Socioeconomic Researcher

Discussion in 'New Member Introductions' started by Abram Jones, Jun 27, 2016.

  1. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    I am most interested in the knowledge of making economies efficient and societies healthy. Often people judge nations by morality, though these judgments are usually erroneous or misguided at best, while others judge by economic success, which is often the result of manipulation or oppression of others. I prefer to evaluate culture by high technological advancement and educational achievement in comparison to low resource usage, as well as social health.
     
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  2. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    Hello there Abram. I hope you will enjoy the forum!

    Personally, I don't think we can find simple ways of looking at that. Any measure we find can be manipulated, as per Goodhart's law. There are many things that indicate success but when we decide to use them as indicators of success, it becomes a bad indicator because people know to aim for it.
     
  3. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    Measuring resource consumption is a pretty simple thing to measure. I'm not sure how you think Goodhart's Law effects this.
     
  4. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    Sure, but I'm not sure it will reflect the efficiencies and health of a society if they know the measurements will be used for that.
     
  5. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    I think maybe you misunderstand me. I'm simply taking a different perspective on measuring success, because what people generally consider successful I disagree with. Judgments of morality upon nations have been laughable at best (examples: UK, France, Soviet Union, United States judging Nazi Germany or United States/France/UK/Germany judging Iraq). And judging a country by economic success is ridiculous, because there are direct factors like economic manipulation of disadvantaged foreign economies or lesser citizens within the country. What I'm saying is taking a look at a country's resource consumption in contrast with what practical things they provide for the world (such as technology), as well as the social health of a country are better indicators of good countries.
     
  6. Greataxe

    Greataxe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It would save you much time and energy to focus on demographics as ethnicity is the primary driver in why a society is highly advanced or not. An average IQ of 100 is needed to reach and maintain a modern culture.

    If you are going to give a sermon on the benefits of diversity, then please tell how well the most ethnically diverse nations on the planet are doing.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...countries-Earth-South-Korea-comes-bottom.html
     
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  7. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    I'm afraid you have no idea what you're talking about. Firstly, you make the most absurd claim against me. I am not promoting diversity in anyway shape or form in my statement, nor did I even mention diversity. You come across as if this is your fixation, certainly not mine.

    High intelligence and society has little to do with ethnicity unless we are referring to certain cultural traits, then obviously yes. The true factors for a successful civilization are things like natural resources (for both dietary and industrial use), era of technology (this is heavily influenced by external situation), geopolitical factors (heavily relies on external events), cultural traits, systems (to a lesser degree), decisions of economic elite at pivotal times, financial advantage, etc. Populations with higher IQs generally come from well off places. Well off places arise from these variety of complex factors and historical events. What this means is that you could have a crappier nation doing better than a very efficient nation (examples: USA/China/Russia have more power than any Scandinavian country despite all Scandinavian countries being more efficient and better than USA/China/Russia in almost every way).

    Lastly, since you unjustly, poorly, and distastefully brought the topic of diversity into this discussion... the data you have provided is clearly a case of "correlation does not mean causation." You could probably figure this out yourself if you knew the economic histories of the 2 countries (or am I speaking to soon). South Korea was heavily invested in starting in the 1960s by advanced nations while Uganda has been economically manipulated since the dawn of colonialism by these nations. In addition to this, you are cherry picking data.
     
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  8. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Or it could be on average shoe size. Has anyone done a comparison of countries of GDP per person compared to shoe size? Maybe that's it. Or maybe a matter of which country's words have the most or least syllables in their average usage words.

    Generally, a person can find statistics seemingly to prove or disprove anything.

    The OP message claims the best measure of society is from an environmental perspective, leading me to believe the OPer is young, white, male, liberal, Democrat and of middle class parents. Did I get it right?
     
  9. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Until recently, Scandinavian countries were particularly efficient at preventing poor non-white immigration, thus preventing their social programs from being overwhelmed.
     
  10. RPA1

    RPA1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    One key part of that knowledge is the understanding that individuals want be free to pursue their own happiness. This does not mean a structure-less society on the contrary, it means that society as a whole understands and agrees to a set of basic moral principles that support man-made laws.
     
