Weeee!

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Thu May 22, 2008 8:13 am

Caliborn wrote:All the different foods are the best part of having your country aggressively culturally dominated.

Yes. That is an extremely good point.
For example, I love the Latino and Indian sections in every grocery store where I live.
Perhaps it's time to learn Spanish.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu May 22, 2008 8:19 am

Hey, I don't know who is to blame, all I know is that when my ex lived in an apartment block and was the only non-Arab in the building, she lived in fear. At one point she lodged a complaint to the landlord once because of their noise in the early hours of the morning, and the next day found a death threat spray-painted onto her door.

And lack-of-assimilation is a problem when someone goes from (Arab country) to (European country), has a problem with the women not being covered from head to toe and feels that the problem is with the country and not with him, thus feels he has a right to do something about it. Note that the reverse does apply, in my books - if a lady goes from (European country) to (Arab country) then she does need to respect their laws and customs, no matter how stupid I consider them to be. My suggestion of course would be "Don't go there, the food is shite anyway."

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Thu May 22, 2008 8:20 am

PhoneLobster wrote:I'd have to say that on the whole when it comes to domination of of a host culture the strategy of not being able to communicate with (let alone "attack") the locals and simply building your own temporary cultural presence with a kebab shop and a mosque while your kids all learn English and get mobile phones is not exactly what I would regard as an aggressively successful strategy in cultural domination.

Down with private schools, up with compulsory world religion classes. Speed both sides of the process up.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu May 22, 2008 8:23 am

Crissa wrote:The trouble in Europe isn't that they're insular. It's that they aren't citizens of the country they're ghetto'd in. That means their children can't assimilate. That's hardly their fault.

Perhaps.

When my grandmother came over on the boat from Italy, she did her best to adopt the traditions that dominated her idea of what was American. To the point where she gave up things like olive oil so that she and her family would blend in.

It was my mother who went back to her roots, so to speak. She's the one who studied Italian. She's the one who smuggled the family cookbook out of the hidden recesses of my grandmother's house. And when my grandmother discovered those things, she was angry at my mother for trying to go back to tradition.

In my personal experience - which, admittedly, is not that of someone from someplace like California - the people who come to the United States do their best to assimilate themselves into the culture because it was better than what they left in whatever country they came from. It's their children who romanticize the home country and try to maintain the culture.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Thu May 22, 2008 8:33 am

There's one factor that limits the aggressive expansion of all foreign, alien cultures into welcoming borders:

The prospect of your very own children, born in the country to be natives with dual citizenship, having sex or even marrying those... those.. Western barbarians!
And then they might start wearing those tight jeans and.... *gag* listen to that horrid, blasphemous ROCK MUSIC.
The horror.
The. Horror.

Koumei wrote:My suggestion of course would be "Don't go there, the food is shite anyway."

Advice acknowledged. I had planned to see Mecca before I die just for shits, but figured I wouldn't be allowed within miles of it without being sniped in the forehead by some stray bullet.
If the food sucks, then there really is no reason to visit.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu May 22, 2008 6:02 pm

Cultural neutrality is bullshit. "Live and let live" is a cultural value, and if you can't assimilate others to your ideal of 'not hating people because they act different', you're never going to get anywhere.

I'm not saying that cultural homogeneity is a good thing, I'm just saying that some cultural values are objectively bad and need to be assimilated to better view.

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Thu May 22, 2008 6:20 pm

Remember that cultural homogeneity isn't intrinsically bad either. Albeit many of the things some people do to try to get or return to cultural homogeneity are monstrous.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu May 22, 2008 10:05 pm

I want to know what capitalist wants to make society or their country better? Those ideals are exactly contrary to the bottom line of capitalism. Which is, you know, to assign a capital value to everything and produce with the least negatives on your balance sheet.

Which is why capitalists include manufacturers that don't 'pay' for the cost of sending their gasses into your yard; miners that scalp the mountains where your water used to come from; loggers who cut down trees on land they don't own; farmers who pour their effluent into your water supply; fishermen who pull fish from waters they don't stock; truck drivers that don't pay for the roads they use; etc.

-Crissa

PS; Mecca is a city in Saudi Arabia. It doesn't have a higher incidence of terrorism or violent crime than the US. However, westerners and non-muslims are generally not allowed into the city.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu May 22, 2008 10:35 pm

Caliborn wrote:Remember that cultural homogeneity isn't intrinsically bad either.

Yeah it is. Conflict is important for the shaping of ideas and policy. A homogeneous culture lacks the ability to improve itself. It's like a completely planned market of ideas.

Plus homogeneity is just flat-out boring.

