cb18

There are no genetic markers that taken together say "this person is black" or "this person is white".

Actually, there very much are.

I think what you're trying to say is that not all black people have all the "black people genetic markers," and likewise for other groups. This is true, but this is not necessary to distinguish well-defined groups.

Family resemblance is a philosophical idea made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein

It argues that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance

The idea that we will soon control everything seems akin to other inaccurate prognostications.

The combinatoric explosion of interactions between new "control technologies" alone will introduce many new, unforeseen variables.

The world will still be uncontrollable in new unforeseen ways.

Skin color is a relatively minor component of race, race describes the clustering of a whole host of traits and characteristics in a group of individuals.

Yellow-skinned Africans would still be Africans, purple-skinned Asians would still be Asians, and green-skinned Europeans would still be Europeans.

I'd probably edit my children to be darker. Having spent a few days on the beach in Thailand, the genetic inferiority of my own fair skin is quite visible and painful.

Is this like reductio ad absurdum of PC signalling? Where do you spend the other 362 days of the year? In an environment that fair skin provides advantages for things like vitamin D production perhaps?

I suspect he's saying that his daily payment on his house is roughly on par, or less than the daily rate of a high priced hostel.

You could have figured that out yourself without the attitude, right?

What is the relevance of the image at the top here of a sub-Saharan African to an article about an ancient European philosophy.

An ancient European philosophy we know of today thanks to written language and a European civilization that developed, preserved and cultivated countless worldchanging ideas.(like the controlled conveyance of photons into your eyes relaying this information)

Written language was never even devised in sub-Saharan Africa!

These agenda driven, Magical Negro juxtapositions are becoming obscene.

US is killing everyone

How?

unfortunately, that would cause a LOT of pain for good everyday people

Consider that it is the crooked system that has led you to believe that.

See this, newly released, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY shocking stuff.

Because the WSJ wants Google to index their articles, but Google will penalize sites that show different content to a regular user vs a crawler.

Or something like that.

Thanks for providing that.

Thomson grants for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life

Thomson says, abortion does not violate the fetus's legitimate rights, but merely deprives the fetus of something—the use of the pregnant woman's body and life-support functions—to which it has no right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion

This has a real sleaziness to it. Her argumentation is to separate into two, something that cannot logically be separated.

It's like saying you have a "right to breathe all you want from our oxygen rich biosphere," ... while in outer space.

I'll say this again, because it has just struck me so strongly, and it is so strange. What is it about our society that we have people so passionately arguing for killing off our progeny?

But if you're solving/addressing a problem efficiently, you should work out a solution where the event space can be mapped such that events classed 'typical' should far outnumber events classed 'edge.'

Yes it's never going to be perfect when trying to overlay a closed system of logic on the open system that is the universe, but we've shown ourselves pretty capable at getting to good enough.

In this case it is a question of what is "good enough"? Meaning, what are we trying to accomplish?

I'd always been mostly ambivalent toward abortion but thinking about it more recently, it does seem quite the tragic and brutal practice.

I'm inclined to believe you that no one does it for fun, at least in retrospect. I think there is a problem of too much of a glib attitude about it from the SJW/Tumblr types which hides a lot of the torment an abortive mother is likely to feel after going through with the procedure.

I'll repeat: What is it about our society that compels women to do this?

No not really. Going back millennia, there has always been an elite within a society. The difference that is recent to emerge is that there is a growing disconnect between the interests of the elite and the societies to which they supposedly belong.

Nationalist vs Globalist is a pretty good summarization.

The globalists seem primarily interested in using their positions of power to enrich themselves and gratify their egos, and they perhaps feel they are doing something right in their policy prescriptions, but it is driven by complete lack of understanding of human nature.

The nationalists understand that humans have concentric (genetic) loyalties, from self, to family, to nation/race. These are just facts of nature, fighting against them is a losing battle and arranging our societies along these natural lines will produce the best outcomes.

The nationalists want the best for the whole world, not just a tiny trans-national elite.

Trump is a nationalist.

