Crowstep
1hr ago
Patent laws are national, not international.
My understanding is that once a variant has been donated to say, Bangladesh, it cannot be 'undonated' unless Bangladesh's government decides to issue a patent there.
Crowstep
18hr ago
That is precisely why so many former Conservative voters are voting Reform. Conservatism just meant Blairism with right-wing rhetoric.
Labour will win, of course. My hope is that the Tories will see how many of their voters went to reform and will choose an actual conservative as their leader.
As for what Labour will do, Keir Starmer has been very careful to not reveal anything of what he actually believes. He'll mock the government for tripling immigration after promising to reduce it, but he won't say that reducing it is actually a good thing to do. He'll criticise the government for being unpatriotic, and then give a job to a woman who is most well known for mocking the national flag.
My hope is that he's a Lee Kwan Yew-style pragmatist. Hell, I'd settle for rainbow flags on every town hall if he makes it possible to actually build houses.
Crowstep
18hr ago
My expectation is that the illegal immigration situation will continue to be as dysfunctional as it has been under the Conservatives. I think Labour's plan was to swap our boat people for France's boat people, though it isn't clear what the purpose of this is exactly.
As for legal migration, probably we'll see a more liberal visa regime, followed by public opposition, followed by tightening up, followed by party revolts in favour of looser rules, and so on in a circle. Basically what we've had for the last decade.
It's worth noting that the people's favourites were, in order:
- Croatia (an energetic, rock-adjacent anthem written in broken English)
- Israel (a standard Euro-ballad that was originally called 'October Rain', forced to change by the producers)
- Ukraine (a vaguely ethnic, vaguely religious ballad with light effects very reminiscent of bombs)
- France (a minimalist love song by an established French singer with an impressive voice)
- Switzerland (the jury winner)
The juries came with a similar list, but put Switzerland much higher, and gave very few points to Israel. So either Israel's song was great, and the juries were biased against them, or it was meh and the public were biased in favour of them. Also the juries love a man in a skirt.
Other highlights include:
- Finland - A comedy song by 'Windows95Guy' which involved him running around on stage wearing nothing from the waist down, his skin-tone pouch strategically blocked by scenery a la Austin powers.
- Ireland - Another non-binary (a woman this time) seemingly trying to summon a literal demon.
- UK - A gay guy sings while buff male backing dancers gyrate on eachother. Somehow not the gayest entry this year.
- Audible booing every time the head of the European Broadcasting Union appeared on screen (for letting Israel compete).
- Several coded anti-Israel statements from national representatives (ostensibly talking about peace and love).
- Plus lots of 90s throwbacks, obscure ethnic instruments and young women in Beyonce-esque bodysuits.
Altogether a fairly standard year for Eurovision.
Crowstep
21d ago
If that were true, we would expect traditional societies to be more willing to allow women to suffer and die in place of men, because they have less value.
Except we don't. Every human society treats men as disposable relative to women.
However human psychology shakes out in any particular society, I think 'high status vs low status' is simply an inappropriate measure to use when comparing the stations of men and women. Men and women are not competing ethnic or religious groups, where power and status differentials can be clear, deliberate and explicit. The relationship is more complicated than that.
Crowstep
7d ago
The only two anorexics I ever knew in real life were my grandmother in her final years and a boy I went to school with. The meme when I was growing up was that teenage girls caught anorexia from reading fashion magazines. It jarred so much with my own experience that I always figured there must be more to to disease than 'I wanna be skinny so boys will like me'.
Crowstep
23d ago
can.
Food has been getting cheaper, we're growing more of it on less farmland since the 1990s, and malnutrition is declining rapidly. There's no reason to expect that all of the trends that have been occurring since the industrial revolution will suddenly reverse, especially since global birth rates (gross) peaked in 2016 and global TFR is about to fall below replacement (if it hasn't already).
Crowstep
21d ago
That 12% gap seems pretty large to me (presumably it's mostly driven by motherhood). But OP was talking about working in a particular field, not employment more generally. We should expect college graduates (who are smarter than average) to mostly be gainfully employed. That's different from studying Psychology and actually getting a job as a therapist or whatever.
Crowstep
6d ago
I've seen enough Youtube polyglots to be convinced that you can probably learn, if not an arbitrary number of languages, then certainly a large number without it 'crowding out' anything else. I suspect the same is true for physical skills, like playing instruments (loads of musicians can play multiple) and sports (or sport-like skills such as juggling).
