It seems like it won't be a popular opinion given the comments, but: a three-letter-agency, especially the CIA, maintaining a "factbook" always seemed like an oxymoron to me. Indeed it was an oft-cited source in research and school essays, and for the most part it was certainly accurate, but, as many tools of propaganda, that veneer of accuracy could be a useful cover for the small portions of reality where truth was inconvenient.
As an example in recent memory: the World Factbook has been heavily cited lately to argue against the idea of a genocide in Gaza. Maybe a year or so ago, the Factbook was updated, and it claimed that the population in Gaza had grown: no decrease, no inflection point in growth, nothing to see... That claim was in heavy rotation, as soon as it was published.
That the espionage agency of the main weapons supplier to Israel would publish such a claim felt grotesque, and the claim itself seemed ridiculous, impossible, based on even evidenced peripheral information (the 90+% of people displaced, the destruction of all hospitals, the deaths of so many aid workers, the levels of starvation), but... the Factbook claimed it, so it became true to many.
It would be impossible to quantify the effect of this, how many days of horror it added, how many more debates those trying to stop the killing had to do, how much fewer donations were sent to aid workers. But an effect it certainly had.
I'm feeding a troll here, but for the benefit of those reading along:
The official numbers are a subset of all deaths: only deaths from direct military action are counted.
In most wars, excepting the shortest conflicts, those deaths are a minority of all deaths.
Even taking the numbers of Save the Children (and I'll let everyone decide whether they're likely an overestimate or an underestimate), it's difficult to think that for every 4 people killed in this slaughter, only 1 person died of hunger, disease, chronic illness, childbirth, age, etc., etc., etc.
My friend, since you were able to produce the Save the Children post, I can only assume that you're also aware of the methodology of the MoH, which means that you're just lying now...
That methodology is not secret or subject to interpretation: their numbers do not include the deaths I've mentioned. Not even the deaths of people buried under the rubble!
I don't understand the downvotes to your comment (and the few replies are grotesque...), but I definitely support the sentiment. If dropping the NYT over Iraq is not justified, then the concept of red lines loses its meaning.
You didn't lose much by the way, their handling of Gaza was equally despicable.
I probably don't understand your point, but if the result of having the prevention of balkanisation as the overriding goal is a "horrible and inefficient" government, why is it a good goal? If India had fractured into its component states (and you seem to imply that this has often been a strong threat), would the people have been poorer? It's rare that independent states ever want to rejoin their historical country of origin.
That's a good question but preferably left unanswered, because trying to find the answer could easily lead to some very, very bad outcomes.
Sub-Saharan Africa is an example of what happens when you allow balkanization through arbitrarily-drawn territorial lines (and all territorial lines are always inherently arbitrary enough to not please everyone). Perpetual war, misery, stagnation.
> how it could contribute to destabilizing democracies as the "economic losers" in rich countries started to demand more political power
Far from me to defend globalisation, but what would have been the alternative here? Is the idea that authoritarian governments have less hurdles in a more globalised world?
Arguably, we'd have fared worse: we'd be starting our days by taking a power stance while listening to the TV broadcast of lists of positive words to prime ourselves into greatness, then we'd go out and salute people with "Most people in your neighbourhood are having a great day". All exams would be not-eating-marshmallows exams. Only upshot I can think of is HN would be called PHackerNews.
No, if there's one social science we should have picked, it's anthropology I tell you.
> Arguably, we'd have fared worse: we'd be starting our days by taking a power stance while listening to the TV broadcast of lists of positive words to prime ourselves into greatness, then we'd go out and salute people with "Most people in your neighbourhood are having a great day".
This is all psychology research (which presumably you know). (I definitely do as I have a PhD in it).
> No, if there's one social science we should have picked, it's anthropology I tell you.
I actually agree with this, will update my rant to include this next time.
Yes... I should have come up with jokes about deconstructing the power dynamics inherent to lunch, but I don't know many egregious examples of retracted sociology studies, so I chose to not only disregard HN rules but also to do so lazily...
Will do better when I reply to your anthropology-fueled rant.
> Yes... I should have come up with jokes about deconstructing the power dynamics inherent to lunch, but I don't know many egregious examples of retracted sociology studies, so I chose to not only disregard HN rules but also to do so lazily...
To be fair, this is more a function of psychology having a lot of experimental studies (as you can normally run them on individuals) which tend to get lots of press, and they're badly conducted because most psychologists suck at stats (and the incentives are towards publishing or perishing). That being said, it's really good that we now know lots of them were garbage and is a sign of decent science being done.
Sociology OTOH (rather like economics) typically deals with observational data which is less flashy and prone to all kinds of errors that make it harder to figure out what a replication would even look like (we can't generate another 100 countries to test, unfortunately).
Interesting insight. I can think of some objections, but they don't change your point.
I also checked out your blog and got 2 interesting articles in 2 tries. If you have some personal favourites and listing them is not a bother, I'd be happy to read them.
That's awfully kind of you to say! I added a section to the Main Page listing a couple of ones that people have mentioned to me before, though it's a bit of a cluttered page so I doubt it works as it stands.
A few things I think of more frequently than they affect my life are:
Thanks, I'll read through those (and Citogenesis was one of the two that I stumbled upon!). I find a lot of value in observing out-of-the-box/second-order reasoning, your blog fits the bill!
While de Gaulle being far-right is not a majority opinion (except in some marginal circles), he would undoubtedly be considered far-right if he was governing today, which is what GP seems to have meant.
I think that, for most Western people today, far-right == bad to non-white people, independent of intention (as you demonstrated with your remark about the PS), so de Gaulle's approach to Algeria, whether he's loud about it or not, would qualify him as far-right already.
All this to say, the debate is based on differing definitions of far-right (for example you conflate fascism and far-right and use Eco, while GP and I seem to think it's about extremely authoritarian + capitalist), and has started from an ignorant comment by an idiot who considers Bush (someone who is responsible for the death of around a million Iraqis, the creation of actual torture camps, large-scale surveillance, etc.) not far-right because, I assume, he didn't say anything mean about African-Americans.
Immigration is not a left-right issue, there are reasons to want to limit wanted and unwanted immigration, regardless of who one might vote for.
> If we are honest to ourselves about what they want and openly talk about [...] without visible abuses, these people are unhappy.
You seem to be talking about a subset of all people who do not want immigration: caricaturally-extreme racists. You and GP are not talking about the same people, and GP is not carrying water for anyone.
Yes, as far as I know most criminality follows a Pareto distribution, so consistently removing those who get arrested will indeed affect the stats here.
Hi, not into supplements, but really appreciating your approach to building a community and the reasoning behind it (and that you're being so transparent about it!). I'll give this a go too, thanks for the inspiration :).
As an example in recent memory: the World Factbook has been heavily cited lately to argue against the idea of a genocide in Gaza. Maybe a year or so ago, the Factbook was updated, and it claimed that the population in Gaza had grown: no decrease, no inflection point in growth, nothing to see... That claim was in heavy rotation, as soon as it was published.
That the espionage agency of the main weapons supplier to Israel would publish such a claim felt grotesque, and the claim itself seemed ridiculous, impossible, based on even evidenced peripheral information (the 90+% of people displaced, the destruction of all hospitals, the deaths of so many aid workers, the levels of starvation), but... the Factbook claimed it, so it became true to many.
It would be impossible to quantify the effect of this, how many days of horror it added, how many more debates those trying to stop the killing had to do, how much fewer donations were sent to aid workers. But an effect it certainly had.