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I’m at BIL right now. Interestingly there seem to be a more “LA” vibe this time around from what I recall in 2010 (when it was in Long Beach on the Queen Mary). By that, I mean less tech, more fashion and design. I have to
Apologies if I can’t post your comment right away, though I should be checking on my phone now and then. Please remember that you’ll be banned if you leave something insulting me (this doesn’t apply to those commenting on open threads usually, but hopefully lurkers will note this and save their own time and mine).
Still got my Kindle, and trying to get a few pages in here and there of Confucius: And the World He Created. It’s a pretty easy, if not excessively scholarly, survey (contrast it with Annping Chin’s book from a few years back). Ironically Confucius would recoil from the idea that he created a new world, with the standard model being that he revived ancient forms and ways. But the reality is that the emergence of a school around Confucius and his intellectual heirs did signal a change in the Zeitgeist of what became ancient China. Though to a great extent even if Confucius existed and believed he was an expositor of ancient ways, almost certainly for all practical purposes his interpretations would seem strange and novel for the ancients he had in mind. But, I do think that philosophies like those expounded by Confucius, and contemporaries further east in Eurasia at the same time, tapped into deep rooted human intuitions, which were attempting to find more rational and systematic justification in a new complex world.
Also, someone asked me in the comments earlier why the books I recommend on cognitive science of religion seem to date to the early aughts. For example, both In Gods We Trust and Religion Explained are from 2002. I should also mention that there are other works which I don’t mention as much, but which are also good. For example, Harvey Whitehouse’ Modes of Religiosity is interesting. Naturally it dates from 2004. So in any case, the reason for this coincidence in timing is that I got what I wanted out of that period of reading and study in relation to cognitive anthropology, which includes topics beyond the purview of religion. I retain an interest in human social and political development over time, but my focus in the domain of cultural anthropology is strongly influenced by the sort of views espoused by Dan Sperber in Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach, and the framework of Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson in The Origin and Evolution of Cultures. Since my time is finite usually I don’t focus on all the topics I’ve exhibited a fascination with in my life at any given moment. A quick skim of my Goodreads profile indicates that my interests are pretty catholic, at least compared to most people. But only for a few topics do I keep coming back to the same well (e.g., my interest in evolutionary biology goes back to early elementary school years). In most domains I check back in periodically, but if I think the findings are robust I stop following the field very closely.
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Sorry for last night Razib , I was more than a little drunk . I know you don’t suffer fools gladly and appreciate not getting thrown out of the place .
Hey Razib. I’ve been reading you since you were published in print in Discover Magazine. Just wanted to say thanks for sharing your thoughts and helping us plebs in the audience digest genetics and anthropology a bit more.
I get the feeling that you stress the non-political in your work and the tone you set is very objective. Good for science, but I’m afraid that a non-arbitrary number of people who read and share your blog attach some sort of emotive/political/subjective metadata to it. I think this website is the wrong place to host your ideas. I know you’re right-leaning, but some of the articles and authors here directly contradict the objective tone you write in, and even some of the things you’ve said.
While your interest is purely looking at humans as the complex and messy talking monkeys we are, the neocon and boring, one-sided ‘race realism’ permeates this site and runs at a perpendicular path to your posts. Your ‘personal classics’ make it appear even more so; while your post ‘Why Race as a Biological Construct Matters’ goes into the specifics of mate selection, phenotypical distinction, and other anthropological affairs, I’m positive that many of the people who passed the link around on the internet skipped over the science behind population distribution and just used the general perceived sentiment as more fodder for casually racist views. The posts where you talk about race and IQ end up being your most popular ones, for example, even though it’s not the majority of what you publish or are interested in.
I won’t talk to you as if you haven’t seen this yourself. In short, I think your writings need to be posted somewhere else that more accurately reflects the personal philosophy that you talk about. Whether it’s independent hosting or a site more dedicated to science, it might be better for your image than this place.
to be precise, contemporary politics is not important to me really. in the long run we're dead or singularity is coming :-)
Good for science, but I’m afraid that a non-arbitrary number of people who read and share your blog attach some sort of emotive/political/subjective metadata to it. I think this website is the wrong place to host your ideas. I know you’re right-leaning, but some of the articles and authors here directly contradict the objective tone you write in, and even some of the things you’ve said.
interesting you say that, because people said the same at *discover* i.e., that my platform there came particular interps credibility. so i don't see that this issue is specific to this site, though as you note many of the things posted here are ones i disagree with. it seems a major problem that crops up over and over again. do you know about my aggregation site which also has some non-unz content?
http://razib.com/wordpress/ here's the RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RazibKhansTotalFeed
the neocon and boring, one-sided ‘race realism’ permeates this site and runs at a perpendicular path to your posts.
as someone else has noted, to some extent the raison d'etre of this website is ANTI-neocon. i.e., isolationism in foreign policy, and a raft of anti-israel articles. if it's any type of 'con' it is paleo :-) as for the race realism, well, people take facts and interp them how they want. that's just generally true.
