Hyperion
8mo ago
And even fought super advanced alien midgets
The opposite, they were tall lanky things called 'Skinnies.' They also jumped around with jump packs, powered armor and I think laser swords.
Hyperion
8mo ago
Looking at opportunity cost is a fair way to divide the profits. Let's say you have only one option, but I have lots of options. If you want me to join your project, pay me more. This is why software engineers get paid more than HR reps. Software engineers have talents they can shop around. HR reps don't.
Prices and wages only equal opportunity cost in a competitive market. They still matter in the monopolistic setting, but the whole point is that any distribution of rents that is above everyone's opportunity cost is economically efficient and a possible equilibrium.
Hyperion
8mo ago
On more replicable scale it sort of happens with programmers. There is a reason why programmers are being better paid than say cleaners.
That's not due to bilateral monopolies though. That's just normal supply and demand. Bilateral monopolies would be more like United Autoworkers or other heavily unionized jobs.
Hyperion
8mo ago
Same-sex couples raise kids at around 56% the rate of straight couples, which is a large difference, but is not an order of magnitude different nor 'impossible' which I feel like some conservative arguments seem to imply. And for lesbian relationships it's more like 80% the rate of straight couples.
90% of straight couples in that sample are married only 50% of same sex couples are. You are also using the married stats without saying so. I was confused by your post at first since the survey you cited shows same sex couples having much lower rates of child rearing than what you claimed.
Hyperion
8mo ago
That's true, but postmodernist leftist philosophers and critical theorists use this kind of thing as a basis for their whole ideology. It isn't just a debate tactic it's something they really believe is true in their heart of hearts.
Hyperion
8mo ago
Flattening out the distribution of realized traits has similar problems to flattening out the distribution of underlying genes, as I'm sure you realize.
Yes, but, most variation is neutral.
Additionally, what the genetics industry actually detects will be what they pay to detect, so there could end up being a reduction in underlying genetic diversity even if there are many variants with the same overall outcome naturally.
All that data is there for you to look at yourself. No one denies the actual data, because it is true.
Hyperion
8mo ago
They use a tactic that's common to leftist thought. Set up an 'essentialist' strawman of a concept that is 100% discrete and definitive and then after knocking down this strawman declare any more nuanced approach just as essentialist and false as the strawman. It doesn't matter if the 'essentialist' idea of race or sex works 99% of the time, you already defeated any notion that discrete races or sexes exist, so any attempt to categorize people by race or sex must be just as false as the strawman(and motivated by racism and sexism).
Hyperion
9mo ago
Most variation is neutral and due to genetic drift and the accumulation of, new, mostly neutral allele variants. This doesn't change the fact that people can vary genetically on socially relevant traits like height, IQ and skin color despite being genetically similar.
Amazonians are relatively light skinned, but nearly identical genetically to their dark skinned Peruvian neighbors. Both Europeans and North East Asians are light skinned due to convergent evolution despite their large genetic differences. Both Peruvians and Amazonians are genetically more similar to Europeans than they are to North East Asians, because they have a lot Ancestral North Eurasian ancestry from people who used to live in Siberia, the same as Europeans.
Yet they don't look or act more like Europeans than the North East Asians do, because of culture and selection and the fact most variation is neutral.
Hyperion
9mo ago
And how exactly do they account for the elements that are not well studied? Like for instance volatile organic compounds in the air and poorer air circulation/higher CO2 levels at home? Being poor puts people closer to environmental contaminants that have large and well-known effects on the overall intelligence of people.
Those would show up as shared environment in twin/adoption/sibling studies. We see, universally, low shared environment in every research method tried. These hypotheses have been tested and found wanting.
Hyperion
9mo ago
Traits like height, sprinting speed, hand-eye coordination, etc. are approximately normally distributed. That means even small differences in mean or variation matter a lot on the tails. If we are talking about the highest levels of play where only people 2+ standard deviations out can even compete, then even the smallest differences matter more, exponentially more. It's not something that can be consigned to the margin, it's almost the only thing that matters at this level.
Look at someone like Shaq, he has no skill, he's just a big guy who could bully the court with his size.
Hyperion
9mo ago
Governments have an insurance-like incentive to reduce genetic diversity
They arguably have an incentive to reduce phenotypical diversity. They don't have much incentive to reduce genetic diversity, except so far as it reduces phenotypical diversity. Neutral selection theory is true and most genetic diversity is neutral. More genetically diverse groups like the Khoisan or Pygmies aren't more phenotypically diverse than other more homogenous groups. All non-Africans put together are less genetically diverse than the Khoisan put together, but the non-Africans display a much wider range of phenotypes, because genetic variation is largely neutral in practice.
Hyperion
9mo ago
The genetic biomarkers that indicate genetic lineage also indicate significant non-genetic differences or environmental and social causes as well. The genetic markers that indicate race also point to factors such as: blood serum lead levels; air quality/pollution exposure; poverty and its associated effects and a complex interplay between sub-cultures and the wider society around them.
