Will_Newsome comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Multiheaded 25 January 2012 05:43PM

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Comment author: GLaDOS 25 January 2012 07:44:03PM *  72 points [-]

Let's do the impossible and think the unthinkable! I must know what those secrets are, no matter how much sleep and comfort I might lose.

Watson was right about Africa. Larry Summers was right about women in certain professions. Roissy is right about the state of the sexual marketplace.

Democracy isn't that great. A ghetto/barrio/alternative name for low-class-hell-hole isn't a physical location, its people. Richer people are on average smarter, nicer, prettier than poor people. The more you strive to equalize material opportunities the more meritocracy produces a caste system based on inborn ability. Ideologies actually are as crazy as religions on average. There is no such thing as moral progress and if there is there is no reason to expect we have been experiencing it so far in recorded history, unless you count stuff like more adapted cultures displacing less adapted ones or mammals inheriting the planet from dinosaurs as moral progress. You can't be anything you want, your potential is severely limited at birth. University education creates very little added value. High class people unknowingly wage class war against low class people by promoting liberal social norms that they can handle but induce dysfunction in the lower classes (drug abuse, high divorce rates, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, more violence, ... ). Too much ethnic diversity kills liberal social democracy. Improving the social status of the average woman vis a vis with the average man makes the average man less attractive. Inbreeding/Out-breeding norms (and obviously other social norms and practices too) have over the centuries differentiated not only IQs between Eurasian populations they have also affected the frequency and type of altruism genes present in different populations (visit hbd* chick for details ^_^ ).

Have a nice day! ~_^

Comment author: Will_Newsome 25 January 2012 10:47:50PM *  8 points [-]

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Comment author: drethelin 26 January 2012 04:22:22AM 32 points [-]

technology has indirectly caused millions of deaths by directly causing enough food to create millions of lives.

Comment author: J_Taylor 26 January 2012 06:46:22AM 23 points [-]

Technology has indirectly prevented millions of deaths by directly providing easy means of birth control.

However, now I am getting silly.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 January 2012 01:04:21AM 13 points [-]

Scientific and technological progress has indirectly caused millions upon millions of deaths that would not have occurred in the absence of scientific-technological progress.

It has also directly saved millions upon millions of lives.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 26 January 2012 01:36:34AM *  0 points [-]

Is that true? It sounds plausible, but I'd like to see evidence.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 January 2012 01:40:38AM 11 points [-]

Given that we haven't achieved immortality yet, we'd have to specify what it means to "save a life".

Comment author: Will_Newsome 26 January 2012 01:47:32AM 5 points [-]

Yeah, I was thinking that. QALYs would be nice but tricky to deal with.

The first thing that comes to mind as establishing a lower bound are antibiotics but their effects are pretty complicated I think.