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Heh, I just have a strong immune response to argument by authority in general, on subjects where there are no viewpoint privileges except time (as opposed to for eg astronomy with its instruments). My first theory of anything political is generally my own prima facie one.
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I don't mind reinventing wheels at all. In fact I think that's a necessary human activity. A lot of people comment that my Gervais Principle analysis is Marxist for eg. I'm sure it was in the osmotic environment, but I've read zero Marxist theory. But reinvention was good.
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agreed it's often good and necessary but opportunity cost is prohibitive. I guess it's just that; it doesn't bother me at all when ppl trying to understand the world in an intellectually honest way reinvent a few wheels in the process -- or, hey, even all of them, why not >
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< but when ppl get into positions of actual policy influence on the idea that they've got insight that can be put to work on an urgent problem and their credential is they've figured out that wheels need to be round, I worry that solutions are, uh, probably not forthcoming
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concrete example: "gee, look, the data shows suicide bombers are as likely to be from middle or even upper middle class as from the very poor" no shit, sherlock. why does this surprise you? "well we thought were motivated by 'poverty'." well, whatever gave you that silly idea?
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so western policies of inoculating radicalizable MENA populations against right-wing radicalization by buying them off with liberal "prosperity" didn't work -- i.e. didn't prevent any of the needless death and suffering the radicalized went on to inflict *anyway*
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which was frustrating bc if you'd read Hobbes it was already obvious that people just don't embrace Friedmanesque security-and-prosperity regimes until they're deliberately and, frankly, *taught* to, paternalistically and coercively -- Europeans didn't either!
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