  11. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    Not only did you interpret my original post incorrectly, but I do not identify with being liberal or democrat, nor do those types of people generally get a long with me politically speaking... in fact they are usually repulsed by many of my ideas, just as often as conservatives, fascists, and communists are. Which I am quite proud of. In addition to this and your other implications resulting from logical fallacies, something tells me you are wrong about a lot of things :)
     
  12. liberalminority

    liberalminority Well-Known Member

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    this type of evaluation of society is against freedom.

    while a moral society, or a society based on making a lot of money, do both have their problems, they have the common need of freedom for at least those in power when at their worst.

    this society of technology and education to save resources sounds a lot like stealing freedom to further a greater good.
     
  13. Greataxe

    Greataxe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Sorry, but it is the people who make a nation great, not the land and resources. Scandinavia is a terrible place for humans to thrive. A harsh climate, short growing season and lack of farmland. One could not have been a dummy and survive long in such a place 1,000 years ago. As opposed to one living in a tropical climate where one can grab fruit or spear an animal year long.

    Please explain "well off places." Are they well off because a certain group made it will off over the years, or is a "well off place" a place with natural abundance and/or a good climate?

    Why did post Colonial Singapore and South Korea economies now thrive from almost nothing in 60 years ago, yet virtually every nation in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to be a dismal failure by comparison? Colonialism is not a terminal cancer that has only effected Africans.

    But of course bringing IQ into the Ivory Temple of Economics that is exclusively ruled by those far to the Left, is not going to tickle any of your ears. This is why Economics is part of humanities---and is so politically corrupted that few in the scientific world bother to take it seriously. The field of Economics I feel lies somewhere between Eastern theology and Cryptozoology (Bigfoot hunting, etc..) It certainly isn't mathematics where 1+1 is always 2.

    Doing simple DNA-based IQ tests with progressive matrices on sample populations would be far superior in predicting how well a society advances than using your current theorems. However, those in the humanities have failed to launch a single such test using this DNA technology that I personally worked with in college back in the 1980's. What are your reasons for not doing modern testing?
     
  14. Greataxe

    Greataxe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Probably so. I doubt he is from a working class family of Pentecostals from rural Alabama.
     
  15. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    Perhaps your fanaticism for freedom has blinded you from reason and practicality. Certainly I believe people should be guaranteed certain rights, but there is a large group(s) of people who have taken this way too far to the point of insanity (much of our modern day society can not be explained in any other way than insanity). Another important concept to understand is that people can perceive freedom differently, and that potential for freedom is certainly limited by things such as technology, wealth, etc. Also, your statement that societies based on money or morals have a common yearning for freedom is absolute BS. And perhaps you didn't catch my original implication which is: that people judge countries' morals or lack thereof, while at the same time are extremely immoral by the same or similar standards. Basically I was mocking this hypocritical behavior and model for judgement. Lastly, you also interpreted me incorrectly. Countries should be judged on more than just technical advancement in comparison to resource usage, but also social health (this is important and cannot be left out). This takes into heavy consideration of relative happiness and standard of living (relative based on the technological era), which is very important for several reasons.
     
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  16. PreteenCommunist

    PreteenCommunist Active Member

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    Hey, welcome to the forum!

    Those are some interesting ideas. Would you have considered the Soviet Union a healthy society, in that case? It obviously would not have done well on certain moral metrics, or on economic ones in general; but it was a pretty advanced country with a world-class education system. Additionally, for whom should economies be efficient or societies healthy in your model? What is efficient/healthy for some people isn't necessarily so for others.
     
  17. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    It's almost as if you completely ignored my response to you, I am not surprised by such a poorly thought out response from you. The success of a civilization depends on many factors, many of which I already listed and you seemed to ignore. Here is what I said ". The true factors for a successful civilization are things like natural resources (for both dietary and industrial use), era of technology (this is heavily influenced by external situation), geopolitical factors (heavily relies on external events), cultural traits, systems (to a lesser degree), decisions of economic elite at pivotal times, financial advantage, etc." <--- look very carefully, in no way shape or form am I saying that success only is dependent on natural resources, and I also obviously pointed out that the cultural traits of the people matter also. I also explained why countries like South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Brunei, etc. are successful. Short answer: because they were invested in instead of manipulated. Almost the entire continent of Africa has been and still is manipulated economically by foreign powers for cheap resources and labor. This isn't even debatable. Well off places = those that had the right conditions (technological, resources, industrial), culture, and leadership to prevail at pivotal times. It goes hand in hand with what I'm saying above.

