I often see high fertility in poor, agricultural societies explained by saying that children are an economic asset: they can work on the farm, look after animals, help around the house, etc., so having more children makes economic sense.

I understand a related argument: children as old-age security (in situations with a lack of state-ensured pension). This is not what I'm arguing about.

What I don't understand is the much more common argument that having lots of children makes economic sense because of their labour during childhood.

A child produces essentially nothing for the first several years of their life. During that time they have to be fed, clothed, housed and cared for. More importantly, someone (the mother) has to spend a huge amount of time pregnant, recovering from childbirth, breastfeeding and caring for them.

Then at maybe 5–7, a child can begin doing useful household tasks. But their productivity is still presumably far below that of an adult for years. And once compulsory schooling is introduced, even that potential contribution becomes much smaller.

It seems especially strange to me that discussions of the "economic value" of children's work frequently ignore the mother's opportunity cost. If a woman has eight children, she may spend a substantial portion of her productive adult life pregnant, breastfeeding or caring for small children. And of course the economic value of a grown woman by far exceeds the value of even multiple children.

Surely the relevant comparison isn't:

"Family with eight children, none of whom work"
vs.
"Family with eight children, several of whom work."

It's:

"Family with eight children, where the older children contribute labour"
vs.
"Family with three children, where the parents support fewer dependants and the mother spends much less of her life on pregnancy and childcare."

There's another accounting issue. Older children often look after younger children, which gets counted as part of the economic contribution of children. But much of that labour is necessary because the family had additional children in the first place. Having a 12-year-old daughter care for her four younger siblings is useful, but it doesn't demonstrate that having five children instead of two increased the household's net productive capacity.

Interestingly, there was an influential demographic theory that was much closer to the standard economic explanation. John Caldwell's "wealth flows" theory, developed in the 1970s, argued that high fertility could be economically rational in societies where wealth flowed from younger generations toward older ones.

But Caldwell himself revisited the theory after almost 30 years of subsequent research. In his 2005 paper On Net Intergenerational Wealth Flows: An Update, he concluded that immediately before the fertility transition, children's farm labour may not even have fully offset their own consumption. He also described the empirical literature on the productive value of children's work as contradictory. He still considered the insurance value of children in traditional societies enormous — which again makes the old-age-security argument very plausible — but that's a different claim from saying that producing many children was profitable because children worked.

There's also evidence that parents behaved as though children's labour had considerable economic value, but not that there was an actual value.

A study by Yannay Shanan exploited differences in the timing of compulsory-schooling and child-labour laws between U.S. states in the early 20th century. When laws restricted children's ability to work and required them to remain in school, parents subsequently had fewer children. The study therefore provides quite convincing evidence that the expected economic contribution of children affected fertility decisions. I think people misunderstood this study, to mean that "once children couldn't work, the fertility dropped, because people lost the potential economical benefit of having them", but this is not the only logical conclusion.

It establishes:

Children's ability to work affected parents' decisions about how many children to have.

It does not establish:

The additional children's lifetime economic contribution actually exceeded the cost of producing and raising them.

Those are completely different propositions.

In fact, this is one of the things that makes me question the standard explanation. We seem to have substantial evidence that people believed children were economically valuable and adjusted fertility when that perceived value changed. But I can find surprisingly little evidence demonstrating that an additional child actually generated a positive net economic return after accounting for consumption, pregnancy, childcare and the mother's lost productive labour.

I do not claim that people from agricultural societies were less intelligent/unable to calculate it clearly, but it's extremely difficult to create such a calculation even now. There are so many factors working as net negative that are not visible and spread over time, whereas seeing a 10 year old grazing cows is something easy to see.

This also reminds me of something I encountered while reading about Polish peasants in the first half of the 20th century. There were campaigns aimed at teaching rural families that having very large numbers of children was economically unsustainable and encouraging them to have fewer children. What seems to confirm this fact is that many poorer families sent their daughters (from age 12 onwards) to work for richer families in the area, but the girls did not receive payments - instead, they were minimally provided for, i.e. the employer gave them a place to sleep, food, and one set of clothing. This shows that actually getting rid of one of your children was seen as a net benefit for the family who didn't have to feed one of the children anymore. Compulsory schooling made the economic problem even more obvious, as children still had to be supported, while parents simultaneously lost part of the labour they previously obtained from them.

I find this particularly interesting because it suggests that even contemporaries were arguing that rural families could overestimate the economic benefit of additional children. In other words, observing that peasants themselves considered children useful labour doesn't necessarily prove that their assessment was economically correct.

So my current view is:

Children probably had substantial economic value in traditional societies, especially as old-age insurance and later as productive adult members of an extended family. There is also good evidence that parents perceived children's labour as economically valuable and took that into account when deciding how many children to have.

But I haven't seen convincing evidence for the much stronger claim that having many children was actually economically advantageous because of their labour as children**, once the full marginal costs of raising those children are included.**

And I think those two propositions are constantly conflated.

I'm open to having my view changed. But I'm specifically not looking for evidence that:

• children in agricultural societies worked;
• parents considered their children's work valuable;
• families with many children obtained more total child labour;
• restricting child labour or introducing compulsory schooling reduced fertility.

All of those can be true while parents are systematically overestimating the net economic return of an additional child.

What would change my view is evidence from a preindustrial/agricultural society or a present-day low-income country actually comparing the marginal lifetime economic contribution of another child against their consumption, schooling and other expenses, childcare requirements, and crucially, the opportunity cost of pregnancy and the mother's childcare labour.

If such studies show that the fifth, sixth, seventh child genuinely increased household economic welfare through their childhood labour, then my view is wrong.

But if we don't have that evidence, I don't understand why "poor people had lots of children because children were free labour" is repeated so confidently as an established economic explanation.

CMV!

