I highly recommend you read chapter 17 (on violence) of The Blank Slate even if you read nothing else in the book. Hobbes, human disposition for violence, and the state, are what the entire chapter is about.
Sam's quote almost echos Pinker. Pinker says:
> A governing body that has been granted a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence can neutralize each of Hobbes’s reasons for quarrel...Adjudication by an armed authority appears to be the most effective general violence-reduction technique ever invented.
> I don't watch JBP.
You should, he'll help you
> I can't believe I'm being pressed to dispute the idea that female humans are hardwired to like pink and play with dolls, and that male humans are hardwired to like Disturbed and extreme skateboarding.
The hard-wiring is there, yes, and it is INDISPUTABLE despite what your college professor or whatever says about "social construction".
Pinker wrote this entire book on the topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344
The idea of a blank slate is old school behaviorist stuff. No one thinks that anymore.
> and why is that still a thing nowadays when we're supposed to all be about equality?
What you'll see in Sweden, the most egalitarian country with the most freedom to choose your career path for any gender, is that gender-specific professions are picked more often than in societies with less apparent equality of opportunity.
In other words women simply tend to go for (lower paid) social careers and and men simply tend to go for (higher paid because there's higher demand) STEM careers.
You cannot erase that difference between genders without erasing liberty. Blank slate equalism is simply false. The data we have does not support it.
> but even when I finally do make more than her, I'll still be unable to shake the sexist feeling from my mind that I should be the one earning more...
That is not a feeling. It is a thought. Which has a reason/cause. Perhaps you were socialized to believe it (by parents, teachers, friends, books you read). Perhaps it is rooted in the fear that she would at some point leave you. I can't tell you, you have to do some introspection on your own here and start to be honest with yourself.
Interesting! Proves something that has been known from practical experience for some time. It is discussed in The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker which is a damn good book all round actually
I base my knowledge not on belief that something is true, but on science and data, which suggests that people are not born as blank slates and could therefore have a genetic predisposition to violating the law. This has been thoroughly researched and discussed in the book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard and MIT. Nevertheless, even with a possibility of racial genetic predisposition, the social inequality (probably) plays the dominating role in shaping the crime statistics.
Let me give you another example. Suppose, there is a city, which has 4 equally sized districts divided largely by their inhabitants ethnic group. Now, imagine one of those districts has a crime rate that's 2x higher than the others. Would it be wrong to send more police over there? In my mind, that's clearly what needs to be done - who gives a fuck about their ethnicity? The crime has to be stopped, so you send more police for the benefit of the people living in the district and the city overall.
This book should definitely be on your to-read list if you're serious about learning more about this topic.
I do not believe this authors understands the subjects very well at all. She lost me at how Dawkins' theory doesn't explain how a tattoo isn't passed down. She fails to understand that Dawkins' is building on prior works. She seems entirely unaware about epigenetics.
Are you wondering what her article is actually about? What is actually driving her mindless drivel? Read: http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial/dp/0142003344
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.
I'll look for Haidt's video, but I've been reading Steven Pinker's <em>The Blank Slate</em> and the purity meme isn't just on the right. Try getting a vegetarian to eat something tainted by an animal broth, or look at the laws being created to marginalize people who smoke tobacco, or companies that use trans fats, or low-cost labor in developing countries. Hell, New York City is trying to outlaw the use of salt in cooking, and the people who want to continue using salt are being vilified just as religions vilify blasphemers.
Pinker's book is way to dense for a reddit post, but it's worth the read if you want a better understanding of why we humans have many of the views we do.
> Some yes, but I've found that pretty much all of these differences come down to reproduction and child rearing.
That's the politically correct belief. Apparently is not true. That's why I mentioned as an example autism, which affects males a lot more than females (like four times more).
> Statistics are a human creation used to better organize data and to recognize patterns.
I'm not sure what are you trying to say with this, other than dismiss statistics.
> It's worth adding that your social environment, especially why you're developing as a child, can actually effect the development of your brain.
Sure, but not so much as we used to think. There are studies with adopted children (different genes, same upbringing), separated twins (the reverse), etc.
Again, I recommend this wonderful book.
Race is definitely deeper than skin color
Leftists believe in false equality, humans will never be equal economically or otherwise
There's simply some things white people are better at
​
EDIT: I copied this over so i apologize for formatting
Race is absolutely a biological reality.
Common non-arguments against race are :
a) "It's just a difference of skin color"
Skin color is but one phenotype among several different phenotypes, like bone structure, eye color, hair color, skull shape, brain size, lung capacity etc. which arise from genetic differences between races.
>There is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other,—as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body, the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain. But it would be an endless task to specify the numerous points of structural difference.
- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
>It is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences between races, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate with many of today's racial constructs are real. Genetic variations are likely to affect behavior and cognition just as they affect other traits and pretending that scientific research has shown there can be no meaningful average genetic difference among human populations is contradicted by scientific facts.
- David Reich, Geneticist, Harvard University
b) "There is a continuous variation between races, so it doesn't exist"
This is a fallacy known as Continuum Fallacy. There is a continuous variation between colors, but we can still categorize them. Moreover, races even have clusters, so the continuous variation point is even less true in races than colors.
c) "There is more variation within than between said races as well, so races don't exist"
This is a fallacy known as Lewontin's Fallacy. There are more variations within cars than there are between several types of vehicles, yet we still can differentiate between a sports car and a pickup truck and categorize them.
In the following, I'll provide some quantitative data.
Genetic Cluster Analysis
In a genetic cluster analysis, you give a computer program information on ton of people’s DNA and you tell it to sort the data into X number of groups, called clusters, so that the genetic differences within each cluster are minimized while the genetic differences between clusters is maximized.
When you do this and tell the computer to group human genetic variation into 4 – 6 “clusters”, the clusters end up mirroring the races such that researchers can predict someone’s race based on which cluster they are assigned to with a 99%+ level of accuracy (Rosenberg et al. 2002; Tang et al. 2005; Rosenberg et al. 2005).
Heterozygosity
<strong>Michael Woodley 2009 – Is Homo Sapiens Polytypic</strong> compared the heterozygosity in humans to other species with wide ranges. Heterozygosity is simply the probably that, at any given gene location, two organisms of that species will have a different gene variant (allele) at that specific location. A gene is a series of SNPs, so even though the similarly is 99.5% SNP by SNP, at any given gene they can be different more often than not.
SpeciesHeterozygosityRecognized SubspeciesSourceHumans.776?<strong>Wise</strong>Chimpanzees.634<strong>Wise</strong>Leopards.5813<strong>Uphyrkina</strong>NA Brown Bears.527519<strong>Paetkau</strong>Scan. Wolverines.3252-3<strong>Walker</strong>
Time of divergence
In addition, there are several recognized subspecies which have diverged from each other in time spans similar to or more recent than humans have had to evolve subspecies:
SubspeciesTime of divergence<strong>Cyanoptera – Discors (birds)</strong>65,000<strong>Discors – Septentrionalium (birds)</strong>70,000<strong>Cyanoptera – Septentrionalium (birds)</strong>95,000<strong>North American Moose – European Moose</strong>165,000Proposed time for human subspecies to have evolved100,000<strong>8 subspecies of tigers</strong>72,000
And given the speed at which humans have spread around the world, it shouldn’t seem intuitively implausible that humans would evolve subspecies faster than most (but not all) other animals.
FST Distances
FST is the proportion of total variation that exists between two populations compared to the overall variation in both populations.
FST distances between the subspecies of various species are similar to the distances between populations of humans:
SpeciesFst DistancesRecognized SubspeciesSourceGray Wolves0.16837<strong>Roy 1994</strong>Asian Dogs0.15411<strong>Kim 2001</strong>Humans (K=14)0.155?<strong>Barbujani 1997</strong>North American Wolverines0.0672-3<strong>Kyle and Strobeck 2001</strong>African Buffalo0.0595<strong>Van Hooft 2000</strong>Plains Zebra0.115<strong>Lorenzen 2008</strong>
FST values will vary depending on how many groups you divide a species into. The Fst value for each species is just an average for all subspecies-relations. “K=14” refers to the number of subdivisions in the species. The fewer the divisions that are recognized, the higher the average FST value between the divisions will be. That’s why any species will have a higher FST value when the number of populations is lower.
Here are some great books on Human Bio-Diversity:
Here are a few good websites which discuss research on the topic:
https://thealternativehypothesis.org/
Check out Blank Slate book, it has a ton of material on personality traits are inherited (dna dependent) - probably most of them.
https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344
Having said that - some of the brain development is environment-based, and a lot of brain function has to do with macro structures of the brain - those are based on dna, but changing dna once the brain is fully grown wouldn’t change the structure.
​
My personal bet: intelligence-related stuff wouldn’t change much. Everything else like emotionality, empathy, reasoning - a lot. A simple proof: try feeding a homophobe with MDMA :)
Okay, I understand you feel like I've glossed over a lot of your points and I apologize for that because you made a lot of points and it was hard to respond to them all. So let's talk about gender in particular since in this post you focused on that.
