HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
No bio...
User ID: 179
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
I'm sure they are, but your premise was not that they are worse, but rather that they are "awful." That's not the same thing!
All they need to be is worse to raise the question of why people don't move out of them when there are affordable alternatives.
Do you have data re jobs?
These suburbs are within commute distance of major metros. I think it's safe to say there are jobs galore, and I won't believe you if you claim to doubt it.
And, again, if prices are low in those places, that can only be because 1) supply is high; or 2) demand is low. Based on realtor.com listings, I don’t see much evidence of the former, though maybe there is evidence elsewhere. If the latter is true, then those places must be undesirable for some reason.
I agree! That's why I'm asking. But the consistency of this phenomenon across metros seems to demand an explanation beyond some idiosyncrasy of one place.
And yet the Zillow current listings are much higher.
You're right, and that is curious. While I would expect listings to be a bit more valuable than the median home value, simply because nicer ones are more likely to be for sale, the disparity here is too great to be comfortable with that explanation. But while I don't know enough about that particular market to hazard any guesses, I will say that this is one thing that doesn't seem to generalize to other metros' white suburbs. A few more examples:
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Greenfield, Indiana (20 miles east of Indianapolis, 96% white) has a Zillow median value of $244k, there are many homes listed for less than that.
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Indianola, Iowa (20 miles south of Des Moines, 95% white) has a Zillow median value of $272k with many homes listed for less than that.
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Pretty much all the suburbs of Cincinnati are ~95% white, and there are plenty of non-dilapidated homes for <$250k.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
Perhaps only a few inner city neighborhoods are that bad. That is usually the case
Some are certainly worse than others, but I wager the majority are going to be substantially worse than the sort of suburbs I mentioned, on almost any metric that's universally cared about (e.g., crime, income, jobs, stable families, etc.), and casually browsing ACS data on policymap.com will certainly back that up.
If those areas are cheap, there is probably something wrong with them. Perhaps there are few jobs, or poor transportation options to where the jobs are.
It's possible I'm missing something (and it's one of the reasons I'm here asking), but I haven't been able to find it despite a wealth of ACS data to go off of. And given how social ills tend to correlate with each other, I would expect it to be noticeable somewhere.
Perhaps your premise is wrong. According to this, there are 1364 homes for sale in areas of St Louis where the current average asking price is under $250K. Of those, 800 are in St Claire County, IL, which is 59.6% White and 29.7% black. Of the places listed on your map that are not in that realtor list, on realtor.com there are 28 current home listings for High Ridge, 10 in Murphy, 22 in Valley Park, 80 in Oakville but only 20 under 250K.
A few things:
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ACS data on median home values lags present data. The most recently published ACS data is an average of 2016-2021. But the home value increases since then apply across cities, not just to these suburbs. So to the extent these white suburbs have gotten more expensive, so has everywhere else. And even if that wasn't the case (and Zillow's graphs of home values over time indicates it is), it doesn't explain why so few non-whites moved to these cities before the most recent ACS data.
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Your source includes only current listings, which may not be representative and/or have small sample sizes.
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Zillow data is pretty consistent with ACS data.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
Conventional wisdom is that whites and Asians in the US insulate themselves from inner city blacks by pricing them out of homes. But in the process of researching where in the Midwest I want to move to, I've found that most Midwest metros have suburbs/exurbs in the eminently affordable $150-250k median home value range and yet remain 90+ percent white. Can anyone help me understand this?
For example, here's a racial dot map of St. Louis and its southern suburbs/exurbs, with some of the individual cities and their white % and median home value labeled. The same pattern exists for most other Midwest metros I've looked at, too. Certainly most metros have some suburbs that are very expensive. In the St. Louis example, that would be the western suburbs (you can tell because of the red Asian dots). But not all the suburbs are expensive like that.
So, why aren't African Americans moving to these cheap white suburbs to get away from the awful inner city black neighborhoods? It's not like these places are full of "white trash" - poverty rates are low and incomes are high compared to outside of metros. Certainly a good many inner city blacks really can't afford a $100k-150k home, but surely enough can that it'd drive these places well down from 90+ percent white?
And what about immigrants - why aren't there substantial numbers of immigrants who move to these places? High-SES Asians tend to move to richer suburbs because they can afford it, but surely many working class immigrants would appreciate being in a cheap white suburb with easy commuting to the city core?
