>The internet has allowed him and his ilk a bigger voice, platforms to more efficiently spread their ideology and organize.
But again, that's not authoritarianism. Quite the contrary, the left demanding that people like him not be allowed to speak, and in many cases demanding he be attacked or even killed, that is authoritarian.
>We must not tolerate intolerance, because that kills tolerance overall.
I see people repeat that, but I don't see anything to indicate it is true. Quite the contrary, it would appear that one of the main factors in the growing white nationalist population is censorship and other attempts to silence people (calling them some thought terminating cliche like "racist" or "bigot" when they aren't saying anything racist or bigoted). When you say that someone's words are dangerous and they must be silenced, you imply that their views are so overwhelmingly convincing that large numbers of people will be swayed if they hear them. Since you can't actually silence them, all you do is cause them to move somewhere you don't control and then point to your censorship on platforms you do control as evidence that you know they are correct and fear the truth. You end up portraying yourself as the evil authoritarian empire, and the people you are trying to silence as the valiant freedom fighting rebels. People are sympathetic to the rebels, not the empire.
>When an ideology is built on intolerance, it must be opposed and deplatformed at every turn.
But that very ideology is built on intolerance. I presume you are going to delete your account so as to "deplatform" yourself?
Rather we must expose the fascists for what they are, drive them back to their hiding holes. We're not forcing anyone, simply showing social media platforms etc. that the presence of hate-spewing and minority-oppressing fascists is not wanted. They react by simple mechanisms of capitalism, by removing them, in order to not lose ad revenue.
The fascists are free to find other platforms, no one is censoring them.
>that the presence of hate-spewing and minority-oppressing fascists is not wanted.
But the bulk of the people being targeted are none of those things. What the average person is seeing is that anyone who dares to state a fact that far left ideologues don't like gets attacked and called racist. And if twitter doesn't censor them, twitter gets attacked too, and called "a haven for white supremacists and nazis". In reality, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are wanted, it is only a small group of vocal objectors that insist they are unwanted.
>The fascists are free to find other platforms, no one is censoring them.
The former does not support the latter. People moving to an uncensored platform does not mean the censored platform is not censored.
You've been getting involved in a lot of flamewars on HN. That's not what this site is for. If you keep doing it, we're going to have to ban you again, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended, we'd appreciate it. The intention is intellectual curiosity, not ideological battle.
>I'm not convinced that people intrinsically "care" about migration
Lots of people do. For many people it genuinely is about maintaining the nations their ancestors spent hundreds of generations creating. Nations, not states. Somalians can never be part of the German nation, no matter how long they have citizenship in the state called Germany. You can't spend decades telling white people how evil colonialism was, and then say "by the way you have to allow your native land to be colonized and if you say no you are an evil racist and we'll throw you in jail". People have a natural instinct for fairness.
Your idea of nations "their ancestors spent hundreds of generations creating is historical fiction. A hundred generations is around 2500 years. Look at some maps of migrations in Europe over the last 2500 years, and the idea of people mostly staying put over that time frame is demolished.
Modern English is a West Germanic language, coming from the Germanic tribes that pushed aside the Celts, for example. The reason it doesn't sound more like Dutch and German being the Norman invasion and subsequent exchange with the French. Modern German on the other hand isn't closer to Dutch or Danish than it is because High German from the South has supplanted the Low German native to Northern Germany, parts of the Netherlands and Southern Denmark as political shifted in the last 100-200 years.
And from the UK at least, it is clear that the people who care most are the people who have the least experience with it.
>the idea of people mostly staying put over that time frame is demolished.
That idea was never put forward. Again, a nation is a people.
>It's about fear, where origin is a proxy.
It seems rather arrogant to tell other people what their beliefs are and what they are about. Would you tell Indians that they were evil racists for being "afraid" of the British invaders? That they just don't have enough experience, and you, being so much more wise and experienced know better than they do, and should be allowed to dictate to them who is allowed in their country?
> That idea was never put forward. Again, a nation is a people.
"A nation is a people" does not say anything. It's a totally empty phrase given that the notion of what makes up "a people" is totally fluid, and changes dramatically over time, as I pointed out. You won't find anyone in England who consider themselves Germans, for example, but most of them are descendants predominantly of Germanic tribes. And despite "British" as an identity is even more of a fabrication you'll find plenty of people who see no distinction between English and Scottish people, for example
And it changes rapidly: Even surveys of what nationality people in the UK consider themselves to have shows massive shifts over even the last 30-40 years. These things can not be measured meaningfully in "hundreds of generations" - they often change dramatically in as little of 1-2 generations.
The irony of what one finds in such surveys is that contrary to your earlier attempt to paint this as something lasting, families of recent immigrants to the UK tend to show much stronger feelings of national belonging than "ethnic British" people, and are largely accepted as British. Unsurprisingly given how much of the culture of many of these immigrants have become an integral part of British culture.
> It seems rather arrogant to tell other people what their beliefs are and what they are about.
Not when there is plenty of evidence.
> Would you tell Indians that they were evil racists for being "afraid" of the British invaders?
I wouldn't tell anyone they're racist for being afraid of people who are actually invading and taking their country. That you even try to equate this with immigration says enough.
> dictate to them who is allowed in their country?
You're the one assuming I am suggesting I should have a right to dictate to them. People are free to be xenophobes and bigots if they wish. That does not make them any less so, and I'm equally free to call them out on it.
> being so much more wise and experienced know better than they do
In terms of the UK for example, as I pointed out, it is not at all about my experience. It's about the fact that anti-immigration sentiments linked to opposition to the EU was strongest in the areas where people have the least personal experience with it, and in fact opposition to the EU in general was largest in areas with the least immigration. If they had actual experience of it, I'd have slightly more sympathy for their position, but most of this xenophobia is linked to lack of experience.
Living in London, as an immigrant, the vast majority of British people I meet are equally exasperated over the xenophobia in "Middle England", because most people here know immigrants, work with immigrants, or are in relationships with immigrants.
