1) Literally a third of all people died of the black plague. Why are we arguing over who died harder? When _I_ was in college, one of the woke talking points was that "playing oppression olympics is immoral; we shouldn't be arguing over who has it worse when we could be working on making it better". Weird to see them do a 180 on this as soon as it is convenient
2) The same people who want to dig up 500 year old skeletons and assign race to them, insist that there are no meaningful differences between races, to the point that they will insist on (eg) not factoring physiological differences between races into medical decisions. But those same differences that don't exist, can be used to identify the race of a skeleton? Get real
3) Why does this study even exist? What productive purpose could it possibly serve? Who paid for this?
4) If the biggest problem in your life is that "Your presence was not formally recorded" then you have nothing to complain about. Actual people actually alive today are actually dying of actual diseases, and they care more about the fact that people who died in the past weren't written down in a book properly? Jesus
5) Do they not realize that the overwhelming majority of _white_ people were de-facto slaves back then (eg serfdom)? Or do they just not care?
6) They are unironically identifying the race of skeletons using _phrenology_, which is typically considered to be the stand-in example for pseudoscience. It's also one of the 'pseudosciences' that most 'right wing racists' online believe is real. Horseshoe theory!
7) "May". "Might". "Could have". This is what counts for _science_ these days?
years ago an expert got a huge grant to learn a tiger to walk on a threadmill. Studies are mostly ridiculous and useless. The useful studies are not done.
As I recall, phrenology had to do with personality characteristics. Skull shapes (and other bones) do have a legitimate place in identifying age, sex, and race, but I don't think it's definitive.*
* disclaimer: everything I know about forensic anthropology I learned from the TV show Bones.
At this risk of spouting platitudes, I think it is obviously correct that
1) Phrenology can be predictive of personality characteristics; and also
2) You can't conclude anything with confidence from phrenology.
A billion different factors go into what makes each person who they are. Looking at the shape of a skull and concluding someone has a personality trait is absurd.
But at the same time, like, your skull holds your brain. Your brain is responsible for your personality. To say that the shape of your skull has absolutely zero relationship to your personality is essentially the same as denying that your brain is what does the thinking.
I don't personally have any knowledge of this subject, nor do I really care, beyond that I think it's plausible that bigger brains relative to body size = more intelligent, and obviously your skull size constrains your brain size.
----
This evokes another idea I've had for a long time that doesn't have a name. It's similar to the Fallacy Of Divison (the fallacy that "fact is true about group" => "fact is true about individual members of group") but a touch different. Take for example, genetics and IQ. (CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT): it is simply a fact of psychiatry that different groups of people have different IQ distributions. Some groups have higher average IQs than others.
But people will all the time try to use this to argue about specific individual people and that's not correct. It's also silly. Let's say the Blarthians have an average IQ of 89 and the Thwormps have an average IQ of 102. Given no other information, if you were considering a hypothetical average Blarthian you should assume that they're dumb.
But if you're talking to a specific Blarthian, the information about their average IQ is irrelevant, because you can just check his IQ specifically. He might be smarter than you! And if he is, it'll be obvious! Taking an obviously smart person and saying "well, your group on average is dumb so you're also dumb" is itself the dumb thing.
I don't have a pithy name for this but essentially the fallacy is when people give higher weight to general data than to specific data
My position on phrenology is similar. It is likely a weak statistical signal. It's better than nothing, but we have better tools and when you use those better tools you can essentially ignore the weaker ones
If you have no frontal lobes, you'll be a psychopath. You could be a crude psychopath or a brilliantly disguised cunning psychopath. You'll be a psychopath without frontal lobes. There's no theory about it. If I can see the size of your frontal lobes on a scan of your brain, I can tell you what the exact likelihood is you will be a criminal. In fact, I can tell you the likelihood your descendants will be criminals. No frontal lobes means no impulse control and no empathy for others, which is why the frontal lobes have been called the seat of civilization. Blacks, Jews, Women and Homosexuals have smaller or undeveloped frontal lobes on average compared with non-blacks, non-jews, non-women and non-homosexuals. God chose to do it that way and he chose to give other people the brains to know the difference. People's real beef is with God Almighty, but they project onto the closest thing that is tangible, which is White Men who have on average larger frontal lobes than any other race of men on earth. Some White men have smaller frontal lobes than any of the averages for any other group. We can usually tell instantly there is something seriously wrong with that person. If the exact same size frontal lobes are present in another person of different demographics, we blame a lack of college scholarships on that person's behavior. When Whites are born dirt poor and have zero incidence of crime we credit society, when blacks are born dirt poor we justify all their actions as warranted because they are poor in spite of the fact they would have won Nobel prizes had they only been born middle class.
The functioning of the frontal lobe is often impaired after a cardiac arrest which may result in the victim having difficulty controlling their reactions./urge to react.
I'm saying that, _in the absence of more information_, _assuming_ that which holds true for a group is _generally_ true of an individual is a reasonable starting point. But as soon as you have more information, it's not reasonable anymore
I think it's probably reasonable to say something like "people with skull shape X _generally_ have personality trait Y". But if you have a specific person in front of you with skull shape X, you don't need to say "oh he's probably a Y". You can just talk to him and ask him what he's like!
De Facto? Ask the white women pulling 500+ man trains of blacks and arabs each day in the Barbados slave trade for centuries if they were de facto. The majority of all slaves throughout history were white men - period, not "de facto" - which explains why they are the most rabid abolitionists of them all. Find me the black or arab abolitionist movements in history - they don't exist, because they have no feeling for others or compassion and never will.
At least one slave in ten was owned by a white sharecropper in the Deep South. The other nine were owned by another demographic or two. Unfortunately whites were not permitted to participate in the actual slave trade at all, it was a cartel which membership in was dictated by religion. No whites were tolerated in the slave trade at all and the monopoly was maintained with lethal force. This same demographic that owned and operated the entire slave trade for a thousand years paid for the establishment of the NAACP and has insisted that we are right to hate whites for the slave trade they invented ... which they didn't and never happened. Imagine the moxie.
That was more a historical quirk of the slave trade first taking off in Portugal and Portuguese territories in West Africa where "conversos" were deeply suspected by society and barred from working in most "respectable" trades, pushing them towards speculative and high risk sectors of the economy.
Heard it all before. Only the Devil himself would hatch apologetics for the kind of barbarism and raw inhuman murderous behaviors seen in such people. It's always "We had no choice but to form international cartels and monopolies over the most profitable criminal professions."
I'll just bet you did. God condemns you and will judge you for the horrors committed in the slave trade by the men who controlled it worldwide. Hint : It wasn't whites.
This is totally false, there were thousands of "white people" and Christians involved in the slave trade, from British wildcat slavers who would sneak into Portuguese territory to Americans from Rhode Island, Boston, and New York who organized and funded slave ships bound for the colonies.
God is not the author of confusion. Thanks for trying to muddy the waters.
The white men you are talking about at the destinations were like Renfield is to Dracula. They did what they were told and got paid for it. Like most of politics nowadays.
The same answer when you find out how many Jewish Czars under Bolshevism. Out of hundreds of Jews, they point out two or three possible gentiles and declare that Communism was not a Jewish creation funded, staffed and imposed on Russia by Jews.
Any honest account of history around Jewish people will end with them denying everything and accepting guilt for nothing. Jews then as now were particularly brutal, bloodthirsty and cruel to slaves, many of them purchased for nothing but sex. They never confess to anything, always concluding that somehow white gentiles did these things. Those are the same people who now have the highest rate of suicide and the worst rates of poverty but still have the lowest rates of crime. Jews pin everything in history on them even as they beg for money, resources and fight to get inside their nations.
