IMMIGRATION thread

[Montmorency]

How do you suppose cultural attitudes change? If at some point many or most people in a country believed in witches; and then, at some point, most do not - how did that come about? Was there an unbroken chain from one end of the country the other consisting of people telling people their acquaintances "I doubt witches exist"? I presume not, and that once the state stopped prosecuting people for witchcraft, people's beliefs started to follow suit (or because of some other centralised process, like a religious decree).

Kind of a strawman. In the first place, people had many varying beliefs about witches, and these circulated in a stable fashion. Other changes in society, least of all lack of prosecution, led to de-emphasis and finally abrogation or neutralization of beliefs in witchcraft.

Not sure what you are saying here, but the idea is not that any culture or viewpoint dominates any other, but that factors that drive cultural change become the same in many different cultures.

Yes, I said that's wrong, and moreover any factors that drive cultural change in similar ways across cultures do not develop as such but simply exist as a fact of the nature of culture.

Today, many 'regular' people become activists and are often part of international organisations.

"Local" people assimilate international ideas to local contexts. Internationally-minded intellectuals are the ones who spread, among each other, the discourses with which we're more familiar. This mistake you make is one of the factors that led many to misinterpret the events of the "Arab Spring". A selection bias.

What is one large obstacle facing English farmers who want to settle in the Afghan countryside? Security.

That obstacle is beside the point. Security is not an obstacle to their settlement in the United States, yet that hasn't been a trend for a 150 years, a time when the United States was much less safe.

What is needed for your scenario is first and foremost

As I said, I believe the first and foremost necessity would be top-down allocation to drive the movement and interaction of people in such a way.

I am not sure what you mean by 'lightly-urbanized'

More specifically to the Afghan context, I see their geography and demographic distribution as entailing much of the countryside become dotted with interconnected small towns around a handful of major urban centers. In Scandinavia, it's simply a matter of fact that the south and coasts carry most of the population, so infrastructure through mountains and tundra is more relevant to the transportation of goods than directly connecting and servicing residents. This doesn't have bearing to the larger topic.

[Viking]

Kind of a strawman. In the first place, people had many varying beliefs about witches, and these circulated in a stable fashion. Other changes in society, least of all lack of prosecution, led to de-emphasis and finally abrogation or neutralization of beliefs in witchcraft.

Not so much a straw man as an explanation aimed at your "??", accompanied by a question for which model(s) you are using for cultural evolution.

So, would you maintain that the decline in the belief in witches and supernatural creatures was by and large not driven by any centralised process - i.e. not driven by science or formal education? What exactly caused the decline?

Yes, I said that's wrong, and moreover any factors that drive cultural change in similar ways across cultures do not develop as such but simply exist as a fact of the nature of culture.

I am not sure what you are saying here, so I'll bring up a specific, theoretical example:

Person in a culture with little focus on animal welfare happens upon the web page for an organisation for homeless dogs in a culture with much focus on animal welfare. Person empathises with the organisation due to (I presume) an innate function of humans to empathise with other beings, such as dogs (and ugly ones). Person then creates a local version or branch of this organisation and gets media attention. Through this and similar organisations (that eventually start to pop up), the attitudes regarding animal welfare in person's culture starts to approach the attitudes in the other culture (as it may become considered generally more advanced and/or authoritative in person's culture for this particular topic).

One of the things that is underlying my prediction for cultural convergence is the (presumed) fact that most humans - regardless of culture - run a similar operating system in their minds (which can support software requiring empathy, jealousy and so on), so to speak. So in this scenario, the original organisation was created because of the same empathy function that caused the new organisation to be founded in the other culture. The reason why the organisation did not already exist in the other culture could be more or less arbitrary (like the fact that any trend typically starts at one specific or a limited number of places), or that the original organisation was started in a wealthier country where people are more likely to feel that they have the time and resources needed to dedicate themselves to such a cause.

"Local" people assimilate international ideas to local contexts.

Exactly. The ideas are not supposed survive as identical copies in individual cultures, but to pull the cultures in question in a similar direction. The more factors you have pulling in a similar direction, the less difference there will be between cultures when it comes to the adaptation the original ('pure') ideas or new ideas will require; as the other parts of the cultures that required this adaption have also changed - in a similar direction.

