Zompist Bboard Again

Sometimes, local elites will get rid of their own people's cultural traditions on the basis that foreign (e.g Western) traditions are superior. Wikipedia on Turkish music: Tekelioğlu has argued that a major reason of this censorship is the republican elites' unwavering belief in absolute truths and ...

What would a radically Utilitarian state’s policies be?

Uninformed people making weird linguistics claims : https://mobile.twitter.com/waytasas/sta ... 0413544461

Hypotheticals aside, Western* cultures are so dominant that 70% of the world uses the Latin Alphabet to write their native languages. *Classifying America, Russia, Europe, Australasia, Latin America as collectively Western https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Latin_alphabet_worl...

This reminds me of a timeline by ruth set in MITHC a generation later, where the Japanese Empire has politically loosened its grip on its clients, but still promotes Japanese emigration and Japanization of its clients to the extent of eventually overshadowing English in the Pacific States. Like cert...

decon_redscript_sample.png Here is one sample of my attempt to implement featural writing. Every element expresses some phonological feature with the arrangement of these elements in the block also having featural significance. The sheer level of discontinuity bugs me since it renders pretty much e...

Also, I will refrain from - and I advise others to do likewise, to refrain from bringing in non-academic commentary on culture, since culture wars are widely discussed topic among non-academic writers and I do not wish to have every third post be JoeThePundit's opinion on something

Back on topic, is there a formula-based way to measure how much a culture converges from, diverges from and borrows from neighboring and distant cultures, quantifiable through units?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/ I don’t think this article is pushing for a world culture at all. He spends a whole third of it presenting arguments why it might be a bad idea! (And by the way, he prefers to go by the name Scott Alexander.) Point taken - although he does...

This thread is for discussion about nationalism, culture wars and the intersection of politics and culture, to match the capitalism/socialism etc. thread Some people I know not only push for a world government, but also a world culture to match. Scott Siskind argued it is already occurring: (CW: lon...

Why did the number of tones gradually reduce to 4 in Mandarin from Middle Chinese? I don't think there's any way to say why , but the first thing to notice is that ru tone was spoiled by the loss of final stops, so its syllables were distributed to the other tones. So after that change, it was 6 to...

Why did the number of tones gradually reduce to 4 in Mandarin from Middle Chinese?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAz1FjSWYAEfCBT?format=jpg&name=medium There are advocates of “National Divorce” along red-blue/urban-rural lines The problem with that would be that it would allow the Republicans to lord over the red areas, when the real goal ought to be to exclude them from power ...

Evaluating long-shot political proposals is more conwording than activism. But hey, I love conworlding! On a more serious note, what kinds of economic policies would a “degrowthist-green” government pursue? Here are some concrete proposals Promotion of local currencies, elimination of fiat money an...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAz1FjSWYAE ... ame=medium
There are advocates of “National Divorce” along red-blue/urban-rural lines

So what you’re saying in the previous posts is that what LeGuin describes the Always Coming Home society to be like is materially impossible because a lack of industrial-scale economy means poverty, and socially impossible since the absence of coercive authority means many of the “beneficial” taboo...

BTW; relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36rjDJ81GK0 So what you’re saying in the previous posts is that what LeGuin describes the Always Coming Home society to be like is materially impossible because a lack of industrial-scale economy means poverty, and socially impossible since the absence...

They carry a large accumulation of genetic damage, which leads to fewer successful pregnancies and higher infant mortality. If this is sufficient to make it work, then they are effectively an alien species that is incapable of developing an industrial society. Like human societies that were too poo...

The Kesh maintain this low population without coercion How? According to wikipedia, They carry a large accumulation of genetic damage, which leads to fewer successful pregnancies and higher infant mortality. They also have social taboos against multiple siblings and early pregnancies; a third child...

The Kesh maintain this low population without coercion How? According to wikipedia, They carry a large accumulation of genetic damage, which leads to fewer successful pregnancies and higher infant mortality. They also have social taboos against multiple siblings and early pregnancies; a third child...