(Yes I know this seems antithetical to the experience of many in SV, elite universities, etc. What these supposedly smart people fail to understand is that they are among outliers of outliers. Exceptions to rules are not unknown, but basing our policy on exceptions is an invitation to disaster.)

And another example of how wrong you are about rising tensions in the US, how many times in recent years have we seen some huge clusterf*ck about a supposed murder in cold blood that turns out to be perfectly justifiable? (Where is any coverage of frequent and horrendous, totally unjustifiable black on white crimes?)

It's gotten to the point where we see all pretence dispensed with and we now see regular race riots in the US when someone is justifiably killed by the police.

All thanks to a get out the vote effort of Democrats and their media compatriots in the form of falsely portraying blacks as victims and stoking racial tensions, encouraging the tensions along with violence in many cases.

And a deafening silence in public discussion about the huge disconnect in rates of black on white crime vs white on black.

One must wonder, what is the endgame for these people? Facts can't stay hidden forever.

It is a well documented strategy for left-leaning politicians to import voters through unchecked immigration in an attempt to create an unassailable electoral base.

In this case, the politicians who "sow hatred, insecurity, fear and division for their own ends and don't care what mess they leave behind," are the leftists.

See the rapid, shocking, galling decline of civil society in some western European countries in recent years.

These mass immigration leftists sow hatred and insecurity when they act as if the natives of the western world(genetic Europeans,) are somehow in debt to the rest of the world for past sins. Strangely overlooking the fact that the entire modern world with all its convenience and affordances, huge improvements in health and nutrition etc. etc., are more or less entirely the product of Europeans. All peoples can look at some past actions with regret, but Europeans have clearly been a net positive on the world at an unprecedented scale.

These mass immigration leftists sow fear and division when they support the importation of huge population groups with the bonkers notion that these groups will then start behaving along the societal norms of the country they've been imported to, rather than the country they came from.

So the Trumpers are right, their country is being taken from them in this way.

But before we get too far in the weeds on a patented HN thread of only the most tenuous relevance, Congratulations Bob!

And I found Charles Murray's recent explication of the topic rather compelling.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am...

Doesn't all this seem somewhat backward.

There's this victimization mentality that acts like poverty is this absolute thing that is meted out like a cursed rock, outside the control and agency of whom it's been placed upon.

Why don't we have more discussion about the causes that lead to the effect of poverty.

It's really more productive to see poverty as being an effect, or outcome of other causes or actions. Change the input and get a different outcome. And at a certain point it becomes a personal responsibility. If you want to help someone else, great, but the two of you have to be pushing in the same direction.

And likewise, external conditions do have effects, if it comes to light that someone appears to be needlessly and negatively imposed upon there's clearly a place in society for discussing how best we can optimize everyone's external conditions. Everyone faces obstacles, but placing blame wholly outside oneself is always going to be a losing battle.

On top of it all, if a murder occurred in a child's neighborhood — in an area of about six to 10 square blocks — their score fell by 7 to 8 points.

This is so ridiculous that people can make a pronouncement like that, thinking it's a reasonable analysis, or indeed the only analysis.

We know that intelligence is a highly stable trait. Meaning for intelligence to be significantly diminished[0] requires something pretty drastic, like a serious brain injury or some kind of long term deprivation. There is no reason to think someone being killed within a particular distance of someone would have any kind of effect. Do all soldiers come home as dunces?

Something seems to be missing from the kind of people that write these articles. Hard to say what it is exactly, a more holistic view, better analytical capabilities, less pre-conceived notions, intelligence? something...

If they had whatever missing ingredient, then they might understand that an analysis that stands up to rigor is something more like,

People tend to self-segregate along a whole host of traits[1], intelligence is a trait. The trait of intelligence is linked to a propensity for certain types of crimes. Murder among them, therefore it follows that the people that commit murder are statistically likely to have lower intelligence, as are the people around them.

Oh, another thing: Living in these poor neighborhoods makes you significantly less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy

Oh, another thing: Any analytical mind of any worth can clearly see that the inverse has just as much going for it, if not more.

