What is being rejected is not evolution by natural selection. What is being rejected is untestable, just-so stories invented to explain why certain biological traits evolved. Or, as is the case here, to explain traits that are assumed to have evolved in certain populations
The premise was more that we can say with near-certainty that there are non-visible genetic differences between the races without even knowing specifically what these traits are or the extent to which they have diverged. We know this based on our understanding of genetics, natural selection, migration patterns, randomness, and the passage of time.
It would actually be quite the story if the races were somehow identical in all of these traits.
Both of these positions are untestable. One, however, is extremely likely while the other would be a miracle even in the wildest fantasies of the wokest progressive.
Your "extremely likely" scenario is the "cold winter theory", which is problematic for many reasons including the myriad of historical instances where hot-climate civilizations outpaced cold-climate civilizations.
How would you explain how geographically distant groups in radically different conditions could, over millennia, converge on all of the exact same non-visible traits without even minor variations? I truly can't imagine a way that this would be possible aside from the infinitesimally unlikely product of completely random chance.
You're not even telling a coherent story at this point. The "cold winter theory" isn't merely that the populations are different (though: again: when you look at the molecular evidence and the way genes propagate, it's nowhere nearly as clear as you'd think), it's that the cold winter populations are smarter. But you have to literally ignore most of human history to reach that conclusion. Somehow, in this view of the world, evolution only kicked in a couple hundred years ago. Seems unlikely!
Your fantasy is that every human group - no matter the genetics of the founding nomads, no matter how many generations they have had to diverge, no matter the selection pressures of their environment or even random chance, no matter how visibly different they have become over millennia of genetic differentiation - are all exactly, perfectly, indistinguishable in any and all non-visible traits (just because it would be "problematic" otherwise?). That is absurd.
Some may excel in some areas, some in others, some may generally be good at more things than others. That is entirely natural and expected.
I think it is reductionist in the extreme to say "Europeans smarter because Winter cold". I never said that. I would say that it's a reasonable explanation for some of the aggregate behavioural differences we can observe (both "good" and "bad") between Danes and Congolese, for example.
These are difficult to quantify, but in every attempt we seem to find that there are differences evident between disparate ethnic groups. IQ is the most commonly discussed one, while we also have statistics around criminality, sexual behaviours, family structure, academic achievement, income and wealth, addiction, mental illness, etc.
So much of this involves the brain - a physical organ with structure largely determined by genetics. We can physically observe the varying size and shape of the brain and its regions among different groups. There are various mental and intellectual conditions that we know affect certain ethnicities at higher rates than others. Why wouldn't there be myriad tiny variations that influence behaviours and potentials, to varying extents? Why wouldn't you assume that? How is it that you are so sure that everything we can't see inside this black box must magically be identical, even as so much that we can observe is not?
I, frankly, don't know what one stands to gain by denying these differences. It's genuinely confusing and irrational behaviour to me.
I have no idea what you're talking about or who you're arguing with. You brought up the "cold winter theory". "Cold winter" is very funny. It's just a very funny theory put forth by a huckster white supremacist. Where do you hope to go from there?
Whatever the rest of these arguments are, I'm not invested enough in this thread to drag this out.
Cold winters. Tell it to the Abbasids! I guess some of them had kind of cold winters sometimes? Maybe that explains it.
> I'm not sure how they count 6000 citations, but I guess they are counting everything, including quotes by the vicepresident. Probably 6001 after my comment.
The number appears to be from Google Scholar, which currently reports 6269 citations for the paper
> If the US was genuinely concerned about the security of Greenland they should have discussed this with the EU and encouraged them to reinforce the island, and/or offered a joint base.
This is where it gets stupid... well, stupider.
The US already has a base on Greenland, namely the Pituffik Space Base / Thule Air Base [1].
The US used to have a larger military presence in Greenland, including other bases, but choose to downscale their presence following the end of the cold war [2].
This presence was predicated on the 1951 Defense of Greenland agreement between Denmark (and later the autonomous government of Greenland) and the US, which allowed the US great freedom in establishing their military presence in Greenland [3].
