Links - 16th January 2020 (2)

How The Medieval Church's Obsession With Incest Shaped Western Values Today - "Most people living in Western, developed countries are psychologically distinct from the rest of the world.For one, they tend to be more individualistic and think of themselves as being independent of other people."There is a stronger sense of autonomy and agency," says Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, who, in 2010, along with some colleagues published a study describing these psychological attributes of people in so-called Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic (WEIRD) countries... A new study published Thursday in Science suggests it all began in the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church pushed a way of life that broke up extended family networks and paved the way for nuclear families, weaker family ties and a more individualistic mindset. The researchers looked up records in the Vatican's archives and found that, starting in the early Middle Ages — around A.D. 500 — the church began to advance a set of policies that banned people from marrying anyone within their extended families.At the time, marriages within extended families were common in Europe, says Joseph Henrich, a human evolutionary biologist at Harvard University and an author of the new study. In this and other aspects, European society was very much like other parts of the world, he adds... Marriage within extended families helped keep wealth and property within the family, and the family networks were also people's safety net. "So your main fallback when shocks hit — say you got injured, or drought hit, or something — you're going to fall back on this network of kin relationships to take care of you," says Henrich.That also meant people had obligations toward others in their extended families... "[In] some societies, you might have to bury your brother-in-law, or you might have to avenge the deaths of certain cousins if they're killed or murdered."...  the places in Western Europe that were under the influence of the Catholic Church were more likely to have lower rates of cousin marriages and weaker ties to extended families.And people in these places also had the psychological characteristics typical to WEIRD countries, like individualism, independence, lower levels of conformity to others and a higher level of trust of strangers (as opposed to trusting those within one's own community).Places that were under the influence of the Catholic Church for a longer period of time had a higher likelihood of having this psychological profile.This impact on the social structure and psychology showed up even within individual countries. For example, when the researchers looked at northern and southern Italy, they found that the northern region, where the Catholic Church has had a stronger and longer hold, was more WEIRD in its psychology than the south, which has been under the Orthodox Church and part of the Islamic society. The researchers also looked at potential confounding factors like income levels and wealth, the history of a country, its ecology and the kind of agriculture practiced there. No other factor besides the Catholic Church's influence was associated with the social structures and psychology of WEIRD countries... the Church kept widening the circle of relatives that one wasn't allowed to marry. "By early second millennium, they've extended it out to sixth cousins," he says.The bans didn't just include blood relatives — they also included relatives by marriage and spiritual relatives, he adds. There are also bans on adoption and remarriage."If you eliminate adoption and remarriage, you prevent lineages from getting heirs and lineages literally die out," he says... "In some sense, the church is killing off clans, and they're often getting the lands in wealth""
Medieval Catholicism nudged Europe towards democracy and development - God and Mammon - "Social capital can take centuries to amass. Mr Putnam has shown that parts of Italy that were ruled by a feudal monarchy around 1300AD have low levels of social trust and are relatively poor today. In contrast, the Italian regions that formed city-states in that era, where citizens banded together for commerce and self-defence, are now unusually rich and well-run.A recent study by Jonathan Schulz, Joseph Henrich and two other scholars proposes an explanation that delves even further back in time. They focus on family structure. Until recent human history, people lived in small groups and often married relatives. These habits reinforced family ties, but made people wary of outsiders. In Europe this started to change around 500AD, when the Catholic church began banning polygamy and marriages between cousins, or between widows or widowers and their dead spouses’ siblings. These edicts forced unmarried men to venture out and meet women from different social groups. The paper says that this reduced Christians’ “conformity and in-group loyalty”, and made them trust strangers more. By expanding the community beyond clans, it helped create the broad solidarity on which development may depend...  In places where Catholicism was generally the leading religion from 500-1500AD, people score highly on measures of independence, impartiality and trust—such as agreeing to testify against a friend whose reckless driving killed a pedestrian. The same pattern occurs in countries settled mostly by Christian migrants, such as America. In contrast, social trust is lower and marriage between cousins is relatively common in areas whose populations do not descend from medieval Catholics. This effect distinguishes Catholicism from other strands of medieval Christianity"
Another explanation for "white privilege"

Competition watchdog proposes crackdown on widespread tricks by online travel booking firms - "Singapore’s competition watchdog is moving to crack down on the proliferation of online travel booking sites that try to trick consumers with hidden fees, such as credit card charges, or use misleading pressure tactics to get a quick sale...
1. Drip pricing
How it works: Drip pricing is when online sites do not disclose both mandatory and optional charges upfront...
2. Pre-ticked boxes...
3. Strikethrough pricing
How it works: This is when a discount price is displayed beside the purported “original” price, which has a line through it. This misleads consumers into making a purchase — or paying a higher price — when the comparison between a current and a crossed-out price is false or misleading. The consumer may have no way of knowing how the discounted price was derived.
4. Pressure selling using false or misleading claims...
nearly a third of Singaporeans said they have been scammed — or nearly scammed — when booking a holiday online."

Spectacularly unreliable MRI “results” - "People mostly assume that MRI is a reliable technology, but if you send the same patient to get ten different MRIs, interpreted by ten different radiologists from different facilities, apparently you get ten markedly different explanations for her symptoms. A 63-year-old volunteer with sciatica allowed herself to be scanned again and again and again for science. The radiologists — who did not know they were being tested — cooked up forty-nine distinct “findings.” Sixteen were unique; not one was found in all ten reports, and only one was found in nine of the ten. On average, each radiologist made about a dozen errors, seeing one or two things that weren’t there and missing about ten things that were. That’s a lot of errors, and not a lot of reliability. The authors clearly believe that some MRI providers are better than others, and that’s probably true, but we also need to ask the question: is any MRI reliable?"

