We keep failing to take seriously the ideas sincerely believed by devout Muslims.

Article on the ideas of Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas:

They frequently talked of implementing "the last promise" - the day when all will submit to Islam, or be killed. They planned the implementation of "the last promise."

Hamas divided Israel into cantons for the day after the conquest and prepared a list of who will rule each one.

(The quotes are from Gazans in Cairo, those who could afford bribes to get across the border into Egypt.)

Remarkable and high-quality Swedish study:

If men win the lottery, they marry and have children.

If women win the lottery, their fertility does not rise. (Indeed, low-income women get divorced.)

You might think more resources means more kids. Yes with men, not with women. Maybe we need a society, as was the case in the baby boom, where men have sufficient resources to marry and reproduce.

Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" asks why Eurasia became more advanced than other areas of pre-modern farming (New Guinea, Africa, the Americas).

3 factors:

1. East-West orientation of Eurasia meant technologies could diffuse more easily (appears to be unsupported).

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1758185908220936260

Eurasia is ecologically heterogeneous, so diffusion would not be more easy then elsewhere.

E.g. the river valley ecologies of early Civs are very different from most of the rest of Eurasia

Rich countries don't have revolts, color revolutions, socialist revolutions, coups, civil wars, regime changes.
They keep what regime they have, democratic or autocratic.
Below: the World Bank's high income countries. Last time any had a regime change was when they were poor. The rich Arab states were immune as revolts, revolutions, civil wars, and regime changes of the Arab Spring after 2011 affected the poorer ones.

(Libya was an edge case, fairly rich but had a revolt and civil war.)

Red is high income.

Canada is a fascinating experiment in high immigration.

Non-homeowners have suffered greatly from rising rent.
Income per person is stagnating. Canada's unprecedented population growth

Settler colonialism is trending.
Some current examples. 🧵

1. China. Settled loyal Han in disloyal Xinjiang (from 90s). Settled 1m loyal mainlanders in disloyal Hong Kong.

A road across Xinjiang's Taklamakan desert China built to entice settlers. 2. Indonesia. Settled about 300k loyal Javanese in West Papua. Many around the giant Grasberg gold and copper mine, which had been a target of attacks by Papuan independence activists.

Anna Krylov, a chemistry professor, has published several pieces on how left/woke ideology is undermining science. Here's her latest.

She gives examples of four main issues:

1. Policing of language.

Ever longer list of forbidden words like "healthy weight". 2. Rewriting the history of science.

More and more scientists having their names stricken from buildings, textbooks, awards, etc.

Some examples:

Few countries enjoy cooperativeness. A 🧵

1. Corruption. Everyone recognizes that corruption is antisocial, but it persists. Most countries cannot uproot it to become more prosocial.

There's a Pattern: NW Euros + offshoots and Japan are low. (Plus scattered others.) 2. Economic freedom.

In most of the world, people find it easier to collaborate more in nepotistic groups or patron-client networks than in free markets.

The Pattern reappears (NW Euros + Maritime East Asians).

So many dictatorships in the Middle East. Why?

The cope answer is to Blame Foreigners. Western meddling. Schemes by British and US Intelligence.
But autocracies like Syria, Iran, Saudi were not conjured into existence by America. The based answer is that democracy exists where Western influence is greatest.
In the Middle East, that's Israel (the only democracy) and Iraq (a semi-democracy).
The Middle East lacks democracies because of the lack of Western influence (either direct by settlers or indirect).

Why so many wars in the Middle East?

1. Dictatorships.
Wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen started in the 2011 Arab Spring as uprisings against autocrats -- the only way to change government in an autocracy.
🧵 2. Islamic jihadism.
Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Houthi (Yemen), Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, Revolutionary Guard (Iran).
Fanatical ideology + armed militias = danger.

There was a superb study of honesty around the world in 2019.

Leave 17,000 wallets (with contact email) containing various sums of money in 355 cities across 40 countries.
Would finders email the owner?

