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BenAlbahari comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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I'll bite the bullet and say global warming is the perfect example here. It's pretty clear to me that many people hold their positions on this issue - pro and contra - for political/social reasons rather than evidential ones.
Unfortunately that often seems to be the case when there are vested interests in the answer going one way or the other.
The impact of genetics on behaviour is another example. Most of the educated people I know are ultra-behaviorists, so if I see somebody argue that genes matter (but aren't everything), they definitely get brownie points. Especially since such a view tends to be seen as vaguely quasi-racist.
In reality you can make the bar even lower. Just ask the right wingers if they're even aware of an empirical study comparing the relative happiness of Scandinavians to others.
Here's something I believe-- I might as well toss it in as a possible rationality test. I think immigration/emigration flows are a good rough test for ranking how good places are to live in. There are barriers to moving, so it's only a rough estimate. Any place which people are willing to take a high risk of dying to leave is a bad place.
However, the fact that there isn't a significant number of people moving from the US to western/northern Europe or vice versa suggests that they're roughly on a par.
It suggests they believe they're on par. All else being equal, you're right.
With Scandinavia in particular, there's an issue in that immigrating is really hard. Which is to say, we require you to learn our language and culture. Terrible taskmasters, we are.
It's really easy to emigrate from a country in the European Union to Sweden (presumably also Denmark, but not Norway because it's not in the union). I mean, I'm doing it at 3 AM while browsing the web! Is there a legal requirement to learn the language for immigrants from outside the EU, or did you mean you can't make it in practice without speaking the language? I would expect that sitting around in a country for five years automatically teaches you its culture.
The second, mostly.
The first, with Norway, in practice. If you have particularly valuable skills they'll overlook it, and being western helps, but immigration has pretty much had it with third-world immigrants lately.
I believe (I'm an expat, so haven't followed that closely) that we just added a requirement to join some natives on cultural trips of various kinds, too. Going hiking, that kind of thing...
We do take our hiking seriously.
Are there any countries to which that doesn't apply?
Yes, most notably the USA.
You're saying it wouldn't be that hard to live in the US without speaking English? That doesn't sound very likely to me (though I've never been there).
(Or do you think that all people who might consider moving to the US because they think that's a better place to live in already speak decent English?)