Pigeon
coo coo
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User ID: 237
Pigeon
coo coo
2yr ago
Even granting that Marxist rhetoric is violent in this way (which I’m hesitant to grant without significant qualifiers) surely you can see there is a difference between:
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A likely explicit order to exterminate a group of people when in paramount power, and
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A discussion of mass murder visited upon one’s political opponents, written not in any sort of office, which then was reinterpreted by various organisations decades after the death of the author, and in one case was perpetuated against a separate ethnic population, which was really not quite the point of the original texts (even if it was justified on those terms at the time).
In any case, it’s undeniable that Marx advocated for violent revolution, but I think there’s a qualitative difference between that and the sort of industrial murder machine created by the Nazis and the Japanese during WW2, as well as between advocacy and, well, actually doing the thing.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
That seems remarkable. Where do you live that this is possible?
You even mentioned one of these cities by name!
Hong Kong and Seoul and Tokyo should support such a lifestyle, work-related travel aside (depending on which area you live in and work at). I don’t have experience with mainland Chinese cities, but I’d expect most of the tier 1 cities at least to be similar. I’d also expect other large Japanese cities to be similar.
The amount you would get into your bloodstream through a nasal spray is likely much more controlled compared to, you know, IV chlorhexidine. Bloodstream availability is waaaaaay lower. Not really comparable.
I mean, there’s also dermal absorption, right? But I think most of us would be pretty doubtful of the idea that washing our hands is essentially IV soap, and nasal spray is probably significantly closer to washing hands than it is to IV.
Same/similar goes with the eyewash, really.
Pigeon
coo coo
2yr ago
I think we can agree on that, at least in the sense of “these are people fomenting violent ideologies”.
I do think that Marxist theory probably has more historical relevance even beyond the dictatorships and mass famines, though, in that quite a lot of economic theory was written in response to and in refutation of it, and ideas like dialectical materialism had pretty substantial influence. In that practical sense it makes sense to rehabilitate Marx somewhat, if only to understand why he was wrong (e.g. on labour theory of value) in economic (or other discipline-specific) terms rather than on moral terms.
Even given all that, I do flinch a bit when people openly declare themselves to be Marxist.
Pigeon
coo coo
2yr ago
I have to say, the line from Hitler to Holocaust is much shorter than from Marx to the Holodomor. On that alone I think it’s more reasonable for people to want to rehabilitate Marx in broader society.
I think most Westerners would look askance about rehabilitating Stalin, though, and tankies who try are generally seen as lunatics.
Pigeon
coo coo
2mo ago
In particular, China didn't adopt this particular vice despite being home to small but significant populations of Jews throughout history, with enclaves in many Chinese cities (with the Kaifeng Jews being the most famous of the bunch), while also hosting significant numbers of Christians and Muslims. There has been some suggestion in the official records that the earliest of them arrived mid-Han dynasty approx. two thousand years ago, and there are independent observations by e.g. Persian travellers noting established Jewish merchants operating in China by the Tang dynasty.
Interestingly I have noticed an uptick in a bizarre sort of antisemitism in some of the wackier corners of Chinese popular culture very recently -- some sort of combination of classic Da Jooz tropes imported from the West, combined with the perception that the West is trying to contain China, resulting in various syncretic conspiracy theories about how (((they))) are puppeteering Western institutions to control China (or have in some nonsensical way done so in the past). But on the whole the Chinese remain philosemitic.
Pigeon
coo coo
2mo ago
I mean, straight women fucking love seeing hot men railing each other, so this doesn’t seem like that much of a problem to me.
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
Scott Alexander's posts often veer into "holy shit, get to the point, dude!" territory
They do?
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
The male:female skew of autism is 4:1, which is the simplest explanation why STEM careers have been filled with men at around that ratio until recently:
Is your contention that STEM careers have been filled almost entirely by autists until very recently, or do you also think that “logical intuition” is similarly biased towards men vis a vis women?
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Sure (though I think you underestimate nuclear hellscape), but we can just not listen to the batshit stuff and take the useful solutions as they are. Things like nuclear plants?
Though of course that runs into environmentalists blowing an aneurysm because they don’t understand it.
My point is that this issue in particular is worth thinking about for sensible people even if the loudest group talking about it are lunatics.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
They could give CPR while slapping them in the face with a flaccid cock and I'd still rather my kid live than not.
Does this mean the calculus changes if they were giving CPR while slapping your child in the face with an erect cock?
Pigeon
coo coo
2yr ago
I suppose I was reacting more to the idea that it's a subculture thing now, when it's...pretty mainstream, I think.
Pigeon
coo coo
2yr ago
/r/AskHistorians is probably a case where draconian moderation improves the quality of the subreddit.
Pigeon
coo coo
2yr ago
In which country are you more likely to actually be arrested (or at least have the police show up) for posting in contradiction of state mandated beliefs
——— This is definitely, definitely China. It is difficult for me to express the absolute incredulity I have for people seriously comparing Western states to the PRC.
