How well did these cultures fare against the imperialist Europeans, exactly? How well do they fare against their more technologically advanced neighbors?
Incidentally, you may also wish to read "Industrial Society and Its Future" by former Berkeley mathematics professor Theodore Kaczynski.
Terribly. Agriculture is destroying their culture by taking the land they lived on, causing plants and animals to go extinct, imposing laws that don't fit, and spreading alcoholism, war, etc.
Agriculture seems more aggressive and destructive. People seem to work harder and enjoy life less.
It seems what makes one culture defeat another isn't necessarily what makes the people in the culture happy. Or what keeps the air, land, and water clean, or plants and animals from going extinct.
That's the Unabomber, right? I'm probably supposed to read between the lines from your mentioning him that way, but I didn't get the meaning.
>Therefore, in order to attract a mate, logically women should try to attract a mate when they're younger, and try to improve the way they look. They should not be trying to get more educated or accomplish more in their careers.
Now that's ridiculous, why should women care about getting a mate, it's not like we have a sub-replacement birthrate or anything, or that having children later increases the chance of birth defects.
I was wondering why this comment was downvoted, and realized that it’s probably because of the “childless” bit, which is a pretty conservative attitude.
But there is an important point here. People who are in a healthy family and have dependents don’t do things like suicide bomb or go on mass shootings. Those are the acts of desperate, miserable men.
I’m not advocating nuclear families, but when I hear about the insane gender disparity in places like China, I worry.
>Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? One option would be to have the cultures integrate so there are not sub communities for PoC.
I find it a bit insane that people think that this is even something that needs to be fixed - why can't different ethnic groups live among themselves, instead of being required to lose their ethnic identity and become part of the larger group? Do you seriously think that's what they actually want? What you're advocating for is the destruction of their ethnic identity. I think that's wrong.
Why does living next to someone else destroy an ethnic identity? Does a chinese family moving into an italian neighborhood all of a sudden mean that no one can open an italian restaurant? If there is a German festival one weekend, does that mean they can't have a Scottish highland festival the next weekend in the same venue? Does a Russian family moving in next door mean that I have to start drinking Vodka instead of Rum?
No, of course not ... all of those are ridiculous statements, because the truth is that the only reason you would not want to live near someone else, is because you (not you personally, in the general sense) don't like that someone else.
Clamoring on about "maintaining your ethnic identity" is just a dogwhistle ... and masks the true underlying racist/xenophobic underpinnings of that person's mindset.
So the actual issue here is that the 'pure' bloodline might be tainted? Oh boy. The cat is out of the bag.
If this was actually about 'culture', we'd have a different discussion here. Nothing prevents a chinese/italian family from making dumplings and home-curing some pancetta. If anything that seems like a pasta/noodle dream-team of family. The cultural elements that make up an ethnic identity are remixed over time, and the ones that work tend to stick around.
Is there some creative destruction that happens there? Sure. But that's the norm, not the exception. Plenty of great stuff comes out of it. We wouldn't have chicago-style deep-dish if all the italians had to stay in Italy and use fior di latte and mozzarella di bufala exclusively.
I give the guy credit for at least admitting his point of view, disgusting as it is. We can down-vote him on HN and wish extinction upon his mindset, but the scary reality is, at least in the U.S. that his mindset is now spreading, after a long period of time where it was declining.
It's not enough to hope that it's extinguished--you have to actively fight it.
If you ethnic identity is so weak that the only way to preserve is to make babies and indoctrinate them and hide them away from all other ethnic ideas, then maybe your ethnic identity is obsolete.
>I find it a bit insane that people think that this is even something that needs to be fixed - why can't different ethnic groups live among themselves, instead of being required to lose their ethnic identity and become part of the larger group? Do you seriously think that's what they actually want? What you're advocating for is the destruction of their ethnic identity. I think that's wrong.
Probably because segregation leads poorer conditions for PoC.
>In 2015, 17.3% of blacks in Milwaukee were unemployed compared to 4.3% of whites, the report found. And many blacks in the city were earning much less than whites. According to the report, the median household income for blacks in Milwaukee was $25,600 compared to $62,600 for whites.
>Among 20- to 24-year-olds, the Chicago area's employment rate is 47 percent for blacks, the lowest among the big cities, and 73 percent for whites, which is among the highest. Only Philadelphia comes close to that gap, with a 48 percent employment rate for blacks and 66 percent for whites.