The first recorded historical instance in Egypt of Jews was not as slaves, it was their purchase of slaves to sell elsewhere. This was published first in Israel but Jews freaked out when it leaked to the rest of the world. In Israel, Jews write freely of their monstrous deeds but panic when said boasting of their brutality reaches other media.
And then the Soviets persecuted thousands of Jews, and were as pogrom-happy as any nominally Christian Eastern European nation. I think you're seeing a conspiracy where there are actually hundreds of different cultural and historical reasons why certain people end up concentrated in particular roles or ideological communities.
But it sounds like you actually believe that "the Jews" have been at the center of most human misery for the past two thousand years, so I don't know how much actual historical information will change your mind.
"Ask the white women pulling 500+ man trains of blacks and arabs each day.. " Boy you must love fiction, and I doubt that any woman pulling that many daily would last for a single century never mind centuries.
"The majority of all slaves throughout history were white men - period" that is ridiculous nonsense even if you class "Serfdom" as slavery. The middle east (Arabs) and Africa have had slaves in their thousands for at least 20,000 years and continue to do so to this day.
"Slavery is a system in which principles of property law are applied to people, enabling individuals to own, buy, and sell other individuals—designated "slaves"—as a form of property. Slaves are unable to withdraw from this arrangement and are typically forced to work for little to no pay. "
India - 7,989,000
China - 3,864,000
North Korea - 2,640,000
Nigeria - 1,386,000
Iran - 1,289,000
Indonesia - 1,220,000
Congo (Democratic Republic of) - 1,045,000
Russia - 794,000
Philippines - 784,000
Afghanistan - 749,000
The "White Man" realised that there was a cheaper method of 'owning' people.
“We disapprove of slavery and the cost of the maintenance and upkeep of slaves. We prefer our English model in which we control the issuance of currency, and control of money, it allows us to control labor without the cost of maintaining it.” Lord Baron Rothschild (private owner of the Bank of England. Quote 1849)
Islam on the other hand made slaves equals, whilst still being property.
"Before his time, women were not allowed to inherit any share of a father’s or husband’s property, but he changed the laws, and inculcated justice and kindness toward widows and orphans. His example established the idea that no believer in the faith of Islam ought to hold a fellow believer in slavery. In the sale of captives, he prohibited the practice of separating mothers from their children. He ordained that masters and slaves should have the same food and clothing; and he rendered emancipation easy." (Child 1855, vol. 3, 376; see also Einboden 2014, 97)
So basically you show all the characteristics of an ignorant bigot.
Flying in a million directions off-topic and scrambling to implicate anyone and everyone. The original point now forgotten.
Jewish mindbenders have now officially appeared in response to my original point to rewrite history as a tale of Jewish suffering. That's their monopoly protected by force as well.
5) Do they not realize that the overwhelming majority of _white_ people were de-facto slaves back then (eg serfdom)? Or do they just not care?
Right now, at this very moment, people in Asia are de-facto slaves in factories that manufacture products in mostly toxic conditions to satisfy the Western consumer.
The self-righteousness and hypocrisy is astounding.
Slavery conversations always bother me because they seem curiously gerrymandered to declare that every inconvenient instance "doesn't count"
I remember a long time ago I read a brief essay on the idea that taxation is not theft, but rather slavery. It went something like this:
Do you agree that someone else forcing you to work for their benefit is slavery?
Do you agree that someone else paying you to work, and then taking all of the money, is slavery?
Do you agree that someone else paying you to work, and then at a later time, a third person takes your money, is slavery?
And so on. And I said, well obviously it's a spectrum but yes that just sounds like slavery with extra steps.
Using that logic, I see myself as a literal slave, right now. I'm a highly paid white collar professional in the US. But I am not American, and men with guns will make me leave if I lose this job. Meanwhile, when you factor in across all sources (don't forget to count sales and property taxes!), I pay almost half of my income in tax every year.
It is literally true that in my life, half of my productive earnings get taken away by force, and also that I am forced to work. I don't have the option of not working. I don't have the option of not having my money taken from me. Just because nobody's tying me to a post and whipping me doesn't mean I'm not a slave.
And to complicate it further, "slavery" didn't mean the same thing in all places or during all eras.
Sadly, it is largely due to american cultural imperialism (sorry, couldn't resist dusting off an old Classic Marxist slogan) - american cultural influence and media dominance that "slavery " now is virtually synonymous with the very brief and limited period during which africans were used as labour.
The still ongoing arab slave trade is rarely mentioned, despite being magnitudes greater than the british one. To say nothing about the Songhai Empire or the many. many african slave-lords conquering and selling neighbouring tribes and bothersome kinsmen into slavery.
And so on. Truly, ignorance is strength, if we judge by how powerful the meme of "slavery" has become.
During the part of history where slavery was present in the west, would you like to guess how many white people were enslaved?
About a million.
In fact, America fought a war to stop _that_ slavery, too. The Barbary wars.
Morocco and all those North African pirate states would just raid European villages on the Mediterranean, kidnapping random whites and selling them into slavery in North Africa. They did this for _hundreds_ of years.
But you see, they castrated their slaves, so they couldn't have any children who got angry and rose up against them. So now nobody remembers this is a thing.
This was actually one of the first major political controversies in the US. Around the year 1800, almost 20% of the US federal budget went to paying off Morocco to stop their pirates from kidnapping _americans_. But then this turned into a domestic policy issue: Americans who had just fought a war to stop from paying taxes to the British ended up paying significantly more taxes to the Moroccans, and demanded the government do something.
So we did. We sailed some battleships over to Morocco, shelled the shit out of them, blew up half their capital, and a few days later they stopped kidnapping whites and selling them into slavery.
I used to blog, years ago. Then a bunch of stuff happened both in my life and online, and I withdrew. Writing mostly feels pointless now, like back in the day I would really think on these subjects and try to develop intelligent opinions and share and discuss them. But now it's like, well, the example I use, there's no point in me learning anything whatsoever about, say, what is the optimal and socially just taxation policy, because at the end of the day the taxation policy we actually have is going to be a combination of political power tripping and carve-outs for rich people, and intelligent thought doesn't factor into it at all. So what's the point of discussing it?
But I'm glad that some of you here find value in my words
Your information seems quite prescient for our future.
Who are the ones that will win this one? perhaps the only ones with impaired frontal lobes -- in comparison to the ones with zippity doo dah for brains
It's the curse of the Neanderthal. The same genes that gave him superb levels of high trust and empathy for his in-group can be used against him in all kinds of situations. They are the secret of building civilizations as successful as ours and at the same time make us very vulnerable to crybabies complaining they are mistreated and why don't we do something about it? Have we no heart? I know, my ex-wife was one of them. We need to harden our hearts against vile, cruel, cunning people who feel nothing for us but hatred.
The earliest animal welfare leagues appeared in the 1600s in the poorest white communities. Whites insisted animals not be beaten, whipped or starved 400 years ago and our sensitivity to cruelty in general extends to the entire animal kingdom. Recognize this too is probably a legacy of our Neanderthal genes. The other races just don't feel these things at all.
This is why I like Substack. remember reading a while ago about eastern Europeans being captured for slavery in the Middle East, but I just read up on the Barbary slave trade, thanks to you. And while my reading has been brief so far, it appears that this is the reason the French took Algeria? That is particularly interesting.