I think your writings need to be posted somewhere else that more accurately reflects the personal philosophy that you talk about.
well, i do write elsewhere, and plan to continue to do so :-) just not as frequently.Replies: @donut
I was the guy who asked “why the books I recommend on cognitive science of religion seem to date to the early aughts.” Thanks for the reply. I figured it was something like that and appreciate the additional book recommendations.
Things got Problematic in my city this past week: http://youtu.be/dpdddGgksrU
summary: black kids have been robbing students at gunpoint on various campuses in town for several years and one happened at Kalamazoo College about a month ago. In response, a white, male K-College student asked his Student Commission if they would advocate for concealed carry on their private campus. The “students of color” on the Commission took this as a personal threat and started a twitter campaign called #Unsafe@K. This link is a recording of their meeting on the whole issue (he immediately gets interrupted because he’s a “white male of privilege.”) FF a week later – open carry advocates on the net post a message on the college’s anonymous Facebook page “Konfessions” that someone is going to “systematically execute K Faculty members on March 5 at 9 a.m. to teach them a lesson about concealed carry.” Cops show up to their campus en mass that day, obviously nothing happened but it was highly entertaining the whole week! The SJWs there got The Cause they’ve always wanted and now they’re basically airing all past grievances and claiming PoC have never felt safe there – even going as far as saying they want a segregated study center for PoC so they can “feel safe.” LOL – brave, well spoken guy though.
I get the feeling that you stress the non-political in your work and the tone you set is very objective. Good for science, but I'm afraid that a non-arbitrary number of people who read and share your blog attach some sort of emotive/political/subjective metadata to it. I think this website is the wrong place to host your ideas. I know you're right-leaning, but some of the articles and authors here directly contradict the objective tone you write in, and even some of the things you've said.
While your interest is purely looking at humans as the complex and messy talking monkeys we are, the neocon and boring, one-sided 'race realism' permeates this site and runs at a perpendicular path to your posts. Your 'personal classics' make it appear even more so; while your post 'Why Race as a Biological Construct Matters' goes into the specifics of mate selection, phenotypical distinction, and other anthropological affairs, I'm positive that many of the people who passed the link around on the internet skipped over the science behind population distribution and just used the general perceived sentiment as more fodder for casually racist views. The posts where you talk about race and IQ end up being your most popular ones, for example, even though it's not the majority of what you publish or are interested in.
I won't talk to you as if you haven't seen this yourself. In short, I think your writings need to be posted somewhere else that more accurately reflects the personal philosophy that you talk about. Whether it's independent hosting or a site more dedicated to science, it might be better for your image than this place.Replies: @affenkopf, @Razib Khan
There are many things you can accuse this site of but being neocon is not one of them (boring, one-sided ‘race realism’ might be).
I get the feeling that you stress the non-political in your work and the tone you set is very objective. Good for science, but I'm afraid that a non-arbitrary number of people who read and share your blog attach some sort of emotive/political/subjective metadata to it. I think this website is the wrong place to host your ideas. I know you're right-leaning, but some of the articles and authors here directly contradict the objective tone you write in, and even some of the things you've said.
While your interest is purely looking at humans as the complex and messy talking monkeys we are, the neocon and boring, one-sided 'race realism' permeates this site and runs at a perpendicular path to your posts. Your 'personal classics' make it appear even more so; while your post 'Why Race as a Biological Construct Matters' goes into the specifics of mate selection, phenotypical distinction, and other anthropological affairs, I'm positive that many of the people who passed the link around on the internet skipped over the science behind population distribution and just used the general perceived sentiment as more fodder for casually racist views. The posts where you talk about race and IQ end up being your most popular ones, for example, even though it's not the majority of what you publish or are interested in.
I won't talk to you as if you haven't seen this yourself. In short, I think your writings need to be posted somewhere else that more accurately reflects the personal philosophy that you talk about. Whether it's independent hosting or a site more dedicated to science, it might be better for your image than this place.Replies: @affenkopf, @Razib Khan
I get the feeling that you stress the non-political in your work and the tone you set is very objective.
to be precise, contemporary politics is not important to me really. in the long run we’re dead or singularity is coming 🙂
Good for science, but I’m afraid that a non-arbitrary number of people who read and share your blog attach some sort of emotive/political/subjective metadata to it. I think this website is the wrong place to host your ideas. I know you’re right-leaning, but some of the articles and authors here directly contradict the objective tone you write in, and even some of the things you’ve said.
interesting you say that, because people said the same at *discover* i.e., that my platform there came particular interps credibility. so i don’t see that this issue is specific to this site, though as you note many of the things posted here are ones i disagree with. it seems a major problem that crops up over and over again. do you know about my aggregation site which also has some non-unz content?
http://razib.com/wordpress/ here’s the RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RazibKhansTotalFeed
the neocon and boring, one-sided ‘race realism’ permeates this site and runs at a perpendicular path to your posts.
as someone else has noted, to some extent the raison d’etre of this website is ANTI-neocon. i.e., isolationism in foreign policy, and a raft of anti-israel articles. if it’s any type of ‘con’ it is paleo 🙂 as for the race realism, well, people take facts and interp them how they want. that’s just generally true.