""A nation is a people" does not say anything. It's a totally empty phrase"
No, this is absurdly false.
If you visit different nations, you find different kinds of cultures.
This is obvious.
The very words 'culture' and 'ethnicity' exist in every language to describe such a thing.
That they are 'fluid', of course, does not deny their existence.
I understand that we want to be wary of ethnocentrism, and hyper-nationalism, but the denial that there is such a thing as ethnic groups that constitute 'people' who have a shared culture and history is just as repulsive.
"People are free to be xenophobes and bigots if they wish"
This is childish, anti-intellectual rhetoric.
The mere observance that there is such a thing as different groups of people on the planet does not constitute any, even remote form of negative connotation.
Finally - the position that 'those with less exposure to migrants in the UK voted for Brexit, ergo, ignorance' is not necessarily true. Those in highly cosmopolitan areas tend to identify less with the groups around them, whereas those in areas with lower rates of migration, are more likely to identify as part of an ethnic group to which they belong.
I live as a tiny English speaking minority in a fully Quebecois part of Quebec. I'm only one of a handful of people in my area that speaks English as a first language - moreover, the area is not multicultural at all: it's very much Quebecois. The coherence of this community is obvious and palpable to anyone. My family members (English) notice it immediately when they visit. In fact - we 'English Canadians' have a very globalized culture, much less affinity for one another to the point wherein the level of social cohesion among the Quebecois seems strange to us. Sadly - this also implies that it's 'harder to break into' this culture, and that they are less successful with integration.
Whatever the Quebecois are, for better or worse - they are absolutely 'a people' of some kind. Because it's so gloriously obvious to anyone without an ideological bone to pick, one might have to consider how one could possibly arrive at the conclusion that the sky is not blue when it obviously is? That's the interesting question.
A mere 10km drive from my home to the English speaking area yields obvious, quantifiable and measurable differences. A child would see the difference. That's literally what 'diversity' is.
There are nations of people in the world. It doesn't make some better than others and it doesn't deny our common humanity. Of course there are nary any 'hard boundaries' between cultures, and as you say - it's all fluid. But they still exist, and it absolutely must be part of the equation as we move forward, otherwise there'll be calamity.
It was attempts to align the borders of Germany the state with the German-speaking areas of Europe that got us into this mess, with the annexation of the Sudetenland.
The borders among 'German speaking people' have been nutbars since time immemorial, frankly the concept of a fairly federalized Germany is a very, very new thing in history.
>Since modern states don't have an entrenched hereditary aristocracy
We absolutely do, but because we are bombarded with propaganda telling us they "earned it" by "working hard" and "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" we pretend it is just a co-incidence that the people born into the top 1% almost always remain there, and people born in the bottom 99% almost always remain there.
>After public schooling became a things, suddenly just being able to read and write is not a distinguishing feature
It never was. The aristocracy were educated specifically on economics, justice, etc. It wasn't simply a matter of being able to read.
Sure, I simplified a lot. The current western world order is still much more fair to the common folk than feudalism.
The education aspect was not as much about how much more educated the aristocracy was rather that the unwashed masses rose to their level, and it was not anymore sufficient to say that god has decreed duke X a distinguished gentleman and commoner Y a filthy peasant.
It is not easy to rise social ladders, but it's way easier with our figment of a fair society, rather than if we believed social status was a fixed quantity given by the creator of the universe.
The pithy armchair psychologist in me would claim modern society is much more facilitating towards a growth mindset than a feodal one.
>The current western world order is still much more fair to the common folk than feudalism.
That's the common perception, but there's little evidence that it is true. Modern peons have no more ability to control their governments than medieval peons did, we just have the illusion presented to us to keep us complacent. We work longer hours, have less nutritious and safe food, and have an epidemic of "mental illness" stemming from our lack of social bonds and community. But because we have medicine and electronic gadgets we declare ourselves to be much better off.
>The education aspect was not as much about how much more educated the aristocracy was
Well really that is exactly what aristocracy was, as originally conceived. Some places ended up with a corrupt form where it was rule by birth rather than rule by excellence (the literal definition of aristocracy), but mostly people just mistakenly refer to monarchies as aristocracies.
>but it's way easier with our figment of a fair society, rather than if we believed social status was a fixed quantity given by the creator of the universe.
Why? The modern myth that nobility was defined purely by birth is just that, a myth. If you believe that excellence is given by god, it does not also follow that you must believe god only gives excellence to the offspring of others he gave excellence. In reality it was seen as no different than with livestock. If a good specimen is born you make it part of your breeding stock, even if its parents were not.
> We work longer hours, have less nutritious and safe food, and have an epidemic of "mental illness" stemming from our lack of social bonds and community. But because we have medicine and electronic gadgets we declare ourselves to be much better off.
This smacks of rosy retrospective bias. Even if we have less nutritious food, which is debatable, we have an abundance of it, sufficient to feed us all and we don't suffer famines and shortages, or nutritional deficiencies.
We have an "epidemic" of mental illness because most of our day is no longer solely focused on scrounging for survival. Also, the mentally ill are no longer shunned as harshly and so they don't die of starvation. Perhaps community bonds have something to do with it, but that's also debatable.
>Even if we have less nutritious food, which is debatable
It really isn't, it has been measured. With increased atmospheric CO2, plants grow faster and end up with a much higher calorie:micronutrient ratio. We also consume vast quantities of industrial waste products now like "vegetable oil", HFCS and soybean by-products.
>we have an abundance of it, sufficient to feed us all and we don't suffer famines and shortages, or nutritional deficiencies.
Famine wasn't as common as you seem to think it was, unless you include impoverished states, in which case famine is killing more people now than it was back then. You can't just look at rich countries now compared to everyone centuries ago. You have to compare like to like. We suffer plenty of nutritional deficiencies, and we suffer huge amounts of diet caused diseases like "type 2 diabetes" and osteoporosis.
