PYF Dark Enlightenment Thinker

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Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Heresiarch posted:

I wonder what their logic for that is, considering that the elite under feudalism usually held hereditary positions. I have to assume that they think they would somehow be the ones in charge in a post-democratic world, and for some reason not the people who are already sitting on government-sized privately-owned power structures, many of whom inherited them from their family.

Personal mobility was rather low in the middle ages. An individual feudal lord had at least theoretically some incentive to look out for the serfs and peasants on his land, as if they all died, he would soon find himself impoverished, whereas a modern business can always grab an entirely new set of interns from the vast jobless hordes.

That's a kind of logic I can find in it, anyway. I don't think the peasants were actually better off as a consequence, though.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 05:12

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 21:56

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

From 1 to 10, duh.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 07:52

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

ArchangeI posted:

"Physical attractiveness is a measure of genetic health" and the comparatively inbred European women are somehow more attractive?

And that's besides the fact that ideas of physical attractiveness differ from culture to culture and time period to time period. It make absolutely zero sense. I actually think it makes negative sense.

There are certain standards (symmetry first and foremost) which seem to be quite reliably connected to physical attractiveness. But his entire line of thought about Africans having a heavier mutation load (?is he assuming mutation is degeneration from some un-mutated, Edenic ideal?) by virtue of being around longer (did people on the other continents spring fully-formed into existence at some late date, as opposed to diverging from and therefore having the same genetic history as the Africans?)...well, it's hogwash. Disconcerting that it was even published.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 09:13

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

How exactly is he twitting about being banned from twitter, anyway.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 23:23

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Sham bam bamina! posted:

New account.

Ah. Right.

Almost pointless to even ban somebody, then. :shrug:

# ¿ Sep 16, 2015 00:27

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 07:56

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Wales Grey posted:

How is eugenics even remotely connected to criminology?

Eugenics, particularly in the United States, was intimately connected to crime prevention.

quote:

The tenets of modern criminology according to Lydston in brief are these

1. The criminal and vice classes are the product of certain Influences of heredity, congenital and acquired disease, and unfavorable surroundings involving pernicious teaching and example, physical necessities and other social maladies.
2. These influences result in a class of persons of a low grade of development, physically and mentally, with a defective understanding of their true relations to the social system in which they live. Such persons have no true conception of that variable thing called morality and in the case of the criminal, no respect whatever for the rights of others save in so far as it may be compelled by fear of punishment. Some become criminals, some paupers, and still others prostitutes, inebriates, or insane
3 These subjects are characterized upon the average by certain anomalies of development that constitute the so-called stigmata or marks of degeneracy. In them vice crime and disease go hand in hand

# ¿ Sep 27, 2015 19:17

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Laserjet 4P posted:

Turns out it was lead paint, and it would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those darn meddlin' ~~EPA~~ kids!

That's certainly a noteworthy theory, but I tend not to find it terribly compelling, because while the removal of lead-based paints and the switch to unleaded gasoline tracks well with the decline in crime rates since the 90s, it is an extremely poor match for the long rise since the 60s to get to that point. From what I've read, use of lead paint peaked in the 20s, which would suggest there should have been a crime peak around the 40s, not 50 years later.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2015 20:15

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Jack Gladney posted:

There could be other factors that would cause crime to peak independent of brain damage. A big population spike might be one. Also, leaded gasoline use certainly didn't peak in the 20s.

All true, but it's still a rather glaring hole in what is usually proposed as a comprehensive explanation.

Wales Grey posted:

I was going to riff on the usage of "morals" instead of "ethics" squarely dating your excerpt as 18th century pseudosociology, but then I remembered there are still people who write about "morals" in the context of a culture or society being "moral".

I don't really see what's inappropriate about the term.

quote:

Ninety-nine percent of all new income generated today goes to the top 1 percent. The top one-tenth of 1 percent owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Does anybody think this is the kind of economy we should have. Do we think it's moral?

Strudel Man has a new favorite as of 01:32 on Sep 28, 2015

# ¿ Sep 28, 2015 01:27

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Wales Grey posted:

Morals are irrelevant in establishing effective policy because morality is a set of personal beliefs. Your quote is asking an irrelevant or meaningless question; social structures such as "the economy" cannot be "moral" because are not individual persons and as such cannot hold a belief.

That's not really a distinction commonly drawn - morals and ethics are synonyms, at least in normal usage. Even if it were, it doesn't make a great deal of sense. Morality is concerned with behavior, individual or otherwise, and societies and economies both have a great deal to do with how people behave.

Strudel Man has a new favorite as of 02:37 on Sep 28, 2015

# ¿ Sep 28, 2015 02:34

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Silver2195 posted:

, but this is enforced to a degree already (bans on cousin marriage, for example).

I think you could argue fairly strongly that this is a different matter. Close-kin marriages are genetically harmful on an individual level, but not on a species level, as there's no change in allele frequencies from it relative to the same two people involved marrying people to whom they're not related.

In a sense, banning it is more akin to banning drinking while pregnant than it is to actual eugenic prohibitions.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2015 07:22

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 21:56

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

A White Guy posted:

I don't even . How the hell can you possibly draw the conclusion from that graph that we need to tax the poor people even more? Holy gently caress, we have more subsidies to the rich than we do to the poor!

Nah, I misread it the same way at first. It's misleading because the highest and lowest quintiles have similar colors, and they're listed in the key with the lowest quintile on top. It's showing subsidies for the bottom 40%, not for the richest.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 18:08

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