Links - 17th April 2019 (2)

Why Smart People Are Vulnerable to Putting Tribe Before Truth - "Unless accompanied by another science-reasoning trait, the capacities associated with science literacy can actually impede public recognition of the best available evidence and deepen pernicious forms of cultural polarization.The supplemental trait needed to make science literacy supportive rather than corrosive of enlightened self-government is science curiosity. Simply put, as ordinary members of the public acquire more scientific knowledge and become more adept at scientific reasoning, they don’t converge on the best evidence relating to controversial policy-relevant facts. Instead they become even more culturally polarized.This is one of the most robust findings associated with the science of science communication... given what positions on climate change have now come to signify about one’s group allegiances, adopting the “wrong” position in interactions with her peers could rupture bonds on which she depends heavily for emotional and material well-being. Under these pathological conditions, she will predictably use her reasoning not to discern the truth but to form and persist in beliefs characteristic of her group, a tendency known as “identity-protective cognition.”... The findings on science curiosity also have implications for the practice of science communication. Merely imparting information is unlikely to be effective—and could even backfire—in a society that has failed to inculcate curiosity in its citizens and that doesn’t engage curiosity when communicating policy-relevant science."

The full story of the sex-crazed tribe cut off from the world for 30,000 years - "The Sentinelese are one of a very few remaining ‘uncontacted peoples’ in the world and they are determined to keep it that way. Which means we know tantalisingly little about their language, their culture, their belief system or even how many of them there are... in 1970, a group of anthropologists approached the island, notebooks and cameras at the ready, and were peppered with arrows and then treated to an energetic beach sex show, described by one observer as a ‘sort of community mating . . . a frenzied dance of desire’... Occasionally, instead of firing weapons, the men wave their penises very angrily and, on rare occasions, would accept the odd coconut before opening fire. But the message has never changed."

Christian missionary's letter to his family before he was killed
Too bad John Chau was not from a favoured minority and/or religion, or liberals wouldn't have celebrated his death

Liberals say immigration enforcement is racist, but the group most likely to benefit from it is black men - "Claims that immigration enforcement equals racism ignore the reality that the group most likely to benefit from a tougher approach to immigration enforcement is young black men, who often compete with recent immigrants for low-skilled jobs... The labor force participation rate for adult black men has declined steadily since the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which ushered in a new era of mass immigration... African Americans tend to be a reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party, but they have repeatedly indicated in public opinion surveys that they want significantly less immigration.A recent Harvard-Harris poll found that African Americans favor reducing legal immigration more than any other demographic group: 85% want less than the million-plus we allow on an annual basis, and 54% opted for the most stringent choices offered — 250,000 immigrants per year or less, or none at all... In a 2010 study on the social effects of immigration, the Cornell University professor Vernon Briggs concluded: “No racial or ethnic group has benefited less or been harmed more than the nation’s African American community.” The Harvard economist George Borjas has found that, between 1980 and 2000, one-third of the decline in the employment among black male high school dropouts was attributable to immigration. He also reported “a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates.”"

Migrants Make Up 40 Percent of French Unemployed Youth - "Migrant youths make up nearly half of the unemployed youth in France, according to statistics gathered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)... The OECD also released similar figures for other countries including Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden with averages of the rate of NEET individuals being lower for natives than for those with a migration background. Unemployment in Sweden, in particular, has shown to be far higher in recent years among migrants than among natives, with a report from last year by the Swedish Public Employment Service revealing that while overall employment had decreased, there remained a large gap between migrants and native Swedes."
This casts doubts on claim that migration is always good for a country's economy. And this doesn't even focus on illegal immigration

Gender Role Identity and Attitudes Toward Feminism - "For female participants, we found positive relationships among higher masculinity on the PAQ (Personal Attributes Questionnaire), nontraditional attitudes toward gender roles, and the combined SRAI (Sex Role Attitudinal Inventory). A negative correlation was also found between lower scores on the PAQ masculinity–femininity index and the combined SRAI in women. For male participants, we found positive relationships among high femininity on the SIS (Sexual Identity Scale), willingness to consider oneself a feminist, positive attitudes toward the women's movement, and the combined SRAI. We also found a negative relationship between high masculinity on the PAQ and willingness to consider oneself a feminist in men... Mezydlo and Betz (1980) compared feminist and nonfeminist perceptions of ideal men and women. Both feminist and nonfeminist men and women described an ideal man as highly masculine. However, feminists described an ideal woman as possessing masculine characteristics... Burn et al. found that high gender self-esteem in women and low gender self-esteem in men were positively related to support for feminism"
This is interesting in the context of feminists dissing masculinity

Notorious Feminist Site That Smeared Aziz Ansari Goes Tits Up - "Babe.net, the website that published anonymous allegations about comedian Aziz Ansari’s sex with a date, is up for sale... Editor Amanda Ross admitted at the time that the Babe.net gave Ansari just six hours on a holiday weekend to respond to the allegations against him on the Saturday of a holiday weekend, whereas the journalistic standard is at least 24 hours... Jezebel published an article, headlined “Babe, What Are You Doing?” that admonished its fellow feminist site to stick to “fidelity to confirmable facts, thorough arguments, and an abiding lack of sensationalism.” Otherwise, the post warned that reporters could “re-traumatize subjects.”"