A related question I have is why smaller-tier cities (say, in the 50k-100k population range) tend to be so much more diverse than metro suburbs. There are only 2 cities in the entire country that are >50k population and >90% white (Ankeny, IA and The Villages, FL), yet 90+ percent white suburbs of metros are common.
As one example among many, why is Columbus, IN (pop. 50k, 45 miles south of Indianapolis) 24% nonwhite despite median home values ($185k) that are higher than many of the 90+ percent white suburbs of Indianapolis (e.g., Franklin, Mooresville, Greenfield)? Certainly some black families moved there generations ago and the current inhabitants want to remain near family. But that can't be the whole explanation, because many of these places are substantially foreign-born (e.g., Columbus IN is 15% foreign-born). Surely a newcomer's job prospects are better in a cheaper commutable suburb of Indianapolis than in a more expensive isolated small city like Columbus.
Demographic data for this post come from the Census's 2019 American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Housing values are from policymap.com, which uses the 2021 ACS 5-year estimate. Racial dot map is from Dave's Redistricting App.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
US citizens are not going to want to do stuff like fruit picking, meat processing, restaurant kitchen work, and landscaping for the kind of money that illegal immigrants do it for.
Other countries without substantial illegal immigrant populations seem to manage just fine. But yes, wages for those jobs would surely go up, and consumer prices along with it.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
I'm not aware of any pre-Roe public polling on abortion, but the earliest polling data came just two years after Roe. Since then, there's been no significant change. So unless public opinion on this important moral question massively changed in two years and held steady since then, I think it's more reasonable to assume that Roe changed nothing about people's public opinion.
By point of comparison, public opinion on interracial marriage gradually changed from before and after anti-miscegenation laws were struck down by the court in 1967 in Loving v Virginia.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
That doesn't explain why Roe v Wade didn't result in a similar widespread change in attitudes towards abortion.
People are correct to dispute the notion that piracy is the same as traditional theft, since copying doesn't deprive the owner of the original. However, one thing I don't think any other reply has discussed thus far, and which I'm interested in hearing takes on, is the idea that pirating deprives the owner of the money you would have paid had you not been able to pirate.
For example, I wouldn't have any qualms about pirating some multi-hundred-dollar piece of software I only need for one little fun project that I wouldn't otherwise purchase the software for. But I do pay the $20 here and there for various pieces of software that I derive great value from, and I know I would do so even if I could pirate them.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
I agree with most of that, broadly speaking. As usual, few people here are as eloquent as you on this subject. You've at least made me much less confident in my position on banning circumcision. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me despite few other people probably reading this far back anymore.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
I appreciate your arguments - I've never heard circumcision defended in this way before, and I'm genuinely enjoying contemplating this challenge and curious if I might even change my mind. For brevity, I hope you'll graciously permit me to omit quotes and respond to what I think is the core dispute that runs through most of what you're saying.
I understand and usually share the instinct to want to limit the ability of the state to interfere in parents' decisions regarding their children and how to raise them, even when it is (I believe) to the detriment of the kid. For example, I think it's important for parents to be able to opt their children out of sex ed classes, even though I think sex ed is beneficial. I also think parents should be allowed to terrify their children with the idea of Hell, even though I think that's harmful.
There's a few reasons I support giving parents a lot of freedom to raise their kids in ways that I think are wrong or harmful. First, each of us might be wrong about what is harmful or beneficial. Second, parents are in a better position to know what's best for their kids and care most about their kids. But perhaps most importantly, it would be truly terrifying to live in a world where the state is essentially credibly threatening lethal force to prevent you from doing what you might think is an extremely important thing for your children. In some cases so important that you might even be tempted to defend your family and way of life with lethal force yourself. Not only is that unstable on a societal level, it's just awful. Like, I sometimes imagine if social workers decided to take my kid away from me and transition him because he started identifying as trans. I honestly suspect I'd die fighting before allowing that to happen.
But with circumcision, I think it's different. To be sure, it's way less harmful than tons of other things that I would without hesitation permit parents to do to their kids. But there's a few reasons I think it merits an exception to the general rule that parents can do to their kids what they wish. First, we already generally don't allow parents to perform medically unnecessary permanent alterations to their kids' bodies. Banning circumcision simply aligns with that norm. Second, circumcision can still be done when the child grows up if he still wants it done for whatever reason. Third, I suspect most non-Jewish parents don't actually care that much and just do it because it feels like the default. I think getting out of this rut requires changing the default.