>We have an "epidemic" of mental illness because most of our day is no longer solely focused on scrounging for survival.
People were not scrounging for survival then either. They were producing significant surpluses of food, enough to feed massive armies. And while they worked hard in spring and fall, they essentially had summer and winter as vacation time. They had more holidays/vacation time than modern Americans do.
>Perhaps community bonds have something to do with it, but that's also debatable.
We literally have hundreds of thousands of people killing themselves entirely because they have no social bonds. Everything is debatable, but this debate in particular has overwhelming evidence in support of it being correct. As population density grows, social cohesion, trust and relationships all decline. We just didn't evolve to be friends with 5 million people.
> Famine wasn't as common as you seem to think it was, unless you include impoverished states, in which case famine is killing more people now than it was back then.
"More people" is an irrelevant metric, what matters is the percentage of people relative to the total. That's a meaningful measure of progress.
> We suffer plenty of nutritional deficiencies
Such as?
> and we suffer huge amounts of diet caused diseases like "type 2 diabetes" and osteoporosis.
The latter of which was either common back then also, or uncommon because they didn't live long enough to develop it. As for type II diabetes, it's a disease of abundance, which proves my point. You can't overeat if you don't have enough to eat.
> They were producing significant surpluses of food, enough to feed massive armies.
That often starved during campaigns.
> And while they worked hard in spring and fall, they essentially had summer and winter as vacation time. They had more holidays/vacation time than modern Americans do.
During which they had to ration food, developed nutritional deficiencies, and died of exposure. Some vacation. You're awfully selective about how you compare "like to like".
> We literally have hundreds of thousands of people killing themselves entirely because they have no social bonds.
Citation please.
Also, there is very little real data on historical suicide rates [1,2]. It consists mainly of conjecture from the writings of artists at the time, like Dante speaking about hell and suicide. So your claims that modern rates are higher are also pure conjecture.
It is not a naturalistic fallacy. The things I mentioned are harmful. Industrial waste may not be necessarily harmful, but it is also not necessarily food. We consume it because it is industrial waste, not because it is food. It is harmful, we consume it in vast quantities, it did not even exist before the early 1900s.
>"More people" is an irrelevant metric, what matters is the percentage of people relative to the total. That's a meaningful measure of progress.
It is more as a percentage.
>Such as?
Do you think nutritional deficiencies don't exist any more? Common deficiencies include iron, B12, D, calcium, A, iodine, magnesium, zinc and folate. People now eat fewer vegetables, which contain fewer micronutrients, and we have almost completely removed organ meat from our diets altogether.
>The latter of which was either common back then also, or uncommon because they didn't live long enough to develop it.
Those are conflicting explanations. You can't dismiss a problem by throwing out random conflicting excuses. No, osteoporosis was not common then. "Type 2 diabetes" and heart disease both didn't even exist, and now are so widespread that they are top killers.
>As for type II diabetes, it's a disease of abundance, which proves my point.
No, it is a disease of consumption of toxic omega 6 polyunsaturated fats. Fat people existed in medieval times. They did not get "type 2 diabetes". And it still would not prove your point, as overeating is not the same as healthy. I said people ate healthier. People eating high calorie low nutrient food and getting morbidly obese now supports my point, it does not contradict it.
>That often starved during campaigns.
Only if you have an unusual definition of "often". And those incidents were due to being cut off from supplies. Another army preventing your food from getting to you is not an indication that you are unable to grow enough food and thus "everyone is spending all day trying to stave off starvation".
>During which they had to ration food, developed nutritional deficiencies, and died of exposure
Except none of those things. Those are the times they spent feasting. We still have several of the same traditional feasts, just renamed to pretend they are christian.
>So your claims that modern rates are higher are also pure conjecture.
Modern rates are higher than any other point in recorded history. We have poorer data from ancient times, but we do still have data. You even linked to some. And it indicates that suicide was rare, and when it did happen it was mainly out of shame or a sense of honor having done something wrong. There is no reason to assume suicide rates were higher in medieval times just because you want to believe the iron age was some horrific time. Again, the people who still live in the stone age today and are healthier and happier than us right now, and have essentially no modern "mental illnesses" like depression or social anxiety and no modern dietary diseases like "type 2 diabetes", even the ones with BMI scores in the "morbidly obese" category. Because they do not possess the technology to create petrochemical solvents necessary to extract toxic seed oils. We are just supposed to ignore that because they inconveniently point to modern society being harmful?
>Again, the people who still live in the stone age today and are healthier and happier than us right now,
That’s a senseless statement. Nobody lives in the Stone Age today. That’s a period of time.
If you’re referring to primitive tribes with no outside world contact, then you’ll need to provide evidence and definitions for healthier/happier. They have high infant mortality rates, they kill disabled children, they die from treatable illnesses, and they starve during bad years.
Of course they have mental illness, there is no evidence they are immune to Down syndrome, schizophrenia, or anything else. They are just much more likely to murder or ostracize people having too much difficulty fitting into the tribe.
>It is harmful, we consume it in vast quantities
Ugh, you accidentally forgot to provide any evidence of its harm again. You just preceded it with another naturalistic fallacy that implied that it must be harmful because it’s industrial.
>Nobody lives in the Stone Age today. That’s a period of time.
Yes they do. It is a period of technological development. There is no singular timespan that makes up the stone age or bronze age or iron age, those periods are different depending on the people.
>If you’re referring to primitive tribes with no outside world contact
They have outside world contact, they simply choose to continue living the way they prefer instead of adopting modernity.
>then you’ll need to provide evidence and definitions for healthier/happier
The dictionary already does.
>They have high infant mortality rates, they kill disabled children, they die from treatable illnesses, and they starve during bad years.
The first three things are not healthy, and the last thing is false.
>Of course they have mental illness, there is no evidence they are immune to Down syndrome, schizophrenia, or anything else.
Please attempt to read what is being said rather than intentionally taking an obviously contrary definition so you have something to argue about. I am talking about the modern "mental illnesses", note the quotes, like depression and social anxiety which are epidemic in modernity, and do not exist in primitive cultures.