Living in Texas, as a white (non-)immigrant, I certainly have very mixed feelings about border stuff.
But honestly, the Mexican people in Austin are way cooler than most of the white people. The white people are all ridiculous obnoxious liberals who hate me without even meeting me. Most of the Mexican people are pretty cool, down to earth, based af, just trying to raise families and have a good time.
Also, I was taking a bit of poetic license. Nobody's going to forcibly remove me if I overstay a visa. But what will happen is that somewhere in a government computer, a flag will get set. And then, the next time I try to get a job, and they file the I-9 to prove I'm allowed to work there, the government will say "hey wait a second, he's not allowed to work here. So then why is he trying to work here? That's a felony" and _then_ I get fucked.
Mexican people don't have this constraint but it's not just because they're Mexicans. It's because there's a gigantic web of nonprofits and government entities facilitating that. There's no such web for me. Mexican people can work construction under the table for their (legal US citizen) uncle or whatever. I don't have that option
No offense here, but you miss the point. I doubt very much if any Englishman at the time or resident of what we now call the UK - had ever heard of a black person, never alone, ever seen one.
Same BS as watching BBC shows where they have 30% black characters back in the 18 and 19 century .... or some reporter telling us that the first curry house was set up on the Isle of Wight back before Christ was allegedly born .. ALL UTTER SH1T3.
I grew up in Northampton 1950-1956 and only once saw a black man. A US soldier in uniform.
In 1948 they imported people from Jamaica to do the low paid jobs. The Windrush carried less than 500 people and they all stayed in London.
Interestingly, in the 1820s there were approximately 100,000 Black people/servants/slaves in England. Virtually none of them went back to Africa as they were highly regarded as (strong) workers and were considered very good marriage material by working class women. It is entirely possible that several million Englishmen (including myself) have some degree of African blood (1-2%) but no outward characteristics.
However I do find the Curry house on the Isle of Wight believable, they are everywhere and always have been. (except Northampton in the 1950s)
Good, amusing whilst accurate comment, cheers. Went to school in the 70's and 80's around the now Greater Manchester area - throughout my whole schooldays knew of only 2 black kids; yes seriously.
I am sure we have many diverse types of DNA / blood in us from the different races (or whatever they are called nowadays)... unfortunately though (if the stories are true), due to the wife's comments, I can be certain that I have no black heritage !!!. LOL
I would best answer your question (3). I've been hugely influenced by Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil," the first section about the "prejudices of philosophers." If one accepts his opinions, it is basic instincts, unconscious drives, that primarily drive men, even in claimed deliberative, rational thought. "Studies" such as this one are done for some combination of obedience to the dictum "publish or perish" but with a large serving of virtue signaling to one's peers. So right there are two primary instincts attempting to be satisfied: [Academic] survival and to become (or remain) acceptable within one's peer group (tribe). There are perhaps others: to expand one’s power (to become more influential), to weaken or attack perceived enemies (the out group) even in the abstract e.g. as “structural racism.”
What the study neglects however is how many TRANSGENDERED black women were singled out by the plague for death. The failure of the workers to consider this is proof of their hate.
i knew i could count on you. i'd read the referenced piece yesterday and i really struggled, non-academic though i am, with the idea that a medieval plague cemetery in london was overloaded with black skeletons, and i did not see anything on dna evidence for ethnic determination.
so these guys have reverted to skull shapes? well, quelle surprise. dna evidence would've blown up in their hands.
honestly, the silliness. and what a strange sort of desperation too.
the high rates of "black" skeletons is in itself a huge red flag that their craniometric method is pure nonsense, but the tactic seems to be to leverage all signs of failure as evidence of diversity.
The overwhelming majority of 'legitimate' scientists in the western world get their funding through government grants. It's dangerous to publicly contradict your bosses if you like getting paid
This is why it is a moral imperative to oppose government funding of science, it's essentially the modern equivalent of separation of church and state
I spent a decade in Academia, but left in 2000 for those reasons among others. I just can't believe that standards have dropped THAT far in just 20 years. Stunning!
This is a hard and nuanced argument to make with most people, because (apologies for being smug) most people lack the cognitive capacity to understand complex ideas. They thing "science good. We should have more good. Money buys things. Money for science. Buy more science. Have more good".
But in reality, any money you didn't earn by yourself has strings attached. As soon as the government (or any giving entity for that matter) gives you money, the government gets to control you.
In many contexts this is not the worst thing in the world. The government gives money to eg traffic infrastructure, the government controls traffic infrastructure. Most of us are ok with this because at the end of the day, someone has to keep the traffic lights running and there's not really all that much that a bad actor can do with them.
But science is special because science only works with free inquiry. As soon as someone tells you what you can and can't say, what you can and can't read, what you can and can't research, what you can and can't publish, etc., it is no longer possible, not even in principle, to do real science. Because that control proscribes what you're allowed to investigate but you don't know the boundaries of what you're investigating. So once that control exists, and you hit a boundary, you have no way, not even in principle, to know if that's a boundary from the universe, or if that's a boundary from the controlling entity.
To bring it back to the original topic of this place, that's the biggest problem with the public communication regarding covid19 vaccines. They might be safe and effective. They might be useless and dangerous. The only way we can figure it out is by doing science. But as soon as the government told doctors that they were allowed to conclude "safe and effective" but they'd lose their license if they concluded otherwise, it became _literally impossible_ to conclude _either way_. Even if they literally are safe and effective, once you do this, you can't prove it, because you can never say for sure if that's a real result or just the mandatory one
That's why, and this sounds like I'm trolling but I actually believe this sincerely, that's why it's a _moral imperative_ for me personally to never take the covid vaccine. I'm the control group. The existence of people like me are the only way it is possible to prove that the vaccines are _good_, nevermind proving that they're bad
I would add that another fault of modern political thought is a form of magical thinking (I don't know the "official" term) known by many names. I offer a non-controversial example: In the Progressive mind, if one gives a tool to a worker, this will magically make the worker competent. Now, to be sure, tools and other resources are needed for many tasks. Of course, the error the Progressive makes is that he implicitly invests an inanimate object with magical powers, assuming that it will transform any human being into a skilled worker. By this logic, I should be able to purchase a few textbooks about nuclear physics and in short order become the equal of an Einstein, a Fermi or an Oppenheimer. Or at least, a technician able to work in their lab.
So well said. Sad but true in every regard. The "money good, but science good" - I actually KNOW people who would say that, and to play it in my head, narrated in their voices lolol Thanks for the laughs!
All very true, especially if you are a member of the public. However, as a scientist, you are assumed to be trained in the Scientific Method, which includes statistics and Design of Experiments, along with the laws and current theories applicable to your field of study. When you hit one of those boundaries, you KNOW whether it's a natural limitation, a theoretical incongruity, or a politically mandated limitation. That's why scientific ethics demands an obligation to truth, and of course, as you suggest, science is useless otherwise..
Since older forms of academia are seen as [insert woke adjectives, verbs, nouns here], it is natural for the current crop of professors and students to strive as hard as they can towards the other end of the imagined see-saw of ideas.
Odds are, standards have fallen so much the actual decline is unrecognisable to you because all your points of reference are so far removed from today's situation.
Your "imagined see-saw" is also known as the false dichotomy fallacy. Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil) identifies this as the "antithesis of values," one of several of what he calls the prejudices of philosophers. Such assertions are similar, if not identical, in avowing that only two choices (either-or) can exist, or that any concept must have a single, opposing value. Of course that's true in some cases. But isn't it more likely that a range of alternatives exist?