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Fri May 23, 2008 1:25 am

A) Improvement doesn't come solely through conflict, and conflict can cause a halt to improvement and even destroy what good is already present. Besides, some conflict will be present in any large group of people, shared culture or not; not to mention that to exist in the world a culturally homogeneous nation will still have to deal with other nations that are different from it, causing conflict and influx of new ideas. Homogeneity is bad in a purely closed system, but any industrialized country is not a closed system; at least not for long.

B) Homogeneity will often spawn positive repercussions such as a strong national identity that undercuts dissent for dissents sake, helps unite the people in whatever cause that their culture happens to tend toward, and cuts back on otherwise necessary work to make sure no particular culture or ethnic group in that nation is getting shafted.

C) "Boring" is not a legitimate complaint when we're talking about the fate of nations.

Homogeneity isn't intrinsically bad, just different.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 23, 2008 5:29 am

Darwinistic survival is maximized by diversity. The future is a scary place and you don't know what will be useful, what will be detrimental, what will be required, what will be lethal. Efficiency is maximized by similarity. Mass production and interchangeable parts are the most powerful ideas that humanity has ever achieved.

At the extreme of full clonal interchangeability, then there need only be one killer virus, tactic, or meme to destroy your entire civilization and end your legacy forever. You'll go the way of the Megatherium. No matter how bad ass you are in your time, your time will end and you will have no descendants.

At the extreme of full individuality, no one gets anything done. The production of one man working alone is pretty asstasstic compared to what can be achieved in groups with planning. Indeed, the output of humanity taken as a series of individuals is so low that it endangers species survival the other way. We start getting eaten by leopards and shit.

---

Like with most things, a balance is not only useful, it is required.

-Username17

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Fri May 23, 2008 6:42 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Darwinistic survival is maximized by diversity. The future is a scary place and you don't know what will be useful, what will be detrimental, what will be required, what will be lethal. Efficiency is maximized by similarity. Mass production and interchangeable parts are the most powerful ideas that humanity has ever achieved.

Or the future could be one of attempted sterile equilibrium, an environment in which Darwinism has no place.
Only in such a truly human scientific realm could continued life be guaranteed.. at the expense of boredom.

For thousands of years we've always progressed closer towards such an objective, exterminating giant beasts that threaten our lives and converting the land into (supposedly) safe crop-bearing or hospitable terrain, but it turns out that the biggest threat humankind has is other humans.
Humankind will probably end the same way. Destroyed by humans, outside of evolution's rules.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 23, 2008 7:18 am

That wouldn't be outside evolution's rules. Evolutions rules are that things happen all the time that may eliminate your ability to have a next generation. And if you have what it takes (whatever the fuck that may be) to persist anyway, you persist. Things which don't reproduce, don't reproduce and you don't see any of them represented in The Future. Things which do reproduce have offspring which are not quite 100% copies, and it is those similar things which are seen in The Future. Of course, The Future is a big place, and things which are very similar to things which are very similar to things which are very similar and so on for a hundred million iterations are actually not that similar in many cases.

The fact that we use technology to adapt our society and change our culture and our knowledge to maintain our survival and keep ourselves around in The Future is not outside the rules of Evolution. Evolution has very harsh penalties (nonexistence), but very loose rules. Pretty much anything goes. And the fact that we can pass culture laterally to other members of our society or write it down in books and toss it down to the great grandchildren of people we've never met is no more cheating than is the ability of a bacteria to scavenge up a gene from a dead bacteria and thereby gain access to a fully formed protein that they never had to evolve themselves.

Culture is an extremely powerful end run around genetic evolution. It bestows upon us strengths and advantages that are at once more powerful, more environmentally appropriate, more completely propagated throughout our population, and more rapidly achieved than anything DNA has ever done. But it's still evolution, and it still plays by those rules. Everything plays by those rules, because those rules are axiomatic. If you die you are dead, if you live you are here. Anything you do to compete or cooperate with those around you of your own or different kind is just a strategy that may or may not pay off with the only reward the evolution game has to offer: the mandate to keep playing.

-Username17

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Fri May 23, 2008 10:56 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Darwinistic survival is maximized by diversity. The future is a scary place and you don't know what will be useful, what will be detrimental, what will be required, what will be lethal.

I think we can be a little less inclusive here. Any meme that pushes for nuking shit detrimental. The same goes for memes that suppress innovation. Those are the equivalent of genetic overspecialisation, if what you have can't be changed fast enough you will lose.

Fwib · Post by **Fwib** » Fri May 23, 2008 4:48 pm

Draco_Argentum wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Darwinistic survival is maximized by diversity. The future is a scary place and you don't know what will be useful, what will be detrimental, what will be required, what will be lethal.
I think we can be a little less inclusive here. Any meme that pushes for nuking shit detrimental. The same goes for memes that suppress innovation. Those are the equivalent of genetic overspecialisation, if what you have can't be changed fast enough you will lose.