Student Who Sold Her Virginity For £1 Million Has Fallen In Love With The Man Who Bought Her - "Young student Jasmine flogged her virginity for £1 million ($1,373,249) to travel the world and set up her own business but has fallen for the man who bought her for sex. The 20-year-old from Paris, France, intended to save her first time having sex for marriage, until discovering Cinderella Escorts... "I don't want to go into details but what I can say is that we are going to date each other again."It is too early to talk about love yet. We like each other, and we'll see what will happen in the future."I am happy that I was lucky with the man who bought my virginity. He is smart, successful and I like older men. Maybe we will travel the world together."... Despite coming from a religious family, she opted to sell her first coital experience to cover family expenses, travel the world and start her own company. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? ... Cinderella Escorts says its highest sale made so far was for American Giselle who sold her virginity to a businessman from Abu Dhabi for €2.5 million (£2.1m/$2.8m)."

Data proves it: Authoritarian leaders are bad for the economy - "autocrats were either damaging or inconsequential for the economy of their countries. Besides showing the poor economic outcomes of oppressive regimes, the study calls into question the idea of “benevolent dictators”—for instance Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew or Rwanda’s Paul Kagame—who are commonly believed to be good for the economy. “Autocrats with positive effects are found at best as frequently as predicted by chance, while autocrats with negative effects are found in abundance,” wrote Stephanie Rizio and Ahmed Skali, the authors of the paper. Strongmen mostly leave a county’s economy worse than they found it, or simply “ride the wave” of an economic growth that would have happened regardless of their rule... In the large majority of cases, countries led by autocrats—whether benevolent or otherwise—were found to have worse economic outcomes in terms of growth than democracies. And not just in the short term: The researchers also looked at delayed growth, testing the hypothesis that reforms put in place by a dictator might take time to bear fruit. They found no demonstrable growth to connect with autocratic rule. Growth isn’t the only economic metric on which autocrats failed to deliver. They also fell short on employment, health and education spending, and government debt... while authoritarians do pay for their bad economic performances, it takes much longer for them to lose popular support and be deposed from power than they do in a democracy under comparable economic circumstances."

China’s misperceptions of Singapore

China closes dozens of “unsafe” scenic glass walkways - "The last few years have been China’s golden age when it comes to glass-bottomed scenic walkways, however, that ambitious age may now be coming to an end... The glass bridge fad really exploded back around 2015 in China and hasn’t slowed down much since, even after a newly-opened bridge on Henan’s Yuntai Mountain cracked.Scenic spots have even stayed busy coming up with new and more daring transparent attractions. Back in June, one person was killed and six others injured after falling off a glass slide at a Guangxi tourist site."

53 People Who Found Ways To Cheat The System - "an online store had this promotion where whoever spent the most money over a month would get free round trip airplane tickets to anywhere in the world. My friend (who's a f**king genius) found that one thing you could buy on the site was a gift certificate. So he bought a $25 gift certificate and kept spending it on another $25 gift certificate. So he ended up spending $25 on round trip tickets to Australia."
"My brother once yelled "last one to jump in the pool is gay," and then jumped into the pool. However, I figured out that if I did not jump in then technically he would be the last one in the pool, and he is still gay to this day."
"When I used to own a console, the auto-renew function for Xbox Live would not allow you to cancel it online, you had to call a number where you would wait on hold and they would try to convince you to keep auto-renew on.I found out if you switched your zip code to Illinois there must have been a state law that forced them to allow you to cancel the same way you would sign up or something like that.So i switched my zip, reloaded the page and magically a "Cancel Auto Renew" button appeared. Good times."
"Using Limewire to download Limewire pro when I was in highschool."
"Instead of buying sandbags to weigh down the bed of my pickup truck in winter, I just shovel the snow right in there. When it warms up, the snow melts. No muss, no fuss."
"Want a tall iced latte at Starbucks? get an iced espresso in house and pour in the milk yourself. This saves you about $1.30. If you want a hot coffee and like milk in it, order in a bigger cup so that you get the full cup of coffee and still have room for milk (for example rather than getting a grande coffee with room for milk, get a tall coffee in a grande cup). There are tons more tricks for the same experience but a little cheaper price when you know the ingredients in the store and what they charge."

Meme - "When You Fight Through All the Feminists and Have to Face the Final Boss"

'I'd like to apologize to absolutely nobody!' McGregor coach unrepentant over 'sexist' gender equality tweet - "Conor McGregor coach John Kavanagh has remained unrepentant over his tweet lampooning a $1 billion pledge to promote gender equality from Microsoft founder Bill Gates' parter Melinda as '"a wife spending her husband's money".A Forbes article reported that Melinda would pledge the hefty sum to promote gender equality in the U.S. over the next 10 years through foundations set up by the couple."

Elizabeth Warren: 'Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy' - "I am not certain when pandering to transgender people became necessary for any Democrat running for president.  Nor do I know what percentage of Democrats are totally convinced that saying you are of the opposite gender means that you are of the opposite gender. But Elizabeth Warren, reacting to an endorsement from a group calling itself "Black Womxn For," spread the pandering on thick"

Elizabeth Warren: Black Transgender & Non-Binary People are 'Backbone of Democracy' - "Senator Warren made the radical claim during a Thursday statement in which she declared that "non-binary" people are central to the "structural change our country needs." Presidential candidate Warren issued the remark after her campaign sealed the endorsement of the far-left activist group “Black Womxn For.”... The group continued by listing off the promises Warren made to the Black Womxn For community.Those commitments include holding a “People’s Policy-Making Summit” that “puts Black women, working people of color, disabled people, Indigenous people, and diverse community leaders and experts in the driver’s seat of structural reforms in her administration.”The activist group also expects Warren to take action by “rooting out the culture of white supremacy.”"