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Reading The Shape of Ancient Thought. Not a light read, but worthwhile so far. I’m not a big fan of metaphysics in general, but the empirical patterns are interesting. Surprised at the likely Mesopotamian influence on both India and Greece, though in hindsight it makes sense. More to say on this later….
Some people are asking me about this Jeff Jacoby column, Sex is etched in our DNA, but race is all in our heads. Actually, everything is in our heads. Everything is socially constructed. It just so happens that some social constructions (e.g., gender binary) robustly map onto patterns in reality, while others (e.g., gender is purely a function preference) do not. The idea that “our racial and ethnic identities are purely subjective” seems to be pretty false if you think of it as a prediction you can use. Someone of my physical appearance could plausibly “pass” as a range of ethnic groups across the 10/40 Window, but no one is likely to accept that I’m ancestrally Chinese, Swedish, or Dinka.
Rakhigarhi ancient DNA paper probably a while away.
A suggestion for debaters. Basically, debate science in your own specialization and don’t claim broad knowledge you lack.
34% of my readers supported Donald Trump in the survey last month. Over 50% had graduate degrees. A bit lower than the average proportion for readers of this weblog, but not that much.
Poll: Utah would vote for a Democrat for president over Trump. I don’t accept this poll. I think Trump will get nominated, and he will win Utah. But, this poll, and results from Idaho, suggest that Mormons have a particular antipathy toward Donald Trump. Reiterates that though Southern Evangelicals and Mormons are allies in the political realm, there are deep cultural differences between the two groups.
Global median income has doubled in the last 13 years.
Another good chart. There's not a single Democrat-held Senate Seat being contested in a red state this year. pic.twitter.com/QveRiiyBN4
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) March 19, 2016
Article on why Bangladesh does so much peacekeeping. My cousin is in Bangui right now, so on my mind.
Stannis died in the show. How about the books? I guess we’ll know in the 2020s….
Statisticians issue warning over misuse of P values. R. A. Fisher warned about this.
Causes of molecular convergence and parallelism in protein evolution.
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Razib,
Have you read that book’s slightly older counterpart?
I take it you’ve at least seen it before
Welcome to last year Razib. :p
The next year looks to go well past that in terms of spoilers. It looks really good though. I’m excited. It’s not the book (I figure late 2016 for that – I’m an optimist), but it’s the next best thing for me.
Razib,
I am all for people saying I don’t know. This was one of the great things the owner of the small company I started working for more than 20 years ago used to drill into everyone. Never be afraid to say “I don’t know or I don’t understand”. Shame on me when I fail to heed it. That said, when it comes to debates the problem is that large numbers with deep scientific knowledge would and do extend that as authority well beyond the realm of science into public policy. Make room for the limits of what the science can answer.
There is plenty of stupid on the right side of the bell curve. It is not the sole domain of the left.
I am all for people saying I don’t know. This was one of the great things the owner of the small company I started working for more than 20 years ago used to drill into everyone. Never be afraid to say “I don’t know or I don’t understand”. Shame on me when I fail to heed it. That said, when it comes to debates the problem is that large numbers with deep scientific knowledge would and do extend that as authority well beyond the realm of science into public policy. Make room for the limits of what the science can answer.
There is plenty of stupid on the right side of the bell curve. It is not the sole domain of the left.Replies: @marcel proust
Distinguish between smarts and wisdom, which is some kind of weighted average of smarts and judgment (and the latter includes both self-awareness & intellectual humility in addition to other, unnamed, traits). Then, by definition, the pure “stupid” is only on the left side of the bell curve. However, the bell curve measures neither the only nor perhaps even the most important trait of interest in this sphere.
I try to parse your reply and I confess i must be too stupid to understand. Razib & Chochran make good sport of smacking down such worthies of the right tail along with us more pedestrian folk. Perhaps you can explain this trait of interest for the more dim witted among us.
Razib,
I remember a remark from you sometime during the gnxp.com days about how Yankeedom has tended to follow the cultural lead of the Ivy League throughout American history. Do you by any chance recall where I can learn more about this process? I’ve been on a US cultural geography kick lately, so I’m familiar with the work of David Hackett Fischer and Kevin Philips already. Thanks.
The title of the article on Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers reads “Why One Small Nation Plays a Major Role in Peacekeeping” — perhaps it’s small geographically, but they’ve got more people than France and Germany put together.
Its contribution to UN peacekeeping forces is impressive though.
South Asian UN forces are typically more reliable and disciplined than most African troops (which isn't saying much), but you can't rely on them in any kind of a serious fight. I wouldn't exactly use words like "contribution" and "impressive." To be blunt, they are combat-averse cannon fodder used in cruddy places where Western troops are considered too valuable to deploy.Replies: @Numinous
MP,
I try to parse your reply and I confess i must be too stupid to understand. Razib & Chochran make good sport of smacking down such worthies of the right tail along with us more pedestrian folk. Perhaps you can explain this trait of interest for the more dim witted among us.
From what I can gather Thomas McEvilley (“The father of art world multiculturalism”) slew Euro centric modernism, as originally exemplified by Clement Greenberg who claimed that true avant-garde art is a product of the Enlightenment’s revolution of critical thinking”. Greenberg is the name that is not mentioned to intellectuals, it gets hissed at.
Jacoby appears to think races such as black African or European does not show up in genetic testing. Apart from the well worn point about people of intermediate race being not universally classifiable (which could apply to hermaphrodites and the concept of the male and female being a social construction), Jacoby’s piece seems to be objecting to affirmative action, though citing anti Jim Crow legalism, while implying that AA does not benefit blacks–them having no need of quotas if everyone judged each other other on their merits. But no black leader says that AA ect should be scrapped. The belief that racial disparities are caused by social construction on the part of people who believe that they are white is never accused of being essentialist that I have noticed.
Instead of trying to say race is social construction or findings of objective DNA differences correlating with human geographical variation, why not admit it is a bit of both.
Game Of Thrones wasn’t exactly The Tartar Steppe
“this poll . . . suggest that Mormons have a particular antipathy toward Donald Trump.”
This amalgamation of Trump polls from 2015 concludes that Utah is Trump’s worst state and New York is his best among Republicans. There may be a religious element, but 16 of his worst 19 states were west of the Mississippi. This is kind of an odd map from any traditional political culture perspective
This amalgamation of Trump polls from 2015 concludes that Utah is Trump's worst state and New York is his best among Republicans. There may be a religious element, but 16 of his worst 19 states were west of the Mississippi. This is kind of an odd map from any traditional political culture perspectiveReplies: @Miguel Madeira
Perahps a difference between a specifically American conservatism in the West (with many themes that will be considered “liberal” in almost all other countries of the world, like “small government”), more inclined to Ted Cruz, and a kind of European-style conservatism (law-and-order, nationalist, and not particularly friendly to free market) in the East, more inclined to Trump?
