RogtamBar
Have you read about the Russian frontier? As soon as it was at least somewhat secure so living on it wasn't a sure-fire way of getting enslaved by Muslim steppe raiders(Tatars), the empty land was filled up by peasants looking for land to farm.
An increase in population led to more slave raids, so Moscow was forced to push the border further south to protect the farmers. In this way the border kept moving south. In 250 years, this mechanism caused the Russian state to expand from Moscow to Crimea.
Paradox is also in the business of making boardgames, albeit with way more elaborate rules.
> your own with a computer, and I think it's worked out really well.
I don't think it has. The AI in Civ series is just bad, and only gets by through rampant cheating. Civ V was out for years, and they haven't managed to do anything decent with the combat AI. Nor prevent the AI from doing stupid things.
No emergent gameplay at all in Civ.
Totally unlike the real world, where ruling or governing is more about figuring out how to exercise power without getting overthrown.
Such a game would be way more interesting.
Yes, of course the word 'psychopath' is abused.
Yes of course it's not an either-or thing, and a lot of law abiding people have some features of archetypal psychopaths.
Any psychiatrist would tell you something like this. So, a lot of 'water is wet' type of filler.
>> The Myth of the Born Criminal argues that, rather than genes, psychopaths' most significant commonality appears to be an abusive childhood, which related research has demonstrated can affect the anatomy of the brain in various and profound ways.<<
The book dismisses all those cases (there are some) where perfectly normal families produced complete monsters. A good share of serial killers weren't abused. It's thought that those are just people who happen to express a set of genes good for social predation. Nice explanation in this abstract:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786010802159814...
Also, the article has howlers like:
>>It never occurred to me that Gregory’s behavior in Kenya could be the product of anything other than his brain, and thus I never asked or inquired about what might have been going on in his life. I ignored the strong, decades-long relationship he had with our boss, the sort of relationship that psychopaths are supposed to be incapable of sustaining.<<
Because whatever goes on in your life of course cannot affect your brain. Why is this sort of stupid dualism even allowed in the 21st century? A person is their brain, and their body, taken together. You can't separate it.
I'm more interested in when various athletic old people are going to die. Ernestine Shepherd, or Charles Eugster, or any of these ancient japanese bodybuilders.
>>The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.<<
The current fit on part of the intellectuals and media is due to them having lost this power to control the narrative and ideas because they failed to adapt to the new media which have replaced the old.
You can reproduce in excess, but you have to practice primogeniture.
Same if inbreeding is practiced. So, the claim that for example, mid-easterners with their penchant for marrying cousins, or the Swiss with their insular village communities ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanzelka_and_Zikmund .. these guys travelled the world widely in late 1940's. I've read the African book, and it's very funny reading these days.
The both despised the colonialist administrations, and the book frequently mentioned all the injustices done on the native populations. Yet the factual descriptions of Africa at that time make it look a far safer place.
http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/50799-Democrat...
Multiple times, the travellers found spots where locals would make traps for cars and then ask for money to get the cars unstuck.
The only people who were invariably helpful were priests.
70% of French criminals are of Arab origin. Maybe Arabs are better behaved in the Arab world than they are in France?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1135...
Maybe it's because the French are really soft on prisoners. That Coulibaly guy was furious they confiscated his playstation. I doubt Morocco or Algeria would have ever allowed him one..
He revealed what everyone interested was already suspecting. The reason Russia shelters him is that he was working for them. It's a reward, and one they have to give out, otherwise no on smart would cooperate with them.
If he wasn't a former Russian agent, it'd be better for them letting America make an example of him, because what would make US look worse than jailing for life someone who is widely considered a hero by a good fraction of population.
Willful, defiant children were considered a good thing by in early American Virginian planter colony..
And I don't mean parents being sadists for the sake of it, but using it judiciously.
The lesson that resorting to violence results in even more violence thrown back at you and therefore violence is not something to start is a useful one.
Of course, this only works on people or animals with the mental faculties to understand this, so probably it's useless on children less than 6 years old.
They also taste pretty nice, if you eat them singly. Much better than any coffee that can be brewed from such..
And then there is milk. Does beer contain proteins and fats? No.
Well, combine that with knowing almost everything about everybody, and you can use the threat of charges or actually having them charged to deal with dissidents.
I once knew a gun rights' activist in the US. He has friends who were targeted this way by the Federal gov't. It's not just a theoretical thing.
What good are insane labor costs if people can't actually benefit from them -$52 an hour? Isn't that like $100k per year? And another $42 for pension. Now I don't wonder why they're bringing in foreign labor force. SAP developers don't earn that much in eastern Europe, and in the US all sheet metal grunt labor can.
Also the company allegedly paid them about the same they'd get in Slovenia. Genius, really, but stinks somewhat. In eastern Europe people go abroad to work, but usually because you can earn a multiple of what you'd get at home. Double or triple or more.
And how come they can even try this crap, import a hundred foreign laborers and employ them on invalid visa?
Local PD never checked their papers or queried Immigration on that? No one cares once they get cleared?
How do you then explain the glaring over-representation in sciences, scientific awards received and so on? (about 10x)
And that coincidentally Ashkenazi Jews outscore others on intelligence tests?
Are they all cheating? Is that what you are trying to say?
Racism and xenophobia isn't all about scapegoating. There is a number of nations with very low level of foreign ethnics who would like to keep it that way.
You can't accuse them of scapegoating. Them being xenophobic is merely prudent? Which sane country would want a significant Arab minority - after witnessing the various bloodbaths and security scares plaguing Western Europe due to its Arab populations?
Nope.
Multi-regional descent was a theory first proposed in 1984, and of a relatively brief lifespan. Before that monogenism was the prevailing theory. Multi-regional ascent was never the pre-eminent theory.
Now we know we're all mostly descended from h.sapiens, with some minute neanderthal and denisovan admixture.
However, the split between different branches of mankind dates as back as 300 kya. (To put that in perspective, brown and polar bears diverged approximately 500 kya)