That obstacle is beside the point. Security is not an obstacle to their settlement in the United States, yet that hasn't been a trend for a 150 years, a time when the United States was much less safe.

As I said, I believe the first and foremost necessity would be top-down allocation to drive the movement and interaction of people in such a way.

I thought of your comment as "why isn't this happening already" rather than "I think this needs to happen first", so never mind.

More specifically to the Afghan context, I see their geography and demographic distribution as entailing much of the countryside become dotted with interconnected small towns around a handful of major urban centers. In Scandinavia, it's simply a matter of fact that the south and coasts carry most of the population, so infrastructure through mountains and tundra is more relevant to the transportation of goods than directly connecting and servicing residents. This doesn't have bearing to the larger topic.

But why would this light urbanisation be necessary?

[Montmorency]

by any centralised process - i.e. not driven by science or formal education?

By definition these would not be centrally-derived effects unless it was inculcated dictat that "there are no such things as witches; you must not credit their existence". But largely it was other facts of the organization of society, especially changes in political structure and in urbanization, that caused de-emphasis in prevalence of the ideas. They just weren't as useful to apply to the world, and thus became used less often. Science and education were parallel, not driving, factors.

Person in a culture with little focus on animal welfare happens upon the web page for an organisation for homeless dogs in a culture with much focus on animal welfare. Person empathises with the organisation due to (I presume) an innate function of humans to empathise with other beings, such as dogs (and ugly ones). Person then creates a local version or branch of this organisation and gets media attention. Through this and similar organisations (that eventually start to pop up), the attitudes regarding animal welfare in person's culture starts to approach the attitudes in the other culture (as it may become considered generally more advanced and/or authoritative in person's culture for this particular topic).

Be careful, as now you are shifting the focus, and the question. For all intents and purposes, we could take these persons, one apathetic to animal welfare (as philosophy), and another being member of a animal-welfare organization, and have them be neighbors in adjacent apartment or other units. In other words, there is already a considerable cultural scaffold and milieu that abets interpretation in-fact and in content. To put it in the terms we were using earlier, of actual distant acculturation, then we see that it really does not work in this way across the world. Part of the reason is also that cultural elements do not stand alone, but interconnect and reinforce each other. For example, taking conspiracy theorists from the other thread, giving evidence against or wholesale alternatives to one belief or set of beliefs rarely works because beliefs will both require and compensate for each other, leading to conservation until there is some critical point from within the perspective of that system, and not from a perspective outside it.

This idea is a relevant one.

One of the things that is underlying my prediction for cultural convergence is the (presumed) fact that most humans - regardless of culture - run a similar operating system in their minds (which can support software requiring empathy, jealousy and so on), so to speak. So in this scenario, the original organisation was created because of the same empathy function that caused the new organisation to be founded in the other culture.

But this is precisely what creates such diversity in the first place. Even clonal organisms will diverge wildly when placed in different environments.

The reason why the organisation did not already exist in the other culture could be more or less arbitrary (like the fact that any trend typically starts at one specific or a limited number of places), or that the original organisation was started in a wealthier country where people are more likely to feel that they have the time and resources needed to dedicate themselves to such a cause.

No, not arbitrary! Geography and climate are precisely what will generate the bulk of difference between cultures - and that's before we begin to take exchange into account.

Exactly. The ideas are not supposed survive as identical copies in individual cultures, but to pull the cultures in question in a similar direction. The more factors you have pulling in a similar direction, the less difference there will be between cultures when it comes to the adaptation the original ('pure') ideas or new ideas will require; as the other parts of the cultures that required this adaption have also changed - in a similar direction.

Then you would need to introduce material factors, as simply pointing out exposure to culture will not entail (often the contrary) that there will be pull in a "similar direction".

But why would this light urbanisation be necessary?

Simply as a function of transport/communications infrastructure, and to permit more than haphazard growth of population or polity.

[Viking]

By definition these would not be centrally-derived effects unless it was inculcated dictat that "there are no such things as witches; you must not credit their existence". But largely it was other facts of the organization of society, especially changes in political structure and in urbanization, that caused de-emphasis in prevalence of the ideas. They just weren't as useful to apply to the world, and thus became used less often. Science and education were parallel, not driving, factors.

