The Society Pages

If anyone is interested in Thiel's motivations and interests in politics, I recommend Geoff Shullenberger's discussions: Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection: Broad discussion of Thiel's writing and actions pre-2016 (when the essay was written), along with his relationship to Strauss and particularly Girard. https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/08/13/mimesis-violence-an… Theorycels in Trumpworld: Published recently, and on the role of postmodernist-adjacent figures, including Thiel, in justifying the politics of Trump. https://outsidertheory.com/theorycels-in-trumpworld/

I appreciate your thorough erasure of race from the subject. https://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-vol1-12-159/ https://iwpr.org/publications/black-hispanic-women-lag-recovering-rece… https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/08/02/comparing-black-and-w… I think a more recent source than in the middle of The Great Recession itself might be more illuminating.

There's a lot of individual choice involved in the NBA as well. Elite athletes will be elite athletes, but where they choose to devote their efforts early on has ripple effects long afterwards. It's something of a trope that the best US soccer players are in the NFL or NBA, rather than playing futbol like their European athletic counterparts. Fun fact: professional basketball was once dominated by inner-city Jews https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/11/25/when-jews-dominated-p…

with regard to "viral ignorance," the author notes: A sense of cultural righteousness often leads to oversimplification (http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/10/11/you-wont-believe-wha… of complex issues, for example, as noted by PhD student David Banks in a blog post about feel-good clickbait phenomenon Upworthy. Sharing Upworthy videos to show your peers how compassionate you are can help the spread of false information. Many gloss over inequality, or present complex socio-political issues in a simplistic light, says Banks. “Ignorance goes viral,” he quips.

1) Not every person wants the same kind of fit(snug,slim,skinny,relaxed,classic,natural, etc) or drape. 2) Look at this image to see the difference between different brands and their size 8 measurements. http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/04/24/business/20110425_SIZE_gr… via http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/tag/womens-size-chart/ There's many variables to sizing. It wouldn't be impossible to create a database of measurements for every single piece of clothing. And then there's the issue of shrinkage.

> Gen Z is also more diverse and broadly anti-American (or “anti-imperialist”) so they’re less willing to blindly support US foreign policy and feel less connected to European conflicts than previous generations. I don't think it's accurate to say they're "broadly anti-American" because they're "more diverse." The increased diversity in the younger generation is due to Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their kids.[1] First and second generation immigrants are equally or more patriotic than native born Americans, and are significantly less likely to say they are “ashamed” of any aspect of America: https://www.cato.org/publications/immigration-research-policy-brief/im… All else being equal, immigration-driven population change is driving down "anti-American" sentiment. Indeed, the only political group where a majority say they’re “ashamed to be American,” progressives, is also amongst the whitest: https://hiddentribes.us/profiles. I think what you see amongst immigrants is a less ideological view of foreign policy. They have often seen first hand that American has done a lot of harmful things abroad. At the same time, they compartmentalize that because they don't view foreign policy in terms of "good and evil." They may also feel less ownership of America's role and status as world "lawgiver." I also think immigrants are more cynical than Americans. I'd describe my dad and myself as "pro America," but neither of us care about…

I also heartedly recommend Jacques Ellul. From his wiki page (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul): > Jacques Ellul (French: [ɛlyl]; January 6, 1912 – May 19, 1994) was a French philosopher, sociologist, lay theologian, and professor who was a noted Christian anarchist. (...) The dominant theme of his work proved to be the threat to human freedom and religion created by modern technology. Among his most influential books are The Technological Society and Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. I’ve just finished reading his “Illusion of politics”, where he explained (back in the 1960s) how the West lives in a technocratic world only focused on efficiency and why this causes politicians and political decisions (and ultimately democracy itself) to become sort of obsolete, because all the decisions taken by them (the politicians) should ultimately answer to only one and most important criteria: they should be efficient. And as only the technocrats can tell/approximate which decisions may or may not be efficient, the politicians end up being just “puppets” rubber-stamping the decisions actually taken by the technocrats. I’m now just about to start reading his “Le bluff technologique” (it’s in French) and I’m very, very excited because of it. Again, I recommend Ellul to all those interested about us, humans, and about how we function, reading him reminded me of when I first read Hobbes, Rousseau or Tolstoy, i.e. other great literary and philosophical figures…