>Ugh, you accidentally forgot to provide any evidence of its harm again
Almost as if this is a discussion and not me publishing a scientific paper. You are welcome to look up the data linking omega 6 polyunsaturated fats to the modern disease epidemic.
>You just preceded it with another naturalistic fallacy that implied that it must be harmful because it’s industrial.
Simply repeating the fallacy fallacy is not going to accomplish anything.
> It is harmful, we consume it in vast quantities, it did not even exist before the early 1900s.
Many things didn't exist before the 1900s, that still doesn't entail they are harmful. Furthermore, harm is dose-dependent. Water is harmful if you ingest too much. There is little evidence that these are harmful in appropriate doses. Again, most of the harm stems from abundance.
> [Famine is killing] more [people] as a percentage.
Citation?
> Do you think nutritional deficiencies don't exist any more? Common deficiencies include iron, B12, D, calcium, A, iodine, magnesium, zinc and folate.
Now where's the evidence that these deficiencies were not prevalent or worse throughout history, which is what you're actually claiming.
> You can't dismiss a problem by throwing out random conflicting excuses.
You mean like the baseless, uncited claims you're making? I've now provided far more citations demonstrating your claims are incorrect than you have. And the "excuses" aren't conflicting, they're exhaustive covering many possibilities, all of which undermine your narrative.
> "Type 2 diabetes" and heart disease both didn't even exist
As for type 2 diabetes, you have literally no basis to make that claim. There is plenty of historical data confirming the existence of diabetes throughout history, but it's not possible to reliably distinguish them given the data: https://www.healthline.com/health/history-type-1-diabetes#4
> No, it is a disease of consumption of toxic omega 6 polyunsaturated fats.
Citation?
> Fat people existed in medieval times. They did not get "type 2 diabetes".
Citation?
> And those incidents were due to being cut off from supplies
And from food spoiling.
> Another army preventing your food from getting to you is not an indication that you are unable to grow enough food and thus "everyone is spending all day trying to stave off starvation"
Good thing I never said that.
> Except none of those things. [Winter] are the times they spent feasting. We still have several of the same traditional feasts, just renamed to pretend they are christian.
Wrong: "The winter solstice was immensely important because the people were economically dependent on monitoring the progress of the seasons. Starvation was common during the first months of the winter, January to April (northern hemisphere) or July to October (southern hemisphere), also known as "the famine months". In temperate climates, the midwinter festival was the last feast celebration, before deep winter began. Most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter, so it was almost the only time of year when a plentiful supply of fresh meat was available.[5] The majority of wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking at this time."
So basically the reason for the feasts is so they didn't have to waste precious food on keeping animals alive, because otherwise they'd all starve, like I said.
> Modern rates are higher than any other point in recorded history. We have poorer data from ancient times, but we do still have data. You even linked to some.
I linked to evidence that quite literally say we don't have enough historical data to infer the actual rates of suicide. So no, it doesn't at all indicate anything like what you claim.
> There is no reason to assume suicide rates were higher in medieval times just because you want to believe the iron age was some horrific time.
Except no one is making that claim. What I am saying is that your claim that modern rates are higher is baseless.
> Again, the people who still live in the stone age today and are healthier and happier than us right now and have essentially no modern "mental illnesses" like depression or social anxiety
You've fallen into the common trap of romanticizing the past. Some aspects of older cultures indeed are healthier, but your apparent inclination to claim that rates of happiness and health are far worse today than they ever were is completely baseless.
>Many things didn't exist before the 1900s, that still doesn't entail they are harmful.
Stop trying to reverse my statement because you think that will allow you to dismiss it. I said they are harmful, and they did not exist before the 1900s. Not they are harmful because they didn't exist before the 1900s. Their harm is known by the negative health effects of their consumption. Those negative health effects did not exist for people before the 1900s.
>Now where's the evidence that these deficiencies were not prevalent or worse throughout history, which is what you're actually claiming.
I see a pattern here where you state that common scientific knowledge is wrong unless I provide citations for it, then when I do you just ignore those citations and the entire subject and proceed to call some other common scientific knowledge wrong. You can use google too.
I am well aware that people post common misconceptions on their blogs. If I link to a blog post about how the earth is really flat will that make it so?
>Citation?
Again, this is not wikipedia. If you want to call someone a liar, do so. If you want to find out information, do so. You don't get to delete opinions you don't like if you spam "citation needed" enough in a conversation. The history of type 2 diabetes is easy to learn about, it did not exist until the early 1900s.
>And from food spoiling.
Which is obviously caused by being unable to produce enough food and requiring all adults to spend their entire lives toiling in the fields to avoid starvation, thus supporting your belief.
>So basically the reason for the feasts is so they didn't have to waste precious food on keeping animals alive, because otherwise they'd all starve
They didn't waste food, therefore they were all starving. Brilliant logic.
>I linked to evidence that quite literally say we don't have enough historical data to infer the actual rates of suicide
You linked to poor evidence for suicide rates. That is not the same as no evidence. This kind of tactic is just silly. "Oh, well the evidence that shows their suicide rate was much lower has limited sample sizes, so we should just assume that in reality they had much higher suicide rates".
>What I am saying is that your claim that modern rates are higher is baseless.
And yet you provided evidence to contradict your claim.
>Wrong
Neither of your links are even related to my statement, so going "DURRRR RONG!!11" seems a little odd.
>You've fallen into the common trap of romanticizing the past
That's possible. Or perhaps you've fallen into the much more common trap of romanticizing the present.
>but your apparent inclination to claim that rates of happiness and health are far worse today than they ever were is completely baseless.
Again, there's a big difference between "the evidence is not strong enough to know that with 100% certainty" which is the case and "completely baseless" which is what you wish.
> Stop trying to reverse my statement because you think that will allow you to dismiss it. I said they are harmful
And yet, you have provided no evidence of such. The evidence of harm is far from conclusive, and given the replication crisis, your stating these claims as facts is completely unjustified.