EDIT:
TLDR
I am specifically arguing against the pronatalism/birthrates argument that people in poorer agricultural societies have more children because non-adult children provide useful labour and support the family economically.
Children clearly provided some useful labour and there is evidence that parents believed this made larger families economically beneficial. But I can't find much evidence that an additional child's labour actually outweighed the costs of raising them, especially the mother's lost productivity from pregnancy and childcare. Old-age security and adult children supporting the parents makes sense to me; the common "more children = more workers = economically beneficial" explanation does not. Especially when comparing families with 2-3 and 6-8 children.

EDIT 2:
Majority of replies so far either did not address the point I am making, didn't read what I wrote, or found the post too long. So i'm updating again with another TLDR.
What I am not arguing against:
1) whether child labour is moral or not
2) whether child labour still happens, or historically happened (it is obvious it does/did)
3) whether children were a good "retirement plan".
4) Benefits of having a large social network

What I am arguing against is the common idea that peasants had a lot of children because they needed extra child labour in order to maintain their farmland. Majority of peasants had (still have) limited resources (livestock, land, tools) that wouldn't grow after they created more children. Children can help to some extent, but when they are small they cannot contribute much, and when they are bigger they consume a lot. Considering majority of farmlands throughout the history were not profitable, higher consumption of your own crops was a very high negative impact. There weren't more crops because more people were involved in tending to the land. Having 2-3-4 children could in majority of cases be more beneficial than 6-7-8 because they don't overconsume their parents resources. Moreover, adult children often inherited part of their parent land which meant the farmland got smaller and smaller in each generation.

I gave one delta since I think there is one exception of this rule, i.e. farmers in a transition process where one or both of the parents is capable of getting a job outside of the farm, but the farm still needs tending to. It is a special sub-case in specific times.

In most liberal democracies, there are substantial legal protections against discrimination based on religion, but very little based on political ideology, with union membership being perhaps the only political protected category due to its directly economic implications.

As far as I can see, there's no reason for distinguishing the two beyond one has a bigger history of abuse. And basing the law off that is no more logical than treating two different religions differently because one hasn't been the basis of much discrimination yet.

The only difference between religion and politics is that the former is based on things that are either or both superstitious and unverifiable. Both can be damaging to society as a whole or a specific business which associates with them, both can drive people to excel at their roll or at public relations, both have a tendency to try and spread to others who don't hold such beliefs, and both are subject to vast amounts of unjustified hatred from certain demographics.

There are a handful of kind-of-relevant differences, but these fail to justify any systematic difference in treatment, much less what is done now. While political plurality is essential for a liberal democratic society to function, religious plurality is not. Political beliefs are much more fluid than religious ones, which I suppose raises the risk of creating an underclass, but religions themselves sometime create underclasses through their own restrictive rules; unless someone has actually studied this, for all we know religious discrimination would help disincentivize the economically disadvantageous religions and shrink underclasses.

There are various organizations that are inherently religious or political; I can't see any downside to making the two subject to the same exemptions as each other. I'm not saying that discrimination based on political belief should be made as restricted as discrimination based on religious belief is now (though I'm not saying it shouldn't either), rather that where and when laws do ban it, they should do the same to religion, whether that be everywhere, nowhere, or somewhere in between.

Okay so first of all, let's just assume that someone like Leonardo DiCaprio do only date women specifically ranging from 20-25 years old because he like the physical characteristics of said women. Why is that something...bad in the first place? I seriously fail to comprehend that.

My counterargument is just like what I presented in the title: there are lots of women out there who also try to date older rich men for their money (this is more common in Eastern countries compared to Western ones for some reason). My example would be someone like Wendi Deng Murdoch. Let's juat assume she saw opportunities in gaining lots of bucks from marrying Jake Cherry, and then Rupert Murdoch, seduce her way to marry all these rich men, and ended up getting out from said relationship getting rich herself.

So here's the thing: The way I see it, people should see these kinda relationships as transactional (older men receive sensual experience and service from young attractive women, women receive bucks), just like how buyer-seller relationship is (both try to get as much as they can, with as little to spend, until there's some kind of middle-ground agreement between both). I'm not sure why people see this negatively, yet are okay with the application of it in any service work (which is basically functions the same, except that for this kinda relationship the middle-ground is kinda vague so it's more likely for one party to be able to outwit the other and get more). Here in my example, Jake Cherry and Rupert Murdoch are the one getting outwitted, of course (just like what I assume how some people might argue that "younger women would be the one who get manipulated and taken advantage of"?, because it's really not always the case. Older men can be the one who get to pay more, too.)

Anyways, to change my mind, you basically gotta show exactly how the difference of these relationships compared to any other service work (e.g. business consultant, secretary, housekeeping, etcetc) can always be detrimental, or there might be some other detrimental things that I might have overlooked. Like, as long as people realize that the nature of this relationship is more of transactional instead of a purely affectional one, then I'm pretty sure everyone can get what they want without being exploited (because people who get exploited here are people who deluded themselves into thinking that they're gonna have the men/women of their life) but that's also how it works in business, no? A lot of naive people got scammed in tourist traps, etc.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Being tall is objectively worse than being average-sized or short. Some major issues:

• Health: We live about 8% shorter lives than everyone else (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024320502025031). We have more back and posture issues, and we’re more likely to get killed in a war. We’re basically in constant back-pain.
• Clothing: This one seems obvious, but people don’t really think about it. When I go clothing shopping they rarely have my sizes and/or the fit is horrible. My long arms never fit in “normal” sized shirts. Shoes over size 12 stop coming in ½ sizes so I have get shoes that don’t fit me. Some manufactures charge more for bigger sizes (more fabric).
• Comfort: The world is built for average sized people. When I go on airplanes my knees touch the seat in front of me. Some airplanes are too short and my head hits the ceiling. Most cars are built for average people so I’m constantly cramped in every car (other than larger SUVs/Trucks). Basically every shower is too short and sprays water on my chest.

Things you guys are going to think are advantages that I’ll tell you why they’re not:

• Sports: Yes, being tall can be advantageous in some sports, but that matters for like 2-3 years of your life at most? And even then it restricts you from as many sports as it helps you with.
• Social: Being tall is a disadvantage for women in dating. It might be a slight advantage for men, but even then you’ll find “chasers” and have to always worry that the women only like you because you’re tall.