Being married to a feminist - "The best advice I get from my husband whenever I get into a fight with anyone is, “Yes, you can do it. Show them who is the boss.” He would never take my side and would gladly let me handle the situation. His undying faith on my abilities, sometimes scares me. I imagine a gory reality when I would be physically attacked by someone and my husband would be shouting from above, “Fight back, honey. You can do it!”
While I can survive everything, it still breaks my heart to see how he takes care of our daughter, a 8-month-old baby, better than me. He never hesitates to change her diaper or wake up in the middle of the night to pacify her. It is difficult to admit but he is a better mother (yes, mother is the right word) than me. And strangely, my daughter too responds to his calls while ignoring mine gladly. It hurts to see that...
Surprisingly, I gradually discovered that it was not possible for me to live according to the textbook definition of feminism. And sadly, the distorted version of feminism that I encountered in everyday life, made me question—what actually is feminism?"

Jazz is dominated by men. So what? - "An outfit called Keychange has convinced more than 100 music festivals to sign up to a ‘50:50 gender balance pledge’ by 2022, including the major UK jazz festivals in Cheltenham, Manchester and London (which ends this weekend). The musical powers that be may prefer to regard this target as an ‘aspiration’, but ‘50:50’ is an arithmetic formulation. It’s a quota... Although female vocalists are common, the saxophonist Issie Barratt calculated in 2016 that women constitute a scant 5 per cent of jazz instrumentalists. At the Birmingham Conservatoire where my husband teaches, only three out of 70 instrumental jazz students are female (all three studying sax). That’s less than 5 per cent... Only one in 20 jazz instrumentalists now being female, how do we get half the performers in festivals to be women virtually overnight without compromising standards? We’ve been here before, and this is just a conspicuously insensible iteration of Equal Everything for Everyone (or EEE — catchy)... The matter of ‘too many’ men in jazz is especially perverse, since there’s little evidence that women have been actively discriminated against. Jazz education has been eager to accept more female students for years"

Women working longer hours more likely to be depressed – study - "Women who work more than 55 hours a week are more likely to suffer from depression than those who work the more standard 35-40 hours, a British study has found. In contrast, men who put in the same hours are no more likely to exhibit signs of the condition... Both men and women who work on most or all weekends are more likely to become depressed than those who only work during the week... Two-thirds of men work at weekends compared with half of women"
More reasons for the gender pay gap

Danish doctor warns: Vegan food may lead to mental retardation - "The problem is that poor food, which for example requires the addition of vitamin B12, can have serious consequences for children. And as a result several children on a vegan diet have been treated at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen."

Scandinavian socialism might be a product of 19th-century U.S. immigration. - "Frederick Jackson Turner had an idea that American democracy was forged on the frontier, in harsh conditions that promoted risk-taking, individualism, and a disregard for old customs and hierarchies. Some modern immigration scholars have a related theory, called “voluntary settlement hypothesis,” which posits that self-selection tends to produce groups of immigrants who are more autonomous, independent, and goal-oriented than their neighbors who stayed behind—whether they’re going to a cabin in the hills or a tenement in the city.That would burnish Turner’s ideas about frontier culture, but it would also suggest that regions that underwent the highest rates of out-migration would be shaped by the opposite effect, having lost their most individualistic members to the lure of a better life. (Kind of like brain drain.)... In a new working paper, the economist Anne Sofie Beck Knudsen took a clever approach: She used uncommon first names as a proxy for individualism... Because migration rates from Scandinavia to the United States were so high—the three countries lost 25 percent of their populations between 1850 and 1920—Knudsen thinks this would have substantially changed the makeup of the three countries, lowering the rates of individualists by 3.7 percentage points in Denmark, 9.4 points in Sweden, and 13.6 points in Norway. Wondering why Scandinavians have such high rates of social cooperation today? Maybe it’s because they sent all their individualists to America 100 years ago... Knudsen used U.S. census data from 1900 and 1910 to see what had become of those people once they crossed the ocean. Sure enough, migrants with uncommon names were more likely to speak English, less likely to have married a compatriot, and less likely to choose a Scandinavian name for their own children"

UN environment chief resigns after frequent flying revelations - "The UN’s environment chief, Erik Solheim, has resigned following severe criticism of his global travels and internal rule-breaking which led some nations to withhold their funding."

MarleneJ on Twitter - "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "I am as powerful as a man" and it drives people "crazy""
"Cleopatra was as powerful as a man. Margaret Thatcher was as powerful as a man. Angela Merkel is as powerful as a man.
I can think of literally dozens of examples and none of these women drove people “crazy”.
I somehow doubt that AOC’s sex is the issue"

Tim Young on Twitter - ""The right is so obsessed with Ocasio-Cortez!" - People whose last 800 tweets were about how they hate Trump"

Imam Tawhidi - Posts - "Extremist Pro-Jihad and 9/11 preacher Omar AbdelKafi banned from entering Australia? Nope, he’s still on tour. Milo got the ban. I disagree with Milo on many, many issues, but this is very wrong. This country is called Australia, not Saudi Arabia."
On Milo Yiannopoulos being banned from Oz