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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 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.