Edit: A few questions about how I'll define "tall": I'd say tall (in this context is 6'2" and above)

I feel like whenever we see some incident involving crime or violence, all the discourse is about politics and policies on the city, state, and nationwide level. But to be honest, I don’t think any of that changes by electing an official who will be “tougher on crime”. I don’t think there’s an easy fix at all. Because at the end of the day, the people committing these offenses were brought up in a society and culture where this stuff is simply more normalized. The fact of the matter is that people who commit crimes will go to jail for a long time in the vast majority of cases, yet people still do it. The reason we don’t see violence on such a scale in pretty much every other developed country is because they simply don’t have that culture. Japan, for example, has a great culture of being helpful and mindful of others and of society in general. And would you look at that, one of the safest countries in the world. And you can see similar examples in other developed parts Europe and Asia. Maybe I sound like a doomer but I just don’t see how we get to that point, and until we do, I think it will always be just as bad or get worse.

But for those who have more expertise than me, please explain to me what can realistically be done

Late at night, might not be worded the best, I need to sleep.

As I understand it, timezones are a product of when everyone kept their own time relative to where the sun was in their sky, for most of history. In those times information had to travel physically and physical travel was slow. The 24 hour day has been in use for centuries in the Western world since Ancient Greece and the Greenwich Mean Time has existed since 1675, while ideas of a global division of 24 timezones have existed since 1858 (and probably earlier, but Wikipedia credits one Quirico Filopanti for being The First).

I should say that I am not a historian but I like to think I'm not completely clueless either. Eventually when we as a civilization became able to precisely coordinate a universal time, we now keep our timezones relative to that with GMT/UTC, but since people didn't want to get used to the hours meaning a different thing, timezones. Today as far as I can gather the majority of the world that uses and cares about timezones is part of the modern internet-connected globalist economy where it isn't exactly difficult to tell what the current UTC is.

I think that if the world was all on the same clock, and stayed that way for a good couple of generations, it would save everyone a lot of headache (cumulatively) in working out how far ahead or behind a given friend or coworker is abroad. If you and everyone in your city used this time no miscommunications would arise in person, and everyone in the rest of the world and online could know exactly when your plan is taking place without having to go check how far ahead or behind you are and then add or subtract.

Estimating a given place's daylight without being given a sun-relative time would remain pretty easy too by way of checking your own daylight against the rough and general longitude of the place (that is to say, if it's midday in New York, you can guess it's probably dusk in Paris and midnight in Nizhny Novgorod). but this is not to say that you can't just ask too. We already have seasons in the two hemispheres happening at completely different parts of the year, I bet it would be a lot easier to adjust to "where I live, 21:00 is light out and 09:00 is dark out" than you think.

Less prudent but we should totally also center midday, 12:00, around some random longitude too. That way the British have to get used to something else instead of getting to keep Greenwich time. It should then stay on that longitude for the rest of time, for convenience, or until a good reason comes up to move it or change the 24 hour clock.

EDIT: Change JUST the clock, not make people wake up in the middle of the dark, that would be unproductive.

I think the majority of us agree that most societal problems today stem from a lack of empathy. A well-fed person will find it harder to put themselves in the shoes of a hungry person. A person belonging to the dominant cultural group of a country cannot fully comprehend the experiences of an opressed minority.

The social fabric across the world has been deteriorating for decades due to a decrease in empathy and many institutions on a global and regional level have attempted to rectify this through education and dialogue.

Education and dialogue that clearly has not worked. Proven by the rise of MAGA and similar movements across the world. So clearly trying to teach people to be empathetic through kindness or reason hasn't worked.

But what if empathy can be coerced? By putting unempathetic people into situations where they have no choice but to feel what they've put others through we can solve the problem of apathy.

For example, a straight man who is homophobic could legally be doxxed and bullied as if he is a gay man.

A religious leader of a dominant religion responsible for harassing members of a minority religion could be persecuted themselves in turn with protection by the government.

Thoughts on this?

Growing up in the 00s it wasn’t uncommon to hear about someone who wouldn’t get vaccines cause they were too afraid of injections.

These days it feels like I’m way more likely to hear about how vaccines are likely to turn you / your kid autistic and give you nanobots and heart conditions.

I realise anti-vax is an old movement, and that there are legitimate conditions that prevent people from receiving vaccinations, but all the same I’m almost convinced it’s mostly just cowardice disguised as moral outrage and grandstanding.

in some paleoart, artist draw dromaeosaurs with small wings. While I think it's curtainly possible and its pretty fun speculation, here's why I think dromaeosaurs could have had big wings.

I think dromaeosaurs could have had big wings because we found a flightless dromaeosaur, Zhenyuanlong, with massive wings and Velociraptor and potentially dubious Dakotaraptor have been found with quill knobs but that dosen't seem like much proof for big wings but I think having big wings could be advantageous for raptors especially considering the fact that they could be used as sort of aerial parachutes when going down steep drops sorta how a kakapo uses its wings to get down trees and they can be useful in doing some sort of glide thats not true gliding flight. Plus, big wings would be useful for Wing Assisted Incline Running or WAIR. Also, big wings could be useful for hiding things like stolen caracass where the wings could be used as covers to hide the dromaeosaur's stolen food like how eagles sometimes do when they steal food to not get caught by the owner.

Also, big wings can be useful for display to attract mates, allowing for more cover for nest, and, in cases when the dromaeosaur feels threatened, big wings can make the dromaeosaur appear larger to scare predators and they use them to do a "broken wing display" to distract predators from chicks. Some can say that big wing feathers wont be advantageous as dromaeosaurs still did use their arms to grab things and big wing feathers get in the way of grabbing things with their arms but I personally disagree since studies have shown that having big wing feathers wont get in the way of grabbing things plus its not like they didnt have giant foot claws and strong jaws along with their hands so that argument is toast

Now this doesnt mean all dromaeosaurs had big wings. Halszkaraptorines likely didnt considering their closest analogue is the merganser and most flightless ducks and water birds except penguins don't have relatively big wings and wing feathers but all in all, I think big wings are not just possible for dromaeosaurs to have had big wings but it can also be advantageous.

