darkroasted
Joined 11 years ago
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Comment · 10 years ago
Comment · 10 years ago
There is a problem with how parents are involved with their kids education.
This is being too harsh on parents. My parents were very much involved with my own brother's education. They tutored him, got him extra help, set up incentives, etc, etc. But he still did far worse than me. Meanwhile they had to pull me away from the books. I never got help with math homework because I never had any trouble with it. School just came naturally to me. I was just born much smarter than my brother. My parents never had to pressure me to learn programming, I picked it up because it was fun and I was good at it. Heck, I taught myself calculus because I found the problem solving fun.
And I see this observation over and over again. If a person is naturally good at cognitive work, sooner or later they will go whole hog on learning some economically useful cognitive skills. If a person is just naturally a bit slower, it will always be an uphill battle.
These personal observations are corroborated by adoption studies and twin studies. Twins raised separately end up closer together than non-twins raised together. Adopted children end up closer to their biological parents than their adopted parents. Etc. (sources; http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023048987045774784... http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/10/genes-dont-just-influ... )
Comment · 11 years ago
The existence of people like Jessica is not just something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge, but something feminists need to learn to acknowledge as well. There are successful women who don't like to fight.
There is another lesson here for feminists that PG does not fully articulate. In my experience, most women are similar to Jessica in that they do not fit naturally into an alphadog founder type role. The time-honored tradition for such women to be part of accomplishing great things, is to partner with an alphadog mate. Unfortunately, modern feminism is all about turning women into men, rather than guiding women to fit in as complements and partners to a strong man.
If Jessica was so important to YC, why don't more people realize it? Partly because I'm a writer, and writers always get disproportionate attention.
And also because she was not listed as involved when YC was first founded. I assume that Jessica was "The Fourth Man wants to remain anonymous for now"? https://web.archive.org/web/20050324095016/http://ycombinato...
Comment · 11 years ago
I didn't answer your question because it was not germane to the discussion. Whether or not there is are innate differences in tendency, behavior is quite malleable via the proper culture, institutions, and law enforcement. But if you really want an answer I will try to humor you.
"I am asking a different question. To be blunt, which contributes more to the current lack of "civilizing influences" in inner-cities: that the actors involved are black, or that the actors involved were born into the same lack of "civilizing influences" 20 years earlier?"
To be even more blunt, I take it you asking whether black genes matter more or whether the environmental conditions matter more? It is not really possible to answer that question along a comparative axis of "more or less." With most human traits, genes determine both the slope of the improvement curve and where the improvement curve plateaus. Environment determines where one is along that curve. I cannot throw a javelin 80 meters. Which matters more, genes or the fact that I have never trained to throw the javelin? That's not really a well put question. I'm sure with training I could throw it 40 meters, I highly doubt I have the genes to ever be able to throw it a world-class 80 meters.
Similarly with African-American neighborhoods -- I think they have the genes to have peaceful, orderly neighborhoods because such neighborhoods have existed in the African-American population before. I am pessimistic that there will ever be an African or African-American Pudong or Silicon Valley, because I don't think the concentration of genes are there. I would love to be proven wrong, but I think more evidence backs that view than not ( https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i... https://liberalbiorealism.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/the-likel... )
Most likely, there are statistical differences in gene frequency that make average behavioral traits differ between the races, all things being equal. I say that, because the world looks exactly like you would expect, were that hypothesis to be true. When you compare races, such as the Han Chinese, the Irish, and Africans, the Chinese tend to be the most orderly, regardless of where they live (China, Singapore, Taiwan, the American Chinatowns, etc) whereas those of African descent tend to have higher rates of crime and disorder, no matter whether it be Johannesburg, Belize, Rio, Liberia, Jamaica, Haiti, or Madison, Wisconsin. Worldwide, race predicts crime better than anything else.
But given the right conditions, Chinese can be quite disorderly. And we have proven cases in the past of black communities being quite disorderly. So regardless of the genetic tendencies, the outcomes are malleable.
Comment · 11 years ago
There is a saying that every generation is invaded by a horde of savages -- they're called children. Humans are savage by default, civilization is not natural. It took generations to build the institutions, the social mores, the web of reinforcing family and peer influences, the culture, the churches/schools, etc, that make civilization possible. The existence of these elements vary by people, vary by ethnicity (ethnicity being a combination of tribe and culture and institutions). If you look at the worst inner-city, ethnically African-American neighborhoods, those elements are all missing. Kids are raised from the cradle to the jail-cell without civilizing influences of parental discipline, good peer influences, and peer role models. Again, read American Millstone, or The Corner or Ghettoside. That is what I mean by a void of civilization.
Comment · 11 years ago
Honest question: how familiar are you with the actual history of these problems, and the actual situation on the ground? Have you read anything beyond standard zeitgeist sources (sociology classes, NYTimes, Economist), etc?
The dominant social policy of the last 65 years has been that crime and disorder can be cured by addressing "root causes" which means material deprivation, lack of school funding, lack of housing, a school curriculum that was not culturally attuned, etc.
So first in the 50s, 60s and 70s they built public housing, upped welfare spending, eliminated corporal punishment in the schools, and greatly reduced punishment and police enforcement. Here is a poster from the time: http://www.newyork.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/a...
This was a disaster. The welfare spending incentivized women to not get married and to stay on the dole, because you would lose benefits if you got married or got a job. The public housing was not policed at all and was destroyed by the rougher element in the population. Crime skyrocketed. Youths would commit muggings at gun point and end up back on the streets with nothing more than probation.
Then there was a ham-fisted backlash starting in the mid-1970s but really coming into effect in the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, rather than emphasis consistent discipline and enforcement from the get go, the backlash was more about "three strikes" and using drug offenses as proxy crimes. Even in schools, getting tough meant suspensions, which is not much of a punishment to a roguish street urchin.