It seems to clearly follow that people who are less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy would make their neighborhoods poorer. How a focus on improving happiness, hope, and health? Telling people their predicaments are caused by factors outside of their control is the last way to improve any of those things.

[0]7 to 8 points is half a standard deviation, i.e. significant.

[1]See Schelling's Macro Micro, for some of the mechanisms involved.

"Living" is one of those things that is hard to pin down an exact definition for because there are so many edge cases.

Is life on earth everything that processes sunlight, directly or indirectly? Well solar panels do and microbes subsisting on energy released from deep sea vents don't. Is sexual reproduction the defining characteristic of life? Plenty of examples to the contrary of life forms reproducing in other ways.

It's actually really hard to find a precise definition that doesn't have an exception.

As for the Spielgelman's Monster, if this were to be described as living, that would mean man had created "life" from non-living matter, that would be rather big news.

most of those deaths come from inexperienced riders

Similar things can be said for driving, in that motor vehicle accidents are concentrated in certain segments of the population, (and people having unlucky interactions with those segments.)

Though this niggle of the statistics is more of an issue with bicycling statistics because the bicyclists who know more or less what they are doing get lumped in with the accident rates of people like the "DUI bicyclist" riding home after dark with no lights into oncoming traffic, or terrible tragedies of people driving carelessly through neighborhoods and running over little kids on their bikes.

Then consider, even if we had statistics showing moderately higher injury/death rates for comparable travel styles with a bike opposed to a car, the overall mortality rates in the bike vs car cohorts would no doubt be reversed because of the physical activity vs sitting factor, and likely lower stress levels of the cyclists. Physical activity tends to reduce stress.

Just get some smooth tread tires that will be better for pavement travel.

2.2 miles takes about 40 minutes to walk.

On a bike and mostly flat terrain, 10-15 minutes max.

Unless the commute is a steeply graded 2.2 mile slope the motor seems overkill and providing little if any benefit to travel time or enjoyment. Wouldn't you rather get to work with a little endorphin rush?

Maybe ride the route first after work or on a weekend to show yourself you can do it. But after a commute or two you will quickly see it's nothing and likely want to ride even further.

cool, thanks!

I was curious about the variance in the design you mentioned, reading the comment again, I got more of what you meant. So this is something unique to all Japanese bikes and has been something of a mainstay? At first read through, I mistakenly got the idea this was some new innovation. But now I get what you were saying about how these companies are vertically integrated much like Apple, so all components of the product can be more tightly integrated.

So what would you say the main advantages here are? The bike can perform better in terms of handling because all parts are designed to work most effectively with the others?

How much does the engine shape/design vary with Japanese bikes compared to bikes of other origins? Different attachment points with the engine to the other components?

Do you know of any pictures of a Japanese bike without the body shell/faring on it, or just the bare frame?

Quick Edit:

Do you have any opinion on what you think the best Japanese touring and/or dual sport bikes are?

look into what I meant by Japanese bikes.

Do you have any links or more specific search terms?

I'm not an expert on Canada, I know there was a little bit of tension between the Quebecois and the rest.

because we don't share a well-defined genetic heritage

This is not true. The genetic heritage of both Canada and the USA is European. It is only in recent decades that there has been non-European immigration of any significance.

Therefore the national identity of Canada and the USA is European. After all, they are part of the western world, they have the characteristics that are common to the European/western world.

When I have to explain this stuff, I feel like the world is going crazy. I mean it is so obvious. But it if helps someone, great.

It's really a shame that it has become so difficult to be have important conversations because people have become so trained to insult people they perceive as uncouth, all the while ignoring all the important substantive matters raised.

"German-ness" is emphatically not genetic.

German-ness comes from ethnic Germans which are a genetic subgroup.

"spirit and character" are not either.

Then where else would it come from? Spirit and character come from people, people are genetic.

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Just answer this, you don't need to go into too much detail.

If an Icelandic couple moves to Africa, learns a Bantu language, and has a child who then also learns the language, is the child then a Bantu?

Germany and Austria are similar genetically, but native North Germans are more similar genetically to the Dutch, Danish, and Swedish.

