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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38760 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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I was just thinking today that when checking Twitter for what people in some Global South country are saying about colonialism, you often see quite a few ones that do blame colonialism... for putting the wrong tribe in charge of their country. For instance, Biafran independence activists in Nigeria blaming British colonialism for putting Muslisms (or non-Igbo in general) in charge of Nigeria, or making it an unwieldy artificial state project. Or, as a variation, black South Africans blaming white South Africans not as much for apartheid but for facilitating illegal immigration from Nigeria and Zimbabwe to South Africa, taking away native black South African jobs by employing illegal immigrants. And so on.

Just recently I saw some United Nations organ make a basic "colonialism was bad" post Tweet related to Africa and pretty much all comments were people from various African countries bashing some other tribe or ethnic group in their own country.

Biafran independence activists in Nigeria blaming British colonialism for putting Muslisms (or non-Igbo in general) in charge of Nigeria, or making it an unwieldy artificial state project

I think those complaints are much more legitimate. Direct material exploitation is, speaking long-term, easy to recover from, but wrecked geopolitics in already-fragile regions can lead to long-term stability issues and consistent human capital flight. And that's far worse.

https://freaktakes.substack.com/p/bombs-brains-and-science?s=r

In total, Allied bombings completely destroyed about 18.5% of German homes. Inner-city homes represented an inordinately high chunk of these homes since inner-cities were the very rough target of these campaigns. Coincidentally, inner-cities also are where a high share of universities are located.

All of that is to say: there was a large sample of university research buildings that were partially or fully destroyed by Allied bombs without much rhyme or reason.

Would you rather lose 10% of your researchers or 10% of your labs?

Now, getting your academic building partially blown to shreds is obviously bad for departmental productivity. But, so is having up to 15% of your professors fired for something as arbitrary as having a Jewish grandparent or attending a communist party meeting. And, while it’s obvious that both of these will at least temporarily decrease departmental output, it is not clear at all which is worse, either in the short run or in the long run.

In the short run, a 10% shock to human capital—dismissing 10% of a department’s scientists—reduced departmental output by .2 standard deviations. A 10% shock to physical capital—the destruction of 10% of a department’s buildings—lowered output by .05 standard deviations. The effects of losing 10% of your researchers was 4X that of losing 10% of your buildings in the short-run.

In the long-run, the effects of dismissing researchers persisted. Departments continued to underperform up through 1980, when the data for the study stops. Meanwhile, by 1970, departments that were bombed were experiencing increased productivity, meaning that bombed departments may have benefited from upgrading during postwar reconstruction.

the dismissal of scientists in Nazi Germany contributed NINE TIMES MORE to the decrease in scientific output in Germany than did the destruction of a large percentage of its research buildings.

Sounds simply like outgroup-versus-fargroup effects. The nearer enemy will take more attention than one encountered primarily in theory. This changes if your milieu changes, such as if you're an employee of an NGO.

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