I think the other possibility is in how different regions value celebrity, but I cannot think of a good measure for that.
Have you read that book's slightly older counterpart?
http://www.amazon.com/Pyrrhonism-Reinvented-Buddhism-Comparative-Philosophy/dp/0739125079
I take it you've at least seen it beforeReplies: @Razib Khan
yes, seen it. haven’t read it.
perhaps. but i also think southern evangelicals are more comfortable with “raising hell” and somewhat crass plutocratic types like andrew jackson as a matter of cultural affect. also, mormons are not into serial fabulists. their cultural origin is with yankees and northern european immigrant groups.
Its contribution to UN peacekeeping forces is impressive though.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Odoacer, @Twinkie
i noticed that too. bangladesh is the size of new york. but 60% of america’s population.
colin woodward? though philips and fischer are pretty good.
Its contribution to UN peacekeeping forces is impressive though.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Odoacer, @Twinkie
When I think about the people of China, India and other populous countries, it kind of boggles my mind. Billions of people live in “poor” countries! It is especially disheartening when I think about differing standards of living, e.g. 71% of people in Nigeria don’t have a private toilet, life expectancy in the Philippines is 68 years, child malnutrition in Bangladesh is almost 50%, etc. I mean, most people in the West have it pretty good compared to that.
I oftentimes wonder what is going to happen in the future wrt jobs, standards of living, economics, etc. Knowing that things are generally getting better helps, but there are a lot of people for who an Western lifestyle would be a huge improvement. Will the west always have a comparative advantage over other 6 billion people on the planet? Will standards of living continue to increase if the economy decreases?
Its contribution to UN peacekeeping forces is impressive though.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Odoacer, @Twinkie
Bangladesh earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the participation in UN peacekeeping efforts. The UN pays relatively high salaries and the contributing government typically pockets the difference between the salaries and what it actually pays the soldiers. Pakistan and India also participate significantly in the UN peacekeeping missions.
South Asian UN forces are typically more reliable and disciplined than most African troops (which isn’t saying much), but you can’t rely on them in any kind of a serious fight. I wouldn’t exactly use words like “contribution” and “impressive.” To be blunt, they are combat-averse cannon fodder used in cruddy places where Western troops are considered too valuable to deploy.
Recommend Grady McWhiney’s book Cracker Culture.
I gather Razib thinks Trump is a Jacksonian politician, which relates to religion, but is its own political-cultural type. T. Greer made the case for Jacksonian recently at the Scholar’s Stage.
I think the other possibility is in how different regions value celebrity, but I cannot think of a good measure for that.
In “Sex is etched in our DNA, but race is all in our heads” [March 20] Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe asserted: “Race is not biological. It is a social construct, not a genetic reality. The DNA of blacks cannot be distinguished from the DNA of Asians or the DNA of whites. Unlike our sex, which is stamped in our chromosomes, our racial and ethnic identities are purely subjective.”
If race is “all in our heads” how can physical anthropologists establish with 8o% accuracy the race of a skull’s former owner? On the contrary, race is real — it is a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though admittedly with some imprecision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences. It is helpful to think of a race as a large extended family that possesses more coherence and continuity over time than a typical extended family . The billion or so of the world’s people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race.
Race is a valid construct, not because I assert it, but because it allows us to make predictions about people’s behavior, especially at the group level. In science, a concept is useful if it groups facts so that general laws and conclusions can be drawn from them. And race does this.
No such thing as race? Then how can population geneticists calculate your ancestry from different parts of the world to the percentage point? How can forensic anthropologists determine a suspect’s racial makeup from hair or semen left at the scene of a crime?
Several laboratory investigations carried out on behalf of the police and the FBI have confirmed that genetic testing can determine a person’s exact racial profile. A classic report was that by a staff writer for Florida’s Advocate News (06/04/03). It stated:
“A private genetics lab altered the hunt for the south Louisiana serial killer after telling investigators that the person they sought was a black man. For eight months the investigation had focused on white men.
The CEO of DNA Print Genomics said that he told the task force that the serial killer was 85% Sub-Saharan and 15% Native American based on analysis of the killer’s DNA.”
Eventually a Black man was arrested as his DNA matched exactly the lab’s report.
This is a significant case, clearly showing that there are genetic differences between the races. For months FBI profilers said the killer was a Caucasian, with the authorities conducting DNA tests on 600 whites. But a genetics laboratory, analyzing seventy-three DNA ‘markers,’ said the serial killer would turn out to be a man who was 85% African and 15% American Indian. And guess what? The genetics lab was right.
Race deniers such as Mr. Jacoby act as though race is a mass hallucination afflicting the entire human race. But in reality it is the single most important human identifying characteristic. And there is virtually irrefutable evidence to prove it.
Even more than sex?Replies: @Razib Khan
South Asian UN forces are typically more reliable and disciplined than most African troops (which isn't saying much), but you can't rely on them in any kind of a serious fight. I wouldn't exactly use words like "contribution" and "impressive." To be blunt, they are combat-averse cannon fodder used in cruddy places where Western troops are considered too valuable to deploy.Replies: @Numinous
Coming from someone who claims to be a military man, this is below the belt. Pray give an example of “impressive contributions” made by Western peacekeepers. They didn’t exactly distinguish themselves in Bosnia, from what I recall. And more generally, peacekeepers (Western, South Asian, Anyone Else) are supposed to “keep the peace”, and not participate in combat unless ABSOLUTELY necessary, like protect civilians from genocide.
If race is "all in our heads" how can physical anthropologists establish with 8o% accuracy the race of a skull's former owner? On the contrary, race is real -- it is a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though admittedly with some imprecision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences. It is helpful to think of a race as a large extended family that possesses more coherence and continuity over time than a typical extended family . The billion or so of the world’s people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race.
Race is a valid construct, not because I assert it, but because it allows us to make predictions about people’s behavior, especially at the group level. In science, a concept is useful if it groups facts so that general laws and conclusions can be drawn from them. And race does this.
No such thing as race? Then how can population geneticists calculate your ancestry from different parts of the world to the percentage point? How can forensic anthropologists determine a suspect’s racial makeup from hair or semen left at the scene of a crime?
Several laboratory investigations carried out on behalf of the police and the FBI have confirmed that genetic testing can determine a person’s exact racial profile. A classic report was that by a staff writer for Florida's Advocate News (06/04/03). It stated:
“A private genetics lab altered the hunt for the south Louisiana serial killer after telling investigators that the person they sought was a black man. For eight months the investigation had focused on white men.
The CEO of DNA Print Genomics said that he told the task force that the serial killer was 85% Sub-Saharan and 15% Native American based on analysis of the killer’s DNA.”
Eventually a Black man was arrested as his DNA matched exactly the lab’s report.