The Jewish angle to this certainly hits a lot closer to your (and my) concerns regarding state intrusions, given how important Jews consider it to be to their culture and identity and how important it is to them for it to be done to infants rather than waiting. I'm willing to allow Jews to be an exception to a circumcision ban, even if just for reasons of pragmatism and prudence.
If you don't mind, I'm curious how you determine when the state should be able to override parental wishes, if at all. To take an extreme example, I assume you'd want to state to take custody of children whose parents lock them in the basement 24/7 and physically and sexually abuse them. But what about something less extreme, like female circumcision? That's a practice that is, like male circumcision for Jews, very important to some cultures. It's fine if you can't draw a line that precisely demarcates what's bannable and what's not - the world often doesn't afford us the luxury of that sort of neatness. But I am trying to figure out how you propose approaching these tough questions - what principles, axioms, tests, etc. you'd use, if any, beyond a vague sort of "if it's harmful enough".
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
The fact that it's vastly less destructive is a principled difference.
I don't see why. You admit that foreskins provide more pleasure, and I assume you agree that's better than the alternative, so why would you support people allowing others to forever deprive someone else of that experience?
Literally anything can be labeled "abusive" or "harmful" if one engages in sufficiently enthusiastic linguistic masturbation.
But it's not just the label you find objectionable. You find it objectionable to forbid parents from doing this to their children, unless I misunderstand you.
Those who've lost it mostly don't care.
How would they know what they're missing? And if we have good reason to suppose that people who possess a foreskin very much enjoy it, why would you support the ability for people to deprive others of it for no good reason? Is inflicting blindness acceptable if the blind don't understand what they're missing? The fact that sight is thousands of times more valuable than a foreskin is not a principled reason to support the ability for people to deprive someone else of the latter.
This is quite absurd. What, exactly, was "inflicted" on me?
The removal of your foreskin without your consent, and thus the permanent inability for you to ever experience the pleasure it provides.
[W]hy should its absence be some terrible crushing tragedy? Do you approach all pleasures this way, mourning that your car isn't a lambo and your house isn't a mansion, and that you didn't buy bitcoin for .001 cents a coin when you should have? How would it benefit me to obsessively mourn the things I theoretically might have had, rather than enjoying the good I do have in a spirit of contentment?
You're right that in the grand scheme of things it's not a terrible crushing tragedy that should haunt someone and require therapy, etc. But, look, let me be brutally honest and introspective: I think the reason that strident opponents of circumcision like myself seem so disproportionately and militantly invested in it, often veering well into histrionics, is because of the astronomical ratio of harm to benefit. It's just so utterly inexcusable it blows my fucking mind that this is even a thing. There are few problems, practices, and quandaries in life that don't involve tough tradeoffs, the balancing of which reasonable people can disagree about. But the question of whether to cut off foreskins - like the question of whether to bind feet or sharpen teeth, and other such cultural practices - is one of the easiest questions we've ever had to answer. And still the majority of our society gets the answer wrong.
We are simply in the presence of a bizarre and pointlessly (mildly) harmful cultural practice that persists only because those subjected to it are used to it and would feel bad if they admitted how stupid and pointlessly (mildly) harmful it is.
Why is it not good enough for me to freely decide that I won't continue the practice with my own children? Why is more than that needed?
I'm certainly glad to hear that you wouldn't continue this practice with your own children. But the fact that you believe it's acceptable for other parents to do this to their children is a problem, I think. Of course, you're only one person with one vote, but routine natal circumcision continues to be permitted by law because of millions of people who, like you, don't think it should be unlawful.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
If you don't like the practice, don't practice it with your kids. There's no need for laws, you can just let people make the decision for their own children as they see fit.
Don't you see how that seems rather like saying "If you don't like the practice of double mastectomies, don't practice it with your kids"? Obviously double mastectomies are vastly more destructive than circumcision, but I don't see any principled difference. The foreskin exists for a reason and I suspect most guys who have one will testify to the anguish they'd feel if they learned they'd henceforth be deprived of it. For example, see the responses to the relevant question in the ACX survey.
I implore you to let your psychological guard down for a moment and sincerely examine whether your attitude towards circumcision is simply a result of having been circumcised (which I'm assuming with 95 percent confidence that you have been) and the distress you'd experience if you were no longer able to avoid truly reckoning with what was inflicted on you.
The intelligence researcher Emil Kirkegaard recently put out an informal poll among his followers asking people to estimate the IQs of various rationalists and other public figures, Trump among them. You can vote here or see the results here. Emil also discussed the results on his substack.