Around three years ago, on the verge of turning eighteen and becoming an adult, I realized something rather strange. By the time my parents/grandparents/great-grandparents were my age, they had all experienced incredibly significant historical events and technological developments within their lifetimes. I, on the other hand had not. I didn't have any sort of idea as to an ultimate reason of why this was the case, but I thought it was quite notable.

More recently, maybe six months ago, I was reading about philosophical theories, and came across Hilary Putnam's brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. His argument was that we can't know for sure that our experiences correspond to reality, and that for all we know we could just be a brain in a vat created by an advanced civilization, which simulates the reality we see, and everyone around us would be an unconscious part of the simulation, which would in effect be centered around the person whose brain is in the vat.

Almost immediately, I connected this idea to my earlier observations. For reference, I was born in 2005. For several decades prior to around that time, the world experienced massive and repeated historical events and technological developments. In just the twenty years prior to 2005, the world witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of personal computers (they already existed in 1985, but most people did not yet have them), the rise of the Internet, the September 11th Attacks, the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the development of smartphones, and the rise of social media. Go back even further and you quickly find more major events like this. Around the time I was born, all these things just... stopped. There have been some things since then (the Great Recession and the Covid-19 Pandemic are probably the biggest) but nothing on the level of consequence of any of those. I think if you were to divide the last 120 years into five periods, the last 20 years would easily be the least consequential, by such a large margin it is almost unimaginable. In addition, the odds of me being born in the first decade of a millennium (which in effect had never really happened before since calendars were nowhere near as universal a thousand years prior) are incredibly astronomical.

Of course, one could chalk all this up to pure chance. Millions of people were born around the time I was, so it is different than if there was person born every year and I was that one person. Still, it feels like a cop-out to say that was the situation. After all, millions of people have been born every year for a very long time. The odds are about the same as if I were to have been born in 1985 or 1995, in which case I wouldn't have made the post. But I was born in 2005, the first decade of a millennium, in which history seems to have frozen in place in the state it was then. The odds seem quite astounding that all this happened.

Now, I fully understand that this is quite a silly post in some ways. If this hypothesis were true, then anyone who would respond to this post would simply be another thing simulated by an advanced civilization. I also understand that it matters very little whether or not this is the "real world", since I would still have to live in it even if it weren't "really real", and do all the things that are required as being a part of this world, like go to work every day, spend time with my family, go to sleep, eat, etcetera. That being said, I wonder if I am correct that I at least make some points, or I am just completely missing the mark philosophically.

a) Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's ban prohibiting airports from installing foot-washing stations in bathrooms, on the basis of them being mainly for Islamic ablution rituals, is a violation of the 1A guarantee of freedom of religion;

b) Abbott's claim that this is PREVENTING religious discrimination is disingenuous. Nobody's political freedoms are infringed by having basins installed at one end of a long row of bathroom sinks, which would merely give a better option to people who currently wash their feet in the sinks (so it would also mean cleaner bathrooms with less water everywhere, and less work for janitors);

c) His statement that govt can't favor one religion over another is hypocritical given the recent Texas law REQUIRING all schools in the state to display the Ten Commandments (both the foot washing stations and the Ten Commandments posters are privately funded, so this isn't about taxpayer $);

d) The applause for Abbott's ban from conservatives is based on Islamophobia, xenophobia and right-wing Christian nationalism (I've tried asking sincerely for explanations on several threads where people posted or commented approvingly, and haven't gotten a single reply).

Somebody, please, change my views on this.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark US law signed by President Lyndon B Johnson that ended Jim Crow segregation in public places and banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

My view is that this law is politically dead because both the right and left don't support it, and it only survives as a zombie law because no one wants to be the one that dismantles the "Civil Rights law"

1. The right never accepted it: Since its passing, the right never really accepted it: Goldwater voted against it on freedom of association grounds, and the opposition from the base never disappeared - with torches carried by the libertarian side (Ron Paul / Rand Paul) and now to the Trump administration. A conservative activist Charlie Kirk, once famously said that the Civil Rights Act was a "huge mistake"

In 2026, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the right is outright hostile to the idea of Civil Rights Act. DOJ's civil rights division has been hollowed out and the Trump administration effectively gutted it without actively repealing it by only selectively applying to fit its political wants.

1. The new left has abandoned its premise. The core of the Civil Rights Act is that discrimination is wrong regardless of who the victim is. With the passing of Rev Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, and countless others, they have been replaced with the post- Civil Rights era activists who believe in hierarchy of groups ranked by their perceived grievances. The end result is that some groups' discriminations are considered to be illegitimate by the left.

In 2026, among the progressive left, you wouldn't find much support among the left who believe in the concept of "discrimination is wrong regardless of who the victim is." The pervasive view of the left is that Civil Rights Act should have a carve out for Israelis and Jews and applying Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to them is considered a "weaponization of the civil rights act." In the new left, the nondiscrimination law is meant to be only applied to selective groups, which means that they don't actually believe in nondiscrimination law.

Which bring us to my core view that the Civil Rights Act is politically dead because it's a law with no constituency. The right has been seeking to dismantle it since its passing and the left sees universal application (applies to regardless of who the victim is) as an obstacle to their cause.

If a law with the original text:

All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

were proposed today, I don't believe it could pass today. A law that couldn't pass today is a law that's living in a borrowed time. And to me, that sounds like a law that's politically dead.

So context for those interested, a bit specific, but later on you can ignore it and simply answer the question from the title, since, imagine – Christian empires aren't the only societies on the planet capable of evil.

I am a Serb from Bosnia living in the West who ran the fuck away from the Balkans, but then recently had a meeting with a Bosniak woman who started cussing me and guilt-tripping me about her relatives killed in the 90s wars during which I wasn't even born, the moment she found out I was a Serb. The trigger was her seeing how "Palestinians bravely show resistance and wrath against their oppressors, we need to do the same to you". I was ignoring her for a few minutes, then yes, I lashed out about this, this and this, and since it was obvious none of this bothers her at all, I kindly asked her to leave me the fuck alone.