This is a significant case, clearly showing that there are genetic differences between the races. For months FBI profilers said the killer was a Caucasian, with the authorities conducting DNA tests on 600 whites. But a genetics laboratory, analyzing seventy-three DNA ‘markers,’ said the serial killer would turn out to be a man who was 85% African and 15% American Indian. And guess what? The genetics lab was right.
Race deniers such as Mr. Jacoby act as though race is a mass hallucination afflicting the entire human race. But in reality it is the single most important human identifying characteristic. And there is virtually irrefutable evidence to prove it.Replies: @Miguel Madeira, @Erik Sieven
“But in reality it is the single most important human identifying characteristic. ”
Even more than sex?
i think race and sex are hard to compare...different categories. but yes, i think sex is more important.Replies: @Twinkie
Even more than sex?Replies: @Razib Khan
Even more than sex?
i think race and sex are hard to compare…different categories. but yes, i think sex is more important.
What I'd like to know, Mr. Khan, is whether you winked when you wrote that line or it was just deadpan.
Do you find my opinion of Bangladeshi troops serving as peacekeepers inaccurate? If so, on what basis? If your compound is under attack from some African (or Serb) militiamen, do you want a force of Bangladeshi infantrymen or British ones?
UNPROFOR had a limited mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, mostly humanitarian relief and enforcing a no-fly zone (it had a much greater scope in Croatia). UNPROFOR was also made up of forces from many nations and regions, including those from Bangladesh. You are going to have to elaborate if you wish to make a point of substance here.
There are several different types of “peacekeeping” missions. In a situation, for example, where there is a mutually-respected ceasefire, yes, poorly-trained, combat-averse Bangladeshi or Pakistani peacekeepers will do just fine. They are mostly there just for the show.
If, however, the ceasefire is tenuous or there are active firefights (and to borrow an American Civil War term, bushwhacking) going on, you are going to want Western, better yet Western Anglophone, troops. Of course I prefer my own countrymen, the Americans, but I’d be happy to take a battalion of British, Canadian or Australian infantrymen (backed by suitable air assets, thank you very much)… because when it came down to it, those guys will fight and do their best to keep me alive when things go sideways. They are competent and professional, they are well-trained, and they are generally quite courageous and self-sacrificial.
1. Israel (Well trained, disciplined, well equipped AND fair amount of (at least low level) combat experience) and the US (ditto, ditto, ditto, and more combat experience recently than even Israel)
2. Other professional Western armies, Korea, Japan, Taiwan (well trained, disciplined and well equipped). But there are still differences. French and British forces may have elan and experience well above the others for example.
3. Russian? Well equipped, not so well disciplined, but high level of Russian asabiya means they WILL fight for each other. Much improved from Chechnya days? OR Chinese. A bit of an unknown quantity. OR India and Pakistan (very professional, disciplined, reasonably well equipped, excellent record as fighters in all theaters since British Indian army days). The idea that Pakistan and India are just some kind of incompetent place-holders is very mistaken. These are professional armies, well trained, with some experience and good discipline. Bangladesh is likely one rung lower.
China performed poorly against Vietnam, but they have improved a lot since then.
Oh, and Indonesia, Malaysia etc are probably in the same league as India and Pakistan.
African armies are several rungs lower and no comparison to this group. Most Arab armies are above the Africans, but not by much (except Egypt, which may rank just below South Asian armies).
But all of this has very little relevance to whether they will fight for YOU in a peacekeeping mission. Most peacekeeping missions are just light policing..anything more, and the peacekeepers (of ANY nationality) will defend themselves and wait for orders.
By the way, in blackhawk down, Pakistanis and Malaysians were part of the rescue convoy and I dont think there were any complaints about their willingness or ability to fight.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Twinkie
i think race and sex are hard to compare...different categories. but yes, i think sex is more important.Replies: @Twinkie
Men everywhere agree!
What I’d like to know, Mr. Khan, is whether you winked when you wrote that line or it was just deadpan.
Jeff Jacoby has an adopted son, Micah, from Guatemala.
Love the brother, love the stranger
April 4, 2004
Age as well as sex. If you are distinguishing between an 60-year old Nigerian and a 9-year old Swede you do not refer to them as “the black person” and “the white person”.
Race in the sense of an actual genetic cluster is not an identifying characteristic either (nor is “Black” a race by this standard). What you are identifying people by is salient elements of appearance. Again you do not refer to a Philippine Negrito and a Japanese man as “the East Eurasians” while carefully distinguishing a Dinka from an Igbo.
If you do a ranking of small unit military capability (larger armies is a different matter), then your choice in a firefight would have to be:
1. Israel (Well trained, disciplined, well equipped AND fair amount of (at least low level) combat experience) and the US (ditto, ditto, ditto, and more combat experience recently than even Israel)
2. Other professional Western armies, Korea, Japan, Taiwan (well trained, disciplined and well equipped). But there are still differences. French and British forces may have elan and experience well above the others for example.
3. Russian? Well equipped, not so well disciplined, but high level of Russian asabiya means they WILL fight for each other. Much improved from Chechnya days? OR Chinese. A bit of an unknown quantity. OR India and Pakistan (very professional, disciplined, reasonably well equipped, excellent record as fighters in all theaters since British Indian army days). The idea that Pakistan and India are just some kind of incompetent place-holders is very mistaken. These are professional armies, well trained, with some experience and good discipline. Bangladesh is likely one rung lower.
China performed poorly against Vietnam, but they have improved a lot since then.
Oh, and Indonesia, Malaysia etc are probably in the same league as India and Pakistan.
African armies are several rungs lower and no comparison to this group. Most Arab armies are above the Africans, but not by much (except Egypt, which may rank just below South Asian armies).
But all of this has very little relevance to whether they will fight for YOU in a peacekeeping mission. Most peacekeeping missions are just light policing..anything more, and the peacekeepers (of ANY nationality) will defend themselves and wait for orders.
By the way, in blackhawk down, Pakistanis and Malaysians were part of the rescue convoy and I dont think there were any complaints about their willingness or ability to fight.
Nonetheless, based on my direct, personal experiences interacting with some of the foreign military forces as well as observing and studying their capabilities, I can offer some rudimentary assessments of combat capability of an average small infantry unit from some of these countries you mentioned.
1. Israel. See my response above to Mr. Khan. It is certainly not "no. 1." Generally good quality, but not all that they are cracked up to be.
2. U.S. Highly capable and experienced. Top tier.
3. Japan. Technically proficient. Unknown durability under the stress of combat. JSDF air and naval elements are very high quality, but I have doubts about its army elements.
4. Korea. Well-disciplined. Probably reasonably tough, but averse to risk. Its units in Irbil buttoned down and avoided all contact.
5. Taiwan. Similar to Korea.
6. French. Low readiness than you'd think. I don't have a good opinion of the bulk of the French army, for a first world country.
7. British. Top tier, similar to the U.S.
8. Russia. Poor quality of training and technical proficiency compared to top tier countries. There is a reason why it relies so heavily on specialized units and artillery/air capability.
