LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
You are probably correct, I was mostly just grasping at straws (though I am reasonably confident at least as far as Amazon and PNG are concerned)
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Yes?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Yes, that's what scares me.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Japan did very well on its own, adopting and adapting many Western ideas and institutions
Where does the Perry Expedition fit into this? "On its own" kind of ignores how the Americans forced Japan open to the West and to adopt Western idea.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Right, it's more the outcome of the choices you make. The actual story events that you experience on pro and anti revolutionary "paths" are mostly the same however, it's just how you respond to it. Whereas the noble, priest and commoner paths all have almost completely different events and story arcs, only a small overlap. Hence "main" paths.
If you marry your ideology to claims that animals aren't sapient, are stupid, are incapable of reason, aren't conscious, you're... well I think you're just already wrong based on things I've seen animals do in life and studies.
Those things are true. Animals aren't capable of reason, they aren't sapient (which is distinct from sentience). Animals are incapable of making moral judgements, asking and dealing with abstract concepts.
Like sure, a crow can pick up a stick and use it get some food from a puzzle box. That doesn't make the crow capable of reason.
There has been I think general push to present animals as capable of human like reason, to the point of fraudulent science. Infamously Koko the sign language-using gorilla's abilities were highly misrepresented to the point of fraud. Even our nearest, smartest primate cousins are incapable of human reason. They can't learn grammar, they can't understand abstract concepts, no matter how much researchs tried to make it appear so.
In some sense I would say your argument has an even less stable intellectual foundation. It's basically 'humans have power over animals, so whatever we say goes'. This argument is just weak as as if you were apply it to humans - "justice is the advantage of the stronger" or "might makes right".
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
It still speaks to motivation though - the Americans have been happy to threaten NS2 in the past and does not benefit from its existence.
To your first point, I would say it's an category error to group rape in with violent crime in general. Rape (against women) is really given a special status by society at large separate from other forms of crime. Rape is considered so heinous that even hardened criminals (i.e. the people actually committing violent crimes) find it shameful and disgusting. Rapists are routinely targeted within prison and beaten or otherwise attacked to the point often have to be removed from the general population. Rapist is as about low status as you can get in virtually every culture or subculture, including the criminal. Additionally, when men do commit violent crimes, they mostly target other men, and generally try to avoid victimising women. Even male robbers and muggers who otherwise proudly boast about their crimes are extremely reluctant to mention victimising women, only men, and those that do are ashamed of it and/or insist that they normally only target men. Lastly, the stereotype of violent rape in a dark alley by a stranger is extremely rare. The vast majority of rapes are 'non-violent', that is to say, they mostly occur between at least acquaintances where (especially) coercion, intoxication and dubious consent (i.e. social manipulation) are the modes of rape, which women are just as capable of men.
To your second point, I would first say that while I generally agree with your point that men have a higher sexual drive than men, it's not like women are completely dissimilar and don't have a sex drive, I don't think the difference is that big. But the real issue is how men's 'sexual agency' exists in context with society at large. Both men and women have it drilled into them that men have high libidos ('they always want it') and women are more prudish in general. Whether this reflects an underlying truth or not is immaterial here - the point is that this is the social context people operate in. For this reason, men have it drilled into them they have to seek women's approval (consent) for sex and generally have a greater responsibility for having 'ethical' sex for lack of a better term. This is ramped up to 11 in the current culture where 'consent training' for men is everywhere where men have to learn how to seek consent from women. Little to none expected of women inversely to seek the consent of men however - men are always up for it. Besides, men are physically stronger than women, so they can just stop her, right? Which conveniently ignores that rape is mostly committed through social coercion and manipulation which is just as applicable for women raping men, and a man who uses too much physical force against women is in a whole other world of trouble. Basically, society has always put great effort into enculturating men 'not to rape' (that is, seek respectful sexual interaction with women), while if anything we do the opposite with women.
