4 ms·

I generally agree, it is easy to define good human rights for a country. But this gets hairy when you start evaluating how bad a non-perfect country is. Consi

by berntb 13y ago

I generally agree, it is easy to define good human rights for a country. But this gets hairy when you start evaluating how bad a non-perfect country is. Consider press freedom. Today, e.g. Turkey and Russia keeps the press down and stop dissenting voices. How much worse is that than e.g. Sweden, where the press goes in perfect lock step in certain areas -- few dissenting voices are allowed. (Most of that is self censure. Who choose what is censored and how? Only journalists know. Maybe. Part of this is cultural, too. How much? I have no clue.) Note that this one-way thinking is quite a bit different in the rest of Scandinavia. Or a very intolerant country might be OK to live in, for a homosexual or someone of the "wrong" faith. Live and let live, the "different" would just get lots of curious questions. Compare that with my present home country, which is a bit homophobic. The only openly gay guy I've met was a friend of a work friend. He seems to exercise to be a good street fighter. I hope that is just a coincidence. :-)

Aqueous 13y ago
'How much worse is that than e.g. Sweden, ' I'm going to go ahead and say that Turkey and Russia are still, pretty clearly, worse in this area, and you could probably quantify this. It's not good that Sweden's press isn't quite as diversified as it could be, but I think we can both agree that the constitutional protections in Sweden are objectively better than those in Turkey and Russia. It might be hard to quantify these differences, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, and it doesn't mean that attempts to do so are even nearly worthless.
- Jongseong 13y ago
  Well, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, today Turkey tops the world in the number of imprisoned journalists: http://cpj.org/imprisoned/2012.php http://cpj.org/imprisoned/2012.php No journalists are jailed in Russia at the moment, but Russia comes in 4th in the world in the number of journalists killed since 1992 with 56 deaths: http://cpj.org/killed/ http://cpj.org/killed/ Turkey is 13th with 21 deaths. Statistics are indeed useful when we're separating these sort of extremes. The article gives the example of Norway being less corrupt than Angola, asserting that you "don't need an index" to tell you that. But comparing Norway and Denmark is where rankings are less useful, according to the author. The argument is not that it is always impossible to compare different countries in quantitative terms.
  - wtvanhest 13y ago
    My point is that the author of the paper wants to be paid to work for an NGO but doesn't believe in actually solidifying their opinion. Listing a bunch of stuff is not the same as saying this list means you should a) Build a product in this country, or B) You should not build a product. Essentially he is being paid for very basic research which is not useful without an expert in the field. He wants a guy at Big Corp. to make the final decision so he can wash his hands of it. I don't support this type of thinking. I would prefer that the author openly select the best country and stand by his opinion. Maybe it doesn't make sense to rank country A #132 and country B #135, but it definitely makes sense to give them a rating in several categories and draw a distinct line. Or possibly, there is something I don't understand about the business.
    - Jongseong 13y ago
      To defend the author's position, I would be wary of providing a single ranking because the metrics are going to be different for different needs. Say you're ranking different lodging options at a holiday destination. You can come up with a single ranking for all the options, whether they are hotels, hostels, bed & breakfast inns. But it would be meaningless except to weed out the really bad options unless you knew what the preferences would be in terms of price, location, atmosphere, decor, etc. Such an index could still be useful, perhaps, but I see where the author is coming from.

by berntb 13y ago

Aqueous 13y ago

'How much worse is that than e.g. Sweden, ' I'm going to go ahead and say that Turkey and Russia are still, pretty clearly, worse in this area, and you could probably quantify this. It's not good that Sweden's press isn't quite as diversified as it could be, but I think we can both agree that the constitutional protections in Sweden are objectively better than those in Turkey and Russia. It might be hard to quantify these differences, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, and it doesn't mean that attempts to do so are even nearly worthless.

Jongseong 13y ago
Well, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, today Turkey tops the world in the number of imprisoned journalists: http://cpj.org/imprisoned/2012.php http://cpj.org/imprisoned/2012.php No journalists are jailed in Russia at the moment, but Russia comes in 4th in the world in the number of journalists killed since 1992 with 56 deaths: http://cpj.org/killed/ http://cpj.org/killed/ Turkey is 13th with 21 deaths. Statistics are indeed useful when we're separating these sort of extremes. The article gives the example of Norway being less corrupt than Angola, asserting that you "don't need an index" to tell you that. But comparing Norway and Denmark is where rankings are less useful, according to the author. The argument is not that it is always impossible to compare different countries in quantitative terms.
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  My point is that the author of the paper wants to be paid to work for an NGO but doesn't believe in actually solidifying their opinion. Listing a bunch of stuff is not the same as saying this list means you should a) Build a product in this country, or B) You should not build a product. Essentially he is being paid for very basic research which is not useful without an expert in the field. He wants a guy at Big Corp. to make the final decision so he can wash his hands of it. I don't support this type of thinking. I would prefer that the author openly select the best country and stand by his opinion. Maybe it doesn't make sense to rank country A #132 and country B #135, but it definitely makes sense to give them a rating in several categories and draw a distinct line. Or possibly, there is something I don't understand about the business.
  - Jongseong 13y ago
    To defend the author's position, I would be wary of providing a single ranking because the metrics are going to be different for different needs. Say you're ranking different lodging options at a holiday destination. You can come up with a single ranking for all the options, whether they are hotels, hostels, bed & breakfast inns. But it would be meaningless except to weed out the really bad options unless you knew what the preferences would be in terms of price, location, atmosphere, decor, etc. Such an index could still be useful, perhaps, but I see where the author is coming from.