yocheckit

Was their a lot of drug use going on? Which drugs?

My experience with China is that certain parts are 100% first world, but other parts are 100% 3rd world, with many places inbetween.

Whereas the difference between the poorest & richest Brit while significant is nothing compared to the difference between the poorest & richest Chinese.

It didn't make me question my beliefs because at the time I didn't really have any. But the opening of Bioshock and Andrew Ryan's monologue got me thinking about that stuff for the 1st time.

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No," says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the poor." "No," says the man in the Vatican, "it belongs to God." "No," says the man in Moscow, "it belongs to everyone." I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

It really got me thinking about who makes demands on whom about what in society.

No, they were not.

The heavily religious communities in the early US didn't display any of the tribal behaviour commonly seen amongst the Taliban (which are the cause of most of the governance issues in Afghanistan), just the extremely strict adherence to religion which is in some ways a superficial similarity as the average person in those times was as fanatically religious as only the most hardcore Christian today.

For instance Cousin marriage wasn't a thing at all (which is one of the main ways of maintaining tribal cohesion) while it is still extremely common in Afghanistan and the Middle East today.

Yea, I'm amazed at the criticisms of Steam. Do you all not remember buying computer games before it? Having friends on all different programs, no integrated chat, cds everywhere, this is defintely rose-tinted googles.

huh, that is fascinating to hear. Will definitely be keeping an eye on this space, thanks for the info.

Do they? My experience reading them doesn't indicate that at all, IQ is enormously important in determining lifetime success it's just there are different plateaus.

Once you achieve a certain IQ threshold (be it 115, 130, 145, whatever) then other factors play a bigger role but before you hit that threshold your outcomes statistically will be much worse than even the lowest performers who do make the cutoff.

Really? Care to elaborate?

I went to a school where they did try to introduce these subjects to us from a young age. I'm talking the age of 10 onward and it really was pointless.

Of course you can teach things about Roman Legions, or Athenian ships etc, but if you want to debate and discuss the ideas and foundations of these civilizations (and any philosophy) I honestly think you are fighting an uphill battle until at least 17-18.

Your mind is just not developed enough to handle the kind of ambiguitiy and complexity needed to analyse and judge these ideas. Many people never even reach this ability during university and just parrot ideas that are told to them.

There is a reason teaching children to adhere to a religion from a young age is so controversial in some circles.