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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5412 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I found this archive of Scott's LiveJournal, but I'm wondering of there's a list somewhere picking out the most interesting articles to read. https://archive.fo/fCFQx

Ever wonder how the world's bluest person starts engaging with reactionary thought and HBD honestly? It's the power of (strike)rationality(strike) volunteering in Haiti and seeing every western institution replicated in cargo cult form.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150407223525/http://squid314.livejournal.com/297579.html

Excerpt:

"It has proven hard for me to appreciate exactly how confused the Haitians are about some things. Gail, our program director, explained that she has a lot of trouble with her Haitian office staff because they don't understand the concept of sorting numerically. Not just "they don't want to do it" or "it never occurred to them", but after months and months of attempted explanation they don't understand that sorting alphabetically or numerically is even a thing. Not only has this messed up her office work, but it makes dealing with the Haitian bureaucracy - harrowing at the best of times - positively unbearable."

Chicken or egg? The converse is that after spending a few years in east Africa you realize that the dude living in a dirt-floor hut who speaks multiple languages fluently and could run circles around the median ivy-league grad student is the norm rather than the exception because anyone who isn't speaking at least two languages and working three side hustles either emigrated or starved to death decades ago.

Yeah, we may underestimate two tendencies:

  1. People who are truly uneducated in basic concepts may appear much "dumber" than an educated person would think. I've seen this with coding: I once eavesdropped on an older person being taught coding and things I thought were intuitive like program flow seemed to take too long. Of course, I can't remember how intuitive it was for me in the early days either, because I overlearned it so long ago.

  2. People who are working in impersonal institutions where direct consequences for inefficiency can be deferred or it is hard to identify in the first place can appear very "lazy" and irrational (in terms of just not caring about maximizing their productivity or effort, even if there's low-hanging fruit) to people who've actually been disciplined by the modern workplace with its focus on efficiency and time. This is probably worse in corrupt countries.

I've heard Western-educated Africans complain especially about #2, talking about their own people, in ways that might cause trouble for a white man in a progressive space.

That said...if a person legitimately can't sort things numerically (as opposed to not giving a shit and stonewalling gringos)...I'm inclined to believe that they're actually facing an intelligence deficit.

#2 is absolutely something I've encountered numerous times in the wild and one of the major reasons I think that "culture" is way more important than most commenters here seem to treat it. A somewhat related phenomena I've seen both in countries with major unrest (EG Sudan, the Middle east etc...) and poorer neighborhoods in the states is almost an antipathy towards savings and capital accumulation based on a (largely justified) assumption that if someone does start to pull ahead, someone else will just come a long and steal it from them. A sort of preemptive "crab bucket" effect where instead of being torn down they avoid climbing in the first place lest they make themselves a target. Another one you see in a lot of is the old "honesty is for suckers" trope. IE "Why should I 'cooperate' when I know the game is rigged?". After all being the one honest cop in a otherwise corrupt department, or the one guy in the neighborhood who isn't in on the local organized crime racket generally isn't conducive to one's long term survival.

Local minima and a "defect-defect" equilibrium are a hell of a drug.

Is this a fictional hypothetical or do you seriously believe this?

It's not a fictional hypothetical.

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