Maybe most, but not 'any'.

Example: if your enemy has nukes and has memes that say they they should nuke you, having memes that have prevented you from nuking them first looks like the cause of your downfall.

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Fri May 23, 2008 5:51 pm

Just for the record, capitolism does tend to yield positive results in science and engineering that benefit everyone. All you youngsters today seem to take your fancy "indoor plumbing", "refridgeration", and "electrical light sources" for granted. For all I hear people bitch about how capitolism is polluting a stream, I rarely hear someone praise capitolism for the device in their pocket that links up with a satellite to communicate with people anywhere on the planet. Capitolism isn't all rape-n-pillage the planet, sometimes it gives you iPods or allows you to irrigate previously useless land.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri May 23, 2008 6:22 pm

SunTzuWarmaster wrote:Capitolism isn't all rape-n-pillage the planet, sometimes it gives you iPods

You just provided a point for capitalism being bad.

And I don't know about you, but I don't have plumbing, I just filter sea water through a teabag, just like I use to filter paracetamol out of my codeine. And for electricity, I just shout insults at religious figures and hold a brass rod in the air. As for the Internet, I have an intricate series of smoke signals.

Disclaimer: more or less all of the above is false, barring the bit about iPods being bad.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Fri May 23, 2008 8:59 pm

Koumei wrote:As for the Internet, I have an intricate series of smoke signals.

I send morse code messages to a Chinese internet cafe that writes these messages for me. The word content is decided by a bag of futhark runes.
The above statement may or may not be true.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri May 23, 2008 11:08 pm

capitolism does tend to yield positive results in science and engineering that benefit everyone. All you youngsters today seem to take your fancy "indoor plumbing", "refridgeration", and "electrical light sources" for granted

That is just ridiculous.

Scientific method and education yield scientific advancements, capitalism doesn't.

Now plumbing and running water has been around for centuries and predates modern ideas of science and capitalism. But its invention and use typically occurs as part of a CIVIC improvement rather than a private enterprise. You just can't as an individual have running water in your house if society doesn't bring it to your front door first, and that is a somewhat socialist enterprise.

Similarly with electricity. Private electricity networks and provision just plain do not work, just look at the situaion in the US or UK, or anywhere that has privatised utilities. Public owned socialist utilities are really the only sensible means of achieving that sort of service and so reliably permitting the "advancements" you inexplicably lay at the feet of capitalism.

And lets remember the other important part of the process. Invention and discovery. Which relies on a number of elements. Like public education (not very capitalist). And is exceedingly limited in beneficial impact by capitalism (drug companies preventing the creation of cheap drugs for poor people and countries).

Technological advancement of society is neither unique to capitalism nor even a particularly direct product of it. If anything capitalism works AGAINST it.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat May 24, 2008 3:53 am

Rather, we had 'indoor plumbing' in year 0.

At what year did capitalism bring it to the hicks in the hills?

We had electricity defined in the middle of the nineteenth century.

What program brought it to the farm?

What year was telephone invented? What program brought it to the most remote places on earth?

You will find that capitalism is great at taking advantage of things. But it didn't invent these things. Nor did it bring them to the common man. Science and curiosity did one, socialism did the other.

-Crissa

Jerry · Post by **Jerry** » Sat May 24, 2008 9:18 pm

I'm certain that with Socialism, Capitalism, etcetera, no matter what, you can't prevent large numbers of ignorant and stupid humans from being dicks to each other. And a sucker's born every minute.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat May 24, 2008 11:46 pm

Statistically speaking, about 9% to 11% or people are assholes, or alternatively people are assholes 9% to 11% of the time. At least that's what game research in psychology has shown.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun May 25, 2008 6:50 am

While it's true some people are assholes...

...Capitalism has no mechanism by which it makes society better in its definition. Just just doesn't. It's very limited in that capacity.

-Crissa

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Sun May 25, 2008 7:37 am

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Statistically speaking, about 9% to 11% or people are assholes, or alternatively people are assholes 9% to 11% of the time. At least that's what game research in psychology has shown.

Ah! Statistics.
I'll believe that statement.
It has numbers and percentages.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun May 25, 2008 4:24 pm

sigma999 wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:Statistically speaking, about 9% to 11% or people are assholes, or alternatively people are assholes 9% to 11% of the time. At least that's what game research in psychology has shown.
Ah! Statistics.
I'll believe that statement.
It has numbers and percentages.

The great thing about my human memory is that I store useless fact, but rarely full citations. Check out some game theory papers, particularly group investment games ("tragedy of the commons" problems). Try to see how many people are consistent non-contributors and drive everyone else to stop investing. In smaller studies it's more like 5-15%.