> Not they are harmful because they didn't exist before the 1900s.
What do you think the non-existence of these things prior to the 1900s proves exactly, that you keep bringing it up as if it's a relevant point? My points about the 1900s appear to be just as relevant to the discussion as your points.
> I see a pattern here where you state that common scientific knowledge is wrong unless I provide citations for it
I see a pattern where you keep claiming something is "common scientific knowledge" without any providing evidence of such a consensus.
> then when I do you just ignore those citations and the entire subject and proceed to call some other common scientific knowledge wrong. You can use google too.
When you do? When was that exactly? You've provided a single link to some articles that talk about CO2's effects on plant growth, completely ignoring the fact that I had already acknowledged that even if nutritional density were decreasing, the abundance is sufficient to feed the growing population.
Further, I'm not the one making dozens of unsubstantiated claims, you are. The burden of proof is on you here, not me to prove or disprove your claims, and yet I've gone out of my way to correct your misconceptions about history.
> I am well aware that people post common misconceptions on their blogs. If I link to a blog post about how the earth is really flat will that make it so?
Convenient that you ignore the paper that mentions the prevalence of osteoporosis is due to the aging population. Here's another one for you to deny: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24087808
> The history of type 2 diabetes is easy to learn about, it did not exist until the early 1900s.
Oh, do you mean it did not exist as a diagnosis? Because that seems like a fairly trivial point. If you literally mean that humans from history did not suffer from maladies that are a result of our biology, then that's a much stronger claim, so prove it.
> They didn't waste food, therefore they were all starving. Brilliant logic.
Nice how you just skip all the mentions of how common starvation was, and the actual justification for feasting in early winter.
> You linked to poor evidence for suicide rates. That is not the same as no evidence.
I asked for evidence. You have not provided any. Numerous sources I found all discuss how no robust evidence exists. Thus far, there is literally no reason to believe your claims, and considerable reason to disbelieve them.
> Neither of your links are even related to my statement, so going "DURRRR RONG!!11" seems a little odd.
You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies were healthier. The first link I provided definitively proves otherwise.
You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies didn't suffer from mental illness like depression. Historical documents discussing depressive symptoms are common. Are we to take this as evidence of some depression-like condition that's not depression? Are you seriously claiming that that's more believable?
> That's possible. Or perhaps you've fallen into the much more common trap of romanticizing the present.
Except I haven't made any such claims. At best, I've implied that there is no reason to think historical humans were much different in the maladies they suffered, except modern circumstances and abundance have clearly led to significantly lower infant and adult mortality. Which is actually well documented, commonly known fact, and runs contrary to what you have claimed.
> Again, there's a big difference between "the evidence is not strong enough to know that with 100% certainty" which is the case and "completely baseless" which is what you wish.
Since you've provided no evidence at all, and the evidence I've cited so far actually runs counter to what you claim, "baseless" is pretty accurate.
>The evidence of harm is far from conclusive, and given the replication crisis, your stating these claims as facts is completely unjustified.
Then say "I don't believe that" instead of trying to engage in silly arguments that have no possibility of productive outcomes.
>What do you think the non-existence of these things prior to the 1900s proves exactly
That people did not consume them prior to that time. As I very clearly stated, multiple times.
>completely ignoring the fact that I had already acknowledged that even if nutritional density were decreasing, the abundance is sufficient to feed the growing population.
That's a problem, not a solution. "We have to consume too many calories to get the same amount of vitamins and minerals they did" is not solved by saying "but we have lots of low quality food!". Obesity is not a solution to nutrient deficiencies.
>The burden of proof is on you here
There is no burden of proof. This is a discussion.
>Convenient that you ignore the paper that mentions the prevalence of osteoporosis is due to the aging population
Because it is of no relevance at all. The increase in osteoporosis in recent decades is in part due to the increased average age. That does not contradict the fact that osteoporosis rates in the 20th century are far higher than we have archeological evidence for in any other period.
>Oh, do you mean it did not exist as a diagnosis?
No, it did not exist. Diabetes was entirely and solely the disease we now call type 1 diabetes. That was the only diabetes. "Type 2 diabetes" has no relation to actual diabetes, has nothing to do with pancreatic malfunction, and did not exist prior to the 1920s.
>Nice how you just skip all the mentions of how common starvation was
Because that was not fact, it was opinion. I am well aware of the popular misconception, pointing to someone else repeating it does not add anything.
>and the actual justification for feasting in early winter.
That is not what it says. It claims people starve later in winter. Feasting before that would not change that outcome, and the quote you presented does not suggest it would.
>I asked for evidence. You have not provided any.
You did.
>Numerous sources I found all discuss how no robust evidence exists.
Again, stating that all available evidence points to A but is "not robust enough" therefore we should assume the opposite of A is absurd.
>The first link I provided definitively proves otherwise.
The first link does not look at a single hunter/gatherer society. It looks at minority indigenous populations living as second class citizens in modern countries. Amerindians living on reservations are not hunter/gatherers.
>You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies didn't suffer from mental illness like depression. Historical documents discussing depressive symptoms are common.
No they are not, they are rare, not from hunter/gatherer societies, and they describe the condition as one of cities. Almost as if what I said about it being caused by human settlements exceeding the population humans evolved to handle is correct.
>Except I haven't made any such claims.
You have, repeatedly. You romanticize our disease rates, our abundant toxic waste which we can consume so much of and become morbidly obese and die, thus proving how great modern society is and how healthy we are.
>Which is actually well documented, commonly known fact, and runs contrary to what you have claimed.
No it is not. Average life expectancy has increased almost entirely due to antibiotics. Lots of people lived to their 80s, and did not suffer from the modern diseases we now pretend are just part of being old. Indirectly saying "but lots of people died of bacterial infections" does not mean we can simply pretend those infections were "type 2 diabetes".
