Humor is also one of those thing that requires “deep” cultural knowledge. (I.e., you have to understand what the words and images mean in a complex, nuanced way and probably “feel” them too).

Too deep for me, man. I just laugh if some dude slips up and falls on his arse.

To understand Hitchens’ backing of the Iraq war, one needs to know that some years ago he found that he had some Jewish ancestry – making him Jew-ish – and so support for Israel, and its neo-conservative cadre in America, became an ethnic calling.

Truth be told, this Flynn effect is rather unsatisfactory, and in defence of our ancestors, it has some usually faithful IQ defenders sounding curiously like liberal sceptics.

Oh, that creaky Freudian theory is so laughable. First, it doesn’t explain the coexistence of perfectly straight siblings. Second, even if arguendo there was some correlation, the causative direction could more plausibly be reversed: that parental perception of a child’s gender conformity affects how the same-gender and opposite-gender parents relate to that child.

Oh, ZeroHedge is one of the great tinfoil hat sites, where you will pick up nuggets of true data but have to strain out a lot of cognitive biases. If you’re vulnerable and not careful, it can be addictive.

Whether or not climate change is real, it won’t exterminate us. Humanity survived an Ice Age without any of the advanced technology we now possess and is adaptable enough to have survived in deserts for millennia. The flooding of coastal cities might kill a few dozen million people, but overall, we’ll be fine for the most part. The First World will build dams and floodgates and the Third World won’t, which might lead to a convenient reduction in the global population.

Icch freue mch vvon Ihnen zu hören!

The Zionist Jews that control the US media are fully complicit in horrific war crimes and intentionally deceiving the American people. That fact is easily proven as they have been supporting the FSA, the White Helmets and other terrorist groups and ruses in Syria. These covert actions and propaganda campaigns have led to the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people. The entire Syrian war is being misreported in the US media. Israel and the US are on the same side with Saudi Arabia and are pumping billions of dollars to terrorist factions in the warzones. That fact is continually being covered up by the CIA infiltrated US mainstream media. The proof of such is here:

Massive White Helmets Photo Cache Proves Hollywood Gave Oscar to Terrorist Group
https://clarityofsignal.com/2017/02/27/massive-white-helmets-photo-cache-proves-hollywood-gave-oscar-to-terrorist-group/

Father of Invention: Media Portrayed Grief Stricken Dad Turns Out To Be al-Nusra Front Terrorist

https://clarityofsignal.com/2017/05/02/father-of-invention-media-portrayed-grief-stricken-dad-turns-out-to-be-al-nusra-front-terrorist/

Thank you for your very reasoned explanation of the current Syrian Russian and Israeli status. Your calm and careful analysis is very much appreciated

Are family, marriage, pair bonding a certainty or are they a combination of preference and a necessity of paternal inheritance? Matrilinial societies have been studied where marriage is not a norm and care of children is a collective responsibility.

In a study of an Australian indigenous society, children were found to have a lot of autonomy in their actions. They may wake up with a different group of people to those present when they fell asleep, follow their own schedule and join in the activities ongoing at that time. This makes school, with a focus on discipline and regimentation an alienating experience.

Evolutionarily speaking, did such collective responsibility, where a child’s survival is no longer tied to their parents’, allow a longer childhood and greater capacity for learning in humans?

Is individual parental responsibility then a convenience found in wealthier (or at least city building) societies, perhaps providing a larger labour force, a necessity of urban life, or a consequence of economic competition?

Alienation from school is hardly unheard of for young children in western society, could discipline and strict routine be an unnatural imposition of economics on the human condition and counterproductive to learning and development?

During the 20th centuary, colonial europeans believed themselves superior to the populations they conquered. Ibn Khaldun however, in seeking cause for the collapse of empires through a detailed study of their history, thought them inferior to their userpers due to a breakdown in social cooperation enabled by the very economic and military advances responsible for their earlier success.

I ask these kind of questions not to assert any claim to truth, but rather where I see blind spots in the discussion of what is natural. People tend to substitute what ought (according to morality and expectations) or their own observations (what appears to be) for enquiry into what is.

I find such blindness goes well beyond theology or philosophy, the stories we tell ourselves about the world influence how we interpret scientific results. It was until recently popular to assume a competitive dynamic equilibrium was the reason ecosystems existed. However the iterative prisoner’s dilemma showed a model where incidental cooperation between unrelated entities would be favoured and selected for over competition, despite the strategy appearing disadvantageous to the individual when assessed as an isolated logical problem.

Perhaps the simplest natural example is pollination by insects. Insects that take nectar without pollinating dont gain from the promotion of their food source, while plants that attract insects without providing pollen don’t gain from promoting the survival of those insects.

If one is looking for a basis of human morality, promoting cooperation between unrelated individuals might be a hypothetical start to the line of enquiry.

I notice a current effort to create new definitions of intelligence, based on factors that make one successful in the 21st centuary western economy, rather than what were considered desirable in spearman’s day. Even in the space of artificial intelligence, generalized intelligence is not really a thing. A processing engine designed to solve one kind of problem suffers significant disadvantage when unleashed on another class of problems.

From Zelesnky’s speech:

I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.

The Budapest Memorandum is the agreement that Ukraine gives up its nukes in exchange for western security guarantees. Zelesnky is saying, “If I am not armed to my satisfaction by the West, then I will pursue nukes.”

I won’t find Putin’s exact quote referencing this right now but his speech in linked too