Out of 495 responses, the IQ estimate for Trump is a mean and mode of about 120 (SD 15.8).
But many of these estimates for seem hilariously off in either direction, probably depending on how liked or disliked the figure is.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
Given how much platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have been pushing their own versions of portrait-aspect-ratio-short-videos, that's what I'd guess too.
Tangent: I've never understood the portraitification of everything. Do people not realize smartphones can be turned on their sides? Or that not everyone is viewing content on a smartphone to begin with? Why would anyone want to view something in portrait form?
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
The problem with these databases of school/mass shootings is that they don't map onto what people think of as the sort of mass shootings we're discussing in this thread. A school resource officer accidentally firing his weapon, or a gang dispute that leads to one student shooting a few of his rivals, or a drug deal gone awry, or an 8 year old accidentally shooting a classmate when showing the cool gun he took from home, etc., - those all make it onto these lists. There's value in that, but it's important to recognize the broad scope of the dataset and not act as if these are lists of people who intended to kill as many people as possible, which is what our culture is almost always talking about when discussing mass shootings.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
I don't have specific recommendations, but I would advise checking the index for any book you're thinking of getting (the index is often shown for free on Amazon's or Google Books' preview feature) and disregarding any book that doesn't have index entries for something like genes, genetics, heritability, or twin studies. Any non-RCT study of parenting or childhood outcomes that does not control for heritability (and most don't) is literally worthless.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
Yeah, I'm not suggesting that nothing can be done to increase enforcement of existing laws. Like you said, the Giuliani/Bratton era in New York City is a good example of that. Nor am I saying that possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony shouldn't be an enhancement to sentencing. I'm just saying that there's not much else in the way of plausible laws or regulations (the OP's topic) that is going to meaningfully reduce gun deaths in a country with 400 million guns and a 2nd Amendment.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
I think the biggest problem with that argument is that cars pretty much entirely kill unintentionally. Only about 535 accidental gun deaths occurred in 2020, according to the CDC. That's 2.2% of all gun deaths in the US that year. That's an order of magnitude less than annual accidental drowning deaths, and fewer deaths than (scarcely regulated) swimming pools or bath tubs alone.
It's not enough to say "here's a problem, here's a regulation that pertains in a very broad sense to that problem, therefore the regulation will help address the problem". If people want to commit murder or suicide with a gun, it's incumbent upon would-be regulators to explain how their proposed regulations would stop those people. "We'll make it illegal" does no good - murder is already illegal, and suicidal people won't care. "We'll require a license" does no good when people can trivially obtain one like they can a driver's license. And if the licensing requirement becomes sufficiently onerous that it's practically a ban, they'll run into the same problem as advocates of banning guns: how exactly is that going to happen in a country with a 2nd Amendment, more guns than people, and criminals who don't care what you say you've banned?
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
I don't see why restricting immigration based on group identity is antithetical to liberalism. People who are not lawful residents of a country are not owed the same treatment as that country's lawful residents. We discriminate amongst would-be immigrants all the time and in all manner of ways that liberalism would rightly demand we not treat our own lawful residents. For example, a categorical ban on immigration from people who believe in certain ideologies or who have illnesses likely to make them a public charge.
And while selecting based on individual characteristics rather than group characteristics is ideal in theory, in practice it runs up against the problem of regression to the mean - children of people at the high end of their group's bell curve end up closer to that group's mean than their parents' giftedness would predict.
There's also the additional problem of the possibility of HBD being applicable to group personality differences. We might not want a substantial portion of our population to belong to groups that, for whatever reason, differ in personality in ways that are at odds with our culture (e.g., individualism vs collectivism, work ethic, intellectual curiosity, and so on). It can be hard to test for this sort of thing, and it also probably involves some amount of regression to the mean. We may rightly decide that's just not a risk worth taking for a bit of a boost in GDP.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
Even if it becomes widely accepted as true, in liberal societies that should not lead to any significantly different political policies.
The entire affirmative action policy regime depends on the assumption that group disparities are a problem that can be rectified. You say that affirmative action can be justified even with belief in HBD, because some of the disparities could be the result of discrimination. Disparities being the result of discrimination would be hard to falsify in a world of HBD-believers, but more importantly I think the same incentives to play the victim would exist as they currently do. I suspect few people will be satisfied accepting that they're innately less capable when they can easily and unfalsifiably claim to be victims of discrimination, systemic or otherwise.
