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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3452 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 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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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Watts' The Way of Zen. So far his discussion of relativity has been clarifying.

The Weirdest People in the World about the effects of the hajnal line on European culture.

Could you share a gist of what it says?

I've read the intro of the wiki page on the hajnal line and it just seems from a quick glance to be a refuted ? theory on a fertility divide.

It is well known that fertility is inverselly correlated with wealth so that divide might have been partially true.

I’m only about 2/3 of the way through, and this is my first time reading a treatment of the hajnal line which doesn’t focus on HBD. But the thesis is that the marriage laws of the medieval Catholic Church led to individualism, capitalism, urbanism, widespread literacy, democracy, and innovation in Western Europe and not other parts of the world specifically because of their effects on family formation(that is, marriage of unrelated adults by free consent), and most of the book is taken up by comparisons to other parts of the world with bits and pieces of the same process going on. I will likely write a fuller review when I finish it, but for now it makes a strong case for the cultural effects of the hajnal line, hampered by a few historical view errors and the book’s unwillingness to think about HBD.

Sorry what does HBD mean?

Human BioDiversity- group differences are at least partially influenced by genetic differentiation.

Thanks

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