Differences among all those groups can be teased out when comparing them among themselves, but when comparing to Arabs, Africans, or Afghans, the differences among Europeans effectively vanish.

That was the point.

For Europe as we know it to continue to exist it's population must be Europeans.

Consider the types of societies one finds across the Arab world and Africa to the societies one finds in Europe.

neo-Nazi reference

I didn't even know about the "neo-Nazi reference" thing until someone pointed it out before(you?).

The truth is there are a series of account that were made when the number of saved stories was limited. i.e. cb1 ... 18

I just happened to stop on 18.

It's really absurd if every time you see the number 18 you shriek and go Nazi!!!

Do you watch sports where they wear numbers? Do you ever see prices in stores that say 18? There must be nazis hiding everywhere huh?

And I don't see anything negative in that Of course there's nothing wrong with that.

What I found strange was that you thought he would want to identify with a neighboring political entity(Austria) instead of just as Germanic-European and Ashkenazi-European.

Also what I saw occuring was this symptomatic absurdity that occurs from our genuine desire to not want to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Which is acting like a migrant from Afghanistan or Syria is the same thing as an immigrant from Austria(!) or even Israel, Askenazim are mostly European.

In our fervor to not repeat past mistakes, we are willfully blinding ourselves to the fact that not all people are the same. And the kinds of societies that result when different peoples form societies are very different.

Thinking all these muslim migrants are going to somehow become model germans is madness.

The sad irony is, who do you think the biggest anti-semites in Europe are today? Muslim migrants and the Muslims already in Europe...

The native populations of Germany and Austria are the same genetically, and assuming Ashkenazi, then also pretty similar.

So why would you like your son to see himself as "Austrian" and "Israeli" just because his parents lived there, instead of simply as having a genetic heritage in the region that goes back millennia before the modern conception of the German and Austrian State?

The genetic distance between a German and an African is many, many multiples of the genetic distance between a German and a Pole.

If an Icelandic couple moves to Africa, learns a Bantu language, and has a child who then also learns the language, is the child then a Bantu?

You can be non-Caucasian and still be German.

A country is the spirit and character of a people. That's what makes a country what it is. Not political boundaries on a map. And groups of people don't just take on a new spirit and character if they move into new political boundaries en masse.

The spirit and character of a people comes from their DNA. And their DNA comes from their environment over many thousands of years.

If the majority of the population in Germany were to be African or Arab, do you really think Germany would retain it's particular character that makes it European and German? No of course not! You would have to be insane to think that it would.

Were that to come to pass, Germany would look a lot more like countries in Africa or the Middle East than a European country.

With the recent migrant madness we are already seeing troubling signs of this, with loads of horrendous crimes hitherto unknown in Europe.

It's not just the excess of crime that doesn't bode well, but that these foreign populations, even into 2nd 3rd generation receive welfare at much higher rates than the general population.

Why would it ever be a good idea to take in loads of immigrants who are a net drain on the economy in multiple ways? Europe can't babysit the world in this way. Not only does make it make no sense, but it is unsustainable, the time at which our welfare states have become totally dismantled from this looting is rapidly approaching.

Many resources are finite. Why should grandparents who spent a life time contributing to the system have their benefits cut, so politicians can try to import future voters in order to extend their reign? It's madness. It is destroying the western world.

So, that's a long-winded way of saying, no a "non-caucasian" or anything else but an ethnic European, ethnic German cannot be a "german." Maybe someone else is a citizen of the Bundesrepublik. But that is just a piece of paper symbolizing an abstract system of agreements. The biological reality of what makes the German people what they are and by extent what Germany is, is another thing entirely.

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I'm sure all of the Germans of Turkish familial origin

Funny you picked the Turks, who are notoriously unintegrated in Germany. Just like all the muslims across Europe of course, but some of the Turks have been here since the 1970s. So it makes people take notice and say, "uh oh!" In fact, this was more or less the reason for Angela Merkel's dictum years back saying "Multiculturalism has failed."

Because if you have an interest in Germany continuing to exist in the future, you need German people.

A country filled with Arabs, Africans, and Afghans isn't Germany, peoples aren't fungible in that way.