You're also missing the most important policy that would change in a world of HBD-believers: immigration. Once you accept HBD, it seems to me to be straightforwardly horrifying and despair-inducing to witness what our society is doing to itself with its immigration policies, and to contemplate the implications of extrapolating these trends a century or two into the future.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
Thanks for your response! I've always respected you, and I share so many of your beliefs on the culture war, so I am very interested in figuring out why I differ from you so much on this. Your time and patience is greatly appreciated!
How about the idea that the best way to order society and our individual lives is to do as Christians do, just without believing any of the supernatural bits?
What you are describing is a reductive, simplified version of the Modernists' plan from the start, one framing of the core Enlightenment idea. There have even been various detailed plans of how to implement it, one of which was Communism. It's obvious to me that any one of these plans would work marvelously if we actually could implement them. It's also obvious to me that we can't actually implement them, and all attempts to do so fail catastrophically. If you want to override the atavistic desires of the self, it appears you need something outside one's personal context to measure those desires against, a fixed point of reference amidst the turmoil and constant shifting of one's internal reality. God works better than anything else I've seen of in this role. Without a convincing God-analogue, people do what they want, or convince themselves that what they want is actually virtuous, or any of a million other permutations of faked compliance, malicious compliance, or non-compliance. If there's nothing higher than you, there's nothing that can't be lied to, and so people lie. Using a state or a king or an ideology as the God-analogue fails because these things are ultimately dependent on other humans.
The short version is that if this actually worked, you wouldn't see the significant relative benefits accruing from faithful Christians compared to non-Christians, because non-Christians would actually catch up. I consider this weak evidence of the truth of Christianity.
I don't see how communism and other post-Enlightenment ideas were trying to "do as Christians do, just without believing any of the supernatural bits", which seems to be what you're saying, unless I misunderstand you. My impression is that these ideologies repudiated Christianity and everything Christians stood for. Isn't that sort of what you acknowledged later when you said "these ideologies were analyzed against Christian axioms, and were found [by Christians] to be incompatible with them"?
And isn't it by the very use of reason that we can even come to the conclusion that those things are worth normalizing?
I don't think so. "Worth", that is to say Values, seem to me to be pretty clearly upstream of our rationality. Reason can play values against each other, but doing so necessarily involves appealing to a greater value over a lesser, doesn't it? If you reason that one thing is better than another, you're measuring them against some standard, an "Ought" not derivable by reason's "Is". Further, the "Is" itself, the core function of reason, is bound by sharp limits in memory and comprehension, by bandwidth available for the assimilation of data, and most cripplingly by lack of available data. We are relatively good at reasoning, compared to stones and fish. We are not actually good at reasoning even on the information available, and most information is not available.
Reason works quite well when its limitations are respected. When people treat it as a fully-general solution, as the Enlightenment demands, the results seem to me to be quite poor. Examples include any big-brain conversation applying utilitarianism to large-scale social problems, or the history of planned economies, or the history of technocratic government generally.
I feel like you're using "reason" in some strange "capital-R" way that I'm not getting. What's the alternative to reason? And, whatever it is, are you not using reason to propose that we use that alternative? It's completely incoherent.
Again, values can be reasoned from, but do not seem amenable to reason themselves, operating more like axioms. Human will, likewise, appears to me to direct reason, rather being directed by it. Hence motivated reasoning, which in its subtler forms is likely inescapable. This last bit leads me to conclude that abstract beliefs are meaningfully chosen, not forced, since I observe that many questions are evidently undecidable from pure evidence, and yet people evidently still decide them. The popular interpretation is that such questions have one right answer, which is obviously the one I personally hold, along with many wrong answers foolishly derived by everyone who disagrees with me. After a lifetime of arguing difficult questions with people, though, I've concluded that for any moderately-abstract question, it's values and the will that decides whether an argument is adopted or rejected, while the effect of reason and evidence is marginal at best.
I agree that humans are fallible, susceptible to motivated reasoning, and usually start from their values and try to reason from there. But how are you not using reason when you decide what you value, or, if you prefer, when you decide which axioms are convincing? Presumably there's some reason you think that slavery is wrong, or that marriage is a good idea, or whatever else. Or, if those are downstream of some more abstract axiom, presumably there's some reason you think that axiom is convincing.
"But," you might protest, "how would we guard against convincing-sounding shitty ideas that we perhaps don't yet know are shitty?" Well, how did Christianity do it? Reason!
