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Feb 12 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Charles Darwin upon his horse, Tommy.
Photo late 1860s, so Darwin would be aged about 50.
From The Complete Photographs of Darwin
by John van Wyhe
darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntro…
Happy #DarwinDay and #TommysDay!

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More from @whyvert

Whyvert Profile picture
Feb 13
An old complaint against academia was that it promoted moral relativism.
This now seems quaint and old fashioned.
Turns out it encourages moral absolutism. Many students become self-righteous, morally superior, indignant, sanctimonious, holier-than-thou.
"our analysis finds that the effect of higher education on moral concerns is comparable to the moral influence of adolescent religion and imparts a sense of moral absolutism that rivals the effect of religiosity." Image
College and the “Culture War”: Assessing Higher Education’s Influence on Moral Attitudes

Data from a longitudinal study from 2003 of age 13-17 to 2013 of age 23-29.

Link: journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117… (pdf)
Read 6 tweets
Whyvert Profile picture
Dec 14, 2022
Total cost of crime in the US is about $3 trillion
Source:
This excludes other indirect costs:
less urban density, which means less productivity, more sprawl;
less social capital and trust, worse institutions and bad governance
forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cPDptuFT…
Read 4 tweets
Whyvert Profile picture
Dec 13, 2022
Many people are realizing that China is mercantilist.
They have used these means in solar panels, shipbuilding, telecoms equipment (Huawei), electric vehicle batteries. Image
This article says that "mercantilist" is an inadequate word. China is engaging in "brute force economics".
I think that term is too incendiary.
tnsr.org/2022/12/chinas… Image
In the 90s and early 2000s, Nortel based in Canada was one of the big telecom suppliers. Then Nortel fell at the same time as Huawei rose.
Reports that it had been the target of Chinese hacking, espionage and IP theft:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nortel#Es…
Read 5 tweets
Whyvert Profile picture
Nov 2, 2022
Consider two new things about China

1. China’s GDP might be less than half its official figure.

Autocracies including China lie: they have less observed nightlight growth than announced GDP growth. (Could be the provinces lying to Beijing to meet their annual growth targets.)
2. Rural & migrant Chinese children have avg Raven's IQ only 88.95.

(Rural & migrant is at least 1/2 maybe 2/3 the country's population.)

China only tests select cities in PISA so this map is misleading. China as a whole isn't in the green.
Source:
Read 5 tweets
Whyvert Profile picture
Nov 2, 2022
An eyeball correlation on the map: countries with similar ancestry have similar levels of democracy.

Because European settlement spread democracy. English settlers from the 1600s onward set up assemblies in their colonies. Some groups then adopted it, others like Arabs didn't.
New study confirms this eyeball association:

"language ancestry explains about 12.3% and religious ancestry as much as 17.4% of the variance in democratic indicators."
Source: Shared cultural ancestry predicts the global diffusion of democracy
(open access)
cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Read 4 tweets
Whyvert Profile picture
Oct 25, 2022
Today's geopolitics.
We are seeing a clash between inland states vs maritime states.
Inland: China, Russia, Persia.
Maritime: Western Europe and its offshoots plus maritime East Asia.
The clash between the two has recurred for 2000 years. Athens vs Sparta. Greece vs Persia. England vs successive European continental power states.
Maritime states have always been smaller, more capitalist, less autocratic than inland states (on average).
The inland states have no shared ideology other than a rejection of modern liberalism.
Read 5 tweets

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