Having heard and read quite a number of stories of male victims of female rapists, one of the most common themes among the stories is that the female rapists often are completely unaware that they are raping their male victim. They are so unaware of the fact that maybe their male victim doesn't want to have sex that the fact they could be raping them doesn't enter their minds (something that is much hard for similar men/male rapists to believe, but it does happen). A typical story is something like the man goes to a party, gets drunk, passes out/goes to sleep, wakes up a few hours later to find a woman having sex with him. He may avoid saying no and forcing her off him because he doesn't want to offend her, or he's personally accepted the narrative that men want sex (i.e. he blames himself the same way many female victims of rape do). Even if he does say no, he often won't resort to physical force, because men know that using physical force/violence against women regardless of circumstance is a big no-no. In the more malicious cases that do exist, the female rapist will often tell the male victim that she will publicly accuse him of raping her if he doesn't have sex with her. In the aftermath of the rape, the female victim often fails to conceptualise what she did as rape even well after the fact, and the man also struggles to conceptualise it as rape, even if he is traumatised by it. If he does tell his friends (both men and women), by and large they won't believe it was rape and that he actually wanted it, something that is much much less likely to happen under similar circumstances with a female victim. Which ultimately leads into one of the issues about trying to quantify rates of rape - men are far less likely to conceptualise a rape as rape, while women are far more like to do so.
As to the reliability of the CDC study, I will say that the CDC is pretty much the best, large-scale data available on sexual assault and rape. The issue is fundamentally hard to quantify by its nature and does rely heavily on self-reporting victimisation data. As I said in the original post, my suspicion is that numbers are probably inflated across the board - self-victimisation reports often have a false positive bias. I will say that this these numbers fit in line with the data that shows that domestic violence has gender symmerty. To go back to your first point a bit, interpersonal/relational violence (that is, violence against people you have a personal relationship with) is distinct from violent crime/violence committed against strangers/'the public'. By all indications, women seem to use interpersonal violence as least as much as men, and perhaps even more, while men commit the majority of stranger violence. This fits into my hypothesis that most violent crime being committed by men is strongly tied to the fact that men are both expected to be and are more agentic in public. Men often commit violence on behalf of women, or share the benefits of violent crime with women.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
10mo ago
Don't have any specific references to if you, but just wanted to comment that the concept of 'natural monopolies' is closely related to what you are describing.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
Indigenous ethnicity in Australia is more a cultural thing than a literal biological genetic thing. The reality is that the majority of Indigenous people in Australia are heavily genetically European due to generations of interracial marriage, Stolen Generation etc. Many urban Indigenous are physically indistinguishable from whites (they basically are white, genetically). But this is not disqualifying. The only Indigenous who are pure Indigenous ethnically are a small minority located in very remote Australia.
In this context, Lidia Thorpe is 100% indigenous, there's really no argument given the current way Indigenous is defined/percieved. She has the credentials too, as her grandmother was a prominent Indigenous activist in her own right.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
I wear a (casual?) business suit (no tie) most days. Also I have I guess what you would call casual formal wear.
I don't have anything super formal as a tuxedo.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
The natives weren't capable of beating back the Portuguese alone, they usually had to get help from the Dutch or somebody else.
The real answer is because, generally speaking, the natives had no reason to 'beat back' the Portugese, or any other colonial state. They benefited from colonial contact, especially in the 18th century onwards. Colonial states had legitimacy and widespread local support until the mid-20th century.
It was less the natives 'getting help from the Dutch or somebody else' but more 'Europeans getting the help from the natives' to kick out their European rivals.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Given the prevelance of single sex friendship groups and associations compared to evenly balanced friendship groups, there functionally are male societies and female societies.
I get your point, but I am yet to meet a man or woman who can reproduce asexually.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
it's not men who need to be convinced to be married
I agree with you on this point
(the opposite direction was true of married women)
I straight up don't believe this unless you have a source.
Being screwed over by family courts is only relevant if you're having kids with someone
Alimony and asset splits can be and often are brutal to the husband even if no kids are involved. Kids just make it worse.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
There's a trend I've notice in the last couple of years where progressive/woke media will decry cancel culture, while at the same time completely ignoring the progressive/woke origin of cancel culture. They portray it as something that happens at random with no political or ideological impetus (or at least not for woke reasons).