I'm a black guy working in IT at a company in the top 5 of the Fortune 500. This is complicated issue. There have been experiment that show having a "black" name lowers your job prospects [1]. Other studies that show: "...race actually turned out to be more significant than a criminal background. Notice that employers were more likely to call Whites with a criminal record (17% were offered an interview) than Blacks without a criminal record (14%). [2]" So all the people acting as though our society is some meritocratic, utopia can keep that bullsh*t to themselves. On the other hand, there is no doubt that blacks under-perform relative to whites when it comes to academics. There are obvious reason for this, but those reasons don't change the truth. Companies that are heavy on the engineering are going to use academic markers to try and select the best of the best. There aren't enough blacks >= white peers in the top percentiles of CS to give us proportional representation. [1] http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html [2] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/04/03/race-criminal-backgrou…

I think you're pretty close on this point. I share most of the views from the post above you, but I'd like to expand on them a bit. First of all, I don't think people like flaws. If you take someone who has never listened to a vinyl record and ask them to listen to one and compare it with a CD recording, I'd bet they would cite the CD as being the better experience. What people like is what they are comfortable with, and not just because of habit: distinctive patterns, especially in highly emotionally charged areas such as movies and music, generate emotional connections and attachment. Those who grew up listening to vinyl associate it's "fuzzy/scratchy" sound with the moments they spent listening to them. There's very potent emotional attachment to those flaws, and that's why people are attracted to them. When I hear the warbly sound and see the poor quality visuals of old VHS's, I'm taken back to watching Disney movies as a child. As explained in this article[0], these emotional attachments are the reason why people enjoy Instagram to the degree that they do. The washed out, blurry, grainy photos generated by Instagram hit on the emotional connections to old photographs of our parents and of our childhoods. Similarly, I think the same follows for 24 fps vs 48 fps movies; think of all the intense moments you've had while watching a movie in your lifetime. How many times have you laughed or cried or gasped at something happening in a movie shot in 24 fps? Given that any…

> it seems like when you get to use a free service or website that costs many millions of dollars to develop, giving the company access to your data is a fairly small price to pay. Unfortunately, using Facebook is hardly a free choice anymore. I personally don't use it, but I have no delusions about the cost that comes with resisting. You miss out on events, news and connections. And because of Facebook's ubiquity, no other social network is a complete substitute. Some employers and dating advice columnists even find it "suspicious" when someone isn't on Facebook: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/08/06/beware-tech-abandon… So there's a lot of pressure to use it. And while you can choose not to have an account, you can't choose to live in a world where Facebook doesn't exist. Even if you never touch the site, people can take photos of you and write status updates about you and post them there, and that affects your privacy. A sociologist I follow has written a good (slightly more theoretical) analysis of this problem: http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/05/21/a-new-privacy-pt-i-d… As for giving away your data being a "small price to pay", we'll have to disagree on that. Some people value their privacy more than others. And due to the above, we're limited in our ability to make an individual decision to preserve that privacy. Hence, I applaud the strict EU privacy…

Just because you never heard it doesn't mean it didn't happen. For example, Irish people were heavily discriminated against in the US and were considered at one point to not be "white" https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/06/negative-stereotypes-… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment

It does seem like common sense that they would be linked. But there is also research: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/02/06/correlations-of-iq-wi…

Wow, I never knew they used to offer DDT-laced wallpaper. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2008/02/DDTwallpaper-726x1…

People don't notice the word "man" getting shoved everywhere but if you dare to replace it they definitely take notice. Sociological Images did an interesting collection of these defaults https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/05/04/default-avatars-a-col…

> ere is no "went back". That never stopped, and still continues today. Rather there is no reason to believe this ever happened. It’s a joke and one that people now toss around as an anthropological truth. Sort of like prostitution being the oldest profession. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/08/08/caveman-courtship/

> The notion of bias being self-enforcing is questionable as well. It seems obvious, to me at least, that people don't pursue careers in areas where no one looks like them, therefore creating a self fulfilling prophecy. > one that has not been empirically verified Historically women were excluded from many scientific fields. The effect of female role models has been studied (a lot [1][2]) and there's no denying the real world impact representation (or lack of it) can have. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2020/10/09/seeing-is-believ… [2] https://thesocietypages.org/trot/2017/02/22/the-role-of-female-role-mo…