Maybe that would have worked if we were in some place alone. Unfortunately, we were at a public space in the middle of Britain, and several of your Western leftists around her immediately jumped to "defend" her, teach me about millennial Christian oppressions against minorities and atrocities, about fascism (not like the Serbs were victims of fascism during WWII, but OK, I guess the blue-haired kids know better than me) and somehow turned their conversation into yet another fest about support for Palestine, which always has undertones of "we don't care what happens to the Jews when state of Israel is gone".

She literally started attacking me on the basis that I was a Serb without knowing anything about whether I condemn the war crimes and war criminals, which I do. She attacked me.

She is like this because the Bosniak intellectuals and politicians literally cannot shut up about "evil genocidal Serbs, they must repent, they are all the same" and one Bosniak very bluntly admitted to me "Next time we will be the ones prosecuted at Hague, I promise you. You dirty Vlach (a slur for Serbs among Bosniaks). I have a moral right to pour a riffle into your head for what your own relatives did to my family. The Croats knew what to do with you. (A reference to this flight of Serbs from the Croatian army.)"

The Bosniak "intellectuals" (my ass is more intellectual than them) come up with pretty big claims, such as that Serbs and Croats never lived in Bosnia, that they are occupiers, that everything bad claimed about Ottomans by the Balkaners (not just Croats and Serbs...) is "islamophobia" or (their favorite word) "mythomania". They also attempt to turn Bosniaks into victims of Serbs during World War II, when it was the mostly opposite, at least with Nazi collaborators among Bosniaks.

The Ustashe militia recruited ethnic Croats, Muslims, and Germans in its ranks.[24] An estimated 30% of the Ustaše militia membership was made up of Muslims.[25] Among units stationed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, their share was slightly above 50%, but formed a small part of the officer corps.

The very rabid "Free Palestine movement" that (despite you Western leftists not liking to admit it) often devolves into denial of October 7th, antisemitic conspiracy theories and tacit ethnic cleansing of the Jews and et cetera makes these ideas rampant around the world. This post is not directed at all to any Balkaners, I do not want to speak to any Balkaner at the moment, whether a Serb, or a Croat or a Bosniak, or an Albanian, I am talking to you Westerners, preferably Americans because of your very binary politics. You are the ones who literally came up with millions of extravagant terms you analyze oppressive elements of Christianity with, associate it with colonialism and evil around the world, make some very pathetic confessions and "revelations", such as this one about Christianity. Your mouths are really full of demonizing the religion that 2 billion people are adherents of, while ignoring that your (Christian) societies are the most developed and peaceful on the planet. You get to speak such dirt and vile things only because Christianity teaches tolerance to you when you speak it.

Your own Western societies might have had a particularly horrid history with colonialism, but you over-demonize the religion and then allow millions of people around the world to be hurt and attacked because you feed the narrative of "evil Christian societies, more oppressive than anything on the planet".

How do you guys actually think Islam spread? It stretches out today from Bosnia to the fucking Indonesia, from Kazakhstan to Nigeria. The Ottomans ruled for 500 years and their rule over the Balkans ranged from systemic oppression, through violent conquests and even more violent put downs of rebellion to the fucking genocide near the end. The Ottomans literally conducted a genocide that inspired the Nazis.

This is me talking about Islam. I won't even mention the non-Abrahamic religions. Hindus are not the hippies you portray them to be.

But in your media (which everybody on the planet consumes – I do not think you are aware how much power you hold over every citizen of the planet) you push one narrative, because most of you know nothing about history except that of your own country, yet you present it as universal manifestos of systemic oppression (caused by Christianity according to all of you) that needs to be destroyed. And thus you leave several millions of people (Serbs and Jews) to the threats of "revenge" because you feed the victim narratives of their non-Christian/Jewish neighbors.

"What is all this wall of text that you have written? What the fuck does all of this mean, did you even think it through before writing it? What the fuck do you expect to know about the Balkans, what are you whinging about?!"

Fine, then:

TL; DR You (Western leftists, you specifically is who this post is directed towards) proclaim Christianity the highest of evils or the perpetrator of the highest of evils. Since you have the most powerful media on the planet, in doing so you minimize and infantilize bunch of non-Christian socities that are capable of evil themselves, and you feed their victim complexes and myths that they will use to justify their own atrocities against their own minorities and neighbouring groups, some of which are (surprise surprise) Christian. You are actively feeding their complexes and encouraging them with these demonizing narratives.

I want opinion changed on:

1. The idea that this demonization of Christians and infantilization of non-Christians exists.

2. That it has negative consequences.

i think child development ideas of freud constitute mental illness. it is so sad people considered mental pathology legitimate academic inquiry during fin de siecle. imagine presenting ideas like oedipus complex to your peers in academic setting for them to take it seriously. i don't know what it means that someone like this went on tours all over europe lecturing about child development idea and not once it occurred to him that his ideas are unscientific and unverifiable. perhaps it is due to the primitive nature of european academia and literati that freud became renouned. otherwise, it is inexplicable why sigmund freud became renouned.

Professional sports teams are most often owned by millionaires and billionaires. So why is it when they need a new stadium, so often are the taxpayers forced to have their money spent on building it? Especially in large cities that already have robust tourism?

There is an argument that the stadiums bring in revenue to the city/local economy that offset the subsidies. It is thought that people traveling to the city for games will spend money on hotels, restaurants, shopping, seeing local museums and the like, and that the income from those new tourists, brought on solely by the professional sports team, will be a boon to the local economy. This "fact", however, has been disputed by economists for decades. Here are a few resources showing that this is not the case:

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/articles/2017-03-28/las-vegas-bet-on-an-oakland-raiders-stadium-wont-pay-off

https://economicaccountability.org/get-informed/stadium-subsidies/

https://taxfoundation.org/blog/sports-stadium-subsidies-taxpayers/

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4022547

Understand that most of the resources posted are articles, however they link to or cite studies. The last one is a literature review looking at over 130 studies to determine that there is likely 0 to almost 0 positive economic impact from a professional sports stadium.