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
This is the root of the tree of evil. Everybody else hacks at the branches in a useless display of opposition.
The basic motivation of all self-styled "scientists" today in the West is to earn grant money by trying to scare the populace with gibberish, drivel and absolute nonsense. The primary goal is the politically motivated intimidation of the electorate to vote for white knights fighting imaginary hobgoblins. They're not high minded men in togas with turbans on. They are cheap, weak, facile men of lousy character who would "research" anything to live in a nice house and be able to shop at Cracker Barrel for their cheese. They are rotten excuses for men and it is to be expected their "science" would be the fruit yielded by their rotten tree.
The impact of funding will always exist. Some authority will always control distribution of resources. In general, he who pays the piper calls the tune. I suppose in theory "merit" could be the standard, but in the real world, resources will always be allocated at least in part based upon whether the research would help or harm existing business interests, who the researchers are. All else equal, the funding will go to someone's daughter-in-law, or nephew, or the guy they knew in the fraternity back at Yale, or whether that scientist attends the same synagogue as you do, or is he of a faith you disapprove of? Objective measures of value are way down the list.
Incidentally, skull shape was used in the 19th century to try to prove (falsely and unscientifically) that whites had larger brains than blacks and were therefore naturally more intelligent. This study is the worst type of disgusting pseudo-science.
Oh, there are some people with big heads but they are not always intelligent and it is tough to measure. They are often found doing scientific studies...
"Not always" but more likely is the way women reason a thing to be false. Males don't practice science that way. Just because you found an exception doesn't mean you invalidated the rule. Fact is - anybody observant has noticed people with larger heads tend to be smarter. Sometimes you might see a microcephalic whose head is filled with water. Just because their IQ score is lower doesn't mean the rule is invalidated. To practice honest science you need nerve, not intellectual acumen. All scientists should be required the first day of college to get punched in the face and knocked down. The research indicates this can cause your amygdala to get bigger even if currently underdeveloped. You need nerve to draw conclusions. Safe space soyboys can never practice science, they don't have the backbone for it. Every conclusion that makes them nervous is deemed false. There is strong correlation between skull diameter and IQ and there is also a strong correlation between size and folds in the cerebrum. A person with a larger skull diameter and many folds in the surface of the cerebellum can be predicted accurately to have above or far above average IQ. When it's strongly predictive, it's called science. It can be used in application.
Except the brains of whites do tend to be larger and in the most important regions as well than blacks. There was nothing wrong with the data last century that has changed. All that changed was political correctness decided that certain conclusions cannot be reached and are outlawed. Asians tend to have larger brains as do Jewish people and sometime they might permit that in print but never whites, so even the data is cherrypicked for acceptance and other data sets are discarded. It's klownworld junk science.
Just because earlier "science" turns out to be false doesn't necessarily make it worthless. Wasn't it Voltaire who said (approximately) that Astronomy was the wise daughter of a mad mother (Astrology)? You're absolutely right about political considerations deciding what investigation or conclusion is allowed or forbidden. In fact, this astronomy example gives many examples of that. Galileo vs. church is probably the most famous. However, Kepler gives an even better example. Here is the man who tried to make sense of Tycho Brahe’s excellent observations of planetary motions. Problem: Kepler was schooled in the ancient Greek teaching that the planets must move in perfect circles. Such ancient wisdom was endorsed (and enforced!) by the Church. To argue otherwise risked severe consequences. It took years for Kepler to finally discard the dogma that the orbits must be circular; finally making the breakthrough that they are elliptical.
Real "scientists" are genetic anomalies, archaic leftovers with Neanderthal brains pursuing personal enthusiasms. The establishment concedes these eccentrics are responsible for all major scientific breakthroughs of any consequence. The other 99.999999% of people claiming to be "scientists" are opportunists whose eyes don't quite align and they smell funny even after bathing. It's a job for people who can't exactly get a real profession in anything. Most of them couldn't mop floors and take the garbage out. As Nietzsche described them, a swollen caricature of a thinker.
The real criteria for entering into the science profession is the ability to think abstractly. Eccentrics tend to think very abstractly in their interpretation of reality. Too abstractly and they end up at the Funny Farm. However, it takes plenty of more ordinary, less talented scientists to take the works of Newton, Faraday, Einstein, Pauli, etc. and apply it all to the real world. I find it difficult to believe that scientific ability is a Neanderthal trait since it was Cro-Magnon that really started developing technology. It's also hard to see someone like Einstein surviving in the tundra hunting mammoths, unless he was the tribe's crazy shaman. Although I appreciate Nietzsche, he was also a bit of a "swollen caricature of a thinker".
I appreciate your input from 1970's public television and hope you are adjusting to your new life in the far flung future of 2023 A.D. and begun to realize all that crap is the worst junk science for morons imaginable. After you woke up like Rip Van Winkle, it must be quite a shock to discover everything you think you knew about the world is completely wrong.
Also expected is the usual ugly slur cliched just-so-story about high IQ people "all being crazy." A convenient political viewpoint when all high IQ people tend to draw conclusions absolutely forbidden to even THINK about, much less say out loud.
All genes connected with abstract reasoning are in the D1-D40 cluster. None ever found in association with Cro-Magnons. Intelligence is not indigenous to Homo Sapiens. It was imported from gang rape. For example, I concluded the vaccine was a depopulation genocide tool. Cuz I'm so "crazy."
So that's what the black death actually was. LOL
lmao
The Rednerf report sounds like something out of Monty Python.
Indeed...or maybe the blacks lived in Fawlty Towers....
Contender for post of the year!
lolololololol
Don't give them ideas.
Lol....
(peers over shoulder to see dept chair coming)
WHOOPS I MEANT, That's Not Funny!!!
LMAO ...
There is _so much_ to comment on in here
1) Literally a third of all people died of the black plague. Why are we arguing over who died harder? When _I_ was in college, one of the woke talking points was that "playing oppression olympics is immoral; we shouldn't be arguing over who has it worse when we could be working on making it better". Weird to see them do a 180 on this as soon as it is convenient
2) The same people who want to dig up 500 year old skeletons and assign race to them, insist that there are no meaningful differences between races, to the point that they will insist on (eg) not factoring physiological differences between races into medical decisions. But those same differences that don't exist, can be used to identify the race of a skeleton? Get real
3) Why does this study even exist? What productive purpose could it possibly serve? Who paid for this?
4) If the biggest problem in your life is that "Your presence was not formally recorded" then you have nothing to complain about. Actual people actually alive today are actually dying of actual diseases, and they care more about the fact that people who died in the past weren't written down in a book properly? Jesus
5) Do they not realize that the overwhelming majority of _white_ people were de-facto slaves back then (eg serfdom)? Or do they just not care?
6) They are unironically identifying the race of skeletons using _phrenology_, which is typically considered to be the stand-in example for pseudoscience. It's also one of the 'pseudosciences' that most 'right wing racists' online believe is real. Horseshoe theory!
7) "May". "Might". "Could have". This is what counts for _science_ these days?
years ago an expert got a huge grant to learn a tiger to walk on a threadmill. Studies are mostly ridiculous and useless. The useful studies are not done.
The purpose of the study was probably to see how long it would take for the tiger to get tired, hungry, and angry enough to attack the researcher.
They should repeat it with Fauci, after removing his vocal chords so he doesn't upset the observers with his screams*.
*Referencing the beagles he murdered, for those who aren't aware.