If Trump had just wanted a stronger military presence in Greenland, then all he would have had to do was ask, and Denmark and Greenland would most likely have agreed. Denmark, in particular, has done its best to align itself with the US, and Greenland, prior to Trump, was also interested in a closer relationship with the US as part of their move towards greater independence from Denmark.
That requires Denmark and the EU to be reliable defense partners. They had decades to invest in Greenland and its defense and what we end up with is a 12 member dogsled patrol armed with bolt action rifles, so they can defend themselves against polar bears.
The EU response to the rhetoric from Trump is to send 30 men and put out a press release telling everyone how harmless they are. The action “Poses no threat to anyone”. Their military show of force, poses no threat to anyone.
Greenland already has the right to independence from Denmark, via chapter 8 of the law for the self-governing of Greenland, that was enacted in 2009 [1]:
> The decision on Greenland's independence is made by the Greenlandic people.
Technically, the Danish government has to OK the decision, but this is largely viewed as a formality by Danish politicians, should Greenland choose to move forward with independence.
If it truly is a pure formality, why is the condition written into law? The legislative branch (the branch that writes and changes laws) can simply remove the condition of Danish acceptance, instead of proudly proclaiming that the condition of Danish acceptance is a pure formality.
>The best we can do for the dead is remember them as they were, good and bad, not demonize them nor write hagiographies for them
I agree with your conclusion, but not with your premise.
We can't "do" anything for the dead. They're dead. What's more, since they're dead they don't care what we do or say because they're, you know, dead.
Anything we might do or say in reference to dead folks is for the benefit of the living and has nothing to do with the dead.
That said, you're absolutely right. We should remember folks for who they were -- warts and all -- to give the living perspective both on the dead and the dead past.
> In 2020, 70% of the population in the EU lived in a household owning their home, while the remaining 30% lived in rented housing.
So it does not seem like the price situation is as dire as you suggest, though Germany is on the lower end of the ownership scale.
Personally, I had a flatmate (rented a room) for one year during my studies, but I don't know anyone currently living with flatmates. Plus, it's not like you have to live in the middle of the capital, thanks to extensive public transport
Thanks for the link, intresting. I must be missing something, how do these stats square with home prices being in the 200-500-infinity range ballpark and, a very decent for Europe, salary being 50 thousand euro or so?
Oh, and all these news reports saying how young Europeans have to live with their parents until their thirties?
Denmark doesn't have submarines, if that's what you mean. We had two, one which even served in connection with the US led invasion of Iraq, but they got retired in the early 2000s:
Not that it matters, regardless of whose subs you are referring to, since the US military already has free access to Greenland thanks to previous agreements with Denmark. See e.g.
It wouldn't completely prevent data-loss, but most "normal" people would be a lot better off if they simply copied their important files to an external HDD or flash drive on a regular basis
Flash drives are less than ideal for backups. I think when they are stored cold i.e. unpowered, flash memory only retains data for a couple of years. Spinning hard drives are way more reliable for the use case.
That's true. But if they are stored unpowered for a couple of years, then you clearly aren't doing regular backups. OTOH, it's doesn't seem unlikely that the average person would leave a disk gathering dust, so advising people to use a regular HDD is probably the best approach
> if they are stored unpowered for a couple of years, then you clearly aren't doing regular backups
I am doing regular backups yet I have a few backup disks unpowered for years. They are older, progressively smaller backup HDDs I keep for extra redundancy.
Every 2-4 years I am getting a larger backup drive, and clone my previous backup drive to the new one. This way when the backup drive fails (happened around 2013 because I was unfortunate to get notoriously unreliable 3TB Seagate), I don’t lose much data if at all because most of the new stuff is still on the computers, and the old stuff is left on these older backup drives.
I do basically the same, but instead of keeping everything around I just keep the last two drives in rotation at the same time: One kept at home and one kept at work. One of them failed recently, while I was performing a backup, so I just got a new (and larger) drive, and synced it with the other backup drive before continuing as usual
This is it, the odds of both main drive and external failing at the same time are low enough for most people. As long as youre regularly backing up and therefore catching if the external has failed.
As long as it is not automatic, this probably is the only working solution. Pair of USB disks that are rotated and manually copied into. Note to self: mark in my callendar backup days.
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