Pigeon
coo coo
2yr ago
Well, I don’t really see how you’re fitting 5 million people in a small village on the Alps. I always think of Yokohama or Hong Kong when I think of “convenient city to live in”.
Pigeon
coo coo
1mo ago
You're right in geological terms, which I definitely missed in the original comment, but I think it's more circumstantial than "high demand for coal". Imperial China, for example, had similar issues with deforestation as Britain did, and had widespread adoption of coal both as a daily fuel and as a metallurgical resource in response to this especially in the Song dynasty; Marco Polo notes the predominance of coal as a fuel, for a European source that's a couple hundred years down the line.
I'm not completely sure why Britain had the need to artificially drain its waterlogged mines while China didn't, despite widespread use of coal. I do recall that the Chinese generally didn't employ shaft mining until quite late, that shaft mines would just be abandoned rather than drained even in the late Qing, and that some Chinese mines had relatively efficient natural drainage that made them less flood-prone; perhaps the geological details of the mines themselves, and the mining techniques necessary for them, were significant factors. I'm also of the impression that viable mines in Britain were able to be operated very close to waterways in a way that e.g. China's (or perhaps other European countries, as well) didn't, which may have lead to different financial bottlenecks.
Speculatively, I also wouldn't be surprised if coal and firewood consumption fell significantly, at least at a per capita level, after the Yuan (14th century or so), which would at least partially explain why there was lower demand for further improvements in mining.
Pigeon
coo coo
1mo ago
Amongst my close friends in undergrad, there used to be a guy who had a ~150 IQ (he was the only member of the group who had it measured "properly" by a professional - he had a psychologist friend and he agreed to be one of the test subjects for something), and he was noticeably duller than the rest of us in [hard STEM subject we all studied] - this was evidenced objectively in exam results (and he worked to try get good results) I'm not sure if he is just one of those unfortunate people on the vertex of the functionality/IQ ellipse, or if it really was just a "culture" issue (maybe he was just overloaded with extra-curriculars, he had test-anxiety, etc - normally I'd discount those explanations as cope - but then... 150 IQ!)
It could possibly be a test with a different SD score, though I'm not sure why that would be the case since I think? most Western tests are calibrated to be SD15 or SD16. I recall hearing about a K-pop star with an IQ of 148 and then finding out [that it was 148 on a different scale (with an SD of 24), as was the standard in Korean school testing at the time (?)
150 would be gifted but not that exceptional in that case.
Pigeon
coo coo
2mo ago
Sure, that makes me more likely to accept that there is a large difference between men and women wrt second languages in practice.
Pigeon
coo coo
2mo ago
There are other silly minimizations: EX: Better Handwriting "just because of small hands". It doesn't matter what the source of the advantage is; the discussion is whether or not it's there.
I mean, this would suggest that women should have worse handwriting when it comes to writing in large sizes, which does create a notable exception for "better at handwriting".
In any case I think it does matter. If the difference in dexterity is mostly a matter of size then we could just retrofit many things to be man-sized rather than woman-sized instead; it is contingent on our current circumstances. But if it is really an inbuilt difference then there is no point.
Interest is a prerequisite to being good at something, at least if that something requires you to put in the hours, as is the case for language learning. But it actually does look like there are differences in how men and women's brains process language, not just a difference in interest.
I agree with this, I just am unsure about how it translates to learning foreign languages in particular -- at least to the extent that the effect size is huge.
See my other comment. This has been shown empirically.
A brief perusal of pubmed gives me much more mixed results. I'm not convinced.
My understanding — I think from an old pornhub survey? — is that women consume much more gay porn than men do, and also more lesbian porn as well. So gay men probably still consume more gay porn that straight women per capita, but there’s still a large female straight contingent. And this is in a medium where it’s inherently unfavourable to female titillation; the porn vs erotica thing remains salient.
I’m not convinced that women self-insert as the uke when looking at gay porn or BL, this doesn’t match my experience talking to fujos at all.
It might be true that women like two men getting hot and steamy with each other, but purely as an observer.
I did note “particularly limited to Southeast Asia”. I don't live in the States, for the record.
I mean, it’s definitely more normalised to the extent that APA hotels is owned by Nanjing Massacre deniers and IIRC put books regarding that in hotel rooms, and that Nippon Kaigi, well, exists. I don’t think either would be permissible in Germany (let alone be able to have members in such high positions as in Nippon Kaigi).
My impression is that many people in Japan don’t know many details about Japanese atrocities, to some extent due to the way history is taught (broadly as a list of facts covering a large span of history, rather than historical analysis).l, and — due both to concerted effort by early postwar governance and due to lack of exposure — people don’t really care.
In that sense it is a "nation that ignores its war crimes". I'm not sure it would be better otherwise, but it is somewhat ugly.
edit: a word
I think this needs to be qualified with…something. It’s clearly not true for many things like shopping, restaurants, and not necessarily true for work.
And cars would often be even slower in the same environment!
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