>Call it theory all you want, but if it wouldn't have existed, no one would have gender based issues. Men wouldnt be sent to war because women are seen as incapable, female abusers would not go unreported, bye bye purity culture and rape culture, bye bye sex industry since women are not seen as objects anymore... i could go on.
One big issue I have with Feminism in general is this "social constructionist" theory about reality. Social constructionists believe that human beings are basically born as a clean slate and all the characteristics about them are learned from their parents and their society. On this view, there's very little difference between men and women, and most of the differences between us are not innate, but created by society. The problem with this view is that it's simply wrong. Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading psychologists wrote an entire book on this subject called The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. And in this book he explains, using the well-understood scientific research, that as human beings we have an unbelievable amount of innate qualities based purely on genetics, and especially the differences between the sexes.
And to be honest, I don't know what's so hard to understand about that. Men and women externally, are extremely different. The way our bodies are built are very different, our reproductive systems are very different, even our hormonal and endocrine systems work in significantly different ways. So if men and women are externally different, and so instantly recognizable from the outside, why would it be any different internally, in our mental and emotional world?
One of the big mistakes that modern Feminism has made is attempting to blame all the differences between men and women on gender, instead of innate biological distinctions that can be observed across thousands of cultures. It is a scientific fact that men tend to biologically be more aggressive, confrontational, and violent. We were evolutionarily designed this way. Saying that the disparity between men and women when it comes to violent or aggressive behavior is due to the patriarchy is to ignore biological sex altogether, and to ignore evolutionary psychology.
And in general, Feminism has a huge problem with this. It's Feminism that's now attempting to argue that the innate physical advantages men have over women isn't relevant to their performances in sports. It's also Feminists who are now allowing biological men into women's spaces where women are being assaulted, harassed, or even raped. This can only be explained by the fact that the innate differences between men and women is not taken seriously by Feminism, and everything is blamed on gender and cultural programming, which is complete nonsense.
Finally, how can you blame the Patriarchy for the sex industry, the porn industry, and prostitution, when it's Feminists who are most loudly proclaiming that a woman sexualizing herself for money and attention is empowering???
Not sure if it's a typo or if you're not familiar with the discourse, but it's not blank-state, it's The Blank Slate.
And yeah it's our genes. Or more precisely, it's a 3 parts simple reasoning: 1- our genes and innate wirings have an impact on our personality, will, reactions, long termism, intelligence, and interests. That's settled science, see also Robert Plomin's "Blueprints", nothing political in there. 2 - So you can have differences in outcomes between two people even with the same upbringing and experiences, and no discrimination here. 3 (the catch) - So you can't point at differences in outcomes and assume it must come from experiences, society and discrimination. You have to prove it, and have an eye out for alternatives explanations that could work as well.
See also on Scott's blog: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/
Even Albion's Seed but that's less grounded.
And for the obvious counter argument "But what if we don't want the truth, it seems like a good story anyway" : well then you have to explain the overachievements of Asian and Jewish people. (Among other things)
You may sound like a socialist determinist or technical called an “economic determinist” to me. Not common and likely pushback from socialists on here. Marx in his early writings is sometimes regarded as teleological with his historical and dialectical materialism. This part of Marx I actually kinda agree with.
OP, where Marx does talk about this is an example in the below passage. Here is an excerpt from “The German Ideology” where he talks about the stages of Labor that roughly goes: Tribal, slavery, feudalism, capitalism. In this excerpt he is going clear from tribal to his then stage he is living in Germany - Capitalism. I think it fits you. I wouldn’t be surprised if Marx knowing research about the human condition today that I cited above he would be more like you and remained more like these early writings.
>This beginning is as animal as social life itself at this stage. It is mere herd-consciousness, and at this point man is only distinguished from sheep by the fact that with him consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a conscious one. This sheep-like or tribal consciousness receives its further development and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs, and, what is fundamental to both of these, the increase of population. With these there develops the division of labor, which was originally nothing but the division of labor in the sexual act, then that division of labor which develops spontaneously or “naturally” by virtue of natural predisposition (e.g. physical strength), needs, accidents, etc. etc. Division of labor only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labor appears. (The first form of ideologists, priests, is concurrent.) From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of “pure” theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. But even if this theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. comes into contradiction with the existing relations, this can only occur because existing social relations have come into contradiction with existing forces of production; this, moreover, can also occur in a particular national sphere of relations through the appearance of the contradiction, not within the national orbit, but between this national consciousness and the practice of other nations, i.e. between the national and the general consciousness of a nation (as we see it now in Germany).
Now I will do two things. I will quote a political science text book for you to have a better overview of the stages of labor. These stages of labor basically then Marx goes it is then communism can happen. I will then source where I think with social science where he went wrong to no fault of his own. He just didn’t have the social sciences we do now.
