Prolific IQ researcher Richard Lynn together with two Russian collaborators have recently published arguing that multiple aspects of socio-economic development - infant mortality, fertility, stature, and literacy-as-a-proxy for intelligence were significantly intercorrelated in late Tsarist Russia. Here is the link to the paper - Regional differences in intelligence, infant mortality, stature and fertility in European... Read More
According to a recent n=150,000 global survey by Gallup and S&P, there is an astounding lack of financial literacy in the world. To gauge financial literacy, they asked a series of four questions on basic financial concepts such as risk diversification, inflation, simple interest, and compound interest. They were very simple and typically only had... Read More
Contrary to what some might try to take from my post on the longterm failure of the Soviet economy, I am not an anti-Soviet ideologue. I loathe lies about its achievements and the blanket condemnations directed its way by moralistic poseurs every bit as much or more than I detest reality-challenged attempts to paint it... Read More
Many Communists, leftists, and even patriots (I'm sorry to say) have a pronounced tendency to make out the Soviet economy as not quite the resounding failure it really was - or even to paint it as a success story that was only brought down by perestroika and liberal reforms. The above chart - based on... Read More
Just in case you thought the correlation between human capital and economic development was an artifice of the post-socialist world, here is a similar graph (R2=0.4273) for all the world's countries that have participated in the Math and Science portions of the PISA or TIMMS (8th grade) international standardized student assessments. The methodology is the... Read More
It is not a secret to longtime readers of this blog that I rate India's prospects far more pessimistically than I do China's. My main reason is I do not share the delusion that democracy is a panacea and that whatever advantage in this sphere India has is more than outweighed by China's lead in... Read More
One of the biggest questions in global history is why it was Western Europe that industrialized first, and ended up colonizing most of the rest of the world. As late as 1450, the possibility of such an outcome would have been ridiculed. By almost any metric, China was well in the lead through the medieval... Read More
How will the global South fare in our likely future of energy shortages, climate change and resource nationalism (and wars)? India has China's population mass, but lacks its industrial dynamism and human capital. Africa has Russia's energy and mineral wealth, but not the military power or social coherence to defend it. South America's prospects appear... Read More
My recent post on demographic myths unleashed a lively discussion on the issue of race and IQ in the comments section. I'm not too interested in wading into it: not out of any misplaced respect for political correctness, of course, but simply because though I think there are good arguments for both sides, it misses... Read More
One of the most interesting emerging sciences today, in my opinion, is cliodynamics. Their practitioners attempt to come to with mathematical models of history to explain "big history" - things like the rise of empires, social discontent, civil wars, and state collapse. To the casual observer history may appear to be chaotic and fathomless, devoid... Read More
The classic Marxist argument holds than an emerging bourgeois class, its wealth based on commerce, industry and capital accumulation, was constrained and frustrated in its political ambitions by the nobility. France was divided into Three Estates, the Third Estate which bore the taille (the main direct tax), the nobility (subject only to the capitation poll... Read More
Sometimes, it is much simpler to expound upon one's views on a subject by replying to and arguing against an opposing view, rather than constructing one's own thesis. Call it intellectual laziness, a clever short-cut or whatever you not, this is what I'm going to do with the Washington Post article A Long Wait at... Read More
A while ago I wrote Education as the Elixir of Growth on DR, in which I noted that in most countries the educational profile is closely correlated to their level of productivity. The major exceptions are nations with resource windfalls (inflated productivity) and socialist legacies (deflated productivity). Furthermore, the greater the gap between the 'potential... Read More
What are the reasons behind the wealth and poverty of nations? Since this question has exercised the minds of thinkers from Adam Smith to David Landes, Jared Diamond and Richard Lynn, I decided to take a look at it myself. I came to the conclusion that while geography, macroeconomic policies, resource windfalls and the microeconomic... Read More
I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.
One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.
Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.
If you like the words I write, and want to see more of them, here’s a way you can make that happen: http://akarlin.com/donations/
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Blogroll
This is not so much meant to be comprehensive as to illustrate the themes and individual thinkers whom I follow and am inspired by.
I do not bother including any MSM outlets, since I’m sure they can do just fine without my publicity.
Blogs which I consider to be particularly good and/or prominent are highlighted in bold, and blogs that appear to have gone dormant appear at the end in italics. While I try to keep these things objective, if you include me in your blogroll that does vastly increase the chances that I’ll reciprocate.
So yes, he made reference to retaliation, but on the other hand he focussed attention on passive defence, with “retaliation” limited to shooting down missiles. That’s how the US regime wants it, because it’s a no-win situation for Russia.
That’s why I suggested they need to make the ...