I guess it depends how much time and energy you've got to spare.
Crowstep
21d ago
The Open Society Foundation isn't a 'Jewish' organisation, it was just founded by a Jew. George Soros may love multiculturalism, but that doesn't mean that Jews love it.
'Every mainstream Jewish organisation in Europe' - The fact that you haven't been able to name a single organisation here suggests that you don't actually have any examples.
Barbra Spectre is an individual, not an organisation.
The JIDF is, as far as I can tell, an Israeli nationalist group. I can't see any examples of them promoting multiculturalism outside of Israel.
As far as I can tell, the ADL is the only thing you've listed that is a Jewish organisation and promotes multiculturalism.
Look, there is a world outside America. American Jews may be left wing, but that doesn't make global jewry left wing. One of the most influential French anti-immigrationist is Eric Zemmour, an Algerian Jew. Britain's only Jewish Prime Minister was a proud British imperial nationalist. I could go on. This idea that western countries invited millions of third worlders because the Jews made us do it is a cope. Our own political class did it to us, not the semitic enemy within that you're imagining.
Crowstep
20d ago
The British Jews have been solidly conservative since like, forever. Continental European Jews also tend to be right wing.
I'm pretty sure American Jews vote left wing because the American right has a history of racial discrimination, which Jews pattern match to Nazism.
The (global) Jews aren't opposed to western civilisation. The anglosphere left is opposed to western civilisation, and the American Jews have integrated into that.
We pressured Ukraine into committing suicide.
That's not how it happened. The west originally assumed that Ukraine would be conquered in three days. It was only after the Ukrainians themselves demonstrated their will to fight against Russia (and their success doing so) that NATO et al started arming Ukraine.
America is not the only country in the world with agency.
Crowstep
1mo ago
Many people who would laugh at the idea of the Aztecs believing the conquistadores to be emissaries of the Aztec gods also themselves believe in the literal truth of the Jewish covenant, that Jews are a people Chosen by god and they are a race of god-creators vis-a-vis the ancestry of Jesus Christ.
I wondered how long it would take for this to be about Jews. You never fail to disappoint.
As far as I can tell, you are upset that Rationalists regard high-IQ Jews as superior to Kurt, despite his noble physiognomy and the fact that they are 'short, weak, ugly nerds'. Am I getting that right?
I would worry about this being an uncharitable take, except for the fact that you cannot stop posting about how Jews are bad.
Have I misinterpreted the post? Could you summarise your thesis in a sentence?
Crowstep
20d ago
'Since forever' was hyperbole on my part, but this article suggests that Jews have been conservative for most of the post-war period. While they started off as poor, Eastern European immigrants (and voted left), they moved up the class pyramid and switched to voting right. This report suggests that the preference for Conservative voting was well established by 1995 but I couldn't find any data from earlier.
Plus the Victorian Britains elected the extremely Jewish-sounding Benjamin Disraeli as Conservative Prime Minister in 1874, although he had converted to the Church of England as a child so his Jewishness was ethnic if not religious. The end of (limited) legal discrimination against Jews is usually dated to 1858, when they were allowed to become members of Parliament without taking a Christian oath of office.
Crowstep
1mo ago
When most people say 'work' they mean something like 'provide good living standards for the median person'. Marxists tend not to brag about how communist countries have the biggest armies, although having a huge army is certainly possible when the state (nominally) controls the entire economy and the leadership doesn't have to pay too much attention to the needs and wants of the populace.
Like sure, the USSR worked in the sense that Russia colonised all its neighbours, spent huge amounts on its military, suppressed opposition and built walls to keep its citizens in. It failed at providing good living standards, innovating technologically, creating economic equality (arguably its cardinal goal) or creating a society that wasn't rife with corruption.
Crowstep
1mo ago
Do you have a wife, or children?
If you want to do something good for the world, passing on your successful software engineer genes would be right at the top of the list. If you want something meaningful, having kids will probably be the most meaningful thing you will ever do. If you're worried about living a selfish life, bringing new life into the world is pretty selfless.
Crowstep
2mo ago
'Weak affirmative action' as you describe it, doesn't exist. It can't exist, because, outside of academic studies with fake resumes, there is no such thing as two equally qualified candidates. Equally qualified candidates would have to be literally identical, and real candidates obviously differ in terms of their work experience, academic background and interview quality.