Science is typically produced at centres (cities, institutions) by a small amount of people (relative to the size of the population), hence centralised. I presume the changes in political structure referred to here were also dictated from central authorities.

Urbanisation does not explain how beliefs in supernatural creatures also disappeared from the countrysides. These trends ultimately manifested themselves both in rural and urban populations with little long-term difference. Yet the physical flow of people tended to be mostly in one direction: from countryside to city, no?

Be careful, as now you are shifting the focus, and the question. For all intents and purposes, we could take these persons, one apathetic to animal welfare (as philosophy), and another being member of a animal-welfare organization, and have them be neighbors in adjacent apartment or other units. In other words, there is already a considerable cultural scaffold and milieu that abets interpretation in-fact and in content. To put it in the terms we were using earlier, of actual distant acculturation, then we see that it really does not work in this way across the world. Part of the reason is also that cultural elements do not stand alone, but interconnect and reinforce each other. For example, taking conspiracy theorists from the other thread, giving evidence against or wholesale alternatives to one belief or set of beliefs rarely works because beliefs will both require and compensate for each other, leading to conservation until there is some critical point from within the perspective of that system, and not from a perspective outside it.

This idea is a relevant one.

Not sure what you are talking about here. The scenario like the one I created is precisely something I had in mind right from the start. In a typical modern culture (at the least), you can expect plurality of opinion, even polarisation. What I have in mind in this context, is that common opinions (polarised or not) about topics should become similar between cultures over time, as ideas flow back and forth. Initial local versions of an ideology or movement might be very different from the ones found in cultures that inspired their creations, however: more extreme in some respects, less extreme in others; maybe entirely lacking some parts.

Of course different elements of a culture can be heavily dependent on each other. In this context, having multiple factors simultaneously pushing for change is important - and, indeed, the right (relevant) factors all acting simultaneously. In the longer run, I would anticipate that this would happen at some point (simple probability; it may be necessary to assume that older cultural influences do not revert or drift too much in the meantime), where the elements that depend on each other are all pulled in the same direction simultaneously.

But this is precisely what creates such diversity in the first place. Even clonal organisms will diverge wildly when placed in different environments.

What globalisation is doing, is to make parts of the environment more similar for all cultures affected by it. The factors that drive cultures in similar directions are of course in sum supposed to make up an important part of this environment per definition (the environment being the collection of all things that influence culture).

Geography and climate are precisely what will generate the bulk of difference between cultures [...]

Do you have sources that back you this up? I mean, the food eaten and which clothes worn when should be expected to differ from place to place, but cultures that already exist do span across significantly different geographies and climates.

Then you would need to introduce material factors, as simply pointing out exposure to culture will not entail (often the contrary) that there will be pull in a "similar direction".

I am primarily not thinking of just exposure to other cultures. The factors in question are supposed to penetrate into and/or stay embedded in the culture (at least for some time). So, if an ideology spreads to a new culture, I model its members as a group that can be almost entirely independent of people in other cultures over shorter time scales; but because most of the ideology remains very similar across cultures, the contribution to the local public debate from followers of the ideology will also be very similar across cultures.

Simply as a function of transport/communications infrastructure, and to permit more than haphazard growth of population or polity.

Afraid I still fail to see the necessity.

[AE Bravo]

http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/berli....co/EbOuBkQZYz

Her dad tried to attack the rapist but the police shot him. To flee terror and getting raped and losing her father in Germany from some migrant. Tragic.

I hope he gets his shit kicked in in jail.

[Fragony]

You couldn't make it up, 'refugees' from Marocco get almost 2000 euro pocket money and a free ticket for the plane once they are naturally denied asylum-status, do that twice a year and you make twice the anual salary you do there. Except for the occupied area (western sahara) nobody likes to mentions because uhmmmmmm, well free palestine now schnapps!!! Marocco is a relatively free and safe country why not send them back immediatly, with only what they came with.

[Husar]

You couldn't make it up, 'refugees' from Marocco get almost 2000 euro pocket money and a free ticket for the plane once they are naturally denied asylum-status, do that twice a year and you make twice the anual salary you do there. Except for the occupied area (western sahara) nobody likes to mentions because uhmmmmmm, well free palestine now schnapps!!! Marocco is a relatively free and safe country why not send them back immediatly, with only what they came with.

Maybe the development aid we send there is reduced accordingly?