>and the evidence I've cited so far
None? Linking to something irrelevant is not citing evidence.
I have not made any extraordinary claims, I have repeated the very standard scientific consensus, which is constantly repeated in the popular media. I do not presume that every piece of common knowledge is going to be considered an "extraordinary claim" by someone who hates search engines.
>Worrying about society overeating wasn’t even a thing in the US until the 50s.
So, our modern lifestyle is good because we've only been worried about it killing us since we've had it?
It is not common knowledge that a hunter gatherer lifestyle without medicine/food science/etc is better. It is not reported in popular media and it’s not backed by scientific research. It is an extraordinary claim.
>our modern lifestyle is good because we've only been worried about it killing us since we've had it?
Nope. It’s good because it’s provided us with abundance to the point where we are no longer struggling just to feed ourselves.
We have orders of magnitude safer food, fewer mentally ill than feudal folk. And we have medicine that works. Its disingenuous and incorrect to dismiss it so glibly.
I am not dismissing medicine. But the existence of medicine now does not mean life centuries ago was a horrifying existence struggling to survive as popular culture suggests. There are still primitive people now, whose existence is far closer to that subsistence stereotype than medieval Europeans were. They are overwhelmingly happy and healthy. They eat better than we do, are healthier than we are, and work less than we do. If they had modern medicine, it is hard to argue they wouldn't be better off than us in every way.
But they don’t have modern medicine, and they don’t have the means to deal with droughts, or other natural disasters. Indigenous tribes who have contact with society are overwhelmingly unhappy with some of the highest suicide rates in the world. The ones who don’t have contact don’t have their happiness measured in any meaningful or comparable way... because they don’t have contact.
Additionally, if they are in any kind of environment where they have to do manual labor for food, they work way more than most Americans do. Standing around for 40 hours a week making coffees for people is a walk in the park compared to tilling a field with a hoe.
People like the indigenous Kitava have no such problems. Because they are not living as an underclass minority in another culture. They have contact with modern people, but they choose to live traditionally.
>Additionally, if they are in any kind of environment where they have to do manual labor for food
That would be every kind of environment...
>they work way more than most Americans do.
They do not. Again, see the Kitava. They barely have a concept of work.
>Standing around for 40 hours a week making coffees for people is a walk in the park compared to tilling a field with a hoe
Tilling a field with a hoe is a completely unnecessary act. Your cultural bias makes you assume this is some universal penance that must be paid in order to extract food from the soil. It is not.
>Yes, we've covered that haven't we? In the very post you just replied to, in order to add absolutely nothing to the discussion?
I’m pointing out that it’s a massive caveat. It’s like claiming they built a plane and other than it not being able to fly, it’s just as good as the ones we have. A society without modern medicine is significantly worse off.
>That would be any kind of environment
No, you should learn about the industrial scale farming that feeds most of the planet
>They barely have a concept of work
Oh? What happens when nobody wants to hunt then? Work is what members of a society do to keep it going. If they aren’t smart enough to recognize it, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
>Tilling a field with a hoe is a completely unnecessary...
Let me stop you there. Hunter gatherer approaches do not scale. Growing food is entirely necessary to prevent 50 and 100 year storms/droughts from causing mass suffering and starvation.
It’s not cultural bias. It’s foresight to plan for the future and actually feed everyone rather than killing babies and old people during hard times.
No they didn't. We have books on farming that are 2000 years old, people have read them even. Just because movies show dirty peasants hoeing fields doesn't mean that was reality.
If we're talking the middle ages in Europe, then 90% of folk farmed as serfs or peasants. When they weren't dead from frequent droughts or plagues. "No they didn't" isn't an argument.
The myth is that 90% were involved in food production in any way. Butchers and millers and brewers and bakers are part of that 90%, they were not doing anything in any fields. But that myth is based on England under Roman rule, where vast quantities of food were grown by slaves and shipped to Rome. After the fall of Rome, people returned to farming for the local population, and so needed fewer farmers. The period is even characterized by the three orders: those who fight, those who work and those who pray. These were societies that had enough food production that a major portion of the population could spend their time praying instead of doing anything productive. And the "those who work" includes carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, etc. not just farmers.
And that's not what is in dispute anyways. Hoeing fields is. Farmer does not equal hoeing fields. Tillage was done as little as necessary, and was done mainly using horses or oxen pulling plows and cultivators. A hoe was used seldom, and mainly in the vegetable garden. As I said, we have actual period texts on how to farm. All the way back to Rome, Greece and ancient China. None of them describe the modern hollywood portrayal of mentally handicapped peasants spending their lives hitting the ground with sticks.
We also have records of actual farm manors and how much labor each farmer was required to provide for the lord every year. They worked less than us, and had 8 weeks a year without work which they spent playing sports and games in the village green. We have skeletons that show they were taller than us, which indicates better nutrition. But because the late 1700s and early 1800s saw massive numbers of people move to cities and suffer terrible malnutrition and poverty, everyone just assumes things were even worse before that. All available evidence says otherwise. Things have always been bad in cities, especially due to disease, but rural life appears to have been pretty decent and was the majority of the population. Localized famines were rare enough to be major historical events mentioned all across Europe.
Would you please read the site guidelines and not post like this to HN? It's against the rules, no matter how wrong or provocative another comment may be.
More generally, please don't do flamewars or post in the flamewar style to this site.
>that the people born into the top 1% almost always remain there, and people born in the bottom 99% almost always remain there.
The former isn’t true for income and doesn’t remain true for wealth for more than a couple generations. The latter is of course true because... math. 99% of the people are always going to be in the bottom 99%.
When you talk about the 1 percent for income, you are capturing doctors, lawyers, professors, and small business owners with your angst. Many of those people absolutely earned their position by busting their ass. You don’t become a successful spinal surgeon by having daddy grease the wheels. You do it by taking on $400k in debt and spending most of your 20s in school.
You are woefully misinformed if you think wealth inequality has only been around for 100-150 years.