9. China. Better than before.
10. India. Highly variable quality. Most units are of very low quality, training, and morale. I suspect most units are quite brittle.
11. Pakistan. Similar to India, but probably technically even less proficient.
12. Bangladesh. Similar to Pakistan. But as you say, may be a rung lower than India and Pakistan. On the other hand, their peacekeeping troops are considered to have better discipline than Pakistani contingents.
13. Indonesia. Very good at killing and keeping down civilians.
14. Malaysia. I would rate it higher than India and Pakistan.
15. Arabs. HIGHLY variable. There are some tough, capable Arab units. And then there are worthless conscripts who flee on first contact. However, they universally talk enormous shit, which I find irritating.
16. Africans. Generally completely worthless, and they know it too. There are, however, some exceptions (e.g. Chadian long range desert units are quite capable in their environment).
I should also note that these characteristics are not set in stone, and are subject to the circumstances of time and place. The U.S. Army in the late 70's and early 80's was in a very rough shape in terms of manpower quality, for example. The Japanese military, which was quite fierce in previous eras, now draws its manpower from a strongly pacifist populace. South Koreans in early Korean War were notorious for breaking and running on contact but then became ass-kicking, bad mo-fo's in the Vietnam War, who would ambush and annihilate the VC in their own terrain, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat (they had something like 20-to-1 kill ratios in Vietnam). Africans are generally useless, but the Askaris who fought for the Germans in World War I (under the magnificent leadership of von Lettow-Vorbeck) fought excellently against the combined might of the British, Portuguese, and Belgian forces.Replies: @omarali50, @Sean
1. Israel (Well trained, disciplined, well equipped AND fair amount of (at least low level) combat experience) and the US (ditto, ditto, ditto, and more combat experience recently than even Israel)
2. Other professional Western armies, Korea, Japan, Taiwan (well trained, disciplined and well equipped). But there are still differences. French and British forces may have elan and experience well above the others for example.
3. Russian? Well equipped, not so well disciplined, but high level of Russian asabiya means they WILL fight for each other. Much improved from Chechnya days? OR Chinese. A bit of an unknown quantity. OR India and Pakistan (very professional, disciplined, reasonably well equipped, excellent record as fighters in all theaters since British Indian army days). The idea that Pakistan and India are just some kind of incompetent place-holders is very mistaken. These are professional armies, well trained, with some experience and good discipline. Bangladesh is likely one rung lower.
China performed poorly against Vietnam, but they have improved a lot since then.
Oh, and Indonesia, Malaysia etc are probably in the same league as India and Pakistan.
African armies are several rungs lower and no comparison to this group. Most Arab armies are above the Africans, but not by much (except Egypt, which may rank just below South Asian armies).
But all of this has very little relevance to whether they will fight for YOU in a peacekeeping mission. Most peacekeeping missions are just light policing..anything more, and the peacekeepers (of ANY nationality) will defend themselves and wait for orders.
By the way, in blackhawk down, Pakistanis and Malaysians were part of the rescue convoy and I dont think there were any complaints about their willingness or ability to fight.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Twinkie
many ppl have said that israelis are a bit overrated because so much of their experience/record is against arab armies. particularly, israelis are arrogant because of their success, but other western armies like to point out who they got their victories against…
Also, there are examples (from their wars as well as special ops) that seem to indicate that Israeli troops have Western (or superior) levels of individual initiative (an area where South Asian armies fall behind them, and Arab armies are quite hopeless).
That said, they were fought to a standstill by Hezbollah, so there is always that.
But I remain confident in my rankings (which, like all rankings where direct competition has not happened, are subjective and open for debate) :)Replies: @j mct
To be sure, the IDF personnel is well-trained and -disciplined, but they are not the heroic supermen (and -women) the media make them out to be. Specialized units such as the Sayeret Matkal are highly capable and daring, easily the equal to any other special operations force, but the average quality of conscripts nowadays is not particularly high. Israelis are technically proficient and benefit from a tremendously capable intelligence-gathering apparatus (excellent HUMINT), but their average soldiery is, in my view, not any better caliber than that from Western European countries with similar level of combat experience.
Hi Razib, I read your blog to stay up to date on genomics research, and you were kind enough to reply to a question I asked you last year about interpreting my 23andme haplogroup results in the context of genetic bottlenecks and pedigree collapse. Since then, I’ve tried to find more useful things to do with my genomic data… have you come across the purported nutrigenomics of Amy Yasko and company? See for example geneticgenie.com and mthfrsupport.com.
My read on this is that the promise of nutrigenomics far exceeds the reality, and that these practitioners are straying beyond science into wishful thinking and quackery. My understanding is that most common SNPs have very small effect sizes, and we still have a lot to learn about the “interactome”. But there is a growing body of research linking SNPs to health effects (see this paper that used electronic health records to data-mine for Neandertal-related phenotypes: Simonti et al Science 2016). But, it seems the average number of gene knockouts (loss of function) isn’t completely known (see VM Narasimhan et al Science 2016).
I haven’t seen you write much about the health impacts of personal genomics and wondered what you thought of it? Better to pass over in silence?
From what I recall from Romeo Dallaire’s comments on the Rwandan genocide, of the countries that sent troops (Canada, Bangladesh, Ghana and Belgium), he felt the Bangladeshi forces did not acquit themselves well, while Ghana’s forces acquitted themselves quite well and were willing to put themselves in grave danger to save lives, and Belgium’s forces were simply recalled by their government when things started to go bad. So I think there’s some truth in these critiques. That being said, I’d give more credit to Bangladesh than to the other ~180-190 countries who couldn’t be bothered to send a single soldier, and more than Belgium who’s government didn’t have the stomach to see things through.
Also – “not willing to wade into a machete wielding mob with orders to not fire unless directly attacked” is a very hard bar. I don’t think many of us here could say with any certainty that we would do better.
Dallaire himself still suffers from pretty severe PTSD and at one point was living on the street because of it.
That is a fair point, but I think of Israel as basically a Western army with even stronger asabiya. There is no reason to think that the Israelies (as educated, as well trained, as disciplined, as physically fit, as well equipped) would not fight to the same standard as Western armies (though we obviously do not have a direct battle we can point to as an example).
Also, there are examples (from their wars as well as special ops) that seem to indicate that Israeli troops have Western (or superior) levels of individual initiative (an area where South Asian armies fall behind them, and Arab armies are quite hopeless).
That said, they were fought to a standstill by Hezbollah, so there is always that.
But I remain confident in my rankings (which, like all rankings where direct competition has not happened, are subjective and open for debate) 🙂
Moldbug.