First, the overview:
>Marx’s theory of history is therefore teleological, in the sense that it invests history with meaning or a purpose, reflected in its goal: classless communism. This goal would nevertheless only be achieved once history had developed through a series of stages or epochs, each characterized by its own economic structure and class system. In The German Ideology ([1846] 1970) Marx identified four such stages:
-primitive communism or tribal society, in which material scarcity provided the principal source of conflict
-slavery, covering classical or ancient societies and characterized by conflict between masters and slaves
-feudalism, marked by antagonism between land owners and serfs
-capitalism, dominated by the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
>Human history has therefore been a long struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor, the exploited and the exploiter.
Here is some data that supports how he was right with the stages and progress.
What I think he gets wrong is the assumption that changing the economic system can change who we are. Here is list of human universals for you to peruse and many are very counter to communism (e.g., trade, property, leadership, territory, violence, nepotism, coalitions, etc.). Then it is my opinion an economic system can bring utopia is the Blank Slate Myth. This was a very popular myth during Marx’s time and still today, tbh. Politically it was very powerful to bring down monarchies. The Blank Slate (or tabula rasa) was the belief that people are just born blank slates for society to write on with chalk. A better way to say that in modernity is babies are born lumps of clay for society to mold in whatever shape we want. There is no genetic makeup that determines who you are and the nature side of the “nature vs nurture” side of the debate in psychology and Human growth & development doesn’t exist. Nurture is everything and thus public policies are Omnipotent.
Now, why was this so powerful in the 18th century. Monarchies ruled through bloodline divinity. If we are all born blank slates then the poorest and most feeble of us could take our new born baby and switch it with kings new born son and our son would be just as qualified to rule! THUS, and this cannot be understated, people with the Blank Slate Myth began to believe they too with education had the ability to rule too! So, is the blank slate myth all bad, no. What it is bad is the belief there is no determinism. There isn’t the 50% of nature side of the debate to contend with. That there are no personality differences just like we see in this sub. We don’t agree on this sub and a lot of that has to do with personality differences. Socialists seem to be in denial of this and for some dumb reason think if their system is implemented that will change. But yet here they are in a system they oppose and they aren’t molded by the current economic systems “Blank Slate” and agree with it ;-).
So…, would Marx catch on with the social sciences and become more moderate. I think so.
Here’s an exceptional book dedicated with tackling “the Blank Slate: The modern Denial of Human Nature”
Oh, didn't my comment fit into the identity politics echo chamber?
Here's some reading if you decide to git learnt...
https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344
Each one of those imgur images provide a source.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016028960200137X
https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/Xr1OWy0LISXN
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/AfMdqihAkj5N
https://vdare.com/articles/indians-aren-t-that-intelligent-on-average
https://vdare.com/articles/indians-aren-t-that-intelligent-on-average
https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/UsTMdPYFgJtN
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/uota-rsg012512.php
This is a basic premise of Evolutionary Psychology.
Steven Pinker, one of the best non-fiction writers of our time, has an entire book about how we all share a common human (animal) nature.
>It's this constant game of whack-a-mole. "I didn't say that!
This is why you need to practice steel manning arguments. Drop your feminist free bleeding class and take an introductory course in philosophy.
>Then you never deal with you being a hypocritical liar.
I'm just trying to impart to you sage advice for life. After all, you don't get any do-overs with your youth, and sadly I made a lot of the same mistakes that you're making. Take heed, little one.
>You're especially fond of trying to deny you're insulting me.
I like to think of it as playful teasing.
>Right, you don't ever admit to being wrong. You just "let it go".
Letting things go is an important adult life skill. Try not to judge people constantly.
>You're in a constant state of letting it go.
You really need to learn better coping skills for processing your emotions, sweetie.
>Of course, you're wrong on them, that's why you resort to mocking and "letting them go".
Maybe you should see a psychiatrist about these feelings you're having. OCD can be effectively treated.
>Everything you've had to say on the topic has been irrelevant.
I omit things to stay on topic, and you say I'm gish galloping. I expand on these ideas, and you say it's irrelevant. There's just no pleasing you.
>"But women have more childlike characteristics" you cry.
And yet it perfectly explains why you're being such a brat.
>"You silly girl. Everyone's voice has a different tenor." Yes, that's the point.