>Why can't we treat people from outside our community as the same as people inside? If we better understand and critique what a community is and how it forms I think it's possible.
Your point is basically that we should destroy the very concept of community and ethnic identity. Groups and their corresponding identities are defined entirely by who is not in them.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but that's correct under the explanation of racism given by the parent comment (which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view).
The example about divesting from a neighborhood due to concerns about property value is spot-on. In a systematically racist society, it is rational to behave in ways that produce racist outcomes even one does not personally have racist beliefs. Racism ends up being perpetuated even if most people don't think of themselves as racists or believe they are doing anything to promote unfair racial outcomes.
> which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view
This follows only because academics (in relevant fields) are a strict subset of the left-wing (and generally the extreme left wing), and the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias. These fields are very open about their commitment to activism over objectivity (and many in these fields consider objectivity and reason to be "tools of white supremacy" or some similar nonsense). We shouldn't confuse "sociologists believe in X" with "X is true or even falsifiable".
> the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias.
As someone who works very closely with academics (specifically sociologists), I would love to see some evidence for this baseless mud-slinging. All of science is having a reproducibility crisis
Do you have a knowledge of the field? Or do you just disagree with their conclusions? I would be happy to be proven wrong so I can let my sociologist friends know that they are doing such a thing.
EDIT: There's also this really neat nature article detailing some of the responses to the current reproducibility crisis in all of science. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0021 Based on this article, it looks like the social sciences are actually the ones spearheading the effort for more reproducible science. One of my colleagues is actually investigating how the typical formulation of ideas with the scientific method can implicitly lead to biases and errors in the science actually performed.
You’re right. Which isn’t to say sociology isn’t a hostile environment for anyone who isn’t avowedly left wing, or that sociologists (or social psychologists, or anthropologists) don’t discriminate against people they know are right wing. But nothing I’ve read suggests that politics before truth is the majority position in sociology. It’s clearly a position, and not a fringe one, but it’s weaker than in the 60’s. Cultural anthropology is a writeoff though.
I would hope the social sciences are leading the charge on reproducibility. If you want to learn more on that topic read Andrew Gelman’s blog.
The idea is that you would apply a high voltage to just the cable, with nothing else attached. If it's just a cable, no harm no foul. On the other hand, if you start seeing smoke from the embedded electronics, you may want to use a different cable.
Unfortunately, that approach will become less useful in the future, as all USB-C cables that support USB 3 and/or high power contain a chip to advertise that fact[1]. (And then there are Thunderbolt cables, which look the same but require even more sophisticated electronics.)
You could also just use one of those cheap USB power/voltage monitors as the author does. Obviously a cable alone should not be drawing power.
Maybe an innovative company could add warnings for USB ports that draw power but have no recognized device. For the advanced ports with charging support and so on they should have power monitoring already.
I think it would be pretty easy actually, to keep up with the data - you could just get a Bluetooth headset and set your phone to automatically accept calls from your spying device, then listen in while you go about your day.
Or hook it up to a Twilio and receive text notifications when a new recording is available. Optionally auto-transcribe and do topic modeling to extract only discussions of interest.
But at the end of the day, we dont want to encourage the deep surveillance state... but we techie always look at this sort of thing and then say "hmmm... wouldnt it be interesting if..."
I don't think products like this encourage the "deep surveillance state" - if anything, they weaken it by loosening their monopoly on high-tech covert surveillance. These things can be used for good as well as evil - you could spy on a corrupt official or catch someone cheating just as easily as anything else.
Agreed. Anything that renders the previously invisible (state surveillance techniques) visible via consumer availability is anathema to state surveillance.
The majority of these techniques are allowed in the US because Congress doesn't know / care.
The more popular exploits of insecure technologies we get, the more security becomes an economically beneficial differentiator. And the more concerned calls your local Congressperson receives.
But the low quality audience for this device is likely incapable of doing such a thing. Now, a company with questionable ethics could facilitate this for clients...
> Now, a company with questionable ethics could facilitate this for clients...
OK, I will bite. I would not call any company doing what is already possible more convenient for users a company with questionable ethics. That, to me, is perfectly OK.
In my book what is questionable (despicable, actually) is making a product that, as a byproduct, generates side-effects undesired by users (such as easy tracking) and does not try to allow the user who cares to turn such features off.
Incidentally, you may also wish to read "Industrial Society and Its Future" by former Berkeley mathematics professor Theodore Kaczynski.