As much of his science was diverted to the Far East, those Beagles probably ended up in a stir fry. Everything has a use.
How many researchers were lost to bring the Tiger Treadmill study to completion?
Who knows? It was just grad students.
Who cares, it was just grad students. (Fixed it for you. You are welcome.)
LOL
grants are always great for learning to do worthwhile things
Training tigers or weaving baskets, or assistance in obtaining a PHD in Drama
Well you can't very well have untrained tigers walking on treadmills. They go too fast and turn to butter.
IKR? I have actually seen that happen in a book, so no study for that is necessary
I haven't seen your colloquialism used in print for a long time.
As I recall, phrenology had to do with personality characteristics. Skull shapes (and other bones) do have a legitimate place in identifying age, sex, and race, but I don't think it's definitive.*
* disclaimer: everything I know about forensic anthropology I learned from the TV show Bones.
At this risk of spouting platitudes, I think it is obviously correct that
1) Phrenology can be predictive of personality characteristics; and also
2) You can't conclude anything with confidence from phrenology.
A billion different factors go into what makes each person who they are. Looking at the shape of a skull and concluding someone has a personality trait is absurd.
But at the same time, like, your skull holds your brain. Your brain is responsible for your personality. To say that the shape of your skull has absolutely zero relationship to your personality is essentially the same as denying that your brain is what does the thinking.
I don't personally have any knowledge of this subject, nor do I really care, beyond that I think it's plausible that bigger brains relative to body size = more intelligent, and obviously your skull size constrains your brain size.
----
This evokes another idea I've had for a long time that doesn't have a name. It's similar to the Fallacy Of Divison (the fallacy that "fact is true about group" => "fact is true about individual members of group") but a touch different. Take for example, genetics and IQ. (CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT): it is simply a fact of psychiatry that different groups of people have different IQ distributions. Some groups have higher average IQs than others.
But people will all the time try to use this to argue about specific individual people and that's not correct. It's also silly. Let's say the Blarthians have an average IQ of 89 and the Thwormps have an average IQ of 102. Given no other information, if you were considering a hypothetical average Blarthian you should assume that they're dumb.
But if you're talking to a specific Blarthian, the information about their average IQ is irrelevant, because you can just check his IQ specifically. He might be smarter than you! And if he is, it'll be obvious! Taking an obviously smart person and saying "well, your group on average is dumb so you're also dumb" is itself the dumb thing.
I don't have a pithy name for this but essentially the fallacy is when people give higher weight to general data than to specific data
My position on phrenology is similar. It is likely a weak statistical signal. It's better than nothing, but we have better tools and when you use those better tools you can essentially ignore the weaker ones
If you have no frontal lobes, you'll be a psychopath. You could be a crude psychopath or a brilliantly disguised cunning psychopath. You'll be a psychopath without frontal lobes. There's no theory about it. If I can see the size of your frontal lobes on a scan of your brain, I can tell you what the exact likelihood is you will be a criminal. In fact, I can tell you the likelihood your descendants will be criminals. No frontal lobes means no impulse control and no empathy for others, which is why the frontal lobes have been called the seat of civilization. Blacks, Jews, Women and Homosexuals have smaller or undeveloped frontal lobes on average compared with non-blacks, non-jews, non-women and non-homosexuals. God chose to do it that way and he chose to give other people the brains to know the difference. People's real beef is with God Almighty, but they project onto the closest thing that is tangible, which is White Men who have on average larger frontal lobes than any other race of men on earth. Some White men have smaller frontal lobes than any of the averages for any other group. We can usually tell instantly there is something seriously wrong with that person. If the exact same size frontal lobes are present in another person of different demographics, we blame a lack of college scholarships on that person's behavior. When Whites are born dirt poor and have zero incidence of crime we credit society, when blacks are born dirt poor we justify all their actions as warranted because they are poor in spite of the fact they would have won Nobel prizes had they only been born middle class.
" People's real beef is with God Almighty"
This right here is what explains so very much in this world; from feminism to racial grievances, etc.
Excellent comment overall.
The functioning of the frontal lobe is often impaired after a cardiac arrest which may result in the victim having difficulty controlling their reactions./urge to react.
Oh yeah?
Well I have had a cardiac arrest and I challenge you come and stand in front of me and say that!
I'm not arguing with you, but can you tell the size of the frontal lobes from the skull? We're talking skulls here.
I forgive you because everything you have ever been told is a lie.
"Everything" is rather comprehensive. Perhaps more like "an awful lot" ;)
It's called a quantification fallacy. Assuming that which holds true for the group must hold true for the individual units of the group.
I'm making a little bit more of a nuanced point.
I'm saying that, _in the absence of more information_, _assuming_ that which holds true for a group is _generally_ true of an individual is a reasonable starting point. But as soon as you have more information, it's not reasonable anymore
True.
If you only know about rattle-snakes, it is best to assume all snakes are venomous.
That's the problem with (logical) fallacies as the one Kertch mentioned: they apply to logic first, real-life situations second.
Because in logic we get to do-over if we mess up. In real-life, that snake that isn't a rattle-snake might be a Gabon viper.
To make it concrete:
I think it's probably reasonable to say something like "people with skull shape X _generally_ have personality trait Y". But if you have a specific person in front of you with skull shape X, you don't need to say "oh he's probably a Y". You can just talk to him and ask him what he's like!
As to your point 1:
Complaining about things that cannot be changed because it's been centuries is safe. Trying to come up with things that could work is hard.
It's that easy, sadly.
De Facto? Ask the white women pulling 500+ man trains of blacks and arabs each day in the Barbados slave trade for centuries if they were de facto. The majority of all slaves throughout history were white men - period, not "de facto" - which explains why they are the most rabid abolitionists of them all. Find me the black or arab abolitionist movements in history - they don't exist, because they have no feeling for others or compassion and never will.
Whatever you do, don't go google who owned all the slave ships
At least one slave in ten was owned by a white sharecropper in the Deep South. The other nine were owned by another demographic or two. Unfortunately whites were not permitted to participate in the actual slave trade at all, it was a cartel which membership in was dictated by religion. No whites were tolerated in the slave trade at all and the monopoly was maintained with lethal force. This same demographic that owned and operated the entire slave trade for a thousand years paid for the establishment of the NAACP and has insisted that we are right to hate whites for the slave trade they invented ... which they didn't and never happened. Imagine the moxie.
I would've said chutzpah but that might be a bit on the nose
That was more a historical quirk of the slave trade first taking off in Portugal and Portuguese territories in West Africa where "conversos" were deeply suspected by society and barred from working in most "respectable" trades, pushing them towards speculative and high risk sectors of the economy.
Heard it all before. Only the Devil himself would hatch apologetics for the kind of barbarism and raw inhuman murderous behaviors seen in such people. It's always "We had no choice but to form international cartels and monopolies over the most profitable criminal professions."
I'll just bet you did. God condemns you and will judge you for the horrors committed in the slave trade by the men who controlled it worldwide. Hint : It wasn't whites.
This is totally false, there were thousands of "white people" and Christians involved in the slave trade, from British wildcat slavers who would sneak into Portuguese territory to Americans from Rhode Island, Boston, and New York who organized and funded slave ships bound for the colonies.
God is not the author of confusion. Thanks for trying to muddy the waters.
The white men you are talking about at the destinations were like Renfield is to Dracula. They did what they were told and got paid for it. Like most of politics nowadays.
