rajin444

Why would the authors say otherwise?

Additionally, why is it framed in a way that makes it seem like white people having more of an impact is a bad thing?

10 years ago if you'd told me articles like this were coming I'd have laughed. How did misconstruing the truth to further the "white people bad" notion become not just acceptable but popular? And it doesn't even stop there - the article implies that more diversity (i.e less white people) is an ontological good. How does this stuff even get published?

This logic of selectively applying externalities based on an arbitrary threshold of risk tolerance is not a good argument.

We might as well blame all the fat people as well. If they were thinner we’d have saved lives.

the Republicans were staunchly isolationist

They were except for their nominee running against FDR in 1940. His interventionist stance (and otherwise complete lack of political experience) made FDRs victory all but assured.

I’m not sure how you have a base so aligned on a topic that gives them an excellent chance on defeating the incumbent nominate a political nobody who holds a dissenting opinion. The same nobody who went on to serve in FDRs administration.

Weren't they in the process of committing some as these trials were ongoing? I don't think there's a reliable number, but certainly 6 figure and likely 7 figure death tolls for ethnic Germans due to postwar resettlements etc.

With regards to #2, Wendell Willkie winning the republican nomination over the isolationist candidates was extremely fortuitous for FDR and Churchill. There was no real desire from the US population to get involved in another European war, but Willkie (lifelong democrat with no previous political experience) securing the republican slot (and basically guaranteeing FDR's win with no policy adjustments) made that issue a moot point since his stance on the war was similar to FDRs. Willkie eventually ended up with a position in FDR's administration.

The only truths taught in US schools are those beneficial to the empire - it's best viewed as propaganda.

School shootings are still insanely rare. When you account for high crime areas the likelihood of an average kid experiencing a school shooting is so low it should make you question anyone trying to make it seem otherwise.

The descent from "The vaccine is 99% effective and prevents transmission" to where we're at now was pretty eye opening. It sounded too good to be true and was.

Nobody has been held accountable for coercing (and worse) the US population based on bad data. I don't see any reason to trust the government going forward.

feudal power structures are no way to organize 21st century business

The efficiency gains and - more importantly - resiliency gained by having a single leader with a strong vision are enormous and the reason a single ruler is so prominent among humans. Democracy is weak to balkanization and demagoguery.

That being said the real issue here is corrupt elites - which no system can fix. The blast radius from a bad ruler is much worse than bad actors amongst a democratic system, but the potential gains from a single ruler are much higher.

Did the study control for race then if genetics are a cause? ie other studies have shown those of ashkenazi descent are more likely to be schizophrenic.

I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way - id very much like to know if my genetic ancestry made me more or less susceptible to things like schizophrenia.

Aren’t they? Banks are out to make a profit not better the lives of their customers. Certain industries are nationalized for good reason.

Diversity should only matter in that it furthers the level of basketball being played. Diversity because it opens up additional markets is an awful incentive. That they only care about diversity because it makes them richer is very telling.

On top of that, the NBA is always going to have a problem with height diversity. I don’t think this is a problem, but viewed with an equity lens it is.

The focus on group outcomes as opposed to efficacy of the discipline is a sign of a sick culture. Groups are fighting over spoils instead of working to solve hard problems and push humanity forward. Ironically, it’s a complacency enabled by those who came before and didn’t have as much concern over the racial / gender / etc makeup of an industry. They succeeded to such a degree our society can afford to waste entire careers in the name of equity.

Who cares if the NBA has horrible diversity? They’re trying to find the best basketball players.

This whole thread is full of takes like this - “how awful they have the wrong morals and erase things I agree with or don’t erase things I disagree with”.

It’s all power games. Trying to pretend your morals are correct is hypocritical.

Do any modern western governments truly represent the interests of their people? They're all suffering from fragmentation and discord. Without high trust culture, they end up balkanizing their people and being ruled by oligarchs.

