What is going on in the UK?

[Senethro]

I'm not on there, so I don't know what you mean.

"I don't think you're capable of explaining it"
That's a poor way of saying you don't understand it.

*selective* xenophobia... Yes. There's nothing wrong with wanting to keep your culture as it is and protecting it from ideas you don't like.

My stance is: mass immigration is a bad idea for any country and any culture.
Just that I don't think it's a good idea if a million Europeans move into Ghana tomorrow.
Or if a million Chinese move into Brazil.

If you call that 'xenophobic' then go ahead.


steam engine, radio, electricity and electronics, chips, cars, bicycles, clocks, literally every health care device and treatment, ... I don't think you realize that 99% of the things that shape modern life come from the West.



Ah, you're back to your ad hominem statements.

No, I don't think you can explain it. If the West has a unique ability to generate technology, I don't think you can show a causation mechanism that is damaged by immigration.

 

[Arwon]

See my answer to the other poster above

Different kinds of immigrants have different impact on society.
If you look at the countries people come from to Australia, they are vastly different than the ones that come to Europe.

Foreign-born population of Australia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Theov has to post a list of which countries of origin he thinks are Good and Bad now

 

[danjuno]

No, I don't think you can explain it. If the West has a unique ability to generate technology, I don't think you can show a causation mechanism that is damaged by immigration.

The idea that culture rather than economic development is main driver of technology is ridiculous anyhow. Nevermind that Theov credits a good deal of "Eastern" inventions to the West.

Theov has to post a list of which countries of origin he thinks are Good and Bad now

We await with baited breath.

 

[Theov]

The idea that culture rather than economic development is main driver of technology is ridiculous anyhow.

yes, some cultures lead to innovation better than others.
I think that's quite obvious when you look at the world and look where all the inventions come from.
And innovations lead to economic development - not the other way around.
Scarcity leads to innovation, not abundance.

Nevermind that Theov credits a good deal of "Eastern" inventions to the West.

Which?

We await with baited breath.

*bated
Stay safe please.

Theov has to post a list of which countries of origin he thinks are Good and Bad now

They are all bad, because I think mass immigration is always a bad idea - regardless of what the destination country is.
And if there's immigration - the more similar the culture the better.

 

[danjuno]

yes, some cultures lead to innovation better than others.
I think that's quite obvious when you look at the world and look where all the inventions come from.
And innovations lead to economic development - not the other way around.
Scarcity leads to innovation, not abundance.

Wrong. Western Europe was a backwater before it benefited economically from the Trans-Atlantic trade brought about by colonial expansion.

 

[Senethro]

yes, some cultures lead to innovation better than others.
I think that's quite obvious when you look at the world and look where all the inventions come from.
And innovations lead to economic development - not the other way around.
Scarcity leads to innovation, not abundance.

So obvious you can't even explain it. You're just asserting that it is true.

 

[amadeus]

Western Europe was a backwater before it benefited economically from the Trans-Atlantic trade brought about by colonial expansion.

I recommend you check out the work of Angus Maddison—he was a British macroeconomist who tried to come up with figures for historical GDP. According to his last published edition, he estimated that most of (following present borders) continental Europe had the most productive economies per capita in 1500, Italy being far in the lead—this would have been before the growth of transoceanic trade.

This isn’t to say that Europe was then a totally dominating economic force that could have imposed its will globally (if it could have at that time, I imagine it would have) but it did, on average, have some of the world’s wealthiest areas by a rate of 2.5:1 for Italy and 2:1 for other parts of Europe as compared to China or the Aztecs.

It is unfair to say that Europe represented a backwater in at least the century preceding the discovery of the Americas.

 

[Akka]

I don’t think it could be proven in the scientific sense, but I think a good place to start would be asking why the formerly advanced civilizations in Greece, Egypt, China, etc. all fell behind over time and were surpassed by, primarily, northwestern Europeans.

I’ve heard some different theories over time that didn’t involve culture at all—that ancient slave labor made the elite class lethargic, that Britain had easy access to coal and iron to make steel, that 17th century maritime powers expanded through trade, that consolidated polities like the Ming made reactionary governments fall behind.