(or anyone else who understands it)
Is Peter Frost’s theory of genetic pacification, the one published in his paper with H.Harpending right, possibly right depending on details, wrong, or not even wrong? In case you haven’t heard of it:
The claim is that propensity for unsanctioned violence is likely determined by many different genes, and that several centuries kept removing (roughly) the most violent 1/100th of male population(by hanging murderers and robbers or killing them), shifted the mean propensity for unsanctioned violence in the entire population.
Is Peter Frost's theory of genetic pacification, the one published in his paper with H.Harpending right, possibly right depending on details, wrong, or not even wrong? In case you haven't heard of it:
The claim is that propensity for unsanctioned violence is likely determined by many different genes, and that several centuries kept removing (roughly) the most violent 1/100th of male population(by hanging murderers and robbers or killing them), shifted the mean propensity for unsanctioned violence in the entire population.Replies: @ziel, @Sean
Is it a theory or a hypothesis? Seems like a quite reasonable hypothesis – deserves more study.
Also, there are examples (from their wars as well as special ops) that seem to indicate that Israeli troops have Western (or superior) levels of individual initiative (an area where South Asian armies fall behind them, and Arab armies are quite hopeless).
That said, they were fought to a standstill by Hezbollah, so there is always that.
But I remain confident in my rankings (which, like all rankings where direct competition has not happened, are subjective and open for debate) :)Replies: @j mct
Though it’s getting back there in the rear view mirror, in the last real military to military war the Israelis fought, the Egyptians made a real good show during the Yom Kippur War against the Israelis. They lost in the end, but they won the opening. Also, Nixon gave the Israelis lots of aid, which might or not have been decisive, but the Egyptian in the street definitely thought they would have beaten the Israelis if the US didn’t help them. This was good for morale, in that the Germans lost both WWI and WWII but no one would say that it was because they were lousy soldiers, and after 1973, the Egyptians said that to themselves too. It also made Sadat, who was a military guy just like the present Sisi, popular and respected enough so he could do the Camp David accords in 1978. Whether or not all that means the Israelis can lose to Arabs, I would say yes but I suppose I am not a recognized authority on such things, is uncertain I guess.
But anyway, I was thinking of peacekeepers: small units in faraway lands faced with an emergency. That is not the setting in which you want an Egyptian army unit over an Israeli one. The cultural gap between Arabs and Israelis has narrowed and is not at the "order of magnitude" level it was in 1948, but an Egyptian colonel still has less individual initiative than an Israeli captain (I have heard the comment "less than an Israeli sergeant", but I will take captain, just to be sure).
I think
:)Replies: @Twinkie
I did separate the Egyptians from the other Arabs, and the canal crossing was definitely an achievement. But they were also executing a set-piece plan that required units to do their job according to plan, under cover of SAMS whose effectiveness the Israelis had not fully anticipated and then deploying anti-tank missiles that too the Israelis had not apparently really anticipated> and of course, they had massive numerical superiority. Clearly. the Israelis had been far too arrogant; it is not like they did not know what the Egyptian capabilities were on paper. The Egyptians had been planning and rehearsing this war for years; they were just not taken seriously. It was a failure of imagination more than a failure of intelligence.
But anyway, I was thinking of peacekeepers: small units in faraway lands faced with an emergency. That is not the setting in which you want an Egyptian army unit over an Israeli one. The cultural gap between Arabs and Israelis has narrowed and is not at the “order of magnitude” level it was in 1948, but an Egyptian colonel still has less individual initiative than an Israeli captain (I have heard the comment “less than an Israeli sergeant”, but I will take captain, just to be sure).
I think
🙂
Once the battlefield became fluid, however, the Egyptians were no match for the Israeli mobile warfare capability.
The current Egyptian military is a shadow of what it had in the opening phase of the 73 war even though the equipment is a lot shinier.
They are.
To be sure, the IDF personnel is well-trained and -disciplined, but they are not the heroic supermen (and -women) the media make them out to be. Specialized units such as the Sayeret Matkal are highly capable and daring, easily the equal to any other special operations force, but the average quality of conscripts nowadays is not particularly high. Israelis are technically proficient and benefit from a tremendously capable intelligence-gathering apparatus (excellent HUMINT), but their average soldiery is, in my view, not any better caliber than that from Western European countries with similar level of combat experience.
1. Israel (Well trained, disciplined, well equipped AND fair amount of (at least low level) combat experience) and the US (ditto, ditto, ditto, and more combat experience recently than even Israel)
2. Other professional Western armies, Korea, Japan, Taiwan (well trained, disciplined and well equipped). But there are still differences. French and British forces may have elan and experience well above the others for example.
3. Russian? Well equipped, not so well disciplined, but high level of Russian asabiya means they WILL fight for each other. Much improved from Chechnya days? OR Chinese. A bit of an unknown quantity. OR India and Pakistan (very professional, disciplined, reasonably well equipped, excellent record as fighters in all theaters since British Indian army days). The idea that Pakistan and India are just some kind of incompetent place-holders is very mistaken. These are professional armies, well trained, with some experience and good discipline. Bangladesh is likely one rung lower.
China performed poorly against Vietnam, but they have improved a lot since then.
Oh, and Indonesia, Malaysia etc are probably in the same league as India and Pakistan.
African armies are several rungs lower and no comparison to this group. Most Arab armies are above the Africans, but not by much (except Egypt, which may rank just below South Asian armies).
But all of this has very little relevance to whether they will fight for YOU in a peacekeeping mission. Most peacekeeping missions are just light policing..anything more, and the peacekeepers (of ANY nationality) will defend themselves and wait for orders.
By the way, in blackhawk down, Pakistanis and Malaysians were part of the rescue convoy and I dont think there were any complaints about their willingness or ability to fight.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Twinkie
I don’t like to engage in this kind of national penis-size contest, because projection of military force is highly situational and synergistic. In the right circumstances, a small American unit with the benefits of the full spectrum support and force-multiplier capabilities can overrun a vast horde of “Third World” forces, while in the wrong circumstances even a middling sized ragtag force of militiamen can defeat the most highly trained, tough American SOCOM unit.
Nonetheless, based on my direct, personal experiences interacting with some of the foreign military forces as well as observing and studying their capabilities, I can offer some rudimentary assessments of combat capability of an average small infantry unit from some of these countries you mentioned.
1. Israel. See my response above to Mr. Khan. It is certainly not “no. 1.” Generally good quality, but not all that they are cracked up to be.
2. U.S. Highly capable and experienced. Top tier.
3. Japan. Technically proficient. Unknown durability under the stress of combat. JSDF air and naval elements are very high quality, but I have doubts about its army elements.
4. Korea. Well-disciplined. Probably reasonably tough, but averse to risk. Its units in Irbil buttoned down and avoided all contact.
5. Taiwan. Similar to Korea.
6. French. Low readiness than you’d think. I don’t have a good opinion of the bulk of the French army, for a first world country.
7. British. Top tier, similar to the U.S.
8. Russia. Poor quality of training and technical proficiency compared to top tier countries. There is a reason why it relies so heavily on specialized units and artillery/air capability.
