Philosophers

Pacific Northwest Territories wrote:

Congress passed the Save Act which would merge U.S. military and IDF. It still needs approval on the senate floor.

But I'll call it now...

We no longer have a government.

> The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, commonly known as the SAVE Act, is a proposed United States law that would mandate documented proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

This is an American issue that a foreigner like me cannot comprehend. The right to vote is generally considered only given to citizens of a state, therefore it should be reasonable to ask for proof of citizenship. And it's indeed the practice in many other democracies during elections.

Disagreements say that preregistrations and signatures are enough and documents are unnecessary. But to me, it's more like a demo of how the government of united states is still pre-modern, and refuses to modernize itself due to issues elsewhere in the partisan politics.

MountAye wrote:

> The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, commonly known as the SAVE Act, is a proposed United States law that would mandate documented proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

This is an American issue that a foreigner like me cannot comprehend. The right to vote is generally considered only given to citizens of a state, therefore it should be reasonable to ask for proof of citizenship. And it's indeed the practice in many other democracies during elections.

Disagreements say that preregistrations and signatures are enough and documents are unnecessary. But to me, it's more like a demo of how the government of united states is still pre-modern, and refuses to modernize itself due to issues elsewhere in the partisan politics.

This sounds reasonable except that in my reading the spirit behind it is to remove a swathe of Democratic voters from being able to vote. Black people, woman who have changed their names upon marriage and transgender people are especially targeted. What appears to be a neutral source says that the new requirements will deprive 9% of eligible voters from being able to cast a ballot.

Trump always acts in a partisan way. His method is to divide, not bring together. The opposition party in the United States has every reason to distrust anything Trump does.

The shameless gerrymandering of voting constituencies in the United States is a further reminder that party advantage is the main concern, not fairness. In the United Kingdom, constituency make-up is decided by independent boundary commissions.

The Save Act was passed by adding it to an unrelated spending bill. It is the spending bill that is presumably the target of Pacific Northwest Territories’s comments (?)

Later edit: Seriously, I know nothing about this except what I read. If I am w4ong, please correct me.

Sunrise Trail wrote:

How is the “Human Development Index” arrived at?

The nation in last place here for human development is Brathon, despite admirable rankings for civil rights and political freedoms. Pencil Sharpeners, ranked last in all of NationStates, has “frightening” civil rights and “widely abused” political freedoms. Can anyone explain what human development in NationStates is about and how it is calculated?

To quote from the game, 'The World Census compiles a “Human Development Index” by measuring citizens’ average life expectancy, education, and income.'

If we look at Pencil Sharpeners, its Lifespan, Public Education, and Average Income stats are considerably low, so my guess it's calculated with these 3 stats, or possibly more. It might be false though, since I do not know how it works in the game. In real life, Human Development Index requires a bit of mathematics to calculate, but there are three indexes: Life Expectancy Index, Education Index, and Income Index.

For Life Expectancy Index, it's calculated with (LE-20)/(85-20) which is just (LE-20)/65. LE stands for the life expectancy of the nation. 85 is the maximum value and 20 is the minimum value. This is to allow us to convert the data from a scale of 0-1, and these limits are consistent with science and history, with maximum values being the limit where a value larger than it does not guarantee a better life, and minimum values being the natural survival baseline. These values are goalposts, meaning it's possible for a nation's stats to be below the minimum value or above the maximum value, so it will be capped at 0 or 1 respectively.

Education Index is split into two indexes: Mean Years Of Schooling Index (where you divide the average number of formal education years completed by adults who are 25 years old or older by 15) and the Expected Years Of Schooling Index (where you divide the expected years of schooling by 18). To get Education Index, just get the average of the two indexes.

Income Index is quite complex, so here's the syntax version of the formula: 'Income_Index = (ln(GNI_pc) - ln(min_value)) / (ln(max_value) - ln(min_value))'. Currently, the maximum value is $75000 and minimum is $100. GNI_pc is the Gross National Income per capita (GNI is the total income made by citizens and corporations of a specific nation, while GDP is the total value of goods and services within the borders of the nation.)

Then to calculate HDI, find the cube root of (Life Expectancy Index x Education Index x Income Index). The game has a different method to calculate HDI, though, since the real-life HDI can only be a value from 0-1, while Cognosco's HDI is way above that.

Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

Sunrise Trail wrote:

How is the “Human Development Index” arrived at?

The nation in last place here for human development is Brathon, despite admirable rankings for civil rights and political freedoms. Pencil Sharpeners, ranked last in all of NationStates, has “frightening” civil rights and “widely abused” political freedoms. Can anyone explain what human development in NationStates is about and how it is calculated?

Quanturium gave a good explanation of IRL HDI. The way the in-game HDI works is similar, but I can explain the specifics.

As with IRL HDI, it is based on three statistics, though there are slight differences. IRL HDI uses some sort of scaled lifespan index as Quanturium explained. In-game, this is literally just the lifespan figure. This does not have an upper limit, but has a lower limit of 14.

Instead of using income, in-game HDI uses economy. This is very close to the economy stat, but in my experience there are some minor scaling differences. The stat that feeds into HDI has an upper limit of 100, and a lower limit of 0 (unlike the actual economy stat, which can go above 100 or below 0).

The final stat is a backstage stat which measures some kind of education/intelligence. This is, however, not the same as the visible public education or intelligence stats, though maximising or minimising these will certainly help. This backstage stat has a lower limit of 0 and an upper limit of 100.

In practice, maximising or minimising the economic and education factors is pretty easy, so the differences between top (and bottom) nations for HDI is usually lifespan, as this is the only stat which does not have a limit (yes, it has a lower limit, but it's very hard to reach).

Hope this helps!

EDIT - I forgot to point out, when HDI is calculated in-game, it is the average (mean) of the three stats above. Hence why it goes from 5 to 100+

Cheers for the Human Development Index explanation Pencil Sharpeners. I’m beginning to almost understand it.