    It looks like you are having trouble noticing the fact that science and shills in suits preaching BS are too different things. In economics things do add up like a mathematical equation, but the issue is that there are so many variables (some of which are not measured), that it's easy to fool a lot of people into believing a lie regarding the topic.

    No, it wouldn't. Because you are not taking into account the situation these groups of people would be living in. example: if you had 2 groups with high natural intelligence, and put 1 into Iceland and gave the other group a large continent like north america the second group would perform better 9 times out of 10.
     
  18. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    No, I wouldn't consider the Soviet Union a healthy place at any time in their history. Quite on the contrary, I would see it as a pretty terrible place for several reasons. I'm not saying they didn't get anything right, I'm just saying they got way too much wrong for them to be even a possible contender for such an award :) Though the USSR had some very rough times caused by external events, there is no excuse for the lack of ability to maintain an economy for a country who has access to such modern technology. One of the main problems with the USSR is that leadership, in addition to corruption and bad management (which we see also see a lot of in the USA), is that they were directing many of their resources toward technological/military development to compete with the west (because the west was already ahead of Russia even before the USSR and WW2 complicated this even more because the USA received a huge free boost). In doing this they neglected people's basic needs as well as the economy's basic needs. In addition, many human rights abuses that were absolutely uncalled for took place just for the quest of power, there is no reason for this primitive behavior anymore.

    I'd like to clarify that I'm basing efficiency on a ratio of practical achievement versus resource consumption, this is a different topic than social health (it may be indirectly related of course). Social health could be defined by things such as the happiness and standard of living of a community of people. The idea here is to find away for people to be happy without turning them into a bunch of consumerist robots like we see today.
     
  19. PreteenCommunist

    PreteenCommunist Active Member

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    Yeah, pretty much. In that case, though, economic and moral standards can indeed be used as metrics.

    Ah, I get you. What do you think of Bhutan? The extent to which the king and queen there base policy on happiness (or at least ostensibly do so) has always fascinated me, even though I sometimes think it's too good to be true.
     
  20. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    I think you misunderstand me (I assume it's purposely based on your parody of a profile). Firstly, I always stated that economic standards should be met (technology/education/resource usage/standard of living all deal heavily with economics). Secondly, morality is not the issue here, I think you may be misinterpreting me. When I am speaking about human rights abuses I am referring to the happiness/standard of living of the nation, this is the judgement. It is not a question of what is right or what is wrong in this context. Morals are important, I don't want to be misunderstood. The problem with basing judgement solely with a moral compass is that usually the moral compass malfunctions.

    I don't know much about Bhutan other than that they have a really cool flag. I think a king and queen deciding these things is a terrible idea and I would never choose such a system. They have a parliamentary monarchy by the way.
     
  21. PolakPotrafi

    PolakPotrafi Banned

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    East Asians in transracial adoption studies score higher IQ scores than Whites, and Black Americans in transracial adoption studies score lower IQ than Whites adopted.

    How come?
     
  22. Abram Jones

    Abram Jones Member

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    I said high intelligence has little to do with ethnicity, pay attention. Let's assume Asians naturally were more intelligent than whites (just for the sake of arguing). Ethnically white nations still conquered Asian territories. This means that the difference is negligible in comparison with many other non-racial factors (many of which I have already written in this thread twice). Why is everyone here so hung up on potential small differences in genetics? I think you guys need to get out more. And realistically, these differences could be from social differences or poor science rather than genetics. Either way, the point is moot.
     
  23. PolakPotrafi

    PolakPotrafi Banned

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  24. PolakPotrafi

    PolakPotrafi Banned

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    Small genetic differences can have big impacts, for example Chimps share 98.8% of their DNA with Humans.

    If you want one more Human based, look at lactose tolerance, a trait which is overwhelmingly found in Northern Europeans, but rare in the rest of the World, as a whole.
     
  25. Ronstar

    Ronstar Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    wrong, again.

    many Middle Eastern peoples are lactose intolerant.
     

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