This doesn't mesh with the history I observe. In all these cases, Christianity did not reason itself into its positions from scratch, but rather reasoned from its axioms. The germinal ideas leading to Communist and Nazi ideology were not rejected because Christians did a careful assessment of relevant objective factors, but because these ideologies were analyzed against Christian axioms, and were found to be incompatible with them. Likewise, Christian arguments were largely rejected by the contemporary intelligentsia, because they had no interest in those axioms, and preferred an objective, rational assessment of the available data.
That's fair on some level, but again, it seems to me that Christians still used reason when deciding to adopt those axioms. So, what is inadequate about using reason to propose that Christian axioms are convincing (and/or adaptive, or whatever else), therefore we should live our lives and operate our society as Christians would, just without the supernatural bits?
Christianity provides an excellent set of axioms. Unfortunately, it also appears to require belief, or it doesn't work, and most people have bought into the idea that belief is forced by objective assessment of evidence. It's quite the pickle.
What makes you think it requires belief (presumably you mean belief in the supernatural claims) to work?
What are you proposing Christianity adds to that? Why not keep the reasoning and skip the middle man (Christianity)?
I don't think it's possible to replace Christian axioms with reason from first principles. I see little evidence that people could do so in the past, and no evidence we can do better now or in the future.
Why? Surely a non-Christian can sincerely believe that monogamy and marriage are a good idea, to take one example?
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
If you have a functional way of preventing our society's suicide, I'm all ears. The only caveat is that it needs to actually work, not just sound good.
How about the idea that the best way to order society and our individual lives is to do as Christians do, just without believing any of the supernatural bits? For example, emphasizing the importance of community, family, marriage, and children; discouraging sexual promiscuity; encouraging the virtues of humility, modesty, grace, charity, etc.; being skeptical of sudden changes to long-held traditions and ways of life. To name but a few.
And isn't it by the very use of reason that we can even come to the conclusion that those things are worth normalizing? I feel like you're using "reason" in some strange "capital-R" way that I'm not getting. What's the alternative to reason? And, whatever it is, are you not using reason to propose that we use that alternative? It's completely incoherent.
Your issue seems to be with people and ideologies who use flawed reasoning to advocate for shitty ideas, like Communism and Fascism. Well, I must confess - and I don't care who knows it - I am not a fan of people using flawed reasoning to advocate for shitty ideas. "But," you might protest, "how would we guard against convincing-sounding shitty ideas that we perhaps don't yet know are shitty?" Well, how did Christianity do it? Reason! They had reasons for supposing those ideas sucked (or at least that we should be wary of them), with perhaps a healthy dose of conservativism (in the sense of risk-averse and traditional). What are you proposing Christianity adds to that? Why not keep the reasoning and skip the middle man (Christianity)?
It claimed that Science, properly applied, could engineer away the problems inherent to the human condition.
Certain people claimed that we could engineer away certain problems inherent to the human condition. Some of them were right on certain matters (e.g., certain diseases), and others were wrong (various utopians). Why is that such an indictment of materialism or the Enlightement or science or Science or whatever? I don't understand why you tar them all with the same brush.
The basic idea of the Enlightenment is that the scientific method is a reliable way to discover truths about material reality, and we can use those discoveries along with reason to try and improve our lives and solve problems. That seems straightforwardly obvious to me. I also don't think there's a bailey concealed under that anywhere. The fact that some people said "Hey, using my reason, and using what I think are some facts I think I learned from science, I believe I can engineer human nature to excise the nasty bits like greed and jealousy and perfect us" is no more an indictment of science/materialism than "Hey, I think these cardboard arm flaps will make me fly" is an indictment of aeronautics, or, for that matter, that, "Hey, I think the good Christian thing to do is burn witches and kill baby Native Americans so their innocent souls will go to Heaven before their society misleads them" is an indictment of Christianity.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
2yr ago
I don't understand why you don't seem to recognize the obvious problem: that Christianity makes specific claims about reality that we either know aren't true (e.g., creationism) or have insufficiently compelling evidence are true (e.g., miracles, the existence of the Christian God, an afterlife, etc.). How can you expect to convince people to be a member of an ideology that they cannot reason themselves into believing?
You keep mentioning Christianity predicting the dreadful outcomes of Communism, Naziism, the sexual revolution, etc. But there's nothing about Christianity that is required to make those predictions. Nothing would stop an atheist from making those same predictions based on, say, an understanding of human nature.
That doesn't really address the question, it just changes it to "why are whites more likely to be homeowners". It's not straightforwardly obvious to me why Hispanics and blacks would prefer to rent rather than own.
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