IIRC, one theory is that the political fragmentation in the relatively small area that is Europe, led to strong competition between polities, which kickstarted fast technological and organisational advances.
This combined with high-population (Europe was a population juggernaut before the mid-XXth) created the ability of European state to have powerful science, military and power projection.

Still just a theory, but it does sound plausible.

 

[amadeus]

IIRC, one theory is that the political fragmentation in the relatively small area that is Europe, led to strong competition between polities, which kickstarted fast technological and organisational advances.

I had heard that one before too, but I evidently forgot to put it in.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Which?

Arabic Numerals (1234567890), without them we'd still be using Roman Numerals(I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X)

 

[Theov]

So obvious you can't even explain it. You're just asserting that it is true.

Everything regarding transport: the west
Electronics you use: from the west
Nearly all scientific papers are written in the west
All medical inventions; be it medicine, practices or devices: from the west.
The whole modern civilization tech tree comes from the west.
Sure - some inventions have come from elsewhere - but that doesn't negate the fact that nearly all you use everyday is an invention from the west.
I'm actually shocked that you don't seem to realize that.

Arabic Numerals (1234567890), without them we'd still be using Roman Numerals(I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X)

Amazing.

 

[Senethro]

Everything regarding transport: the west
Electronics you use: from the west
Nearly all scientific papers are written in the west
All medical inventions; be it medicine, practices or devices: from the west.
The whole modern civilization tech tree comes from the west.
Sure - some inventions have come from elsewhere - but that doesn't negate the fact that nearly all you use everyday is an invention from the west.
I'm actually shocked that you don't seem to realize that.


Amazing.

This is obviously a definition of west including Japan (which could be reasonable) and a definition of scientific paper that is never produced in China.
It might be easiest if you could give what you think are these vanishingly rare counterexamples just to check what your definitions are?

 

[Samson]

Nearly all scientific papers are written in the west

I bet it has shifted away from the west since 2018

 

[Theov]

This is obviously a definition of west including Japan (which could be reasonable) and a definition of scientific paper that is never produced in China.
It might be easiest if you could give what you think are these vanishingly rare counterexamples just to check what your definitions are?

So your counter-argument of me saying "the west has given the world most of the inventions of today" is "nuh, uh, Japan has developed electronics, too." ?
And you brush over everything else I listed.

 

[Theov]

I bet it has shifted away from the west since 2018

Thanks for making my point.

 

[NovaKart]

To be fair, there are some pretty dumb scientific articles out there. A couple examples:

The effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection:

https://www.bmj.com/content/323/7327/1450

Knives made from human feces don’t work:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X19305371

 

[Samson]

To be fair, there are some pretty dumb scientific articles out there. A couple examples:

The effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection:

https://www.bmj.com/content/323/7327/1450

What this study adds: Remote intercessory prayer said for a group of patients is associated with a shorter hospital stay and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection, even when the intervention is performed 4–10 years after the infection

I THINK this is making a joke but also a serious point about the danger of ignoring selection bias in science.

Knives made from human feces don’t work:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X19305371

Highlights​

• An ethnographic account states an Inuit man made a knife from his own frozen feces.
• We experimentally tested knives manufactured from frozen human feces.
• Knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work.

What is wrong with this

 

[Broken_Erika]

Amazing.

Arabic Numerals were originally from India
Here's some reading, shows how much mathematics and science was developed by Islamic nations. Which was built upon by western nations to build much of the technological progress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age#Mathematics
I'd quote the article but wikipedia articles don't copy properly, the format goes all screwy.......

 

[Lexicus]

Everyone has broken the law, and I do not think anyone is a societal ill, everyone is a person.

Anti-immigrant reactionaries clearly are a societal ill, though

 

[Lexicus]

"The level of meteor impacts we suffer is already damaging enough, we shouldn't be trying to steer more interplanetary material towards us to have even more"

"Ah... but where precisely are you setting the line between harmless space dust and and actually dangerous impactors?"

"I don't see how that's relevant to what I said"

"Ah... no answer. How interesting. I guess I win then."


Now all that's needed is for someone to come back with some graphs that highlight the negligible dangers of meteor impacts, and we can go full meta on this.

These comparisons of human beings to cigarettes and now meteor strikes is insane, you presumably believe that humans also bring some positives in addition to just crime, don't you?