Country of origin can be an ethnicity. Ethnicity isn't race. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino_(demonym) >Neither "Hispanic" nor "Latino" refers to a race, as a person of Latino/Hispanic ethnicity can be of any race https://thesocietypages.org/teaching/2013/04/02/latino-race-or-ethnici… >As sociologists, we are quick to refer to “Latino” as an ethnicity,

Evony is an amusingly long-running example. They've been running misleading ads for their game since 2009 (NB: includes some NSFW ads): https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/14/evolution-of-evony-vi… But I think what the parent was referring to was more along the lines of games which literally use images from other games -- or, in some cases, games which don't exist at all -- in their advertisements.

Most likely, yes. In a previous century: https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/07/26/nietzsches-transfor… Nietzsche’s Transformative Typewriter and http://stunlaw.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-author-signal-nietzsches-typew… The Author Signal: Nietzsche’s Typewriter and Medium Theory. But then: > The case of Henry James’s move from handwriting (typewriting) to dictation in the middle of What Maisie Knew has been studied by Hoover (2009). Yet, according to the NYU professor, the author of The Ambassadors took this sudden change in his stride and, despite the fact that we know exactly where the switch occurred, stylometry has been helpless in this case; or, rather, can show no sudden shift in James’s stylistic evolution that continues throughout his career (Hoover 2009).

I wouldn’t be so dismissive of the public relations industry. Sigmund Freud’s newphew Edward Bernaise is regarded as the creator of public relations, and he wrote multiple books and talked widely about his theories for manipulating the public. These theories have been put to the test multiple times and they proved successful enough that the industry is thriving 100 years later. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-freedom-wo…

Some interesting reading on Irish-American immigration over 250 years to America: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130jskg Irish-Americans survived ultra-racist NINA job discrimination and drunken-simian political cartoon libel (https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of… in the late 19th and early 20th century, to joining the contemporary American "white monolith". It's an interesting and silenced American immigrant story.

I feel western culture defines teen culture in a certain way and then 'teens' act in that way. Even now and in the past, you were see as an adult by 15. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/02/23/the-invention-of-adol… Often by age 12 girls would be fully contributing household member doing all work done by adult women and by age 14-15 so would be boys doing everything an adult men would be doing. Even now that's the case in many places in developing countries, teenagers act like complete adults in mannerism, thoughtfulness and responsibilities. Teenager is a phase that is a luxury, where despite being capable you use more than you bring/produce. In west, it gets you to be an adult without any consequences.

From 2011, but the message is unchanged: the US spends more than 2x per capita, but receives average results: https://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2011/04/26/cost-of-health…

The technical name for this is "context collapse", and it's not just Facebook, but social media more generally. https://indieweb.org/context_collapse http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/12/08/coining-context-c… https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/01/10/context-collapse-a-…

IQ and income are correlated fairly strongly. It's obviously not a perfect correlation. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/02/06/correlations-of-iq-wi…

It it also completely wrong because income very much positively correlates with IQ. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/2Methods-Zagors…

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/02/06/correlations-of-iq-wi… The scatter plots show a correlations strong enough that they startled me when I saw them. The higher the IQ, the lower the correlation though.

Yep, 50 years is not correct. See: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/07/03/ok-cupid-data-on-sex-… and https://theblog.okcupid.com/undressed-whats-the-deal-with-the-age-gap-… (tl;dr: women prefer men of a similar age, or slightly older (when they are young) and slightly younger (when they are old); for men it is constant)

This is a complex question, and probably beyond my expertise to fully answer. So let me point you to a couple of decent overview articles. TLDR; among other issues, a lot of the seeds for varieties we used to grow actually don't exist anywhere any more. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/07/19/loss-of-genetic-diver… https://www.croptrust.org/our-mission/crop-diversity-why-it-matters/

Correlation implied as causation. Here is another correlation into causation article linking cardiovascular fitness to IQ[0] Another way to look at it can be from the per-capita relation of economic class to fitness[1]. It is entirely possible that, because people higher up the economic ladder are more likely to be fit, and because they are more likely to receive better prenatal care, generally have better nutrition, and give their children more educational opportunities, that the actual cause may be economic status. [0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/quilted-science/200912/cardiov… [1] https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/06/10/the-correlation-of-fi…