9. China. Better than before.
10. India. Highly variable quality. Most units are of very low quality, training, and morale. I suspect most units are quite brittle.
11. Pakistan. Similar to India, but probably technically even less proficient.
12. Bangladesh. Similar to Pakistan. But as you say, may be a rung lower than India and Pakistan. On the other hand, their peacekeeping troops are considered to have better discipline than Pakistani contingents.
13. Indonesia. Very good at killing and keeping down civilians.
14. Malaysia. I would rate it higher than India and Pakistan.
15. Arabs. HIGHLY variable. There are some tough, capable Arab units. And then there are worthless conscripts who flee on first contact. However, they universally talk enormous shit, which I find irritating.
16. Africans. Generally completely worthless, and they know it too. There are, however, some exceptions (e.g. Chadian long range desert units are quite capable in their environment).
I should also note that these characteristics are not set in stone, and are subject to the circumstances of time and place. The U.S. Army in the late 70’s and early 80’s was in a very rough shape in terms of manpower quality, for example. The Japanese military, which was quite fierce in previous eras, now draws its manpower from a strongly pacifist populace. South Koreans in early Korean War were notorious for breaking and running on contact but then became ass-kicking, bad mo-fo’s in the Vietnam War, who would ambush and annihilate the VC in their own terrain, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat (they had something like 20-to-1 kill ratios in Vietnam). Africans are generally useless, but the Askaris who fought for the Germans in World War I (under the magnificent leadership of von Lettow-Vorbeck) fought excellently against the combined might of the British, Portuguese, and Belgian forces.
If you want to kill someone in the opposing army during a war, you shoot him. A relative fought in the Korean war and he said the North Koreans were like robots: fearless.Replies: @Twinkie, @Bill M
But anyway, I was thinking of peacekeepers: small units in faraway lands faced with an emergency. That is not the setting in which you want an Egyptian army unit over an Israeli one. The cultural gap between Arabs and Israelis has narrowed and is not at the "order of magnitude" level it was in 1948, but an Egyptian colonel still has less individual initiative than an Israeli captain (I have heard the comment "less than an Israeli sergeant", but I will take captain, just to be sure).
I think
:)Replies: @Twinkie
It was successful because the Egyptians at the time were unusually well-disciplined, and the Israelis were still drunk with their “superhuman” success trip in the Six-Day War. And, yes, as you put it, Israelis badly underestimated the new anti-aircraft and the anti-tank missile units the Egyptians possessed.
Once the battlefield became fluid, however, the Egyptians were no match for the Israeli mobile warfare capability.
The current Egyptian military is a shadow of what it had in the opening phase of the 73 war even though the equipment is a lot shinier.
If race is "all in our heads" how can physical anthropologists establish with 8o% accuracy the race of a skull's former owner? On the contrary, race is real -- it is a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though admittedly with some imprecision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences. It is helpful to think of a race as a large extended family that possesses more coherence and continuity over time than a typical extended family . The billion or so of the world’s people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race.
Race is a valid construct, not because I assert it, but because it allows us to make predictions about people’s behavior, especially at the group level. In science, a concept is useful if it groups facts so that general laws and conclusions can be drawn from them. And race does this.
No such thing as race? Then how can population geneticists calculate your ancestry from different parts of the world to the percentage point? How can forensic anthropologists determine a suspect’s racial makeup from hair or semen left at the scene of a crime?
Several laboratory investigations carried out on behalf of the police and the FBI have confirmed that genetic testing can determine a person’s exact racial profile. A classic report was that by a staff writer for Florida's Advocate News (06/04/03). It stated:
“A private genetics lab altered the hunt for the south Louisiana serial killer after telling investigators that the person they sought was a black man. For eight months the investigation had focused on white men.
The CEO of DNA Print Genomics said that he told the task force that the serial killer was 85% Sub-Saharan and 15% Native American based on analysis of the killer’s DNA.”
Eventually a Black man was arrested as his DNA matched exactly the lab’s report.
This is a significant case, clearly showing that there are genetic differences between the races. For months FBI profilers said the killer was a Caucasian, with the authorities conducting DNA tests on 600 whites. But a genetics laboratory, analyzing seventy-three DNA ‘markers,’ said the serial killer would turn out to be a man who was 85% African and 15% American Indian. And guess what? The genetics lab was right.
Race deniers such as Mr. Jacoby act as though race is a mass hallucination afflicting the entire human race. But in reality it is the single most important human identifying characteristic. And there is virtually irrefutable evidence to prove it.Replies: @Miguel Madeira, @Erik Sieven
“But in reality it is the single most important human identifying characteristic” judged by which criteria?
Nonetheless, based on my direct, personal experiences interacting with some of the foreign military forces as well as observing and studying their capabilities, I can offer some rudimentary assessments of combat capability of an average small infantry unit from some of these countries you mentioned.
1. Israel. See my response above to Mr. Khan. It is certainly not "no. 1." Generally good quality, but not all that they are cracked up to be.
2. U.S. Highly capable and experienced. Top tier.
3. Japan. Technically proficient. Unknown durability under the stress of combat. JSDF air and naval elements are very high quality, but I have doubts about its army elements.
4. Korea. Well-disciplined. Probably reasonably tough, but averse to risk. Its units in Irbil buttoned down and avoided all contact.
5. Taiwan. Similar to Korea.
6. French. Low readiness than you'd think. I don't have a good opinion of the bulk of the French army, for a first world country.
7. British. Top tier, similar to the U.S.
8. Russia. Poor quality of training and technical proficiency compared to top tier countries. There is a reason why it relies so heavily on specialized units and artillery/air capability.
9. China. Better than before.
10. India. Highly variable quality. Most units are of very low quality, training, and morale. I suspect most units are quite brittle.
11. Pakistan. Similar to India, but probably technically even less proficient.
12. Bangladesh. Similar to Pakistan. But as you say, may be a rung lower than India and Pakistan. On the other hand, their peacekeeping troops are considered to have better discipline than Pakistani contingents.
13. Indonesia. Very good at killing and keeping down civilians.
14. Malaysia. I would rate it higher than India and Pakistan.
15. Arabs. HIGHLY variable. There are some tough, capable Arab units. And then there are worthless conscripts who flee on first contact. However, they universally talk enormous shit, which I find irritating.
16. Africans. Generally completely worthless, and they know it too. There are, however, some exceptions (e.g. Chadian long range desert units are quite capable in their environment).