You need to think critically about this, because it's a point feminists get wrong constantly. Everyone is a unique individual. However, groups of people share common traits. On average, men have deeper voices than women. That doesn't mean that no woman on earth doesn't have a deeper voice than some man somewhere. However, these are what you call outliers, and are ultimately, statistically insignificant. When you look at IQ, the majority of women are of average intelligence. There are very few very dumb women and very few very smart women. Most men are also of average intelligence, but the IQ distribution among men is wider, so a greater percentage of men are very dumb and very smart. So when you look at the smartest (and dumbest) people on earth almost all of them are men. Steven Pinker is a well respected scientist who studies the human brain. He is a self-described and avowed feminist. If you take anything from this conversation, watch this video. When you get done, read his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQHSKLXu2c
https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344
>This is how much you demonize me. Just one post and you've forgotten your ridiculous little argument against me
In my defense, a lot of the things you say are forgettable.
>"In argumentation, the practice of "quote mining" is a form of cherry picking, in which the debater selectively picks some quotes supporting a position (or exaggerating an opposing position) while ignoring those that moderate the original quote or put it into a different context."
But I didn't do that. For 1), you haven't used follow up sentences to moderate your original point. And for 2), I used your arguments to mock you to show you how childish you're being. If you had said, "Some argue that my butt isn't visually appealing, but I disagree. It's has a nice shape and begs to be spanked." and I replied, "you said your butt is ugly", then that would be cherry picking. But that is not what I've done here. So yeh, you're using "cherry-picking" incorrectly.
>Confirmation bias is you decided what traits are due to neoteny.
Really?
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=fchd_facpub
>It's the same argument all sexists and racists use.
If you think that, then you either don't understand my argument, or you're trying to lump me in with other people in order to help you process your cognitive dissidence. But I assure you, no other "racists", as you put it, is arguing that the biological manifestation of racism is caused by the mathematical formula of rB > C, where r = the genetic relatedness of the subject, B = the reproductive benefit a recipient receives by altruistic acts and C = the reproductive cost to the altruistic subject by engaging in an act of altruism. Ultimately, because you're so spoiled and entitled, you take for granted the luxuries of modern day life. Human beings evolved in a world where starvation was common place. If members of Group A allowed members of Group B to eat their food, then Group A would starve and get weeded out of the gene pool. If Group C evolved a behavior by which they hated other groups and tried to kill them for eating their food, then Group C would be more likely to survive, and their descendents could go on to argue about racism on reddit. This is why it's foolish to give away your stuff to other people who won't return the favor. They will take advantage of your generosity and screw you over in the process. Try not to be so gullible.
>Is this the first time anybody has told you you behave just like any other sexist/racist?
Is this the first time anyone has ever told you that you behave just like any other childish feminist?
>You probably at this point think you're just pretending to be sexist/racist. That you aren't really such.
You're really clinging to this woke religion of yours thinking that racism is immoral. The only countries in the world that are 1st world, rich and free are countries white people created and built. If those countries stop being predominately white, then they will cease to be 1st world, rich and free. If all white countries stop being predominately white, then the entire world will cease to have a single nation on earth that is rich and free. All the technology, innovation, and advances in fairness, justice and decency disappears, and it disappears forever. Do you really want to live in such a world? How do you think women will be treated in such a world?
>No. Neoteny doesn't say all women are girls. It doesn't say all women are immature, either...That is confirmation bias.
Even if I was wrong about this, that still would not be confirmation bias. However, I'm not wrong. Just as children are too immature to take responsibility for their actions, you're too immature to take responsibility for the fact that you're wrong about what neoteny is. You're just pouting and saying, "no! I'm not a child! no! no! no!" It's adorable.
>Neoteny still effects males, but you deny putting your same argument towards them, because you're blatantly sexist.
Like I said, of course neoteny effects males. This is why if I had to go fight a silver back gorilla, that gorilla would rip me to shreds without blinking. The power of those creatures is stunning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T0z1CT-nR8
But we haven't yet discussed why human beings evolved to be neotenous in the first place. Because human beings evolved to walk on two legs, this made giving birth far more difficult because it moved the birth canal between our hips. In order for women not to die in child birth (100% of the time), babies had to evolve to be born highly under-developed. Evolution solved this problem in a rather imperfect way by slowing down our development over the course of our entire lifetimes. This led to a new problem in that babies now took a very, very long time to grow into adults. Human beings spend about a third of our entire lives as children, while for most mammals it's only about an 8th of their life time. This meant that raising children required that the male provide resources to the female. So females evolved to endlessly desire and seek resources from males (it's a nonstop driving instinct, regardless of the resources a woman already has or whether she even has children or not), and males evolved the instinct to give women those resources (regardless if he has children with her or not). So how might women have evolved to induce in men the desire to give them resources? That's where neoteny comes into play. Have you ever noticed that many baby birds (like robins for instance) look god awful, and yet baby mammals are adorable and cute? Baby deer, kittens, puppies, bunnies, baby goats, etc are all cute. As it turns out, cuteness is an evolutionary survival mechanism. It instills in others the desire to provide that baby with resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness
The more adorable and cute a baby mammal, the less likely that baby will be eaten by a predator. This can even cross the species barrier (which is what makes it so effective as a survival mechanism), so that you can sometimes even see different mammalian species caring for each other's offspring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW1VY69x9pQ
The same principle of cuteness applies for human babies, and it applies to women as well. If women were not neotenous, then women could not be beautiful. It's not an accident that women reach their peak beauty when they reach their peak age of fertility. So the only way you can deny your own neoteny is to say that you're ugly. Don't feel bad, neoteny also had other side effects. Women's neoteny is likely the only reason why human beings are so smart, as another side product of neoteny is our large brains.
