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by bbor 260 days ago
This is an absurd article, I’m sorry. To accept the explanation of “brown people are just worse” as possible, but to throw out “colonialism shaped the modern world” because Australia is rich is so clearly biased that it reads like a strawman. Also, are they aware that Australia is quite hot…?

Putting that huge issue aside for more fundamental ones: certainly climate impacts culture in the aggregate to some extent, but the overall framing here is way too overconfident. There’s about a million confounding variables when assessing different societies over large time scales, the largest of which are A) technology and B) to what extent GDP is even a primary goal. Asking if heat makes societies poorer is like asking if rivers make societies richer: it depends!
2 comments
phyzix5761 260 days ago
I think I missed it but where do they say "brown people are just worse"?
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mzajc 260 days ago
They hint at it:

> 5. Race

> This theory is extremely contested, and I haven’t independently assessed it, so I won’t go into any detail, but for sake of completeness we must add the hypothesis that race also has influence in economic development. I might eventually make an independent assessment of the claim.

If you haven't "independently assessed" it and have zero details to add, please leave it out until you do!

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tbrownaw 260 days ago
> If you haven't "independently assessed" it and have zero details to add, please leave it out until you do!

Sounds like a "no I did not forget this" marker.

See also, "this page intentionally left blank".

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happytoexplain 260 days ago
Why? There's no reason to inject hostility like this. It's not as if the author said, "I suspect brown people are stupid, but I won't make any formal claims until I perform an assessment."
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bbor 260 days ago 

  Yeah, I'm open to the idea that women are made for the kitchen and are too stupid to participate in public life. You should keep an open mind!
You see the problem here?
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akdor1154 260 days ago
> Also, are they aware that Australia is quite hot?

That's about as specific as saying the U.S. is quite hot.. you'd be interested to compare the cultures of Darwin and Melbourne or Hobart.

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