I think your writings need to be posted somewhere else that more accurately reflects the personal philosophy that you talk about.
well, i do write elsewhere, and plan to continue to do so 🙂 just not as frequently.
" Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
This is to T. Greer or anyone who is interested in Chinese literature: what are the best English translations of the Four Classical Novels?
It’s funny reading this site, I had already read Razib, Steve Sailer and Peter Frost, it was quite a coincidence (or not) to see them all move to the same site.
Really shows you how strong our PC culture is that so many people feel nervous about being seen reading a news website due to the opinions of some contributors. Sounds like some people need to stop being so worried about every little thing. We aren’t actually in a PC totalitarian state, as some on the right might imagine. You can still read unz.com in public without sanction.
Me too, Hipster. I have a long-standing addiction to Razib, Frost, and Sailer, so I like that they and other goodies are now bundled under Unz. Rare is the day that I don’t visit here–one of life’s little pleasures.
You are lucky I saw this–I usually only stop by these threads if I already have a comment to make! (Feel free to send me an e-mail next time!).
I have read at least part of all four of the classical novels, but I have not read every translation of each one. I will list translations in order of my confidence of how good they are.
The David Hawkes translation of The Dream of the Red Chamber is the best. Period. Note that it is published under the title “Story of the Stone” and that it comes in four volumes that must be purchased separately
Moss Robert’s translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also superior, although this is not really clear when you are just previewing the first page. Be careful which edition you buy, because there is an abridged version and a full two-volume version and you don’t want to get the wrong one on accident.
Journey to the West is harder. There are three translations, and only two of them are full. this Amazon review does a good job explaining the differences between the two full translations. If you just want to get a flavor of the story and its memorable characters, however, you probably want to go with the severely abridged but very well written (read: entertaining) translation by Arthur Waley, which is published under the title Monkey. A lot of the translation comparison reviews of this book focus on fidelity to the original text, but I consider this slightly silly as so much of the original is written in poetic verse and is really quite impossible to translate into English without losing either the tenor of the passages or the literal meaning.
I have read from the Sideny Shapiro translation of Shui Hu Zhuan, titled, Outlaws of the Marsh and found it mildly entertaining. I have not looked at other translations, however, so I cannot tell you if it is superior or inferior to them. (Also, unlike the other books here I have never tried to read any of the Water Margin in Chinese, so I cannot say much about how well it translates the original).
Razib I have a book recommendation for you. It is Michael Cook’s Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective. I recommend it for two reasons. The first is that is a solid academic book with a (thusfar) fairly unique methodology. It compares fundamentalist Hindu, Latin American Catholic, and Salafi-Jihadist movements in an attempt to discover if there is really something about the Islamic tradition that makes it more inherently political or violent than other religious traditions. I think you will find it satisfies your general requirements for being ‘informed’ enough on the history and lit to be worth reading. Second, it runs directly counter to a theme you’ve shared here multiple times (“religion is what people make of it”) and does so in a convincing fashion. I would really like to see your take on it.
Consider adding it to your reading list.
to be precise, contemporary politics is not important to me really. in the long run we're dead or singularity is coming :-)
Good for science, but I’m afraid that a non-arbitrary number of people who read and share your blog attach some sort of emotive/political/subjective metadata to it. I think this website is the wrong place to host your ideas. I know you’re right-leaning, but some of the articles and authors here directly contradict the objective tone you write in, and even some of the things you’ve said.
interesting you say that, because people said the same at *discover* i.e., that my platform there came particular interps credibility. so i don't see that this issue is specific to this site, though as you note many of the things posted here are ones i disagree with. it seems a major problem that crops up over and over again. do you know about my aggregation site which also has some non-unz content?
http://razib.com/wordpress/ here's the RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RazibKhansTotalFeed
the neocon and boring, one-sided ‘race realism’ permeates this site and runs at a perpendicular path to your posts.
as someone else has noted, to some extent the raison d'etre of this website is ANTI-neocon. i.e., isolationism in foreign policy, and a raft of anti-israel articles. if it's any type of 'con' it is paleo :-) as for the race realism, well, people take facts and interp them how they want. that's just generally true.
I think your writings need to be posted somewhere else that more accurately reflects the personal philosophy that you talk about.
well, i do write elsewhere, and plan to continue to do so :-) just not as frequently.Replies: @donut
” to be precise, contemporary politics is not important to me really. in the long run we’re dead or singularity is coming”
” Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Consider adding it to your reading list.Replies: @Razib Khan
bought.
T. Greer, thanks for your reply. I’ll look into these translations!
One of the nice things about asking and getting answered in public is that other people aside from oneself can see the answer. 🙂