tripu @tripu@qoto.org

@eslibre 👍❗

This 4-hour-long #episode of the #MakingSense #podcast with #SamHarris & #BalajiSrinivasan is golden. Highly recommended.

https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/259-reckoning-come/

([One hour for non-subscribers](https://samharris.org/podcasts/259-reckoning-come/))

#politics #economics #tech #crypto

Fun: swap synonyms “#inequality” and “#diversity” in #MSM headlines!

> _“#Australia is undoubtedly a democracy, with multiple political parties, regular elections, and the peaceful transfer of power. But if a country **indefinitely forbids its own citizens from leaving its borders, strands tens of thousands of its citizens abroad, puts strict rules on intrastate travel, prohibits citizens from leaving home without an excuse from an official government list, mandates masks even when people are outdoors and socially distanced, deploys the military to enforce those rules, bans protest, and arrests and fines dissenters**, is that country still a liberal #democracy?”_

— [_The Atlantic_](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/)

…and now, this!

> _“Australia now has a **warrantless #surveillance regime** on the books […] There is **no one to argue on your behalf**, and **there is never any notification to the individual (even after the fact)** so you will never know if you were subject to any of these powers.”_

— [_Digital Rights Watch_](https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2021/09/02/australias-new-mass-surveillance-mandate/)

> _“More than 4,700 #books were removed from #library shelves at 30 schools across the #school board, and they have since been destroyed or are in the process of being recycled.”_

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/book-burning-at-ontario-francophone-schools-as-gesture-of-reconciliation-denounced

https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2173236

#Nodejs #npm #JS

> _“I discovered when I started making #money that I didn't really need it. When you have such an excess of money you don't need, the most sensible, most human and completely obvious thing is to give to people in need.”_

— [Avicii](https://www.timberglingfoundation.org/about-tim)

#EffectiveAltruism #EA #philanthropy

@codewiz

Congrats! That's amazing.

> _“At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, #women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%.”_

> _“U.S. colleges and #universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.”_

> _“This #educationgap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years.”_

> _“After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of #men during the same period.”_

> _“In the next few years, two women will earn a #college degree for every man, if the trend continues.”_

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/09/u-s-a-facts-of-the-day-2.html

#feminism #gender #educationgap #gammabias #mensrights

@koalie

Hahaha… 😆

I don't blame you: I haven't found yet a good alternative myself 😟

@flickr@mastodon.social

@koalie: no, but you're the only one still _using_ @flickr@mastodon.social 😃

@Elucidating

Finally:

> _“You then argue that the only way to address any injustice in systemic sexism is to attack *all* sexism. But this is a ludicrous proposition that I doubt you actually agree with in broad strokes.”_

Of course I think we should “attack all sexism”. How could it be otherwise? Don't you want to combat “all” racism, “all” violence, “all” disinformation…?

What I have _never_ said is that all manifestations of sexism are equal in importance, or equally pressing — or that both sexes suffer sexism in the same degree. Now, _that_ would be a ludicrous proposition.

For instance: I think we all should put resources towards the eradication of (and speak out loudly against) #FGM, honour killings (mostly female), child soldiers (mostly male), any discrimination in the law on the basis of sex (eg, monarchies extending exclusively in the male-line, military draft for males only), oppressive social norms that still prevent girls from getting and education and a job and becoming independent… — we need to focus much more on all that, before tackling customisable pronouns everywhere, cultural abuse towards introverted male nerds, dress codes, accurate parity in parliaments or shareholders' meetings, redesigning all iconography in public spaces to make it fully inclusive, etc.

If that's where we disagree, I can easily clarify that misunderstanding, and I'm glad that our views are actually closer than it seemed.

@Elucidating

You say that I “cherrypick a specific set of dictionary senses” for the term “patriarchy”, and offer three alternative definitions that supposedly “are more structural and less prescriptive”.

The problem is, you are cherrypicking even more, since **none of the quotations you cite are listed as the first meaning, or appear in the first paragraph of those sources**. This is not irrelevant in the context of our discussion, because **the first entries in those dictionaries, and the first sentence in that encyclopedia, all give a very specific and prescriptive definition**.

These are all the first entries/sentences from your own sources, verbatim (in bold, my emphasis):

👉 [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy):

> _“Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold **primary power** and predominate in roles of **political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property**.”_

👉 [American Heritage Dictionary](https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=patriarchy):

> _“1. A social system in which **the father is the head of the family**. 2. **Dominance of a society by men**, or the values that uphold such dominance.”_

👉 [Dictionary.com](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/patriarchy):

> _“A form of social organization in which the father is the **supreme authority** in the family, clan, or tribe and **descent is reckoned in the male line**, with the **children belonging to the father's** clan or tribe.”_

@Elucidating

> _“If we were to device a series of observational tests which ask, ‘what structure would patriarchal societies take?’ we'd find a lot of positive results.”_

“Structure” is too vague a term, but I like this general idea. 👍 I agree that this would be a useful heuristic to “test for” #patriarchy.

To avoid biases, the experiment would have to be conducted having fixed, _ex-ante_, a few parameters and criteria. Otherwise, results could be interpreted to support pretty much any hypothesis.

In that spirit, here I suggest some improvements:

1️⃣ **_How many_ of those “structures” must exist for a society to qualify as “patriarchal”?** ie, what if we find just two or three of those structures? or, what if we find many, but most of them are of low importance, or circumscribed to very specific areas of life?

2️⃣ For the sake of consistency, we should also **ask “what structure would patriarchal societies NOT take?”, and test for that**, too. Positive findings here would _weaken_ our confidence in the hypothesis, namely that the society being examined is indeed “patriarchal”.

3️⃣ All participants in the test should commit to considering any conceivable aspect of life or measure of well-being as **_supportive_ of the patriarchy hypothesis _iff_ statistically _women do worse than men on average_**. And conversely, any area where statistically _men do worse than women on average_ contributes to _undermine_ the hypothesis. This is to proscribe the insidious sleight of hand of explaining that women on average earn less money than their male colleagues because “men exert power and control in society”, and also that boys on average fail school more often than their female classmates… because “men exert power and control in society” (!).

WDYT? Agree on the terms before conducting the “experiment”?