The result: rates of honesty vary a LOT. Now a replication in China, with two measures of honesty:

-did finder email owner? 27%
-did owner recover the wallet after visiting the institution they were dropped a week later? 70% with full contents

Seems like China is more honest than in the original study.

Harvard loses no time in calling attention to the loophole saying they will comply with it. "The court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider ... 'an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.' We will certainly comply with the Court's decision."
Or, "they gave us a loophole!"

Conspiracy theory is an under-appreciated element in Russian official thinking.

Moldovans or Ukrainians want independence?

The REAL reason is that a powerful and nefarious force planned it that way - the West's "anti-Russian project".

https://twitter.com/KBR_Intel/status/1621208320139837444

Putin probably decides to invade in early 2021 when UA closed pro-Russian Medvedchuk's TV stations.
Summer 2021 Putin puts out an essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" to justify his decision.
He complains many times of an "anti-Russian project".

Amusing that while most countries call it Myanmar, the US continues to use the name Burma.

Just because a dictatorship decrees a re-branding, doesn't mean we all have to go along. However, the Associated Press, which likes to think of itself as employing proper and progressive usage, is not in the Burma camp.

There's some evidence that areas next to former Gulags are better off today.
This short article explains: Stalin targeted the elite, so Gulags were smarter than society, some people stayed and made those areas more prosperous. I wouldn't say the evidence is decisive, but who knows it could be true.
Night lights per capita near former Gulags and their share of "enemies of the people" (i.e. politicals, not ordinary criminals).

YouGov took various conspiracy theories, mostly right-wing ones, and asked people in several countries if they believe them.

As you would expect, Danes are the most reasonable and people in developing countries are the least. These are the conspiracy theories they asked about. Mostly considered right-wing.
(There are plenty of left-wing conspiracy theories but they get less attention.)

What's it like being an anarchic failed state, like Haiti?

1. Transit hub for the drugs trade.
Via ports as well as airports and clandestine runways. 2. Private security.
Perhaps 100 private security companies, with 75-90,000 personnel. Hired by foreign embassies, NGOs, businesses.
3. Gangs.
Around 150-200. Control large parts of the country.
4. Crime.
Homicides, kidnapping, extortion, etc.

We shouldn't be too surprised that a militia is currently trying to seize power in Sudan.
Sudan has had around 30 attempted and successful coups 1945-2022.
One of the highest of any country.
clinecenter.illinois.edu/project/resear… It's debatable what should get counted as a coup.
Looks like this group takes a broad definition and includes Jan 6th as an attempted coup.
Absurd that Jan 6th counts the same as a Sudanese militia warlord attacking the army and seizing large parts of the capital city.

A decade ago there was a dubious academic study claiming evidence that wealthy people are selfish and greedy.

Academia loved it! 1300 citations! Journalists too: it got reported in the news.

Now there has been pre-registered replication.
Guess the result ... "two direct, well-powered, and preregistered replications of the field studies by Piff and colleagues (2012) ... we find no evidence of a positive relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior"

New paper: before the Counter-Reformation, Catholic and Protestant cities had comparable numbers of scientists per capita.
Afterwards, Catholic cities experienced a persistent relative decline.
Counter-Reformation's search for heresy was a negative shock to science. Protestants were not innocent!
They also tried to uproot heresy, but they were less well-organized. Lacked the money and staff of the Roman Church & Imperial Spain.
The weakness of Protestantism saved modern science.

Daniel A. Bell advocates Confucian meritocracy: rule of the wise over the irrational masses.

Yet another failed utopianism. All rulers will have imperfect knowledge, power will tend to corrupt even the most virtuous.

Amply proven in Xi's China.

https://twitter.com/tengbiao/status/1642262292044685313

Here he is in the NYT saying that liberalism and democracy are no good and a Confucian constitution is best.
archive.is/1bF79#selectio…