Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest actively encouraged the formation of geological structures in order to increase shellfish yield and sustainability. You seem to think that the simplest explanation is that people just copied happy accidents, when the level of sophistication of these systems combined with the documented propensity of humans to actively engineer their way out of problems leads to the simplest explanation being that what we see with both the food forests and mariculture is such active engineering.
The only way to come to a different conclusion is to assume that something is fundamentally different between Old World and New World populations just because one group's processes are relatively well-documented and the other's isn't. However, that conclusion would be colored by your relative inexperience with the shape of New World solutions. We're just discovering these phenomena because we didn't have the vision to see that they existed, biased as we are to the Eurasian perspective. If all you know are wheels, you won't recognize llama tracks, as it were.
These kinds of posts are always fascinating to me, as someone who had to move heaven and earth to get a graphics tablet and a PC that could run XP and Blender c. 2006. It's not like we were in particularly dire straits financially, and were on the more rational side of "overly sheltered" (having known people who couldn't attend school clubs or who had a parent hovering over their shoulder every time they got online), but the freedom and access some of y'all had is just... hard for me to fathom. Like, whose credit card were you using??
For some of the stuff in the early days we could mail cashiers checks with the order number, bypassing need for credit card. Sure it took longer, but you could still buy a lot of stuff that way.
It's not about people who have already gone through it, or about yourself. It's about people who are still going through it, and how you treat them. For most people, the delta isn't (just) used to justify their own self-destruction, but to justify their cruelty to others. You never know what battles people are fighting. And while it's true that someone can do a lot of damage to themselves, that pales in comparison to what a group of others who don't understand their struggle can do to them.
I also fear that people will use this as an excuse to disregard the fundamental effect of expectation on performance. Speaking anecdotally, my own academic performance was marked by clear lines of correlation (if not causation) with the presence or lack of a welcoming, supportive environment.
Precalculus: Nurturing black woman teacher, other black males in course: high marks.
Calculus: Caustic white male teacher, only black male in course: low marks.
Calculus (college): Black male teacher, class was largely black: high marks.
AP Lang: Supportive, young white woman teacher, only black male in course: mediocre marks, 5 on exam.
AP Lit: Biased, older white woman teacher, only black male in course: mediocre marks, 4 on exam.
If not stereotype threat, something analogous is clearly at work. But I imagine that whatever that might be, the cadre of "unsurprised" commenters here will continue to have issue with it.
(Apologies for the terseness of this reply, my original was lost.)
>For this reason I think WFH is a massively more risky social experiment than most realize.
I think it's the opposite. The standard where people commute to the office, spend all day in the workplace, and commute home with barely enough time to tend to their needs is the failed social experiment, creating unprecedented levels of isolation and entire generations of people who can't form relations outside of work.
I also don't think it's all that healthy for people's primary avenue for building friendships being in a venue where layoffs and transfers could disrupt that process suddenly and without any real recourse.
One thing the marketing of industrialization (I want to say propaganda, but I know how people are...) was quite successful at was in erasing memory of the period just before, when piece-work at home (and farming, lots of farming) was the primary form productive labor took. There is quite a lot of documentation of industrial bosses complaining about such set-ups because they allowed workers to set their own hours and modulate their output to their needs (excuse me, "be lazy").
Putting on my contrarian hat: the studies he mentions seem to be concerned with whether testing conditions affect stereotype threat effects. Logically, they can't prove or deny the phenomenon's existence, only whether testing conditions result in changes to test outcomes that could track with interventions to reduce stereotype threat. Much of what we know about how behavioral effects of identity comes with the understanding that the latter is something people carry with them, regardless of local or recent events. If there's a problem with stereotype threat as a concept, it's that it's positioned as a superficial effector that can be manipulated easily, rather than the surface level manifestation of complex interactions between self-identity, personal values, and cultural expectations. Based on the author's disclosure about his PhD thesis, he seems to be someone who capitalized on the former characterization, so of course he throws the baby out with the bathwater when it no longer works for those purposes. We might be looking at an ass-covering write-up.
>Let’s play “Find the Lebowski quotes game” again!
So, yeah, I find this a deeply unserious blog post.
He must throw the baby out with the bathwater - so far there is no evidence for anything here. The only alternative is to rerun the study, doing it correctly this time and then do a correct analysis. Until then you need to say "I don't know" when asked about this as that is all science allows. Maybe the rest of the baby they are throwing out will replicate and thus is correct - but nobody knows that and so we cannot say anything with confidence right now.
I'm assuming you are not aware of studies not mentioned here that replicate - I'm not in this field and so I would not know where to look. I'm guessing that you also are not in this field and are looking for some way to allow your bias to become true despite these issues - but of course I might be wrong.
Let me analogize. This is a blog post that claims that racism isn't real. As proof, the author explains that none of the studies that show a reduction in racism when you remind people that Michael Jordan and Beyonce exist can be replicated. Well, okay, sure. And the guy who earned a doctorate with the thesis, "Does Playing Jackson 5 Make People Less Racist?" might want to turn this into, "Racism does not exist," as a way to distance himself from his own terrible scholarship. (Also, did you find his Marvel Cinematic Universe Easter Eggs?)
So, thus far, there is actually not enough evidence to throw the, "Racism exists," baby out with the, "Do these interventions affect racist belief?" bathwater. And since we're second-guessing biases, it's super weird that you're always in comment sections of (politically-charged) articles concerning fields you're not in.
I think that contrarian hat may include a no-true-scotsman badge.
If stereotype threat is real, we should be able to have a replicatable study result that confirms it, right? We're not just limited to logical inference, I hope.
Most of the "cost" (at least in the West) can be attributed to people dragging their feet on adapting to remote set-ups and the efficiencies they bring. Businessmen didn't want to do business remotely, teachers didn't want to teach remotely, event planners didn't want to do virtual events; so, they sabotaged the shift. Too bad for the collateral damage of anyone who was underserved during this period, and the environment, and everyone who benefited from their newfound accessibility.
Oooh, that's interesting to me, as someone who sees a common pattern in the way ills that tend to vex black Americans in one generation come back to haunt the rest of the country a few down the road (and often, silently, visited Native Americans first)[1]. There's been a decent amount of scholarship on the gulf between white and black Americans on their experience of the moon landing (shining beacon of progress versus a waste of taxpayer money while food and housing was insecure). Now, everyone's feeling the, "Can you please fund basic things that actually matter," blues. (For the NA analogue, perhaps the way the "progress" of industrialization made their subjugation and denial of land all the easier.)
[1]E.g., the crack epidemic, the opioid epidemic, and alcoholism on reservations, respectively.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24712701
https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-8/targeted-interventions...
https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/indigenous-peoples-have...
Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest actively encouraged the formation of geological structures in order to increase shellfish yield and sustainability. You seem to think that the simplest explanation is that people just copied happy accidents, when the level of sophistication of these systems combined with the documented propensity of humans to actively engineer their way out of problems leads to the simplest explanation being that what we see with both the food forests and mariculture is such active engineering.
The only way to come to a different conclusion is to assume that something is fundamentally different between Old World and New World populations just because one group's processes are relatively well-documented and the other's isn't. However, that conclusion would be colored by your relative inexperience with the shape of New World solutions. We're just discovering these phenomena because we didn't have the vision to see that they existed, biased as we are to the Eurasian perspective. If all you know are wheels, you won't recognize llama tracks, as it were.