>Adults are classified by two things: Biological maturity...Age of majority.
See! That's you defining your terms! I knew you could do it! Now look at definition 2.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/immature
>See how upset you are that anybody dares call you out?
Well, setting aside that calling someone a "racist" functions precisely the same way that calling someone a racial slur functions, I haven't once gotten upset at anything you've said here. This despite that you adhere to a philosophy that's killed more people than the Nazis killed Jews. I think I'm being pretty open-minded here.
When it comes to universities, for instance, yes people are entitled to a platform. https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/25/16524832/campus-free-speech-first-amendment-protest
Yes, a lot of conservatives deny evolutionary biology. But a lot of liberals deny that humans (and in particular the human brain) is a result of those same processes. https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344
GMOs are safe. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2016/05/17/gmos-safe-academies-of-science-report-genetically-modified-food/84458872/
As for taxes and size of government, liberals have increasingly argued for larger government and increased taxes. You may think this is "right", but it also a shift to the left per definition. Here you go (if you accept quantitative studies...): http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/1-partisan-divides-over-political-values-widen/
Nope. Go read The Blank Slate
> Is it because they were raised by their mothers?
Yes and no.
Yes, because most of the time, the kind of woman who allows herself to bring her children into the world, with all its harshness, after failing to find a stable, dedicated and intelligent father is impulsive, irresponsible, high time preference and at the lower end of the IQ scores.
No, because there is a genetic component to these characteristics. The children of single mothers exhibit many of those characteristics because their mothers have "bad" genes, and their fathers are "bad boys" who also have "bad" genes. This is the greatest source of their dysfunction, far more than any environmental cue. This is what the vast scientific literature says (especially Twin studies), each time outcomes are controlled for heredity.
If you want a scholarly look on the subject, I would recommend Steven Pinker of Harvard.
With a welfare state, the natural incentive for women to stay away from unreliable "bad" boys is done away with. They can have kids with the cool, sexy rogues and the state will make sure they do not suffer the consequences of their actions.
There is a corollary for modern married women. You no longer need to screen your mates as harshly, or try to make the marriage work for your husbands as much. If it fails, the state will steal money from your ex husband and award it to you (in the form of child support and alimony), so that you never have to suffer the consequences of your decision to accept and unreliable, unsuitable mate.
>I don't think there are enough single fathers raising their children to draw a conclusion that it is the fault of the gender.
There are. Single fathers are better at raising children. According to the Pew Research Center, they are far less likely to raise their children in poverty and abuse their children only half as much. These are perhaps the most important predictors of positive outcome for a child and single fathers do all this despite largely coming from the bottom socioeconomic classes of society.
>And the lives they spoke of, that I supposedly ruined, were my ex-husbands
You probably ruined their lives, I don't know.
There is the emotional trauma, first. You promised them that you would love each other forever; they probably believed in you, trusted you and made countless sacrifices for you. If so, you betrayed their expectations. Men are not nearly as tough as we like you to think, you probably destroyed some of them, badly.
Of course, there is the financial issue. How much of their wallet did you take each time you left? How did they feel about it?
So maybe you destroyed their lives. I don't really care to be honest. They decided to marry you, they deserve whatever happens to them in my book. It was an easily avoidable situation, with a little research on the eve of the wedding. Instead, they unilaterally decided to hand you the power to do an incredible amount of damage over their lives, should you wish to. They deserve no pity.
>From my simple comment of growing bored by a man after a while they made the presumption that I had been the one to leave the marriages and that my children were miscreants.
I don't think that growing bored makes you a degenerate. If it makes you happier, you should leave, by all means; especially if you don't use the state to steal anything on the way out. I see no reason why you should sacrifice your own happiness for anyone, even your partner. You Only Live Once. Endeavor to enjoy most of it.
As for your children being miscreants? I doubt it. Given the average IQ of a Libertarian, I think there is ample reason to believe that you are an exceptionally gifted woman, intellectually. The children of exceptionally gifted women hardly ever become miscreants. They have good genes.