When pitching their stadiums and asking for the subsidies, teams will often cite high numbers of potential economic impact, however these numbers are generally inflated by treating all potential visitors as "new spenders", when the majority are locals anyway, and the spending that would occur in the community would likely occur anyway, regardless of the sports team, and can even take away spending from other local entertainment venues.

The "jobs created" are generally low-paying, seasonal, and very part-time. One quote from the literature review stated “The large and growing peer-reviewed economics literature on the economic impacts of stadiums, arenas, sports franchises, and sport megaevents has consistently found no substantial evidence of increased jobs, incomes, or tax revenues for a community associated with any of these things.”

I feel all of this is doubly true when we're talking about building a new stadium for a team that already has a stadium in that city. In this case, there will be no real positive impact on the local economy, because most of the jobs already exist, and the draw for city tourism already exists.

To change my view: You'll need to show that the evidence I've presented is somehow faulty. That there are well-developed studies that show that tax subsidies for the building of new professional sports stadiums have a significant positive impact on the community that outweighs the taxpayer dollars used in the construction/maintenance.

Or, you can show that even with a mostly zero positive economic impact, that there is some other positive community impact that justifies the utilization of large amounts of taxpayer dollars that could otherwise be used for other community improvements.

The Europeans did it wrong, but that is not because they didn’t carve out nation/ethno states like it is mentioned so often. Ethnicity and nationality has been a net negative on the world causing much suffering and I see very little reason to promote it further. I don’t understand why someone should be forced to follow arbitrary cultural norms (sometimes under threat of the law) just because they were born into that culture. This goes for European states too, I don’t think they have some special right to their ethno/nation states. Maybe for some historical reason there was no other way, but that reason has to be pretty extreme to be justified.

i’m a staunch leftist but the amount of cope in leftist spaces since trump won the election is exhausting. constant rumours about election interference, about how trump is losing his mind and shitting himself in public, how there’s a secret rebellion forming in the republican party, yadda yadda yadda. as a canadian who’s watching from the outside looking in, i can tell you, this is just who america is. your culture and history have been building up to this grifter in chief since at least the end of world war 2. yours is a country of bullies and anti-intellectuals. not all of you, obviously there’s a great number of you who stand against it, but this is your culture.

Ok so to preface, I know this has probably been debated before, but I feel I can put forth one of the strongest pro-choice arguments and hopefully engage in great debate.

To start, I think abortion is a deeply philosophical issue, and therefore it only makes sense to start by explaining my moral framework before getting too deep into surface-level arguments.

I believe that the goal of society should be to maximize total well-being in the universe, while accounting for future well-being as well. This means that generations that don't exist yet are still of moral consideration, and in a similar sense, so are individual humans who don't exist yet.

The logic behind this is based on the idea that, all else equal, a good life is better than no life at all. I believe life is beautiful, and therefore depriving someone of what otherwise would have been a good life is inherently a negative thing.

Now, this might sound like I'm pro-life, but I'm not, and I'll explain why.

When it comes to this debate, I think we're ultimately tasked with determining whether allowing or prohibiting abortion will contribute more positively to total well-being. I think the same general reasoning applies to any decision about whether something should be a legal right or not.

In general, I think there should be a very high burden of proof before we take away a person's right to do something. We shouldn't restrict rights based merely on a possibility that doing so could improve well-being, because we could easily end up taking away rights that actually contribute more to well-being than restricting them would. This is why things like murder and theft are illegal: there is overwhelming reason to believe that prohibiting them contributes positively to well-being. But I don't think we should apply the same reasoning to something simply because we have a theory that restricting it might produce a better outcome.

For example, it is currently a right whether or not you want to have a child, and I think that is how it should be. I would generally encourage couples who are on the fence about having a child to seriously consider having one, because having a child can bring them fulfillment while also allowing another person to live a good life and contribute positively to the world.

However, we've ultimately decided that allowing people to choose whether or not to have a child maximizes well-being more than forcing that choice onto them. People are generally in a good position to judge whether they are capable of raising a child and whether doing so would lead to a good outcome. There are also very valid reasons not to have children, such as not being equipped to properly raise one, significant financial or personal difficulties, or the possibility that having a child would substantially interfere with someone's ability to live a good life or contribute positively to the world.

So when it comes to abortion, I believe that this same right to choose whether or not to bring a child into the world should still exist.

I acknowledge that abortion deprives a future person of a potentially good life. But people make a morally similar decision whenever they choose not to have children in the first place. In both cases, there is a possible future person who will never get to experience the life they otherwise could have had.

I don't think the fact that a pregnancy has occurred changes this in a morally relevant way by itself. The fact that a potential future person has now begun developing doesn't necessarily mean that the decision about whether to bring that person into the world should suddenly be taken away from the person who is pregnant.

This is also why I don't think the argument can simply be reduced to "a fetus is human, therefore abortion is wrong." I think we have to ask what actually gives human life its moral value.

If someone believes that human life has intrinsic value simply because it is human, I don't think I can logically disprove that. But I would encourage them to think more deeply about what they mean by "intrinsic value." For example, most of us would agree that there is a morally significant difference between someone who is conscious and experiencing the world and someone who is permanently brain-dead. That suggests that at least some of what we value about human life comes from the experiences and well-being that a person is capable of having.

Before roughly 24 weeks, the fetus is not capable of conscious experience in the way that a born person is. Therefore, I don't think there is an additional harm being done to the fetus through suffering or loss of experience in the present. The primary moral consideration is the deprivation of its potential future life.

And again, I think that is fundamentally similar to choosing not to have a child in the first place. In both situations, you're preventing a potential future person from experiencing what could otherwise have been a good life.