That's easy to test. Just see if the genes are just as predictive in poor people and rich people or in black and white people. There is enough genetic diversity you would find people with high levels of both the good and bad genes in all groups.
Hyperion
9mo ago
How do you expect to convince the legislature or courts to reject the disparate impact standard except through convincing them HBD is true? If it isn't true disparate impact makes perfect sense. If I believed in my heart that every group really was fundamentally equal, I would love the disparate impact standard. Nothing else would make sense!
Hyperion
9mo ago
We believe the theory of evolution and not other theories, because, the facts back it up, not in spite of those facts like Aristotelian metaphysics and transubstantiation. If the facts showed the theory of evolution was likely false I would believe in t was likely false. The Church just throws up it's hands and says it's a mystery don't think to hard. If transubstantiation was true it would be the greatest discovery in physics ever, even more important than a theory of quantum gravity; yet, people are fine just shrugging their shoulders and calling it a mystery.
Hyperion
9mo ago
Except Japan existed and was developed and rich despite having no natural resources. They almost immediately matched the European nations once they started trying. China also matched and exceeded Europe prior to the 19th century. I'm sure some racists thought they were inferior, but no one who actually looked at the history of Africa and Asia would find them comparable.
Hyperion
9mo ago
Second, many better tools already exist (standardized tests, colorblind policy, merit based immigration vetting).
Sure, and then when you use those tools and a disparate racial impact is found the courts find you've run afoul of the Civil Rights Act.
They were money changers. They exchanged Greek and Roman coins for Tyrian Shekels that could be accepted as Temple tax payments. He also chased out people selling animals for sacrifice.
Money lending at interest between Jews is explicitly forbidden in Mosaic law and the idea that it would be allowed at the Temple is ridiculous.
He wasn't a Bernie Sanders railing against money lenders, because he wasn't railing against money lenders, and his whole society hated them.
Hyperion
9mo ago
My mistake I remembered it as being the California Supreme Court, not the Federal Courts. Either way, one can't deny liberal judges are quite given to judicial activism. They used to be proud of it.
Hyperion
9mo ago
The California Supreme Court somehow found Proposition 8 unconstitutional. Never underestimate the ability of liberal judges to find a way to get the result they want.
The statement has a clear meaning if interpreted through a Marxist lens. Home Depot and other capitalist organizations and individuals are pressuring directly and indirectly UC Berkley to engage in actions that promote capitalism and the interests of the capitalist class. That UC Berkley is really run by a bunch of communists is irrelevant in Marxist theory. I doubt they really believe Home Depot or other capitalists really did anything to pressure UC Berkeley on this issue. They don't care if they did. It's a part of their ideology that everything that exists is a superstructure built on a capitalist base. Everything bad must be linked to capitalism no matter how tenuous the claim.
Hyperion
9mo ago
This will definitely end up erasing a lot of Native American culture from our interpretation of history.
No, the point is to let the Native Americans be the sole interpreters of that history and culture. We don't need pesky archeologists and geneticists telling us about how their tribe only moved into that area a few hundred years ago. We need to rely on indigenous ways of knowing that are much more valid than the colonialist violence of western science.
Hyperion
9mo ago
Is there something wrong with this? I mean I doubt the person who said it is some kind of doctrinaire Marxist criticizing profit(or at least, I doubt that they're criticizing Home Depot for profit), so they're criticizing construction as something inherently bad.
Why would you doubt a leftist activist in Berkley could be a doctrinaire Marxist? If they aren't explicitly Marxist they at least believe some adjacent far left ideology that borrows heavily from Marxist theory.
Hyperion
9mo ago
If this explanation is correct, it might mean the government stimulus is part of the saved up money that Americans are now spending, but I somehow doubt that one time payments of $600 per person in December of 2020, and $1000-$3000 in 2021 are the best explanation for a sustained increase of prices across the economy. That just doesn't seem like a parsimonious explanation of what we're observing.
This spending was financed by government debt. Debt that that wasn't paid off. In a standard Keynesian model a sustained increase in the level of government debt leads to a sustained increase in the price level all things equal. Monetary factors also matter a lot, but the Fed was also being expansionary and allowed inflation to increase rapidly and didn't want to tighten policy and cause deflation, since that would lead to a recession in the standard Keynesian model.
Hyperion
9mo ago
As for the protests, they're probably astroturfed Western-backed events anyway.
Do you have any source for that or did you just make it up? The government wouldn't need to be so draconian if it really thought it had broad support for it's policies. The Islamist faction gained power through a coup and quickly suppressed it's rivals who helped it gain power.
Ah, yes, I take as an axiom in my metaphysical beliefs, Psalm 103:4 "Who makes His angels spirits." Who could argue against that.
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