>that my children were miscreants
> I am against single women raising kids, as much as against single men raising kids.
You shouldn't be, two reasons. First, you need to understand that single mothers are not responsible for how their children turn out; well, yes and no:
>Yes and no.
>Yes, because most of the time, the kind of woman who allows herself to bring her children into the world, with all its harshness, after failing to find a stable, dedicated and intelligent father is impulsive, irresponsible, high time preference and at the lower end of the IQ scores.
>No, because there is a genetic component to these characteristics. The children of single mothers exhibit many of those characteristics because their mothers have "bad" genes, and their fathers are "bad boys" who also have "bad" genes. This is the greatest source of their dysfunction, far more than any environmental cue. This is what the vast scientific literature says (especially Twin studies), each time outcomes are controlled for heredity.
>If you want a scholarly look on the subject, I would recommend Steven Pinker of Harvard.
If that book is too nerdy for you, here is one written by a George Mason University Economist. He also looked at studies published in the past hundred years or so and the science is pretty much unanimous: genes have far more influence on how a kid turns out than any possible influence from his parents (which approaches zero as one enters into adulthood).
This is where surrogacy beats traditional marriage, hands down. You get to choose your surrogate mother as you wish, without needing to settle for an ugly, lazy, moron of a mother just because she was the only one who would have you. It is far easier to give your kids great genes.
> I like the good old, perfectly normal Little House on the Prairie like children upbringing. I cannot imagine only being raised by my mom or by my dad.
That would be nice. But you are now you not only take the chance of giving your kids shitty genes but, the wife can decide to divorce rape you anytime while taking your kids with her. As long as the state gives those powers to women, we will have to do without, however nice and natural it may be. You can't have everything in life, sacrifices must be made. In this case, unless you want a 50% chance of losing your kids, we have to go at it single.
>I cannot imagine only being raised by my mom or by my dad.
I can see why. But in the real world, plenty of men are doing it already. And what's more, they do it better than women. Single fathers are better than single mothers when it comes to the two things which have been scientifically proven to affect children long term: providing and abuse.
Please read The Blank Slate. Other than The Selfish Gene, its one of the most insightful books written about human nature.
Almost as if a child's upbringing has practically no impact. Hmmm, where have I heard this before...
Right. I didn't learn that till years later. About 13% larger on average, if I remember correctly. I thought men had a higher density of neurons though.
That is something that really changed the way I look at the world.
>Disparities in how certain brain substances are distributed may be more revealing. Notably, male brains contain about 6.5 times more gray matter -- sometimes called 'thinking matter" -- than women. Female brains have more than 9.5 times as much white matter, the stuff that connects various parts of the brain, than male brains. That's not all. "The frontal area of the cortex and the temporal area of the cortex are more precisely organized in women, and are bigger in volume," Geary tells WebMD. This difference in form may explain a lasting functional advantage that females seem to have over males: dominant language skills.
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ?page=2
Back then, I used to see men and women as literally identical, except for a few physical attributes, unlike now where I see men and women as inherently different. It's not that one is better than the other, but that each, on average, excels at certain things and that gender roles are not some horrible oppression so long as they're not rigidly and dogmatically enforced.
I stopped getting on to my wife for not having an interest in why the printer wasn't working, and I started to recognize that she was more more socially adept than me in many ways.
I highly recommend this book, even if I don't agree with Pinker on everything.
The Blank Slate and The Better Angels of Our Nature are two of my favorite books of his. Read them, they are awesome.
>I think the interaction between brain cells, give rises to a level of complexity that genes don't solely determine.
That is in essence the blank slate theory - just a more nuanced version. If you are truly interested in learning more and possibly even changing your mind about this subject, I would recommend Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate.
To expand, reality of course lies on a nature vs. nurture continuum; not even the most ardent polemicist would argue otherwise. But the fact of the matter is that "interactions between brain cells" are useless without an internal structure that gives meaning to these electrical interactions.
Now certainly the environment plays an important role in the shaping of these structures, but empirical study after empirical study shows that general cognitive ability is largely (.5 - .9) determined by genetic variation within populations, and paradoxically there is a stronger correlation between genetic influences and general cognitive ability as you age - meaning the older you get, the less the environment influences you.
This is a wonderful article, which reminds me of Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate," where he argues that the idea that babies are born as blanks to be completely molded by their environments is bogus.
See his article here, for instance: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/The_Blank_Slate_General_Psychologist.pdf
Or his TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate.html
Or, of course, his book: http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273196527&sr=8-1
Between both Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom, it seems babies are indeed born with very interesting cognitive traits were ignored just a matter of decades ago.
