41–50 of 119 posts
The author's key argument is that extractive institutions lead to state failure. Like most theories of state failure, there's some good examples but enough weak or counter examples to discredit it as 'the' answer. At best, I'd argue that extractive institutions are a block to success: countries with them have one fewer barrier to overcome. I recently researched the thorny issue of what consititutes art, and the leadi…
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The implicit comment is that the article's substance is of no conceivable relevance, because it fails to mention the most obvious possible cause - human genetic diversity - for the pattern it purports to analyze. It's one thing to refute or qualify the null hypothesis. It's another to ignore it. Why shouldn't it be the null hypothesis that genetic diversity is the cause of global inequality? Human beings have been th…
The situation is bad enough that I'm a little sensitive to agreeing with what you've said here. According to a few posts up, that makes me a racist, I guess. The problem is, I never really understood why it's a stretch to believe that in all of the messy soup of chromosomes and culture (variables of a magnitude beyond what we could ever possibly research) that there are tangible differences between human beings. And…
So in the overall scale of things, I think it's better not to have those discussions. The costs are too high, and frankly, history has shown that the public can't be trusted with authoritative opinions that can give cover to heinous acts. The conversation should be off the table.
I can't get past how needlessly wordy this article is. It's as if someone is trying to flaunt their language skills and it distracts me from the actual content; I must admit that I read the whole thing and did not catch wind of the author's point. Sentences like these just read as nonsense to me: "The intuition behind the theory is nonetheless compelling, which makes the scarcity of policy prescriptions frustrating."
"The authors do a convincing job of explaining why things are they way they are, but fail to explain how we might go about changing them."
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That sentence is perfectly clear to me, and English is not my first language. I don't even perceive the style as pretentious or "wordy": it seems the appropriate register for a magazine like the Economist.
it seems the appropriate register for a magazine like the Economist. I guess that may be true, but why should it be that way? It could have been restated as 'the theory's good, I had expected more predictions'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The implicit comment is that the article's substance is of no conceivable relevance, because it fails to mention the most obvious possible cause - human genetic diversity - for the pattern it purports to analyze. It's one thing to refute or qualify the null hypothesis. It's another to ignore it. Why shouldn't it be the null hypothesis that genetic diversity is the cause of global inequality? Human beings have been th…
The situation is bad enough that I'm a little sensitive to agreeing with what you've said here. According to a few posts up, that makes me a racist, I guess. The problem is, I never really understood why it's a stretch to believe that in all of the messy soup of chromosomes and culture (variables of a magnitude beyond what we could ever possibly research) that there are tangible differences between human beings. And…
It takes a look at the question of why one group of people ended up with the tech first and largely comes to the conclusion that it is part of a complex interaction involving the environmental availability of species and geography neccessary for the development of sedentry existence and then also a maximally heterogeneous cultural development.
[edit] the explantation I just gave is a massive oversimplification of his argument, but it would be very hard to fit his book into a post.
The author's key argument is that extractive institutions lead to state failure. Like most theories of state failure, there's some good examples but enough weak or counter examples to discredit it as 'the' answer. At best, I'd argue that extractive institutions are a block to success: countries with them have one fewer barrier to overcome. I recently researched the thorny issue of what consititutes art, and the leadi…
Fascinating. Can you post some links about this?
It was eye-opening for me to find out about research into multiple kinds of intelligence. I think I'd like to know more about what you found out about art.
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Wow, this thread just became some kind of magnet for racists, didn't it. Since you are apparently very proud of your IQ, perhaps you can read the actual article and try to comment on something related to the article's substance, and not just give us a knee jerk reaction based on the title.
The implicit comment is that the article's substance is of no conceivable relevance, because it fails to mention the most obvious possible cause - human genetic diversity - for the pattern it purports to analyze. It's one thing to refute or qualify the null hypothesis. It's another to ignore it. Why shouldn't it be the null hypothesis that genetic diversity is the cause of global inequality? Human beings have been th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The situation is bad enough that I'm a little sensitive to agreeing with what you've said here. According to a few posts up, that makes me a racist, I guess. The problem is, I never really understood why it's a stretch to believe that in all of the messy soup of chromosomes and culture (variables of a magnitude beyond what we could ever possibly research) that there are tangible differences between human beings. And…
The best answer to this question I have ever found is in the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It takes a look at the question of why one group of people ended up with the tech first and largely comes to the conclusion that it is part of a complex interaction involving the environmental availability of species and geography neccessary for the development of sedentry existence and then also a maximally hete…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The situation is bad enough that I'm a little sensitive to agreeing with what you've said here. According to a few posts up, that makes me a racist, I guess. The problem is, I never really understood why it's a stretch to believe that in all of the messy soup of chromosomes and culture (variables of a magnitude beyond what we could ever possibly research) that there are tangible differences between human beings. And…
Keeping the conversation off the table removes oxygen in which racists with less noble goals thrive. Human nature being what it is, they make judgements based on first appearances. When people are highly invested in having opinions on people based on things that come from first appearances, they are very likely to mistreat people on an individual basis - i.e. prejudge them, literally, and unfairly , because individua…
Your reasoning is sound and supported by a cursory look at human history. That said, I just can't buy into that conclusion. It can't be either/or.
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That's simply avoiding the question. For what reasons does the art community consider some things art and others not?
Some would argue that art is something that exists for it's own sake. Some would argue quite the opposite, or somewhere in the middle.