So if you look at the situation now, you have kids growing up in homes which are violent and where they don't get punished if they roam the streets and bully other kids. Then you have those kids go to schools that are full of disorder, and where if they cause trouble they just sent to the principals office and then go right back into the classroom. Or maybe they get suspended for a few days. Big whoop, that is only a punishment if you care about school. Gangs are allowed to openly sell drugs on the street. So by age 15 your role models are gang members, you have never been subject to real discipline, you have been fighting others or being assaulted your whole life. And then they commit some heinous crime. At that point, the 15-year-old cannot be permitted to coexist in normal society. Giving them money or something is not going to magically make them civilized when they have spent their live growing up in a barbarous environment. It's not the 15-year-old-murderers fault in the cosmic sense that he was born into such a wild environment. But the fact remains that he his too dangerous to be permitted to roam the streets freely.
But of course I absolutely agree that the problem needs to be addressed earlier. We need to figure out a way that these kids are an environment with order, that is with safety, security, and discipline from the day they are born.
Comment · 11 years ago
Um, from taking walks a few blocks from my apartment and doing volunteering in such communities. Also just reading the local news. Also reading lots of ethnographies. Go read American Millstone (http://www.amazon.com/American-Millstone-Examination-Permane...) or Ghettoside and maybe you will rethink those scare quotes. I'm not sure how "void of civilization" is an unfair label for what is described in those books.
There were white (mostly Irish) inner city areas with a complete void of civilization, such as old southie, but those areas are less prevalent these days. That said there is lots of degeneracy among the white population in some areas too. I'd call those areas more of a partial void of civilization rather than an utter void of civilization.
Comment · 11 years ago
Only .7% of those in prison are there for marijuana possession as their only crime - https://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/pdf/whos_in_pri... And among those possession could mean as much as 100 pounds. The idea that our prisons are full of people who were just smoking pot in their own homes is ludicrous. Whatever our views on whether it is sane to make marijuana illegal, locking up pot smokers is not the cause of mass incarceration.
Comment · 11 years ago
I don't understand how no one talks about the systemic, generational poverty that a large proportion of the US black population lives in. It's just incomprehensible to me how people can't see how this leads to crime.
Because there are lots of instances of people living in deep poverty without killing each other at ridiculously high rates. Most people in China or India are more materially deprived than those living in the American inner-city, yet the neighborhoods there are much, much safer. Philadelphia in 1890 was much poorer, and much more unequal, yet the homicide rates were 10X lower. Also Edwardian England is a compelling counter-example. Read "The Classic Slum" by Robert Roberts. British society around 1900 was massively unequal and lots of people were desperately poor. But their homicide rates were 100X lower than the rates seen in the contemporary ghetto. The poor working class areas of England during that period had intact families, schools that provided discipline, strict policing, and strong institutions.
We are a savage species and crime is the default. What prevents crime is civilization. What you see in the black inner-cities is an utter void of civilization.
Comment · 11 years ago
I feel like you're ignoring a whole host of variables with a reductionist statement like "they commit more crimes proportionally". First of all, how do you compare what "more crimes" is proportionally? Different countries have vastly different definitions of what constitutes a crime, and further, different penalties for those crimes.
Robbery and homicide are the two most clearly defined and well reported crimes. Robbery because the victim can see the offender, and has an incentive to report it to get the goods back. Homicide because it is very hard for the police to ignore a body.
* According to surveys of robbery victims, the offending rate of blacks is 6 times higher than that of whites. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus06.pdf
* According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, homicide offending rates for blacks are 8 times higher than for whites.
The proportion of blacks in prison is not at all out-of-line with the proportion of serious crime committed.
Comment · 11 years ago
"Why is prison even considered for young people?"
Here are some crimes I've seen in the news:
* A man was shot and killed during a robbery while he was getting robbed. He begged for them to not shoot him and they put one more bullet in his chest. The perps were 15. http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Arrest-Questioned-...
* A kid at a local school was gang beaten by other students, had teeth knocked out, and was concussed. He was beaten because of a "mistaken identity" Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjC7yd1OaAk
So what should be done in the case of these offenders? If not jail, then what? Clearly these perpetrators are too dangerous to coexist in civilized society. So there has to be some form of punishment, and some form of separation. I would be ok with sending them to work on a farm instead of prison, but I'm pretty sure that others would describe that as being "forced labor camps" and would rail against that too.
Comment · 11 years ago
I thought those movies were "sweet nerd girl gets the hot guy by being secretly hot"?
There were those too, there were both types of movies.
You seem to have some very absolute beliefs (eg. Women are attracted to strength and command; crying is in fact a symtom of weakness, etc. etc). How do you justify them?
A bunch of life experience; trading stories and confessions with male and female friends over drinks; reading lots of books, ranging from bios and famous literature to books by dating coaches to books on the science of genes and evolution. My statements were slightly blunt and simplified. But I think that as broad generalizations, they are pretty bloody obvious if you just pay attention in life.
Comment · 11 years ago
Seriously. The amount of "2+2=5" type writing in the New York Times is truly incredible.
What I have been doing is creating a separate Chrome application launcher for my different life contexts -- http://lifehacker.com/5611711/create-application-shortcuts-i... I have one for anonymous browsing, one for work, one for personal-real-name, and one for pseudonymous browsing. I renamed the application so I can launch by typing "WorkChrome" or "PersonalChrome" in spotlight search. Each Chrome app then runs with a separate profile, separate cookies, etc. I have a different icon and colored theme for each one, so that I never make a mistake with regards to which I am browsing in. I can have multiple open at the same time and tab switch between them.