Calm down. If Russia do some revenge operation in East Europe; this will happen in Donbas and it will be done on the cheap way. Something like Smerching to the Stone age Ukr forces there.
Relax; the Russians are not coming (to Poland).
Lack of self awareness from Russian imperialists is becoming hilarious at this point - Putin himself was showing animations of nuclear strike on US territory just several weeks ago and now they are trying to present themselves as being very hurt that many people in the West don't like them at all...
"The Jew tells you that he was beaten, but doesn't tell you why."
Unfortunately gentiles don't seem to be immune to this kind of psychopathic sentiment. Little kids are like that. "He hurt me!" "But you hurt him first." "He hurt me! He shouldn't have hurt me!" "But you hurt him first. He only ...
The world is bigger than the US, chickie. Get lost and live out the rest of your days in homosexuality and shrew paradise land. No wonder your men aren't making babies with you.
Is there a strange reason why you feel the desire to troll a Russian blog: this is a country which is far more “based” by Alt-Right standards, and where feminism has made such inroads that the expectations that pretty secretaries are servicing their bosses is usually true. You have to be some...
NATO wars start when the other side chooses to shoot back.
Funnily enough there's another country that adopts the same attitude - we are entitled to attack whenever we want and if you retaliate it's an outrageous act of aggression that will entitle us to do whatever we want in response:
Isra...
How does it feel to be wrong?
You're about ready to find out.
Manosphere types say women act like children. The ironies never cease.
This is a bizarre contention peculiar to American society. It does not exist elsewhere, nor do American girls even behave the way weirdo age gap police co...
when that white skin gets 60-70 years old, it is going to look sad up against brown or black skin
My wife is super-afraid of this; age was not kind to my mother-in-law. While one of the Chinese brothers I knew in UCLA - his mother seemed perpetually stuck at like 40. God apportions His favors amo...
But if Trump is crazy, the Russian leadership has to deal with crazies. You need to play by game theory. Game theory says you shouldn't always fold, and have to be somewhat unpredictable. (Folding some times, but being tough at other times.)
It’s a diplomat, who has not got some great grasp military terminology
Diplomats normally do choose their words very carefully. I doubt what he said was not what his bosses told him to be the party line. It was also never corrected, despite the uproar in the MSM.
If he said "launching pla...
How the hell did Jobbik f*ck up so badly?
I was expecting that the drift of European politics to revolve more and more around immigration and identity issues would benefit Jobbik more than anyone else.
My understanding of the Marxist dialectic is that it would advocate abolition/minimization of the means of production from private, bourgeoisie control and while neither the Russian coalition nor the American one explicitly promote the interests of the proletariat through public/state control, Ru...
Karl Marx would be horrified with modern Russia
Karl Marx was horrified about Russia in his own day, so it wouldn't be exactly much of a change.
And sorry, I understand you're a leftist, but the fact that representatives of major Western powers now present Karl Marx (whose ideas aren't just s...
It was different when the Red army occupied the other half of Europe and of Germany, at least then a war would have been about issues genuinely central to us.
Fermi's Paradox answered: As a technology increases with time approaching infinity, the likelihood of a species eradicating itself th...
Let me put here this article:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-envoy-threatens-war-against-us-over-syria-strikes-lc2k578cf
NATO wars start when the other side chooses to shoot back.
Cet animal est très méchant: Quand on l'attaque, il se défend.
My feeling is: if you have to destroy the world rather than knuckle under to the bullies, go ahead. Better dead than red.
I understand the sentiment, but frankly, I deeply resent the idea that large parts of my country (certainly the part where I live) might get destroyed for the bizarre excep...
And Trump just taunted Putin. I find it unlikely that Putin won’t respond. He has to, if he has any self-respect.
Putin doesn’t respond to insults - he’s been called worse: “Hitler”, “dictator” etc. He doesn’t personalize an issue - something that Western politicians/pundits a...
Because both sides had reasonable positions based on geopolitics, it was easy to find a way out.
I agree with your general point, but I don't think it can be said it was easy to find a peaceful solution to the Cuban missile crisis. Despite JFK and Crushchev both being fundamentally rational pe...
The German diplomats in Moscow cultivated a very nice relationship with their Soviet hosts up until the declaration of war. It probably reflected their personal sympathies. The German ambassador, von Schulenburg often hinted at the coming invasion, trying to warn his hosts of the coming invasion.
And what about the OPCW inspectors who, it was announced yesterday, are shortly to arrive in Syria
I'd certainly be choosing my accommodation in Damascus carefully, if I were one of them.
Trump made a blunder here by referencing Russia’s threat of retaliation in his tweet (“Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria”). If he were smart, he would have stayed quiet about that part to make it easier to sell a possible Russian retaliation as “unprovoked aggr...