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The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#221

Post by sgt101 »

rdtsc wrote: post #5

> My parents by then had reached the conclusion that I was not going anywhere promising in China and were ready to send me abroad for high school. Maybe the title should be "The Western Elite from a Chinese Elite Perspective". Surely sending kids to school to UK as plan B is not in the average Chinese family's abilities. Doesn't mean we should discount the article or its ideas but it's useful to keep the author's bac…

Yes - the big surprise of the sudden high score in the high school test made me smile as well.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#223

Post by iakh »

hacker314159 wrote: post #222

"I told him about the black swan I kept on my desk as a reminder that low probability events happen with high frequency" Uh... wouldn't low probability events happen with low frequency? Am I missing something?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#224

Post by coolaliasbro »

Exo_Tartarus wrote: post #205
theonething wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be born with the genetics to be smart and hardworking is out of our control. So smart and hardworking can be considered circumstances we are born into as well.

Agreed. And I'll go one further: there is no free will. But the point holds

I mostly agree with this sentiment (though I grant that there may be other, more nuanced views with which I might also agree) and find its implication a little startling: that one's life is really "One's Life: The Movie".

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#225

Post by RickS »

icebraining wrote: post #83
jraines wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point, but there's an awful lot of post-hoc Just World fallacy wrapped up in those same statements of faith. The really spurious ones - like 9/11 or Katrina being divine punishment - get media coverage but there're more bland ones that are actually more harmful; like disease or disaster being all part of God's plan. It's all good for living a life where you have to cope with what you can't directly con…

How does that tie with the statistics showing US citizens - and in particular more religious people - as good donors for charities and disaster victims? Seems contradictory.

Sympathy for a disaster and belief about its causes are different things.

If you think a natural disaster is the result of God's plan (and not e.g. climate change), it is perfectly congruent to both contribute to healing in the form of charity, while also being disinterested in climate change regulation.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#226

Post by Shorel »

freeflight wrote: post #201
icebraining wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that tie with the statistics showing US citizens - and in particular more religious people - as good donors for charities and disaster victims? Seems contradictory.

How to measure the "religiosity" of people? While I haven't looked at the statistics, I can easily imagine that's the result of religious communities/institutions having better infrastructure/peer structure in place to motivate donations, at least vs "unorganized unreligious" people which rarely organize on a similar scale. Pretty much all religious institutions are dependent on regular donations coming in, they are…

I would say that Basic Income the way Finland is just testing, is much better than random 'it makes me feel good' donations.

To clarify, it's better in the sense of creating better infrastructure/peer structure/social network.

It's also a difference not unlike between tips in America and a fair salary for waitresses in Europe.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#227

Post by Shorel »

alexasmyths wrote: post #134
DamonHD wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does NOT require any sort of religious will, and I posit that religion will be a steadily larger impediment to further progress if it does not fade. We have better and more nuanced ways of making the universe more just these days.

" that religion will be a steadily larger impediment to further progress if it does not fade" Religion, which is the application of Spirituality (however crude) was essential to the development of morality in humanity, and hence civilization. Much of it has been codified and secularized, but the underlying metaphysical value remains the same and nothing has replaced it. Scientific Materialists, who can't even seem to…

> Religion, which is the application of Spirituality (however crude) was essential to the development of morality in humanity, and hence civilization.

As posited by religious people and writers of religious texts.

As a counterpoint, keep in mind that modern religions are massively syncretic and many of the moral issues were probably absorbed the same way some ancient cells absorbed mitochondria to create modern cells.

Also, that comment about nihilism is just misguided.

I feel as much spirituality in Carl Sagan vision of the stars being part of us and making us part of the universe, making us the universe observing itself, as you can feel with your books and promises of an afterlife.

I am going to die as well, and that fact makes my own life, and the lives of other people, the most sacred thing ever. No gods are needed to determine this fact.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#228

Post by didibus »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #13

"... randomness is not merely the noise but the dominant factor. And those reasons we assign to historical events are often just ex post rationalizations. As rising generations are taught the rationalizations, they conclude that things always happen for a reason. " I didn't realize it until contemplating this statement, but this applies to interpersonal relationships as well as nations. It is the root of tolerance an…

I read an interrsting theory that explains all things in the universe as simply circumstantial symmetry which exist at different places in pure chaos/randomness.

For a given period of time, you can find symmetry in subsets of chaos, and thus it can appear predictable or deterministic from that perspective. But the truth might be that we're just specifically looking for it.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#229

Post by taneq »

eternauta3k wrote: post #197
taneq wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep zooming out and we're all little hypertriangles in some N-dimensional cellular automaton, and there's no such thing as 'meaning', just patterns of higher or lower entropy. Don't think too much about it or it'll just make you depressed.

Nihilism isn't the only option. This is a decent starting guide if you're curious: https://meaningness.com/

Bit of a late reply, sorry, but I didn't mean that nihilism was the answer. I just meant that humans aren't well equipped, emotionally, to deal with the universe at scales too different from those at which we evolved.

You just can't afford to 'zoom out' too far. Focus on immediate small scale things, watch a beautiful sunset, hug your kids, ride a motorbike, eat your favourite meal. Focus on near-term goals like "bootstrap my company" or "reach my fitness goals". Worry about little problems that you can solve. Make someone smile. Smell the roses.

You can stay intellectually aware of the fact that we're transient pond scum on the surface of a space rock in an infinite, arbitrary universe. Just don't dwell on it.

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