The same answer when you find out how many Jewish Czars under Bolshevism. Out of hundreds of Jews, they point out two or three possible gentiles and declare that Communism was not a Jewish creation funded, staffed and imposed on Russia by Jews.
Any honest account of history around Jewish people will end with them denying everything and accepting guilt for nothing. Jews then as now were particularly brutal, bloodthirsty and cruel to slaves, many of them purchased for nothing but sex. They never confess to anything, always concluding that somehow white gentiles did these things. Those are the same people who now have the highest rate of suicide and the worst rates of poverty but still have the lowest rates of crime. Jews pin everything in history on them even as they beg for money, resources and fight to get inside their nations.
The first recorded historical instance in Egypt of Jews was not as slaves, it was their purchase of slaves to sell elsewhere. This was published first in Israel but Jews freaked out when it leaked to the rest of the world. In Israel, Jews write freely of their monstrous deeds but panic when said boasting of their brutality reaches other media.
And then the Soviets persecuted thousands of Jews, and were as pogrom-happy as any nominally Christian Eastern European nation. I think you're seeing a conspiracy where there are actually hundreds of different cultural and historical reasons why certain people end up concentrated in particular roles or ideological communities.
But it sounds like you actually believe that "the Jews" have been at the center of most human misery for the past two thousand years, so I don't know how much actual historical information will change your mind.
"Ask the white women pulling 500+ man trains of blacks and arabs each day.. " Boy you must love fiction, and I doubt that any woman pulling that many daily would last for a single century never mind centuries.
"The majority of all slaves throughout history were white men - period" that is ridiculous nonsense even if you class "Serfdom" as slavery. The middle east (Arabs) and Africa have had slaves in their thousands for at least 20,000 years and continue to do so to this day.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-still-have-slavery
"Slavery is a system in which principles of property law are applied to people, enabling individuals to own, buy, and sell other individuals—designated "slaves"—as a form of property. Slaves are unable to withdraw from this arrangement and are typically forced to work for little to no pay. "
India - 7,989,000
China - 3,864,000
North Korea - 2,640,000
Nigeria - 1,386,000
Iran - 1,289,000
Indonesia - 1,220,000
Congo (Democratic Republic of) - 1,045,000
Russia - 794,000
Philippines - 784,000
Afghanistan - 749,000
The "White Man" realised that there was a cheaper method of 'owning' people.
“We disapprove of slavery and the cost of the maintenance and upkeep of slaves. We prefer our English model in which we control the issuance of currency, and control of money, it allows us to control labor without the cost of maintaining it.” Lord Baron Rothschild (private owner of the Bank of England. Quote 1849)
Islam on the other hand made slaves equals, whilst still being property.
"Before his time, women were not allowed to inherit any share of a father’s or husband’s property, but he changed the laws, and inculcated justice and kindness toward widows and orphans. His example established the idea that no believer in the faith of Islam ought to hold a fellow believer in slavery. In the sale of captives, he prohibited the practice of separating mothers from their children. He ordained that masters and slaves should have the same food and clothing; and he rendered emancipation easy." (Child 1855, vol. 3, 376; see also Einboden 2014, 97)
So basically you show all the characteristics of an ignorant bigot.
Flying in a million directions off-topic and scrambling to implicate anyone and everyone. The original point now forgotten.
Jewish mindbenders have now officially appeared in response to my original point to rewrite history as a tale of Jewish suffering. That's their monopoly protected by force as well.
5) Do they not realize that the overwhelming majority of _white_ people were de-facto slaves back then (eg serfdom)? Or do they just not care?
Right now, at this very moment, people in Asia are de-facto slaves in factories that manufacture products in mostly toxic conditions to satisfy the Western consumer.
The self-righteousness and hypocrisy is astounding.
Slavery conversations always bother me because they seem curiously gerrymandered to declare that every inconvenient instance "doesn't count"
I remember a long time ago I read a brief essay on the idea that taxation is not theft, but rather slavery. It went something like this:
Do you agree that someone else forcing you to work for their benefit is slavery?
Do you agree that someone else paying you to work, and then taking all of the money, is slavery?
Do you agree that someone else paying you to work, and then at a later time, a third person takes your money, is slavery?
And so on. And I said, well obviously it's a spectrum but yes that just sounds like slavery with extra steps.
Using that logic, I see myself as a literal slave, right now. I'm a highly paid white collar professional in the US. But I am not American, and men with guns will make me leave if I lose this job. Meanwhile, when you factor in across all sources (don't forget to count sales and property taxes!), I pay almost half of my income in tax every year.
It is literally true that in my life, half of my productive earnings get taken away by force, and also that I am forced to work. I don't have the option of not working. I don't have the option of not having my money taken from me. Just because nobody's tying me to a post and whipping me doesn't mean I'm not a slave.
But nobody cares about my status
And to complicate it further, "slavery" didn't mean the same thing in all places or during all eras.
Sadly, it is largely due to american cultural imperialism (sorry, couldn't resist dusting off an old Classic Marxist slogan) - american cultural influence and media dominance that "slavery " now is virtually synonymous with the very brief and limited period during which africans were used as labour.
The still ongoing arab slave trade is rarely mentioned, despite being magnitudes greater than the british one. To say nothing about the Songhai Empire or the many. many african slave-lords conquering and selling neighbouring tribes and bothersome kinsmen into slavery.
And so on. Truly, ignorance is strength, if we judge by how powerful the meme of "slavery" has become.
During the part of history where slavery was present in the west, would you like to guess how many white people were enslaved?
About a million.
In fact, America fought a war to stop _that_ slavery, too. The Barbary wars.
Morocco and all those North African pirate states would just raid European villages on the Mediterranean, kidnapping random whites and selling them into slavery in North Africa. They did this for _hundreds_ of years.
But you see, they castrated their slaves, so they couldn't have any children who got angry and rose up against them. So now nobody remembers this is a thing.
This was actually one of the first major political controversies in the US. Around the year 1800, almost 20% of the US federal budget went to paying off Morocco to stop their pirates from kidnapping _americans_. But then this turned into a domestic policy issue: Americans who had just fought a war to stop from paying taxes to the British ended up paying significantly more taxes to the Moroccans, and demanded the government do something.
So we did. We sailed some battleships over to Morocco, shelled the shit out of them, blew up half their capital, and a few days later they stopped kidnapping whites and selling them into slavery.
Just want to say thanks for your insightful and interesting comments in this topic, I learned a few things 🙏
I appreciate that.
I used to blog, years ago. Then a bunch of stuff happened both in my life and online, and I withdrew. Writing mostly feels pointless now, like back in the day I would really think on these subjects and try to develop intelligent opinions and share and discuss them. But now it's like, well, the example I use, there's no point in me learning anything whatsoever about, say, what is the optimal and socially just taxation policy, because at the end of the day the taxation policy we actually have is going to be a combination of political power tripping and carve-outs for rich people, and intelligent thought doesn't factor into it at all. So what's the point of discussing it?
But I'm glad that some of you here find value in my words
castrating you say!
Your information seems quite prescient for our future.
Who are the ones that will win this one? perhaps the only ones with impaired frontal lobes -- in comparison to the ones with zippity doo dah for brains
It's the curse of the Neanderthal. The same genes that gave him superb levels of high trust and empathy for his in-group can be used against him in all kinds of situations. They are the secret of building civilizations as successful as ours and at the same time make us very vulnerable to crybabies complaining they are mistreated and why don't we do something about it? Have we no heart? I know, my ex-wife was one of them. We need to harden our hearts against vile, cruel, cunning people who feel nothing for us but hatred.