I think the non representative democracy the US initially was worked well (as history can attest to). Fully representative leaves you with demagogues (as the current day can attest to).

history

There have been plenty of good kings who saw it their duty to see to their people. This is more or less the default for how humans operate (families, tribes, businesses, etc.).

present day monarchies

There are not any left in western society that I'm aware of, so there's a bit of a sampling bias.

Ironically enough, one of the strengths of a monarchy is a good king could absolutely prevent this and set the empire on a path to enriching the British populace. And if not they run a high risk of losing their head.

Nowadays we’ve all embraced democracy (oligarchy run by demagogues) and it’s a lot harder to hold anyone accountable. Everyone knows the British monarch is “powerless”, so they quibble amongst one another over whos political party is to blame.

Who defines the best? Who defines unbiased?

It all comes down to who you trust.

There’s also a strain of anti intellectualism that assumes every human should be forced through 12ish years of schooling and every human should achieve the same base level of results.

Public education for all is not much different than the American idea of “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”.

Leave education for those that either want or can benefit from it. Come up with more efficient systems for the rest of the masses.

No system can fix a corrupt elite. Even Adam Smith acknowledged that capitalism is an abusive system when you have elites that do not have their people’s best interest in mind.

A high trust, cohesive populace is the minimum for any societal progress. And that starts with rulers who work to ensure they’re doing right by their people. America, instead, has rulers on both sides working to ensure the populace hates one another.

No liability for the Covid vaccines (yes, I’m aware there are options that in reality almost never pay out) was a huge mistake. How do you repair a breach of trust that severe, outside of massive propaganda campaigns?

And that’s just one small part of how the Covid vaccinations were abysmal in terms of trust building. Blaming the “vaccine hesitant” instead of the politicians and media who lied (directly and indirectly)…further strengthens vaccine hesitancy.

Ideally your culture has evolved a common set of norms that enable it to be high trust. Another word for this is “religion”. Additionally, having a more similar than not genetic makeup may be necessary (the diverse society experiment is still ongoing).

Ideally! It’s a great time for those with high amounts of wealth to buy up assets from those suffering from inflation. Cheaper stocks, people losing their homes due to unemployment, business going under, etc.

Human societies never destabilized the entire global ecosystem before

No, but Mother Nature has ample evidence of doing so. If we want to continue as a species we need a way to persist after the next apocalyptic natural disaster. We’re fortunate some ancient peoples lived in environments that forced them to build societies and progress technology - otherwise we might not know we’re one meteor away from extinction!

It is a fallacy, but you’re right ultimately one we have to live with. There’s no way to function doing all the research yourself. This is why trust is so critical.

The crux of your post was “I trust the intent of the experts because they’re experts”. I don’t think that is a good reason to trust somebody.

Because of this Poles formed this connection between Jews and money and greed while completely forgetting that it was the governments at the time that caused this.

I don’t think they’ve forgotten. In much of Europe rulers that issued crippling taxes or engaged in ruinous financial schemes are not remembered fondly.

The parent made a point about trust and how all historians are subject to biases. You responded with an appeal to authority, one of the many ways “history is written by the victors”.

was that they don't allow enough immigrants

Why is this the default solution? Shouldn’t we be asking why - after all these years of technical progress - it is not cheaper and easier to raise a family? Where are all the productivity gains going?

Trying to make women “equal” to men is a ruse to squeeze more labor out of a population. Actual equality could be achieved by fairly disturbing the wealth of the populations labor, but for some reason that option is not considered.

Is that full quote supposed to be better?

I’m not sure what’s being addressed here, but that you feel comfortable reiterating that an entire race is cancerous is concerning to say the least. What is the end goal of this rhetoric?

Sorry, I meant that it'd be ideal for violence to have no place but it does.

Even if no one is around, if you are assaulted, you can file a report

And if you are killed? There is a strong appeal to reducing the likelihood you will die.

I agree, but they do, thus height is important. Why try to pretend otherwise? I’m still stuck on how one can defend “height has no importance”.