Ja? Was denkst du, wie die Verfassung zustande gekommen ist? Über kurz oder lang wird selbst den borniertesten Politikern (und Wählern) klar werden, dass durch Bildung aus der Unterschicht kein Bildungsbürgertum wird. Dann wird sowohl die Politik als auch das Recht der Realität folgen.
Dazu weise Worte eines (gebürtigen) Wieners:
>What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it. — Eugene Gendlin
Du stimmst vermutlich zu, dass der Westen zunehmend nach Bildung stratifiziert ist (Leute die gut in der Schule sind, gehen studieren, Studenten heiraten andere Studenten, deren Kinder studieren auch, yadayada). Eine Erklärung die häufig bemüht wird ist, dass das daran liegt, dass die Kinder in ihrer Kindheit entsprechend geprägt werden etc.
Wenn diese Erklärung zutreffend wäre...
Ausserdem sollte man nicht vergessen, dass Bildung und Erfolg zwar korrelieren, ein kausaler Zusammenhang aber nicht belegt ist. Aktuell gehen hierzulande die meisten (Parteien) von folgendem aus:
a)
> Genügend Mittel => Uni => Erfolg
Eine alternative wäre z.b:
b) > x => Erfolg in der Schule => Uni
> x => Erfolg im Berufsleben
Wenn b) stimmt und a) nicht, sind die üblichen Ansätze für erhöhte soziale Mobilität vermutlich nicht sehr effektiv.
Wenn sich jemand dafür interessiert, wären folgende Bücher ein guter Start:
>Stalinism, strawmen and actual science.
No, just "actual science" that grossly overvalues nurture and routinely denies nature, with marxist-leninist excess taking it to its logical conclusion with the total abandonment of nature's influence, both on humans and on non-human life.
Awareness of this branch of pseudoscience has thankfully been picking up as of late. Here are some relevant criticisms of...
Regardless, the point remains that it is very much a left wing notion. Just like racialist pseudoscience and hardline biological determinism is a right-wing thing.
It's an entire book on social constructionism.
Edit: Downvotes in response to a book written by a highly successful and respected scientist that is about one of my major claims specifically shows that there are at least some people in this conversation that will accept no reasonable evidence that contradicts their claim. If no reasonable evidence will be accepted, there's nothing I can do. This is precisely why I don't like getting into paper wars - if someone can find one paper that supports their intuitions they're put it forward and pretend like it's the last word, and any paper you present in return is "flawed." I've been through that dozens of times, I'm not doing it again.
As they say on the left, "educate yourself" The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
I don't care if some parents reject evolution and don't want it taught to their kids. It's a difficult thing to accept, and many leftists are evolution deniers. For example, the left denies human nature, or the fact that intelligence is overwhelmingly genetic.
The kid can learn the truth when he is out of school if he chooses to.
Hahahahahaha holy fucking shit, how far is your head up your ass? I think what's best is that, among all the bullshit you said, you've said nothing. I gave an actual reference, to the Halabja chemical attack, the only real piece of information here.
What did you just say? First paragraph: Wow, look at all I've read, I am so smart. Second paragraph: Wow, you don't understand me, I'm so great. Both edits: I am the best, I am unable to lift my head as it is weighed down my by enormous brain. I will refer to King of the Hill as a cartoon, because I must act like I am too smart to have ever heard of it.
You made a stupid point and didn't back it up in any capacity, and then simply said I AM SO GREAT AND BETTER THAN YOU. Well done. Don't talk shit out your ass and act like no one will notice cause of how massive a turd it is
And btw, Hobbes was wrong.
EDIT: Aw, comments got deleted. I was gonna post to r/iamverysmart. Oh well...
In the long run, parental involvement is within a rounding error according to Steven Pinker
>There's no genetic reason they cannot succeed.
Unfortunately for progressives, genetics does have a lot to do with it. Read Steven Pinker's <u>The Blank Slate</u>.
Steven Pinker has completely destroyed the Tabula Rasa argument.
Pinker, Steven. 2003. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344. New York etc.: Penguin Books, 2003-08-26.
As quoted at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/703159-i-believe-that-the-rape-is-not-about-sex-doctrine-will-go-down-in
> I believe that the rape-is-not-about-sex doctrine will go down in history as an example of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It is preposterous on the face of it, does not deserve its sanctity, is contradicted by a mass of evidence, and is getting in the way of the only morally relevant goal surrounding rape, the effort to stamp it out. ...
The burden of proof is on you, and defenders of the theory, to show why "rape is about power, not sex" is not also total bullshit.
Note to /u/must_not_forget_pwd and /u/Echospite.