>statement isn't that 99% of people are in the bottom 99%, it is that it is the same people staying there.
That’s not true though. A non-negligible portion of the richest people are first generation. And again, of course most of the 99% will stay in the 99% because math. Even with a complete turnover in one year, 98% didn’t move.
>deliberately misleading corporate propaganda piece about income would be productive?
It’s not propaganda when it comes mostly from the people on the left using it to argue for higher income taxes. Higher income taxes are an attack on income inequality, not wealth inequality. You might think it’s propaganda, but it would behoove you to listen to people on the left to hear what they are proposing.
No, if you are a functional developer from haskell, you will not be impressed by F#. Why add silly things like this to your sales pitch if F# is your first functional language, and you're still pretty new to it?
>Simple test for this is to ask some one to describe the positions of the other party and why they feel the way they do without using any disparaging or cynical terms
That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. They lack the same fundamental values, and so they are unable to see conservative views as being within a set of values that are different from their own. Instead they see conservative views as being contrary to values, period. Liberals being asked to answer a survey the way they think a conservative would will answer agree/disagree questions like "one of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" with disagree, but actual conservatives say agree. On the other hand, conservatives are able to accurately answer the same survey as a liberal would. Moderates are able to answer accurately as either a liberal or a conservative.
Both sides do demonize each other, that's not the question. The question is if they understand each other. Abortion is a perfect example. Conservatives understand the liberal position, that a woman's "right" to an abortion is more important than a fetus's "right" to live. Obviously they disagree, and obviously they consider the other view abhorrent. But they understand what that view is.
On other other hand, liberals overwhelmingly do not understand conservative positions. Sticking with the same issue of abortion, most liberals say conservatives oppose abortion because they hate women and want to control their bodies. This despite the fact that the majority of people opposed to abortion are women. They simply believe the reverse of what I stated above: that the fetus's "right" to live is more important than the woman's "right" to have an abortion.
I'm torn on this. The liberal understanding of this is not entirely wrong. The evidence is that if you look at the big pro-life groups, they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control. So it is not entirely irrational for liberals to think the way they do about this. Perhaps the folks who are both pro-life AND pro birth control need to up their game?
edit: I would bet that this is because Roman Catholics provide most of the funding for the big pro-life groups.
>The liberal understanding of this is not entirely wrong
Yes, it is.
>The evidence is that if you look at the big pro-life groups, they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control.
That is incorrect, and a good example of the bubbles being real. You are just looking at church opposition because that's what the media likes to focus on showing. And it would not make the liberal idea of the conservative view correct even if it were true. Christians who oppose birth control do so because they value the traditions of their culture, not because they hate women. Again, most of them are women. And many of the people who are portrayed as "opposing birth control" actually just oppose having their tax money used to pay for other people's birth control, which is not the same thing.
>So it is not entirely irrational for liberals to think the way they do about this.
It isn't irrational. Being wrong is not the same as being irrational.
> It isn't irrational. Being wrong is not the same as being irrational.
Rational: based on or in accordance with reason or logic.
Your argumentative tone is not compelling and you fail to demonstrate your position within some very constrained topics. Perhaps you will reconsider some of these ideas.
Your link does not support your belief that it is in some way partially correct. The catholic church is not a pro-life group. They pre-date the very idea of a pro-life group by many centuries. The largest pro-life group that random person lists does not have a position on birth control. So this does not support the notion that pro-life equals anti-birth control. But again, even if pro-life did equal anti-birth control that would not support the belief that pro-life people are pro-life because they hate women.
In case you missed in the post you are replying to: "And it would not make the liberal idea of the conservative view correct even if it were true. Christians who oppose birth control do so because they value the traditions of their culture, not because they hate women." Even if every single person who opposes abortion also opposed birth control, that would not make the belief that those people oppose abortion because they hate women correct. Opposing birth control is not hating women any more than opposing abortion is. Consider the opposite incorrect belief: "liberals hate babies, that's why they are pro-abortion". Now would you think "liberals also support birth control, so that proves it is because they hate babies" is good support for that belief? Neither supporting abortion nor supporting birth control can be equated to hating babies, just as neither opposing abortion nor opposing birth control can be equated to hating women.
>Rational: based on or in accordance with reason or logic
Yes? The four humors theory of health and medicine was based on reason and logic. It was also wrong. You can have a rational belief based on incomplete or incorrect data.
>Your argumentative tone is not compelling
Please don't assume a "tone" for someone. It does not further discussion.
>Perhaps you will reconsider some of these ideas.
I have. And in light of the lack of contradictory evidence, my views did not change this time.
> Your link does not support your belief that it is in some way partially correct.
Not my belief. I have evidence, so it's what I know, since previously I did not know. I found your arguments compelling and looked it up.
> In case you missed in the post you are replying to:
Nope. You decided to ignore a statement you agreed with for another you wanted to attack.
The largest pro life groups (as a body made up of pie slices) does evidently (ie have evidence) that supports:
> they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control
Which is what was being referenced by at least a partial correctness, since it was a following statement. Not sure who you're trying to fool.
> Yes? The four humors theory of health and medicine was based on reason and logic. It was also wrong
Wrong is a matter of evidence. For the time, it was right as right can be. That's how science works and is in accordance with rationality. Proving a theorem, does not mean that bringing it up as a theorem was/is wrong. Over time, changes in knowledge are part of the process.
Good luck with your religious convictions to these issues.
Then why not present it? Until you establish it is fact, then yes it is your belief.
>You decided to ignore a statement you agreed with for another you wanted to attack.
I have no idea what you mean.
>The largest pro life groups (as a body made up of pie slices) does evidently (ie have evidence) that supports
The link you provided says otherwise. It very clearly shows the largest pro-life group has no position on birth control.
>Which is what was being referenced by at least a partial correctness
That does not make logical sense. The statement "conservatives support abortion because they hate women and want to control their bodies" is not proven to be partially correct even if you believe that all conservatives oppose birth control. Opposing birth control is not hating women.
