iwillspankyou wrote:As always, you will find some studies that will confirm this, and I suspect just as many others that do not. I bet you will find "studies" that will confirm almost anything, but to conduct solid scientific studies, and finding the same "things" over many studies, is just another thing. Btw, the way you are raised, and the environment you live in, will shape the brain, should not be a surprise to anyone.
What significance this "findings" have to the broader picture, is another question, and frankly, I doubt it is very significant in predicting human behaviour or explaining why there are different political systems in China than in Western countries, in general. It seems to me that you are using this kind of odd findings, to try to explain things that are not related in any way, by overstretching the significance of the findings.
You should bear in mind, that before the revolution in China, they lived under very different economic an political systems, and I doubt that the Chinese brain has changed very much in 2-3 generations. As we all recognize that evolution takes a lot of generations, and most likely 10s of millions of years.
These are not just a few studies, it's a whole line of research that spans tens of studies which replicated the effect over a few decades. There are also (fewer) studies which failed to replicate the effect. So far, the track record seems to support the idea that Asian people process visual information differently from non-Asian people, which may have overarching cognitive effects in other ways in which they think about fundamental issues. That's why I brought it up, because it's likely to have political implications too. For years, we've noticed that Asian societies and cultures stress the importance of collective wellbeing over individual freedom, family concerns over individual concerns, ruler over ruled. Confucianism, which is something like a cultural Chinese ideology, clearly embodies this collectivist spirit which defines Chinese culture. While modern China has moved on from simple traditionalism, their mindset is still defined by a reverence for "chain of command", hierarchy, social rank, group orientation, which are characteristic of Confucianist thought.
Sure, it takes "millions" of years for brains to evolve, but not everything changes at the same pace. Those things that change over millions of years are the most basic brain structures, such as expanded cortex or atrophy of some brain structures which are no longer needed (the vomeronasal organ which used to be involved in processing pheromone signalling and which is no longer needed in higher primates, for example). On the other hand, subtle but significant changes in brain structures may have taken place in just 10000 years, to allow for humans to better process language, writing and reading. It is conceivable that such subtle structural changes may have evolved slightly differently in different cultural regions. The Chinese writing system is one of the oldest in the world: prehistoric symbols have been found in China dating back to more than 8000 years ago. And surprisingly those symbols (Jiahu symbols) look very similar to modern-day Chinese writing (from a geometrical point of view). Could it be that this graphological similarity was caused by changes in brain structure which were already present 8000 years ago? Could it be that the Chinese develop a collectivist mentality also because of learning a kind of script which requires attention to context more than attention to individual elements in the glyph? It's an idea and a hypothesis worth researching. And that's what scientists have been doing. I don't think I'm overstating the importance of these findings, it would surely explain some high-level behaviours that we notice in the Chinese but also in some other Asian countries and cultures (Confucianism has influenced Korea and Japan too, not only China). Sure, we also notice some degree of variability in how different Asian countries and cultures manifest this tendency towards collectivism: for example, in South Korea, although we tend to think of them as more similar to Western countries in terms of freedoms, let's not forget how important the
chaebol system is over there.
We don't yet have a conclusive answer to this question, we don't know whether this is mostly based in biological differences, if it's only partly based in neurobiology, or just predominantly the result of cultural developmental forces. What we know is that there is a growing body of evidence which supports this idea that Asians tend to process information slightly differently from non-Asians. Which might also explain other cognitive outcomes: their excellence in maths and STEM subjects, their tendency to develop collectivist societies which shun individualism, their public "poker face" when it comes to dealing with strangers, but also their fondness for "cute face" characters (anime, toys, etc - even for adults), and their manufacturing prowess in electronics. Imagine finding some neurobiological differences which appeared long ago, when Denisovan populations inter-mixed with Neanderthals, and which eventually led to a regionally unique version of humans in Asia, with unique and slightly different characteristics. That's a super-fascinating hypothesis that may one day be proved, at least partially. We may also discover some even more surprising influences coming from the environment too (imagine the type of soil and vegetation having also an influence over gut microbiota and this, in turn, leading to other changes in brain development).
Yeah, I know, I'm bringing lots of things which appear "unrelated" to this discussion, but, as it happens on this planet, biological systems are not tightly sealed, there are influences on higher-level behaviour (such as economic choices, political choices) that may come from low-level brain processing, which may have been, in turn, caused by evolutionary changes brought about by much more ordinary causes than just "culture".
this way of arguing that taxes don't solve anything and that the individual could just "man-up", is what we usually call argumentation that wants to privatize a systemic problem in the society. In other words, drag yourself up by the bootstraps.
Could be, but then, so is the opposite school of thought which believes that you can simply change a whole society by using a top-down approach, by forcing a specific model onto a society, when that model wasn't organically developed by that society. There's this hillarious example of USA officials visiting Romania's capital some years ago and telling the press how Iraq will be the next young, vibrant democracy, following in Romania's footsteps. It just shows typical American ignorance of local culture and their simple and simplistic belief that a country can change according to their interests. They only forgot one little detail: Iraq is split between different ethnic clans which have different Islamic allegiances. Look at where Iraq is today, can we really say it's a vibrant and young democracy? They've been rocked by terror attacks ever since Saddam was removed from power. The USA's forced democratisation of Iraq didn't lead to the establishment of a stable democracy, it led to a country torn apart by civil war until recently (2017). And I don't think that even after ISIS has been officially "defeated" we are going to see a happy federal Islamic Switzerland over there too soon.
The top-down approach to social changes might work for some very specific and targeted issues, like removing plastics from the environment, but even such policies are likely to have very variable rates of success in different cultures. But imagine having an even more ambitious target...
and that is at the core of the problem imo. stacking away money, and not spending it in the economy, are damaging the economy. As simple as that, and the reason that there should be heavy taxation on money that is being exempt from the economy. I bet that would incentive the super-rich to spend more in the economy. It should not be "secure" to hoard money in Tax havens. It will take political decisions to turn this around, and that is at the core of my argumentation.
If you raise taxes on deposits, it's likely that banks will need to raise interest rates to be able to still attract capital. And this will have a chain effect on the whole economy, making credit very expensive for private enterprise, which would pretty much suffocate.
On the second point, I agree, in fact, I'm more radical than you in this respect. I'd go as far as to say that tax havens should not exist, they should be simply banned. Why should one category of citizens have privileged access to different fiscal treatment? They shouldnt.
I have no clue to what you are saying here about Tribal mentality
I only know that the Scandinavian model is probably the best in the world. It is not communist, nor is it pure socialist, but it is a blended economy model, just like most western economies are. The only difference is that in Scandinavia they tax rich ppl more and have a more fair system, and the welfare state is one of the main pillars of its success. It also constitutes the example that Bernie Sanders is using, when he is speaking about a political revolution in USA.
Again, Scandinavia does not tax the rich more than other countries at all. There are way more countries that tax the rich a lot more than Scandi countries. Which proves that taxing more does not automatically lead to less economic inequality. Economics is a lot more complicated than a 2-variable function.
Can't really explain the tribalist Scandinavia theory here, it's an idea I've been having for some time, but it's just an inkling for now, nothing fully developed I could expand on. I would need more anthropological data to be able to check whether my observations are actually accurate or it's just a vague impression.
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This was just published today:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... inequalityIt appears that populist regimes have surprising effects on reducing economic inequality. And the even more surprising finding coming from this study is that they didn't achieve this by "raising taxes on the rich", which is what leftwing politics usually craves for.