The earliest animal welfare leagues appeared in the 1600s in the poorest white communities. Whites insisted animals not be beaten, whipped or starved 400 years ago and our sensitivity to cruelty in general extends to the entire animal kingdom. Recognize this too is probably a legacy of our Neanderthal genes. The other races just don't feel these things at all.
Not prescient, I'm just reiterating what I read on wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars
This is why I like Substack. remember reading a while ago about eastern Europeans being captured for slavery in the Middle East, but I just read up on the Barbary slave trade, thanks to you. And while my reading has been brief so far, it appears that this is the reason the French took Algeria? That is particularly interesting.
"But I am not American, and men with guns will make me leave if I lose this job."
Learn Spanish, and they won't.
Living in Texas, as a white (non-)immigrant, I certainly have very mixed feelings about border stuff.
But honestly, the Mexican people in Austin are way cooler than most of the white people. The white people are all ridiculous obnoxious liberals who hate me without even meeting me. Most of the Mexican people are pretty cool, down to earth, based af, just trying to raise families and have a good time.
Also, I was taking a bit of poetic license. Nobody's going to forcibly remove me if I overstay a visa. But what will happen is that somewhere in a government computer, a flag will get set. And then, the next time I try to get a job, and they file the I-9 to prove I'm allowed to work there, the government will say "hey wait a second, he's not allowed to work here. So then why is he trying to work here? That's a felony" and _then_ I get fucked.
Mexican people don't have this constraint but it's not just because they're Mexicans. It's because there's a gigantic web of nonprofits and government entities facilitating that. There's no such web for me. Mexican people can work construction under the table for their (legal US citizen) uncle or whatever. I don't have that option
"There's no such web for me."
OK, so you also have to learn to identify as Santo Domingan.
No offense here, but you miss the point. I doubt very much if any Englishman at the time or resident of what we now call the UK - had ever heard of a black person, never alone, ever seen one.
Same BS as watching BBC shows where they have 30% black characters back in the 18 and 19 century .... or some reporter telling us that the first curry house was set up on the Isle of Wight back before Christ was allegedly born .. ALL UTTER SH1T3.
I grew up in Northampton 1950-1956 and only once saw a black man. A US soldier in uniform.
In 1948 they imported people from Jamaica to do the low paid jobs. The Windrush carried less than 500 people and they all stayed in London.
Interestingly, in the 1820s there were approximately 100,000 Black people/servants/slaves in England. Virtually none of them went back to Africa as they were highly regarded as (strong) workers and were considered very good marriage material by working class women. It is entirely possible that several million Englishmen (including myself) have some degree of African blood (1-2%) but no outward characteristics.
However I do find the Curry house on the Isle of Wight believable, they are everywhere and always have been. (except Northampton in the 1950s)
Good, amusing whilst accurate comment, cheers. Went to school in the 70's and 80's around the now Greater Manchester area - throughout my whole schooldays knew of only 2 black kids; yes seriously.
I am sure we have many diverse types of DNA / blood in us from the different races (or whatever they are called nowadays)... unfortunately though (if the stories are true), due to the wife's comments, I can be certain that I have no black heritage !!!. LOL
Most medieval lives went unrecorded. These “researchers” are twits. My dog and cats could run a better research project than this.
And finding a black person’s skeleton in a cemetery in those days was pure luck, finding more than one would have required divine intervention.
I would best answer your question (3). I've been hugely influenced by Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil," the first section about the "prejudices of philosophers." If one accepts his opinions, it is basic instincts, unconscious drives, that primarily drive men, even in claimed deliberative, rational thought. "Studies" such as this one are done for some combination of obedience to the dictum "publish or perish" but with a large serving of virtue signaling to one's peers. So right there are two primary instincts attempting to be satisfied: [Academic] survival and to become (or remain) acceptable within one's peer group (tribe). There are perhaps others: to expand one’s power (to become more influential), to weaken or attack perceived enemies (the out group) even in the abstract e.g. as “structural racism.”
My thoughts mainly went to point number three, as soon as the disbelief that this was real wore off.
What the study neglects however is how many TRANSGENDERED black women were singled out by the plague for death. The failure of the workers to consider this is proof of their hate.
And what about the transracial and trans-species persons inhabiting bodies coded as female?
YEAH, and that too!
i knew i could count on you. i'd read the referenced piece yesterday and i really struggled, non-academic though i am, with the idea that a medieval plague cemetery in london was overloaded with black skeletons, and i did not see anything on dna evidence for ethnic determination.
so these guys have reverted to skull shapes? well, quelle surprise. dna evidence would've blown up in their hands.
honestly, the silliness. and what a strange sort of desperation too.
the high rates of "black" skeletons is in itself a huge red flag that their craniometric method is pure nonsense, but the tactic seems to be to leverage all signs of failure as evidence of diversity.
You'd think that legitimate scientists would say something against this abuse, but so far ... crickets.
The overwhelming majority of 'legitimate' scientists in the western world get their funding through government grants. It's dangerous to publicly contradict your bosses if you like getting paid
This is why it is a moral imperative to oppose government funding of science, it's essentially the modern equivalent of separation of church and state
I spent a decade in Academia, but left in 2000 for those reasons among others. I just can't believe that standards have dropped THAT far in just 20 years. Stunning!
This is a hard and nuanced argument to make with most people, because (apologies for being smug) most people lack the cognitive capacity to understand complex ideas. They thing "science good. We should have more good. Money buys things. Money for science. Buy more science. Have more good".
But in reality, any money you didn't earn by yourself has strings attached. As soon as the government (or any giving entity for that matter) gives you money, the government gets to control you.
In many contexts this is not the worst thing in the world. The government gives money to eg traffic infrastructure, the government controls traffic infrastructure. Most of us are ok with this because at the end of the day, someone has to keep the traffic lights running and there's not really all that much that a bad actor can do with them.
But science is special because science only works with free inquiry. As soon as someone tells you what you can and can't say, what you can and can't read, what you can and can't research, what you can and can't publish, etc., it is no longer possible, not even in principle, to do real science. Because that control proscribes what you're allowed to investigate but you don't know the boundaries of what you're investigating. So once that control exists, and you hit a boundary, you have no way, not even in principle, to know if that's a boundary from the universe, or if that's a boundary from the controlling entity.
To bring it back to the original topic of this place, that's the biggest problem with the public communication regarding covid19 vaccines. They might be safe and effective. They might be useless and dangerous. The only way we can figure it out is by doing science. But as soon as the government told doctors that they were allowed to conclude "safe and effective" but they'd lose their license if they concluded otherwise, it became _literally impossible_ to conclude _either way_. Even if they literally are safe and effective, once you do this, you can't prove it, because you can never say for sure if that's a real result or just the mandatory one
That's why, and this sounds like I'm trolling but I actually believe this sincerely, that's why it's a _moral imperative_ for me personally to never take the covid vaccine. I'm the control group. The existence of people like me are the only way it is possible to prove that the vaccines are _good_, nevermind proving that they're bad
I would add that another fault of modern political thought is a form of magical thinking (I don't know the "official" term) known by many names. I offer a non-controversial example: In the Progressive mind, if one gives a tool to a worker, this will magically make the worker competent. Now, to be sure, tools and other resources are needed for many tasks. Of course, the error the Progressive makes is that he implicitly invests an inanimate object with magical powers, assuming that it will transform any human being into a skilled worker. By this logic, I should be able to purchase a few textbooks about nuclear physics and in short order become the equal of an Einstein, a Fermi or an Oppenheimer. Or at least, a technician able to work in their lab.