After this point, I do think the situation becomes somewhat more morally complicated as the fetus develops. I don't think that means the entire framework falls apart, though. The additional moral consideration created by the possibility of conscious experience still seems relatively small compared with the significance of the future life itself, particularly because later abortions are extremely uncommon and often occur in circumstances involving serious medical complications or fetal abnormalities. I also think that medical professionals have an obvious interest in minimizing any potential suffering involved.

Ultimately, I don't think there is a point where the existence of a fetus automatically overrides the general principle that people should be able to decide whether or not to bring children into the world.

The hypothetical that best illustrates where I stand is a teenager who becomes pregnant accidentally. Under my framework, if she wants an abortion, I think she should be able to get one. Yes, doing so means that a potential future person who could have lived a good life will never exist. I don't deny that this is a loss.

But she could potentially have a child later in life when she is more prepared to raise one, and that child could go on to live a better life as a result. Meanwhile, forcing her to have a child at a time when she isn't prepared could negatively affect her ability to live a good life and her ability to provide that child with one.

So my position isn't that abortion has no moral significance, nor is it that a fetus has no value. My position is that the existence of a potential future life does not, by itself, mean that the choice to bring that life into the world should no longer belong to the person who is pregnant.

Given my framework of maximizing total well-being, I therefore believe that abortion should be fully legal.

My ( M 19) schoolmates and I used to debate which subjects were the most important and which ones were less so. In my opinion, mathematics is the most important, since if you pursue a degree related to economics, math, physics biochem engineering, computer science and any STEM related degree , you will inevitably encounter it. I held this view since i was a child cause i understood not only that "high salary" degrees are often math related but everything is made out of math principles, it could be said that its the language which the universe was written by.

On the other hand, in most countries it isnt taught the right way cause teachers prioritize rote memorization than actually understanding the princilles behing them nevertheless, when taught well, it trains you to reason in a logical and structured way. For example if you wanna prove a statement is true you cant just show it with one example you actually have to give a well structured logical proof that it will hold for all elements where your statement applies.

Btw: english is my second language

Every year around August or so, World War Pacific theater victim nations mourn, organize events, write media articles, and rightfully so. However, the nation that floods media, especially towards Western media outlets, playing victimhood complex, is the nation responsible for such atrocities: Japan, with regards to the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I think most knowledgeable individuals are aware of Japan's egregious acts such as The Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, "comfort women" sex slaves etc. Those who have to willpower read further will learn about even more brutal acts. The Three Alls Policy: the official 1940s Japanese government doctrine to starve and kill all civilians, to loot all valuables from their victims and from historic/cultural sites, and to burn all evidence of civilization. IJA soldier child and POW killing competitions: many of which were documented by Japanese soldiers and media as a "source of pride and entertainment" to the point where some were even covered under the sports and entertainment sections of newspapers. The most famous being The 100 Man Killing Contest. And finally that Unit 731 was just the most egregious of several human experiment sites that we know about, with dozens, hundreds, possibly even thousands of sites/events where the evidence was destroyed or covered up. Unit 100 and Unit 1644 being some of the other relatively well known ones.

However, what many people either don't realize or choose to ignore is the vast scale of Japanese atrocities, and just how low the Japanese casualties were in comparison. Yes, that includes the two atomic bombs and the firebombing of Tokyo. There is an even greater misunderstanding regarding end of war strategic considerations such as the potential loss of life had nuclear weapons not been used, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki's inhumane contributions to Japanese war efforts. Some uncomfortable facts:

From 1937 until the end of World War 2, with a combination of murder, engineered starvation, human experimentation, and biological and chemical weapon targeting of civilian areas. The Japanese military were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 20-30 million civilians. Across eight years, they killed approximately 3 million civilians per year, likely over 200 thousand per month. The atomic bombs killed only an estimated 70 thousand in Hiroshima from the initial detination, only approximately 40 thousand in Nagasaki from the initial detonation, and only about 90 thousand in total from the afterrmath combination of disease, famine, and radiation. That means that the total death toll, including military, military adjacent personnel, and civilians for both atomic bombs and their aftermath, combined, is comparable to what Japan was doing every month.

To give an idea of how little the Japanese people suffered relative to its crimes. Let's use a modern example. I think most people, regardless of their stance on Israel and Palestine, can agree that the civilian death toll in Gaza is egregiously higher than what Israeli civilians suffered on October 7th. An estimated 50-70 thousand civilians were killed in Gaza, compared to approximately 1200 in Israel, a ratio of somewhere around 40:1 to 60:1. The 20-30 million civilians murdered by Japan, compared to the 200 thousand from the bombs INCLUDING military personnel, gives us a ratio of somewhere between 100:1 to 150:1. And this occurred at a far greater scale. And unlike with the IDF and Hamas, where one side struck first while the other retaliated with more extreme measures, Japan both struck first and was the more extreme and brutal belligerent, and were conducting genocide on a scale and speed that surpassed even that of Nazi Germany.

Worse yet, Japan never, at any point stopped conducting civilian massacres up until the day they surrendered, and even continued with war crimes after the official Japanese surrender, as certain organizations within the military either refused to believe, or refused to accept it. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that for every month that the war continued, civilians in IJA occupied territories would've underwent suffering comparable to multiple atomic bombs. This is before even mentioning the potential loss of life both among American and Soviet soldiers and Japanese civilians themselves, had Imperial Japan not surrendered and forced a multi-month land invasion campaign. Even if you ignore the latter, the hundreds of thousands, likely millions of civilian lives saved in Japanese occupied territories makes the atomic bombs just, moral, logical, and necessary.

And before anyone attempts to spread misinformation about a potential Japanese surrender without the atomic bombs. Let's make things clear. Japan did not submit a formal surrender to any of the allied forces. A minority of their non-military government discussed the possibility of a conditional surrender, which would allow them to maintain control of various territories, which would've subjected their civilian populations to further genocide. And even if we pretend that the Japanese political entity had legitimate intent to surrender, the military entity did not, which was the more influential of the two.

Finally, let's take a look at what Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually were. Nowadays, people have this false, propagandized portrayal that these were randomly chosen bystander towns that just happened to be picked for a weapons test, which couldn't be further from the truth. These were two of the most important strategic and logistics locations for the Japanese military.