I should also note that these characteristics are not set in stone, and are subject to the circumstances of time and place. The U.S. Army in the late 70's and early 80's was in a very rough shape in terms of manpower quality, for example. The Japanese military, which was quite fierce in previous eras, now draws its manpower from a strongly pacifist populace. South Koreans in early Korean War were notorious for breaking and running on contact but then became ass-kicking, bad mo-fo's in the Vietnam War, who would ambush and annihilate the VC in their own terrain, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat (they had something like 20-to-1 kill ratios in Vietnam). Africans are generally useless, but the Askaris who fought for the Germans in World War I (under the magnificent leadership of von Lettow-Vorbeck) fought excellently against the combined might of the British, Portuguese, and Belgian forces.Replies: @omarali50, @Sean
I agree with all of this. So we can move Israel to 2nd tier alongside the other professional Western armies 🙂
So all the talk about bilingualism in the other thread (and related searches) has convinced Google/Youtube I must be French Canadian. I guess I’m in for a couple weeks of ads to “chop in cougar” in Quebec.
“Its units in Irbil buttoned down and avoided all contact.” when was the South-Korean army in Irbil?
At one point the ROK contingent was the third largest part of the coalition forces in Iraq. Alas, it was stationed in the very peaceful and cooperative Kurdistan, and refrained from any significant combat mission. The dispatch of ROK troops to Iraq was EXTREMELY unpopular in South Korea, particularly after the murder of a South Korean national there, and, as a result, the Korean units there were very casualty-averse and mostly stuck to reconstruction and medical relief.
On a somewhat zany note, 30-some South Korean troops converted to Islam prior to being sent to Iraq: http://gopkorea.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/koreanculturalimperialisminiraq.jpgReplies: @Erik Sieven
Re peacekeeping, looks like maybe a Bengali thing to me. Perhaps,
Razib: Comments ≡ Bangladesh:World
Nonetheless, based on my direct, personal experiences interacting with some of the foreign military forces as well as observing and studying their capabilities, I can offer some rudimentary assessments of combat capability of an average small infantry unit from some of these countries you mentioned.
1. Israel. See my response above to Mr. Khan. It is certainly not "no. 1." Generally good quality, but not all that they are cracked up to be.
2. U.S. Highly capable and experienced. Top tier.
3. Japan. Technically proficient. Unknown durability under the stress of combat. JSDF air and naval elements are very high quality, but I have doubts about its army elements.
4. Korea. Well-disciplined. Probably reasonably tough, but averse to risk. Its units in Irbil buttoned down and avoided all contact.
5. Taiwan. Similar to Korea.
6. French. Low readiness than you'd think. I don't have a good opinion of the bulk of the French army, for a first world country.
7. British. Top tier, similar to the U.S.
8. Russia. Poor quality of training and technical proficiency compared to top tier countries. There is a reason why it relies so heavily on specialized units and artillery/air capability.
9. China. Better than before.
10. India. Highly variable quality. Most units are of very low quality, training, and morale. I suspect most units are quite brittle.
11. Pakistan. Similar to India, but probably technically even less proficient.
12. Bangladesh. Similar to Pakistan. But as you say, may be a rung lower than India and Pakistan. On the other hand, their peacekeeping troops are considered to have better discipline than Pakistani contingents.
13. Indonesia. Very good at killing and keeping down civilians.
14. Malaysia. I would rate it higher than India and Pakistan.
15. Arabs. HIGHLY variable. There are some tough, capable Arab units. And then there are worthless conscripts who flee on first contact. However, they universally talk enormous shit, which I find irritating.
16. Africans. Generally completely worthless, and they know it too. There are, however, some exceptions (e.g. Chadian long range desert units are quite capable in their environment).
I should also note that these characteristics are not set in stone, and are subject to the circumstances of time and place. The U.S. Army in the late 70's and early 80's was in a very rough shape in terms of manpower quality, for example. The Japanese military, which was quite fierce in previous eras, now draws its manpower from a strongly pacifist populace. South Koreans in early Korean War were notorious for breaking and running on contact but then became ass-kicking, bad mo-fo's in the Vietnam War, who would ambush and annihilate the VC in their own terrain, sometimes in hand-to-hand combat (they had something like 20-to-1 kill ratios in Vietnam). Africans are generally useless, but the Askaris who fought for the Germans in World War I (under the magnificent leadership of von Lettow-Vorbeck) fought excellently against the combined might of the British, Portuguese, and Belgian forces.Replies: @omarali50, @Sean
Here is a WW2 “hand to hand combat” story for you. My grandfather was eating in the NCO’s canteen and complained “There are ‘eyes’ in these potatoes”. The cook leaned over the dinner and said “Where?” Papa said “Here!” and poked him in the face with the fork. “He didnae wash the blood aff his face until he’d showed the colonel!” .
If you want to kill someone in the opposing army during a war, you shoot him. A relative fought in the Korean war and he said the North Koreans were like robots: fearless.
The no. 1. killer in WWII was artillery, "the God of War."Replies: @Sean, @omarali50
2004-2008. It also had an engineering unit in southern Iraq in 2003.
At one point the ROK contingent was the third largest part of the coalition forces in Iraq. Alas, it was stationed in the very peaceful and cooperative Kurdistan, and refrained from any significant combat mission. The dispatch of ROK troops to Iraq was EXTREMELY unpopular in South Korea, particularly after the murder of a South Korean national there, and, as a result, the Korean units there were very casualty-averse and mostly stuck to reconstruction and medical relief.
On a somewhat zany note, 30-some South Korean troops converted to Islam prior to being sent to Iraq:
“Another good chart. There’s not a single Democrat-held Senate Seat being contested in a red state this year.”
By my count there are about eight Republican held Senate seats being contested in states where a Democratic challenger has a legitimate chance given the electorate.
In the likely event that Hillary Clinton is the next President (giving her a Democratic Vice President who resolves tie votes), she needs to swing just half of them to regain control of the U.S. Senate, and there is strong precedent for the winning Presidential candidate having coattails, particularly when Congress is unpopular to an unprecedented degree.
If you want to kill someone in the opposing army during a war, you shoot him. A relative fought in the Korean war and he said the North Koreans were like robots: fearless.Replies: @Twinkie, @Bill M
That’s very satisfying, I must admit, but it’s really better to drop arty or CAS on the enemy.
The no. 1. killer in WWII was artillery, “the God of War.”
Was this true, for example, of US battle casualties (whether in the pacific or in the West)?
At one point the ROK contingent was the third largest part of the coalition forces in Iraq. Alas, it was stationed in the very peaceful and cooperative Kurdistan, and refrained from any significant combat mission. The dispatch of ROK troops to Iraq was EXTREMELY unpopular in South Korea, particularly after the murder of a South Korean national there, and, as a result, the Korean units there were very casualty-averse and mostly stuck to reconstruction and medical relief.
On a somewhat zany note, 30-some South Korean troops converted to Islam prior to being sent to Iraq: http://gopkorea.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/koreanculturalimperialisminiraq.jpgReplies: @Erik Sieven
thanks, interesting. I guess getting sent to Iraq is one of the “benefits” of being allied with the USA
The no. 1. killer in WWII was artillery, "the God of War."Replies: @Sean, @omarali50
Actually the number one killer during wars is disease. War, famine, plague and death. WW1 was the first conflict where most soldiers deaths were from enemy action.
