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27chaos comments on Taking Effective Altruism Seriously - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: Salemicus 07 June 2015 06:59AM

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Comment author: 27chaos comment score below threshold [+] (16 children)

Comment author: homunq 06 June 2015 03:50:17PM * 5 points [-]

I think that it's worth being more explicit in your critique here.

The OP suggests that colonization is in fact a proven way to turn poor countries into productive ones. But in fact, it does the opposite. Several parts of Africa were at or above average productivity before colonization¹, and well below after; and this pattern has happened at varied enough places and times to be considered a general rule. The examples of successful transitions from poor countries to rich ones—such as South Korea—do not involve colonization.

¹Note that I'm considering the triangular trade as a form of colonization; even if it didn't involve proconsuls, it involved an external actor explicitly fomenting a hierarchical and extractive social order.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 06 June 2015 08:22:27PM 5 points [-]

Several parts of Africa were at or above average productivity before colonization

Evidence? Seriously what on earth are you talking about?

Comment author: 27chaos 06 June 2015 08:39:11PM 1 point [-]

It would be nice if you'd avoid downvoting people just because you disagree with them, yeah?

Colonialism was really big, so it's hard to describe with sufficient detail all the things it messed up, but here is a start for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Africa#Colonial_era

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 08 June 2015 02:32:48AM * 1 point [-]

Colonialism was really big, so it's hard to describe with sufficient detail all the things it messed up

Your claim wasn't about what colonialism did or didn't mess up, it was about the state of Africa before colonialism.

Comment author: 27chaos 08 June 2015 04:12:42AM * 1 point [-]

No, my claim was about what colonialism messed up. However, by describing what colonialism messed up, my link also necessarily describes a bit of what Africa was like before colonialism, so I don't understand your complaint anyways.

If you'd like to learn more about Africa prior to colonialism than what that section described, there's this tool on your mouse called a scroll wheel. It's really neat and you should try it! OTOH, if your complaint is that there's not enough information on the wikipedia page about what Africa was like prior to colonialism, this is why I made the caveat that "colonialism is really big, so it's hard to describe with sufficient detail all the things it messed up", stating that the Wikipedia link was just a starting point.

I am kind of flabbergasted by your comment because it makes no sense on several different levels.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 09 June 2015 02:44:51AM 0 points [-]

No, my claim was about what colonialism messed up. However, by describing what colonialism messed up, my link also necessarily describes a bit of what Africa was like before colonialism, so I don't understand your complaint anyways.

Yes, in particular it appears to have been comparable to bronze age Eurasia. There were remarkably few states in sub-Saharan Africa pre-colonialism, even fewer if we ignore Arab/Persian colonialism.

Comment author: Jiro 06 June 2015 09:28:09PM * 4 points [-]

Note that I'm considering the triangular trade as a form of colonization; even if it didn't involve proconsuls, it involved an external actor explicitly fomenting a hierarchical and extractive social order.

If you redefine colonization, you can get the results you wish.

Also, South Korea (and Taiwan) were colonized by Japan and while their main success happened after the end of colonization, if you're going to blame Africa's after-colonization state on colonization, you need to credit these countries' after-colonization state to colonization as well.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 08 June 2015 02:39:38AM * 2 points [-]

Note that I'm considering the triangular trade as a form of colonization; even if it didn't involve proconsuls, it involved an external actor explicitly fomenting a hierarchical and extractive social order.

If you redefine colonization, you can get the results you wish.

Note that here homunq's stipulation actually makes his claim more false. After all the parts of Africa benefiting from the triangle trade were some of the richest and most well off parts of Africa (not for the Africans being sold obviously) before colonization proper started.

Comment author: 27chaos 06 June 2015 10:10:18PM 1 point [-]

I'm not interested in proving colonialism was always economically inefficient, just in pointing out that OP's aside was troubling. That said, your appeal to consistency isn't correct, it overlooks all nuance. Colonialism has clear and unambiguous ties to the problems that exist in Africa today, but it has no such ties to the successes in South Korea or Taiwan.

Comment author: Jiro 09 June 2015 07:54:50PM 3 points [-]

Colonialism has clear and unambiguous ties to the problems that exist in Africa today, but it has no such ties to the successes in South Korea or Taiwan.

Yes it does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule#Economy_and_modernization

Comment author: 27chaos 14 June 2015 06:09:17PM * 0 points [-]

Thanks! I wasn't aware of that; I'd always believed the myth cite 71 refers to, that Korea's economy didn't improve significantly until after the Cold War.

In that case, I am willing to give credit to colonialism for Korea's good economy. However, I still stand by my claim that the appeal to consistency is not compelling by itself. It's the details of each situation that matter, as different implementations of colonialism can vary wildly. As can the aftermath of colonialism; if Africa became stable and productive tomorrow, that wouldn't change the fact colonialism had once hurt it; if Korea's economy were to crash later this week, it would still be true that Japanese imposed policies had once improved their productivity.

Comment author: 27chaos 06 June 2015 08:21:21PM * 1 point [-]

Also, it's reprehensible. I would probably be willing to accept reprehensible policies, very reluctantly, if they actually did result in productive countries. But when neither means nor ends are good, and the results of past failed attempts still cause massive suffering today, giving even passing credit to colonialist ideas is an enormous red flag. It's in the same realm as Holocaust denial imo. I don't think OP was seriously endorsing colonialism, but I'm also not highly confident he wasn't; neoreactionaries frequent this site, after all.

Just so the intensity of my position is clear, the hopefully-not-an-endorsement of colonialism alone wouldn't have motivated me to downvote, I'm usually pretty good at avoiding that armchair online-activist failure mode, but I found the main argument pretty weak as well. Had either one of those flaws not been present, I'd have been willing to overlook the other.

Comment author: Salemicus 21 June 2015 10:20:02AM 0 points [-]

The OP suggests that colonization is in fact a proven way to turn poor countries into productive ones.

Nope. Provide a quote or retract.

What I actually said was that nothing short of colonisation is known to work.

Comment author: homunq 12 July 2015 11:01:55PM 0 points [-]

When you say "Nothing short of X can get you to Y", the strong implication is that it's a safe bet that X will at least not move you away from Y, and sometimes move you toward it. So OK, I'll rephrase:

The OP suggests that colonization is in fact a proven way to turn at least some poor countries into more productive ones.

Comment author: homunq 15 June 2015 08:57:35PM * -1 points [-]

Note that my post just above was basically an off-the-cuff response to what I felt was a ludicrously wrong assumption buried in the OP. I'm not an expert on African history, and I could be wrong. I think that I gave the OP's idea about the level of refutation it deserved, but I should have qualified my statements more ("I'd guess..."), so I certainly didn't deserve 5 upvotes for this (5 points currently; I deserve 1-3 at most).

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