (e.g. a line-item veto for the president) or reduced states' power (e.g. states might not prohibit slavery).  Nyttend (talk) 20:58, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Canada is a federation. The word "confederation" was used for the original process of forming this federation, I suppose because con- means "with" and the colonies/provinces were being federated "with" each other. --76.71.5.45 (talk) 23:45, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure it has a specific name, but you've basically described the operation of the United Nations General Assembly; each nation gets one vote regardless of population. -- Jayron 32 13:00, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Humiliation of Germany after ww2
How was the German loss of territory after ww2 any different than what happened after ww1? I thought the allies did not want to repeat that. I even think that they loss more territory after ww2 than after ww1. --Llaanngg (talk) 23:34, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Read German reparations for World War II; it's quite plain to understand that, though many historians consider the reparations of WWI to be excessive given German culpability in that war, the atrocities committed by Germany in WWII were astronomically worse than in WWI. Or maybe you forgot the Holocaust... -- Jayron 32 02:23, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's rather a harsh response, Jayron. German reparations for World War II does not provide a comparison of WW1 vs WW2 territorial losses, nor does it discuss the nexus of reparations and culpability. Llaanngg seems to ask a lot of questions, but does not seem to be a troll, and is probably well aware of the Holocaust. In view of the consequences of WW1 reparations, asking about the scale of WW2 reparations seems legitimate. My doubtless very ill-informed understanding of the WW1 reparations question was that they were viewed to be excessive, fullstop, rather than excessive w.r.t. Germany's culpability. So. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't think the question has yet been well answered here or by the article you pointed to. --Tagishsimon (talk) 06:25, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Excessive can't be a full-stop concept. The concept "to exceed (something)" implies, in it's own sense, a limit or threshold which has been surpassed.  The context for what defines an appropriate level of reparations can only be understood in the context of what the entity in question is being asked to repair for.  In the case of WWI, the level of reparations leveled against Germany can only be called excessive if one defines the limits that one is expected to exceed.  There is no absolute standard for what is excessive, merely that one compares what happened with what should have happened.  Given the actions of Germany in the period 1914-1918, it was FAR different from the actions of Germany in the period 1939-1945, and as such, the expectations of reparations would be different.  That is all.  One cannot say that the WWII reparations are out of proportion because the WWI reparations were.  The definition of excessive doesn't compare the one to the other, but rather each to the threshold of appropriateness in each case.  In simpler terms, we can only define excessive based on comparing what was given to what should have been expected, and not what was given to what was given before.  The second is not a valid comparison, it's apples and oranges.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 11:39, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What's your basis for saying Germany was "humiliated" after WWII? It was rather the opposite - the allies realized their mistakes following WWI and great strides were made to help Germany rebuild. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:54, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, there was the Morgenthau Plan - if the "allies realized their mistakes following WWI" is quite arguable. But the Cold War set in, and both sides of the former allies built there part of Germany up as a frontline state - hence Marshall Plan, not Morgenthau Plan, and hence the quite superficial denazification in Western Germany (where Nazi anti-communist sentiments fit with the new enemy) and the more thorough one in Eastern Germany (where they very much didn't). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:26, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Overall, Germany (the western part, anyway) was treated a lot nicer than they were after WWI. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:38, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but that does not imply that the reason for that was a wider understanding and acceptance of what had gone wrong after WW1. In other words, this mostly was the result of Realpolitik, not idealism. Judgment at Nuremberg gives a good (if fictionalised) portrayal of the era, especially in the scenes outside the courtroom.  --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:51, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It seems that the entire nation was punished after WWI, whereas after WWII it was more like scapegoating the most obvious perpetrators. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:17, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This rather misses the significantly different effects of the two wars in Germany itself. During WW1 there was little fighting on German territory, and little bombing. At the end of the war German industry and infrastructure was still more or less intact - though the economy was in a mess. In WW2 the allied invasions of Germany, and the massive bombing, left much of the country in ruins. The ability to make reparations was very different: that didn't stop the USSR grabbing anything it could, but the western allies realised fairly quickly that they had a humanitarian crisis on their hands, and it was going to be their responsibility to deal with it. Wymspen (talk) 10:41, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Another distinction, however, is the political turmoil in Germany was distinctly different following each World War. After World War I, the Entente powers imposed their peace terms on Germany, but did not involve themselves in the administration of the country.  The German Revolution of 1918–19 that resulted from the collapse of the German Empire left the country in near anarchy and the political turmoil was at least as responsible for the nation's economic woes as was the reparations themselves.  Following WWII, the Allied powers directly involved themselves in the post-war administration of the country and (at least in the case of West Germany) had a deliberate plan for transition to German sovereignty that assured a relatively smooth resumption of normal political control.  The difference of Germany at the end of WWI and Germany at the end of WWII is that the former was in a state of open civil war, while in the latter case it was under relative peace during the martial administration of the Allied powers.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 17:05, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * There were considerable border changes in the east, see Former eastern territories of Germany, Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) and Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II. Coincidentally, I recently spoke to a German lady who had been born in East Prussia but now lives in Colchester. Alansplodge (talk) 09:43, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It's hard to judge the intentions of "The Allies" after WWII, or even to recognise them as allies. The Western allies (and especially France) may not have wanted to "humiliate" Germany, even if purely from self-interested reasons of avoiding another "WWII began at Versailles" consequence. However the Soviets wanted revenge and plunder. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:47, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's quite valid too. The motivations of the various voices at Yalta and Potsdam were not unified, and the motivation for the plans of reorganization of post-War Europe were often at cross-purposes.  Even moreso that the agreements put in place were not even upheld following the war.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 11:56, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The difference is that Germany by-and-large accepted responsibility for WWII in Europe. After WWI, many elements in Germany viewed the peace deal as illegitimate; the German right concocted the stab-in-the-back legend to claim that Germany had not really been defeated, but was stabbed in the back by Communists, socialists, Jews, and assorted other types in Germany itself, who supposedly sold out Germany for their own benefit. See also War Guilt Clause for some more background. The WWII Allied policy of unconditional surrender was intended to avert a repeat of this. --47.138.163.230 (talk) 23:45, 3 December 2016 (UTC)