Hyperion
10mo ago
There are very high profile academics whose work actually gets cited and picked over just for the intellectual benefit from doing so. If their work had plagiarism it would be found out already. That, there also exists this class of hangers on who just create make work articles and think of academia as a grift they can make easy money out of, is one of the biggest faults of academia.
Hyperion
10mo ago
In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates?
There aren't many open borders advocates, but there are lots of left-leaning people who are advocates of not looking like racists or Republicans. And lots of other more left-leaning people willing to throw those accusations at anyone who wants to crack down on illegal immigration.
Hyperion
10mo ago
It still shifts the supply curve leftwards. No one ever said it would eliminate the supply completely.
Hyperion
10mo ago
It's based on Ancient Greek philosophy that was ignorant of all of modern physics and chemistry. There is no point trying to analyze it rationally it is an attempt by smart, but ignorant, people to make sense of an irrational dogma. At some point you have to just give up. The Christians, Buddhists, Muslims or whoever will just make up knew more elaborate excuses on command. They have the truth of their dogma as a fixed prior and can always reason around any objection to it's truth.
Hyperion
10mo ago
This is different than the selection in effect within a devoutly Christian society, as was common in European history (back when everyone genuinely believed the religion). Acting Christlike and having Christ-ian moral feelings were genuine sexual section factors on their own, and were also factors in being selected for high positions. (You also had interesting things like the practical wisdom of the society being clothed in Christian language, easily accessed to those who believe but less accessible to sociopaths). Obviously it was far from perfect as a social technology, but I think that this likely led to an increase in prosocial gene proliferation. People weren’t chiefly judged on their widget production but on their faith (capacity for moral and social feelings) and their imitation of the singular moral paragon.
The regions of Europe that became Christian later tend to due better than those that became Christian sooner. I.E. Northern vs Southern Europe. Saint Paul was converting Greeks in the 1st century, and Albanians were ruling and converting the Roman Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries; yet, these countries are basket cases compared to Finland or Lithuania. The last bastions of Paganism in Europe.
Hyperion
10mo ago
In this analysis, India is noted as being unstable in terms of central government, instead suffering waves of conquest by foreign powers from the North, I forget the historical elements. This led to, or exists alongside, to cultural tendencies towards nepotism, with family being more important than society broadly speaking.
That wasn't because of foreign invasions. The extreme caste endogamy started during the Gupta empire, an empire of local origin, and during the middle of a long pause in foreign invasions.
Hyperion
10mo ago
And, you also don't choose to be in the 1st or 99th percentile of parents. You are born there just as much as your kids are. No parent within two standard deviations of the mean could push their child rearing to those extremes.
Hyperion
10mo ago
I don’t think you could get 1000 bronies in a room together simply because that’s not how bronies work.
Hippies, new atheists, trekkies and bronies have all had conventions that had, at least, an order of magnitude more attendants. Multiple conventions even.
Hyperion
10mo ago
If we are to assume they are both fanatics then let us support the side that doesn't attack neutral ships. Seems like an easy compromise.
Hyperion
10mo ago
Israel as a major industrialized nation is probably ahead of France in the list of non-Anglo US allies. The amount the French stole with sexy women stationed in airports is much more than Israel ever took.
Hyperion
10mo ago
That just incentivizes countries to be anti-USA and irrationally belligerent in the future. You have to think about this from a time consistent perspective.
Hyperion
10mo ago
Yet Haiti and the Dominican Republic had comparable GDP per capita in the 1950s. Look at them now.
Hyperion
11mo ago
That's true, but Christians were originally the Jews who supported Jesus. Modern Judaism is descended intellectually from the Pharisees who were explicitly the enemies of Christ and the ones who condemned him. The idea that the struggle is racial is a Nazi contrivance, but the idea it is ideological is just history.
Hyperion
11mo ago
(Or, as the all-time greatest example, how Anglos got us to whittle down Napoleon, whereas the most rational move would have been to side with him… and again in WWI…)
I don't see how any of these make sense for the Russian elite. In the Napoleonic wars Napoleon was forcing liberalization throughout Europe which was against the interests of the aristocratic Russian elites. In WW1 it was the Russians who started things against the Germans with their alliance with Serbia and an alliance with Germany would just lead to them conquering France and becoming strong enough to invade Russia, like they did in WW2.
Hyperion
11mo ago
Why spend all the time and energy in the first place convincing people you were a Nazi!
Why do Satanists spend so much time and energy convincing Christians they literally worship Satan? Because, they know it will strike a nerve.
They could just be garden variety secular atheists, but that doesn't get the same kind of reaction in the post-war world.
Hyperion
11mo ago
Christians could never accomplish such a feat, because the Meek will Inherit the Earth. Fortunately for Jews, they don't believe that tripe so they get their Menorah on the White House lawn with no Nativity or Cross in sight.
What do you mean? Christians have done this over and over again in every country they have gained power in. They took axes to the sacred groves. They toppled pagan statues. They expelled Muslims from Jerusalem. There are still blasphemy laws in many Christian countries.
Hyperion
11mo ago
It’s like what the old Armenian said to the young Armenian- ‘my son, treasure the Jews. When they are gone, we will be next.’
That has it completely backwards though. The Armenians were first.
Hyperion
11mo ago
FGM
Do you mean femicide? Because, I don't think the Chinese practice female genital mutiliation, and femicide isn't restricted to China, India probably has it beat there.
Hyperion
11mo ago
They need laborers who don't have strong political opinions especially about Islam. South Indian migrants are fine, Palestinians; however, cause civil wars and coup attempts, just ask Lebanon or Jordan.
Hyperion
11mo ago
Every claim you made there is wrong. Most slaves were from peoples of the Niger-Congo family of languages, not Bantu speaking peoples. Bantus, while the largest group in Sub-Saharan Africa are still a minority; if, also, a plurality. South Africa is, also, not particularly Bantu compared to Central, or South East Africa and has large minorities of Whites, Coloureds, and Indians.
Hyperion
1yr ago
So your only issue with this line of reasoning is the racial line, but you are 100% on board with the cultural idea that Jews want to destroy Christian civilization and have been actively working on that program for centuries?
Hyperion
1yr ago
it's the atheists, the intersectionalists and the grievance-mongers.
That's all stuff that's blamed on the Jews in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and it didn't start there. The idea that the Jews were trying to undermine White, Christian civilization is an old White nationalist trope. It's what the Nazis pushed as well. Just read a summary of the Protocols.
Hyperion
1yr ago
Bryan Caplan has always been shouting this stuff from the rooftops. He hasn't been whispering anything. He's usually subtle just saying stuff like if we control for IQ and criminality there is little evidence for discrimination instead of making a point of saying blacks are low IQ or criminal, but it's always been there in his writings.
Hyperion
1yr ago
The thing is the aristocratic warlike chariot riding elites of the Iliad as from the steppe. That whole thing started on the steppe by barbarian nomads and was transmitted across Eurasia sometimes by mass migrations like in Greece or India and sometimes by trade or small groups of mercenaries like in Syria or China. You don't give your warrior elite lavish chariot burials with massive amounts of bronze if you don't value them.
A factor that itself is heritable. Genetic heritability of traits can be more than 100% due to things like that.
More options
Context Copy link