Razib, I just saw you on Through the Wormhole. The one about evolution and why are we here. Good episode.
I’m one to think that ethnic genetic interests plays a role in human evolution. Mating with someone phenotypically similar to yourself so shared genes can be spread.
Is Peter Frost's theory of genetic pacification, the one published in his paper with H.Harpending right, possibly right depending on details, wrong, or not even wrong? In case you haven't heard of it:
The claim is that propensity for unsanctioned violence is likely determined by many different genes, and that several centuries kept removing (roughly) the most violent 1/100th of male population(by hanging murderers and robbers or killing them), shifted the mean propensity for unsanctioned violence in the entire population.Replies: @ziel, @Sean
As I recall criticism of the theory (by the Ronald no less) was that the genes removed by execution of a small proportion of men could not per the breeder equation, have had a great enough effect to account for the rapidity of fall in violence. Stil, genes have made, quite a lot of mysteriously swift transitions in evolutionary history (http://eegjournalclub.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/5/0/26509069/watson___szathmary_2016.pdf).
Steven Pinker’s alternative, that Enlightenment philosophy’s arguments led to that tiny violent minority exercising restraint in the use of force, seems far fetched in view of our understanding of the way the mind can be influenced.
steven pinker knows a lot more about the mind than you. that's a fact.
Steven Pinker’s alternative, that Enlightenment philosophy’s arguments led to that tiny violent minority exercising restraint in the use of force, seems far fetched in view of our understanding of the way the mind can be influenced.
steven pinker knows a lot more about the mind than you. that’s a fact.
Steven Pinkers smarter wife:
Ethics are massively influenced by the social milieu, because people have a dislike of being the odd one out, but I read Pinker as saying the arguments of Enlightenment humanism were so good they led to a sudden steep fall in violence. To me this means some rational deliberation by the individuals who would otherwise have been violent caused the fall. We are talking about thugs whose violence was their strong suite.
If you want to kill someone in the opposing army during a war, you shoot him. A relative fought in the Korean war and he said the North Koreans were like robots: fearless.Replies: @Twinkie, @Bill M
Your relative may be thinking of the Chinese. The US and UN forces pushed the North Koreans up to the Yalu River at the border with China. Then entire divisions of underarmed Chinese infantry in pajamas during the Siberian winter marched at night to in many cases within feet of US positions, to engage them in close combat to make up for their lack of firepower.
reread *the blank slate* pinker is not as retarded as you make him out to be. the fact that you “read him” that way is a commentary on you.
would have been subjected to an escalating series of slights by those looking to give build a rep, so what was rational in that situation was to give off vibes that you would not brook insults, and fight (with the weapons everyone then carried) if it was questioned http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/05/the-code-of-the-streets/306601/
The no. 1. killer in WWII was artillery, "the God of War."Replies: @Sean, @omarali50
Was that so in all sectors or only on the Eastern front (where the leading cause would automatically become the leading cause overall)? I am just curious.
Was this true, for example, of US battle casualties (whether in the pacific or in the West)?
No doubt there is something in what Pinker says but Pinker’s reference to monist Spinoza supports a reading of him as not setting much store in individual dilemmas. It seems to me that men who practiced forbearance in premodern times
would have been subjected to an escalating series of slights by those looking to give build a rep, so what was rational in that situation was to give off vibes that you would not brook insults, and fight (with the weapons everyone then carried) if it was questioned http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/05/the-code-of-the-streets/306601/
I guess I’ll just have to do the math myself to see whether it could possibly work out. Or ask somewhere whether killing off 2% off the biggest deer each generation would make deer smaller, and on what sort of timeline. I’m somewhat afraid that asking about the heritability of violent tendencies would trigger thought-terminating ideas in heads of nice people.
I haven’t read Pinker’s arguments Enlightenment values and violence, but I am very skeptical about Moral Rationalism, the idea that moral truths can be known through reason alone. In short, morality is underpinned by emotion (which we refer to as a “conscience”). This is not only why moral arguments become so emotionally heated and why so much of the debate over morality is dominated by emotional appeals and rhetoric rather than logic, but also why purely logical arguments so often fail to persuade anyone to change their mind on moral issues unless they reframe their perspective and change how they feel about the factors involved.
Psychopaths illustrate the problem because they lack a conscience. I came to read about them while trying to understand evil behavior and what I found interesting was that many schools of academic philosophy would not consider psychopaths evil (because they don’t truly understand their own actions are evil) while most non-philosophers and many in law enforcement quickly recognize psychopathic criminals as being the epitome of evil.
Background reading on psychopath, moral reasoning, and decision-making that I think all fits together pretty nicely:
Psychopaths:
http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/174276/the-sociopath-next-door-by-martha-stout-phd/9780767915823/ (Read the excerpt, which is the introduction)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?_r=0
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2004/04/the_depressive_and_the_psychopath.html
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/?no-ist
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/life-as-a-nonviolent-psychopath/282271/ (I find the bit about Buddhism, another school of thought advocating detachment, fascinating)
Moral and non-Moral Decision-making:
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/apr/whose-life-would-you-save
http://www.smh.com.au/national/feeling-our-way-to-decision-20090227-8k8v.html
Psychopaths and Moral Rationality:
http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~snichols/Papers/HowPsychopathsThreaten.pdf
Attempts to rationally define morality inevitably seem to wind up with some sort of (small “u”) utilitarian calculus whereby ends are weighed against means. Another fascinating moment I had while looking into this was reading Joshua Greene’s Philosophy dissertation “The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth about Morality and What to Do About it” (http://scholar.harvard.edu/joshuagreene/files/3greene-dissertation.pdf) — he’s the researcher from the Discover article, above. In it, he does a great job of describing the problems of utilitarianism before… suggesting utilitarianism because it’s the inevitable end of thinking about morality in rational terms:
That’s a fascinating example of philosophical lampshade hanging (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging).
I’m left wondering if the intellectualizing of morality and the academic insistence on detached and emotionless thinking about issues is a movement away morality and toward psychopathic thinking. As much as the Enlightenment may have led to a reduction of ambient violence in cultures, dispassionate “greater good” thinking as also led to the killing of civilians on an industrial scale in the 20th Century, where well over 100 million (probably closer to 150 million) people were killed by their own governments in the name of atheist socialist utopias.
Also fascinating is the research on how liberals and conservatives think, which suggests that conservatives are more emotional and liberals more rational. Liberals interpret that to mean that their perspective is more rational and conservatives are less rational. It also suggests it’s more psychopathic, which might help explain the millions of dead bodies left behind by socialist utopias. It also suggests some truth in the stereotypes that liberals and conservatives have of each other.
Anyone who has talked with a “social justice warrior” knows that, for better or worse, liberals have a very emotional morality.