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I’ll echo @Skibboleth here. Names were pretty divorced from profession by the founding of the country, let alone the Industrial Revolution.
A reason, sure. There are at least a couple others. Concentration in cities reducing networking costs. Reduced friction from a surplus of labor. The low-hanging fruit of our transition from an agrarian economy. Etc.
I don’t think this part makes a lot of sense. You’re not exactly working with a steelman of “diversity is our strength,” but then, neither were the authors. Quibbling over terminology is beside the point.
Culture isn’t a closed system.
Yeah, there’s no contradiction here. Innovation is risky. Idea-sharing is risky. A good government hedges against that instability.
No comment.
Steve Sailer thinks they wrote it for a fig leaf. So…probably.
I concede the thing about surnames. But the actual value of things is found in that which haven't yet reached an equlibrium. Value is that which you extract as things tend towards equlibria. But once that equilibrium has been reached, no more value can be extracted. So people promote that which destroys value, which is the classic definition of immorality. This is the problem with superstimuli, they have the highest value, and they destroy value the fastest. Porn destroys relationships faster than erotic magazines in the past, and the more hardcore porn is, the worse the damages. Energy drinks are more harmful than tea, and adderal is more harmful than energy drinks, and meth is more harmful than adderal. The latters have stronger effects, and therefore they build tolerance faster, thus depleting the value of stimulants (the productivity which can be extracted) faster.
But "Diversity is good in itself" is a wrong axiom, and the statement "Diversity is our strength" is not based on said axiom in the first place. They're promoting their own moral values, saying whatever seems to defend said values. The important part is that people start with feelings and end with logical arguments, rather than the other way around. In a best-case scenario, the article in question is signaling, meaning that it holds little academic value
Consider the entire earth as one big system. What would we expect if my model was correct? The continuous merging of many, small local systems into few, giant systems? Less languages over time? Countries becoming more similar in every way (culturally, legally, morally)? All of these changes are already taking place.
There's is a counter-force at work, but it doesn't generate uniqueness as fast as we're currently destroying it, and this generation seems like a unique property of humans, meaning that it will go away as we replace human systems with automated machinery.
That makes me feel a little better.
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