In practice, 'tie-goes-to-the-runner' acts as a fig leaf for more aggressive discrimination. I've seen this first hand. I had to shortlist candidates for an academic programme, giving each one a score. This list then went to the higher-ups, who simply removed the five lowest scoring male candidates, even if they had higher scores than the female candidates. The remainder were given offers. Although the official guidance said preference should be given to the 'minority gender' when deciding between two equally qualified candidates, in practice they just penalised the male candidates.
Crowstep
1mo ago
I would say it's less about Scotland and more specifically about the Scottish National Party. The Holyrood parliament doesn't have to deal with grown up issues, like deficits, foreign policy or immigration. They are guaranteed a constant subsidy from England (or more accurately, London). After the failure of the independence movement, they need to redirect their grandstanding elsewhere or the public will ask what their purpose is.
As for COVID, that was clearly a case of the SNP purposely trying to distinguish Scotland from England. Their model of governing for years has been to create distinctions where none need exist, to be different for difference' sake. For COVID that meant copying the government in Westminster, but being more restrictive on every axis.
This is just a straight up gish-gallop. None of these arguments address the central HBD thesis (individuals and groups differ in personality and intelligence, and these differences are at least partly genetic). Most of them are non-sequitors, some are just straight up lies.
To address just one randomly selected point, 'Africans have greater genetic diversity than the rest of the world'. This is entirely meaningless because genetic diversity does not guarantee phenotypic diversity on any one trait within an ethnic or racial group. For example, all SSAfrican ethnic groups have darker skin than every ethnic group in Europe. Their genetic diversity doesn't provide a range of skin tones matching the breadth that we see in humanity as a whole, so why should we assume that same genetic diversity would provide a range of IQs matching humanity as a whole.
The Ashkenazi Jews obviously have less genetic diversity than the whole of Subsaharan Africa, but that doesn't stop them having the highest IQs in the world.
I guess a question I would put to a HBD-skeptic would be:
Why do IQ scores correlate with brain size, academic achievement, income and criminality? What is the cause of these correlations if not intelligence?
Crowstep
13d ago
For television the sound engineers did amplify applause and mute the boos which also gives a nice discussion about truth and Orwell etc. It will be very interesting what sound from the audience will be broadcast at the final show today.
From what I recall there was no notable booing during Israel's performance, but lots while the head of the EBU was on screen. I'm guessing they assumed there would be booing for the Israeli entry and planned accordingly, but didn't think that the audience would boo the inoffensive bureaucrat who's technically in charge.
Crowstep
4mo ago
The end of the speech is particularly beautiful:
I'm not trying to have grandkids so they can fund Medicare. I want my kids to have kids so they can learn the Christmas morning is actually better as a parent than as a kid. I want my daughters to have sons and my sons to have daughters, and to care intensely what happens to them, and watch as that transforms their whole perspective on the opposite sex. I want them to see all the little imperfections and embarrassing things that they were insecure about as kids in this other person who's just the best and realise that all that was completely okay and not a big deal it didn't make them unloveable. You're supposed to observe your life again in third person.
Crowstep
22d ago
while promoting multiculturalism everywhere else
Do you have any evidence of this? Ideally from countries that aren't America.
Crowstep
1mo ago
I think he was referring to Dor Yeshorim. The organisation's database is used by the traditional Jewish matchmakers to avoid pairing up carriers of diseases like Tay-Sachs.
Crowstep
2mo ago
Median white household income in 2021 was $74,932, median black was $48,297
Which, notably, is around $1,000 higher than the 2021 median household income in the UK, as well as higher than 2/3 of European countries.
I guess it really demonstrates how much these are really zero-sum status concerns. Black Americans are, globally speaking, rich.
Golden rice was developed by a non-profit in collaboration with universities. It doesn't have terminator genes (indeed, no crop with terminator genes has ever been sold, the technology was essentially abandoned in the early 2000s).
It does include patented genes, but patent law is national, not international. Only 12 of the patents are applicable outside of America, and all 12 have been waived by their owners. Any farmer who buys golden rice seeds can replant them forever.
Greenpeace isn't opposed to Golden Rice because they're worried about farmers' welfare. They're opposed to it because of their knee-jerk technophobia.
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