I'm not sure why they do this, I suspect it's to poison the well or pre-empt criticism of the woke due to cancel culture by superficially criticising it themselves.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
I'm just going off what the census data says. While it's probably true that the numbers have increased at least a little due to grifting/socially incentivised white people claim descent. But my general impression is that it isn't nearly to the same extend than happens in say, Canada. The relationship between Australian society and Indigenous people is slightly different to that in Canada or the US - here in Australia, having a claim of Indigenous member does imply something more concrete about the culture practices you engage in. 'Indigenous' is more a claim of ethnic culture, rather than literal genetic ethnicity in many cases.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Well, Jews and some Asian ethnicities are smarter on average than white people. I, a white person, hold no ill will towards them.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
the falling fertility rate will eventually stabilize to a lower population but a richer one
Until you hit the demographic crisis where you're counting on the labour of one grandchild to sustain four grandparents.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Forgive me, but I don't think the war devistating Ukraine and absolutely crippling their country in the hopes that maybe a couple decades from now they join the EU (who knows how the EU is doing in 10 or 20 years anyway) and hopefully get something out it economically is/was the most optimal of all possibilities.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
I agree with your application of this version of progress to the Cthulhu swim, if "problem" is understood correctly: In the version I believe, what counts as a "problem" for the sake of progress in a field is determined by the field itself. Not us, or an "objective observer", looking at the state if the field and thinking something is bad, but the internal criteria that are already present in the field.
Yes, this is more or less the case, but you're right I could have clarified it, though I hope my examples were sufficient to get the point across.
One related issue is that's not exactly clear how define when one thought or historical period ends and another begins and thus when it is appropriate judge progress and when it is not. For some divisions it may be pretty clear cut (e.g. French Revolution) but it's not always the case. I guess you can just make a spectrum argument where the further away from our thought and society the harder it is to evaluate.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
looking at history theirs a huge difference between being in American sphere of influence and in Russias sphere. Russians sphere well has things like Holodomore happen to them. The American sphere even when we do bad things has limited bad things happen to the people of the country.
I don't necessarily disagree with your general point but this is just a lazy argument. There are obviously breaks in political continuity in Russian history that aren't present in American history. For better or worse, contemporary Russia isn't the USSR or the Russian Tsardom.
If I made an argument that a country being under German influence today is a bad thing because Nazis and Holocaust, people would rightfully laugh at me.
This is not to say that being under contemporary Russian influence is a good thing - it's probably not - but actually make the argument about why this is the case and don't just make lazy appeals to history. And preferably an argument that doesn't refer to the supposed 'innate barbarity' of the Russian people that I've seen crop up a lot.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
I have had to take "aptitude" tests before as part of job application processes and some of the types of questions in that practice test are familiar to me (I am not American either).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Indian nationalists have a pretty clear vested interest in blaming everything bad on the British. It's funny you say that the claim made that the British destroyed the native ruling class, when the more common complaint from Indian nationalist/anti-colonialist is that the British ossified the caste system (and thus is responsible for India's contemporary caste woes). I guess the British are responsible for everything bad, like destroying native social structures, as well as reinforcing native social structures.
The vast, vast majority of people working in Indian colonial administration were native Indians, to say nothing of the local Rajas who had significant influence. This is generally true of all European colonial states in Africa and Asia in the 1800s onwards. In a large sense, the locals did rule themselves, even if guided by European thought and colonial administrators.
It's really only through the power of ideologies such as nationalism that to a native in Cochin/Kochi that rule from London (not matter how hands off) is illegitimate but rule from New Delhi is legitimate.
Colonialism in the context being discussed (that is, Africa and Asia reperations) is a mostly post-industral or at the very least a proto-industrial phenomeon. A bunch of Portugese trading posts scattered around Asia and Africa isn't really colonialism proper. Only in the latter part of the 1800s (as with most European powers, scramble for Africa) did Portugal really gained substantial control over what we would call colonial states (e.g. Mozambique and Angola).
Regardless, I also object to the claim that pre-industrial trading was zero-sum. It was obviously not zero-sum, or else the participants (e.g. Portugal and costal Indian kingdoms) wouldn't have participated in it! Portugal got their spices, the Indians got their silver. The actual participants in the trading mutually benefit. The fact that traders might seek to monopolise that trade doesn't change the fact that the people actually doing the trading are mutually benefiting. They're looking to gain an economic advantage over their trading competitor not their trading partner. This is no different to modern economics - the fact that some business try to monopolise or engage in anti-competitive behaviour today isn't evidence of economic activity being zero-sum!
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