So well said. Sad but true in every regard. The "money good, but science good" - I actually KNOW people who would say that, and to play it in my head, narrated in their voices lolol Thanks for the laughs!
All very true, especially if you are a member of the public. However, as a scientist, you are assumed to be trained in the Scientific Method, which includes statistics and Design of Experiments, along with the laws and current theories applicable to your field of study. When you hit one of those boundaries, you KNOW whether it's a natural limitation, a theoretical incongruity, or a politically mandated limitation. That's why scientific ethics demands an obligation to truth, and of course, as you suggest, science is useless otherwise..
Since older forms of academia are seen as [insert woke adjectives, verbs, nouns here], it is natural for the current crop of professors and students to strive as hard as they can towards the other end of the imagined see-saw of ideas.
Odds are, standards have fallen so much the actual decline is unrecognisable to you because all your points of reference are so far removed from today's situation.
Almost makes me consider handing back my Ph.D., but I'll keep it just to piss them off.
Your "imagined see-saw" is also known as the false dichotomy fallacy. Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil) identifies this as the "antithesis of values," one of several of what he calls the prejudices of philosophers. Such assertions are similar, if not identical, in avowing that only two choices (either-or) can exist, or that any concept must have a single, opposing value. Of course that's true in some cases. But isn't it more likely that a range of alternatives exist?
It's not science it's grants 4 scares.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
― H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women
This is the root of the tree of evil. Everybody else hacks at the branches in a useless display of opposition.
The basic motivation of all self-styled "scientists" today in the West is to earn grant money by trying to scare the populace with gibberish, drivel and absolute nonsense. The primary goal is the politically motivated intimidation of the electorate to vote for white knights fighting imaginary hobgoblins. They're not high minded men in togas with turbans on. They are cheap, weak, facile men of lousy character who would "research" anything to live in a nice house and be able to shop at Cracker Barrel for their cheese. They are rotten excuses for men and it is to be expected their "science" would be the fruit yielded by their rotten tree.
The impact of funding will always exist. Some authority will always control distribution of resources. In general, he who pays the piper calls the tune. I suppose in theory "merit" could be the standard, but in the real world, resources will always be allocated at least in part based upon whether the research would help or harm existing business interests, who the researchers are. All else equal, the funding will go to someone's daughter-in-law, or nephew, or the guy they knew in the fraternity back at Yale, or whether that scientist attends the same synagogue as you do, or is he of a faith you disapprove of? Objective measures of value are way down the list.
Because they will be accused of racism.
Only emeriti would have the balls to do so. All others risk career ending animus.
Yes, I've even heard of tenured faculty being dismissed lately over incidents of "racism".
One guy used "niggardly" in a sentence and got terminated.
Incidentally, skull shape was used in the 19th century to try to prove (falsely and unscientifically) that whites had larger brains than blacks and were therefore naturally more intelligent. This study is the worst type of disgusting pseudo-science.
Oh, there are some people with big heads but they are not always intelligent and it is tough to measure. They are often found doing scientific studies...
"Not always" but more likely is the way women reason a thing to be false. Males don't practice science that way. Just because you found an exception doesn't mean you invalidated the rule. Fact is - anybody observant has noticed people with larger heads tend to be smarter. Sometimes you might see a microcephalic whose head is filled with water. Just because their IQ score is lower doesn't mean the rule is invalidated. To practice honest science you need nerve, not intellectual acumen. All scientists should be required the first day of college to get punched in the face and knocked down. The research indicates this can cause your amygdala to get bigger even if currently underdeveloped. You need nerve to draw conclusions. Safe space soyboys can never practice science, they don't have the backbone for it. Every conclusion that makes them nervous is deemed false. There is strong correlation between skull diameter and IQ and there is also a strong correlation between size and folds in the cerebrum. A person with a larger skull diameter and many folds in the surface of the cerebellum can be predicted accurately to have above or far above average IQ. When it's strongly predictive, it's called science. It can be used in application.
By "big heads" I meant their egos.
Most people mean diameter nowadays. They proclaim everything to be the opposite of what the evidence says and they call it science.
Except the brains of whites do tend to be larger and in the most important regions as well than blacks. There was nothing wrong with the data last century that has changed. All that changed was political correctness decided that certain conclusions cannot be reached and are outlawed. Asians tend to have larger brains as do Jewish people and sometime they might permit that in print but never whites, so even the data is cherrypicked for acceptance and other data sets are discarded. It's klownworld junk science.
Just because earlier "science" turns out to be false doesn't necessarily make it worthless. Wasn't it Voltaire who said (approximately) that Astronomy was the wise daughter of a mad mother (Astrology)? You're absolutely right about political considerations deciding what investigation or conclusion is allowed or forbidden. In fact, this astronomy example gives many examples of that. Galileo vs. church is probably the most famous. However, Kepler gives an even better example. Here is the man who tried to make sense of Tycho Brahe’s excellent observations of planetary motions. Problem: Kepler was schooled in the ancient Greek teaching that the planets must move in perfect circles. Such ancient wisdom was endorsed (and enforced!) by the Church. To argue otherwise risked severe consequences. It took years for Kepler to finally discard the dogma that the orbits must be circular; finally making the breakthrough that they are elliptical.
Real "scientists" are genetic anomalies, archaic leftovers with Neanderthal brains pursuing personal enthusiasms. The establishment concedes these eccentrics are responsible for all major scientific breakthroughs of any consequence. The other 99.999999% of people claiming to be "scientists" are opportunists whose eyes don't quite align and they smell funny even after bathing. It's a job for people who can't exactly get a real profession in anything. Most of them couldn't mop floors and take the garbage out. As Nietzsche described them, a swollen caricature of a thinker.
The real criteria for entering into the science profession is the ability to think abstractly. Eccentrics tend to think very abstractly in their interpretation of reality. Too abstractly and they end up at the Funny Farm. However, it takes plenty of more ordinary, less talented scientists to take the works of Newton, Faraday, Einstein, Pauli, etc. and apply it all to the real world. I find it difficult to believe that scientific ability is a Neanderthal trait since it was Cro-Magnon that really started developing technology. It's also hard to see someone like Einstein surviving in the tundra hunting mammoths, unless he was the tribe's crazy shaman. Although I appreciate Nietzsche, he was also a bit of a "swollen caricature of a thinker".
I appreciate your input from 1970's public television and hope you are adjusting to your new life in the far flung future of 2023 A.D. and begun to realize all that crap is the worst junk science for morons imaginable. After you woke up like Rip Van Winkle, it must be quite a shock to discover everything you think you knew about the world is completely wrong.
Also expected is the usual ugly slur cliched just-so-story about high IQ people "all being crazy." A convenient political viewpoint when all high IQ people tend to draw conclusions absolutely forbidden to even THINK about, much less say out loud.
All genes connected with abstract reasoning are in the D1-D40 cluster. None ever found in association with Cro-Magnons. Intelligence is not indigenous to Homo Sapiens. It was imported from gang rape. For example, I concluded the vaccine was a depopulation genocide tool. Cuz I'm so "crazy."
https://www.nature.com/articles/453562a
(Hint : These genes have almost vanished now. You won't survive their absence, I can assure you.)
yes, i almost used the word "phrenology" in my comment but it wasn't quite the right fit. spirit was there fer shure though.
all of this is so sad for so many reasons.
What does stamp collecting have to do with anything?