>For the time, it was right as right can be
No it was not. Incorrect isn't correct if you simply don't know any better.
>Good luck with your religious convictions to these issues.
I find it interesting that you ignore what I say, try to attribute what I say to malice, claim your belief is objective fact, and still suggest that I am the one with religious conviction here. "Conservatives hate women because I say they do" is not fact, no matter how many times you repeat it.
Being against birth control is a very specific thing to the Catholic church. Almost no one else subscribes to that belief, including nearly all religious and non-religious groups in north america.
I couldn't name a pro-life group period. I know a lot of churches are pro-life, but they are not pro-life groups any more than they are anti-theft groups.
> That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views.
Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values. Let's call this the foundational set V.
Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V: mostly concerns for purity, respect for authority and a heightened concern for security. Let's call this set A.
Conservatives could then easily predict the answers of liberals because they are both based on V, but it's not symmetrical, because conservatives are working from a bigger set of values V+A.
>Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values
They share two or three values: care and fairness for sure, and maybe liberty (not necessarily a value held by either group, but one held by some subset of both groups). That doesn't contradict my statement that liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. Views are based on values. Lacking the values that create the view makes it very hard to understand the view.
>Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V
Precisely, they add loyalty, authority and sanctity. Liberals do not have these values, often even viewing them as evil. And so they do not understand the views based on those values. Conservatives do have the values liberals do, and so they can understand the views based on those values.
Whilst that's one way to phrase it, the underlying differences are deeper and more to do with perception of the span of human nature.
For instance the apparent love of conservatives for 'respect for authority' is not actually respect for authority (why would they be so against big government if that were the case?) nor particular to conservatives, but rather, a preference for systems and formalised power structures over loose, informally specified power structures. One can observe that people with liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured authority, in particular, academics.
The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this apparent discovery that liberals cannot understand conservatives but not vice-versa. Conservatives see disagreement with their world view as naivety, but liberals see disagreement with their world view as the result of an evil or malign nature. The latter view leads to a belief that attempting to understand such a perspective is itself immoral behaviour, as you might be legitimising it, or alternatively, might be tempted to the dark side by mere exposure to the ideas themselves.
This is why you see so much no-platforming and general censorship coming from people with particular world views: they believe that conservative ideas work like some sort of infectious disease. Conservatives don't think that way about liberal views.
Ok, let me tweak my list of additional conservative values then: heightened concern for purity, intolerance of ambiguity and a heightened concern for security.
NOTE: I am not conservative, so take that for what it's worth.
>For instance the apparent love of conservatives for 'respect for authority' is not actually respect for authority (why would they be so against big government if that were the case?)
Because authority is not the only value they hold, it is just one of six values. Overreaching authority will naturally conflict with those other values, particularly liberty. This is also complicated by the fact that libertarians tend to be lumped into the category of conservatives in the US, when libertarians have little in common with conservatives and overwhelmingly base their moral foundations entirely on liberty. Libertarians don't have respect for authority, conservatives do. But if you call libertarians conservatives, that will make things look weird.
>One can observe that people with liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured authority, in particular, academics.
I can not observe that at all. Quite the contrary, I find overwhelmingly that liberals do not respect authority in any form. Academics are not respected by liberals, they are constantly attacked and vilified for publishing facts that liberals don't like. Liberals will point to an academic that agrees with them to bolster their argument, but they don't actually respect academics, as they have nothing but disdain for an academic that disagrees with them. Look at how James Watson has been treated by liberals, I don't see a lot of respect there. If they had respect for academic authority, they would actually consider what is said, instead of assuming the person saying it is evil and calling them evil.
>The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this apparent discovery
I'm not sure that's an alternative explanation, it seems like the same explanation. Haidt notes the same thing, that liberals view conservatives as evil because the underlying values conservatives hold are not values to liberals. While conservatives see liberals as ignorant or stupid, because they incorrectly assume liberals are using the same underlying values to come to conclusions about issues and so they must be ignorant of some fact or making an error of reasoning.
Different ways to do things is not art. Patterns emerging from those different ways is not art. Art is for emotional purposes:
"the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power."
Software developers have a tendency to try to claim artist status because what they do is almost entirely meaningless and a waste of time. The exchange of time for money is too transparent so they are unfulfilled and try to imbue their work with meaning. If you want to make art, do it, it can be a hobby. Yet another useless website created to shove more ads in people's faces is not art.
> 2. (countable) Skillful creative activity, usually with an aesthetic focus.
> She's mastered the art of programming.
..
> 7. (countable) Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation.
If that doesn't convince you, compare with such phrases as "The Art of War", "artisan bread", or "liberal arts" (which includes topics like philosophy).
Something that's beautiful in its problem set (doesn't, for instance, act as glue between other, poorly designed systems and thereby reflect their flaws), beautiful in its solutions (doesn't solve too much, nor too little, doesn't make too many assumptions), beautiful in its use (user experience, performance, etc.), and beautiful in its implementation (quality under the hood, no accidental complexity, properly factored, easy to understand and maintain) is quite rare for any problem with a scope larger than say "cat", and even most programs of that size make sad assumptions about things (e.g. are in languages where things are type/memory safe as a practice of the authors' diligence, not verifiable as a matter of course) or have to reflect the complexity of the OS/machines they run on for various reasons (performance, security, etc.).
One off the top of my head is Abrash's perspective correct rasterizer for the original Quake. Come to think of it, the BSP+PVS system for visible surface determination that they used was also pretty amazing.
It did conclude that, but it is just some guy making a statement, and he completely dismissed the soil issue without even considering it. The idea that you are fine if you eat an ill defined "well balanced diet" isn't very well supported. Lots of people have vitamin deficiencies they are not aware of. Very few people get enough B1 or b9 for example, and those are down 1/3 from what they used to be in lots of plants.
But again, that's not authoritarianism. Quite the contrary, the left demanding that people like him not be allowed to speak, and in many cases demanding he be attacked or even killed, that is authoritarian.