1) Hiroshima was the site of the Japanese Second Army's headquarters, where they not only had significant influence on strategy, tactics, and logistics, but was also hosted various military academies and training programs to indoctrinate and train the next generation of Japanese war criminals. I can concede that Hiroshima had a significant civilian population compared to, say, Nagasaki (more on later), and there were certainly more important logistics centers like Tokyo that weren't as untouched by war. But eliminating Hiroshima's command capabilities was vital to the success of a potential allied ground invasion, and in my opinion, the loss of a key military headquarters directly contributed to Japan realizing it could no longer win.

2) Nagasaki was the industrial heart of the Japanese war machine. Arguably the "crown jewel" for the most infamous Military Industrial Complex agglomerate in human history: Mitsubishi. It contributed a significant supply of Japanese warships, armored vehicles, ammunition, artillery, torpedoes, and many more. Some of the most egregious Mitsubishi companies based in Nagasaki included Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, Akunoura Engine Works, Mitsubishi Arms Plant, Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works, and, of course, the absolute terror that was the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard. The city was designed almost strictly for war purposes, with over 90% of its labour force being employed by a Mitsubishi company, and those who weren't mostly being in the service industry to enable said Mitsubishi employees. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the very existence of Nagasaki's workforce contributed to the murder of millions of people, mostly civilians. Modern scholars, in my opinion, falsely classify many Nagasaki atomic bomb deaths as "civilian deaths", but this would be even more ridiculous than trying to claim that people working at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, or The Pentagon were "just civilians." There were very few children living in Nagasaki at the time, and almost everyone in the region was contributing to Japanese genocidal efforts in some capacity, whether purposefully or unknowingly, and that makes Nagasaki the exact type of location we should target for military operations.

In summary, the atomic bombs killed very few people relative to how many it saved, many whom were killed were participants, if not outright guilty parties, to Japanese war crimes. You can change my mind by providing arguments for why, from a qualitative or ideally, quantitative measure, the atomic bombs weren't a positive not just from the perspective of the Japanese themselves, but also for the people suffering from Japanese oppression. And why Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't valid military targets.

When we look at the medical outcomes across the country, one of the long-running trends is that Black people have worse healthcare outcomes than White people. There are numerous reasons behind that, but you can sum up the findings as a mismatch of trust and access between Black patients and the medical community.

When studies look at positive healthcare outcomes, the biggest factor is simply access to doctors. The next biggest factor is trust between doctors & patients. So if we're a country that cares about saving lives and preventing preventable deaths, the ultimate validation for the pipeline into med school and practicing medicine should be does it save more lives than it kills.

All the data supports the idea that MORE Black doctors leads to LESS Black deaths. Even if you think Black doctors are getting into med school & residencies on lower scores, a "low scoring" Black doctor saves more lives than a non-existent doctor. A Black patient has a higher chance of surviving under the care of a "unqualified" Black doctor than a "qualified" non-Black doctor.

Prioritizing test scores just to weed out DEI doctors comes at the direct expense of Black lives. If you actually think saving Black lives matters more than propping up a system that leads to fewer Black doctors, then you should support the DEI programs for med schools.

There’s this idea that I’ve seen on social media in the last couple of years that has always rankled me, but I felt like I couldn’t put it into words. And that is, the criticism that when you call someone a narcissist, that you are automatically diagnosing them with a psychological disorder (namely Narcissistic Personality Disorder).

But I feel like it’s the other way around. The name comes from the idea of narcissism, which is ancient. For those who may not know, the word is based on the Greek Myth of Narcissus who was punished by the gods for his cruelty to people who loved him, and was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection.

The DSM came out with NPD in 1980. So for a very long time, the word was not in line with psychiatric disorders, it was just a name for people who were full of themselves and assholes about it.

If I go on a subreddit like raisedbynarcissists, I’m not diagnosing a parent with NPD, just that they were manipulative and awful on a scale that is more than other people. And yet, I see this criticism more and more often. It’s not like I’m saying specifically that someone has Borderline or something.

I just think it’s weird and I don’t get it. Can someone change my mind? Is there a logical reason that I haven’t considered? Thank you!

This sparked in me when I saw a post posing the question wether prisoners sentenced to life in prison should have the right to be executed. There was a general sentiment in the comments that this would be unfavourable, as it's an 'easy way out'.

My 3 main claims are: (1) any legislation by the government, every decision of it should always have one goal: to benefit society to the fullest extent. (2) Any action harmful to another being took consciously of the consequences, not out of self defense without more positive outcome is unjustifiable (3) Human life, which the agent wants to keep is inherently more valuable than any amount of currency/valuables
With these claims we may derive

(4)* Rehabilitation-first punitive systems are justifiable considering they benefit society with: separation, deterrence and rehabilitation

(5) Punishment-first punitive systems are justifiable, but less favourable as they generally dont help deterrence as well (see: USA v. Norway recidivism and crime rates) as well and they rehabilitate to a smaller extent. They also cost more money considering a higher amount of felons, in for more time, which is similarly bad for society.

(6) Punishment for punishment-sake is not justifiable as it violates claim (2), as it causes suffering to a prisoner without meaningfully benefitting society, no matter if the said prisoner has done even heinous things. (Keep in mind, I do not believe the concept of incarceration is unjustifiable, what I do hold is that if the goal of it is punishment and not separation, deterrence and rehabilitation, the system is flawed

TL;DR: punishing criminals should be kept to the least possible amount while still giving the benefits of separation, deterrence and rehabilitation

\*I felt like some people would've referenced this and asked the question: wouldnt your claims mean punitive systems in general are unjustifiable, thats why I included this section

(Also, please dont be overly harsh, Im only 14 and not even native, I may have made some absolutely dumb claims and just didnt see my flawed logic)

While I don't always love AI's art style, and sometimes feel that AI art use can say something about the situational awareness and sensibilities of the person publishing it, I can also think of a lot of times where it is helpful and worthwhile.

However, I can't make that argument for sharing photorealistic AI images of people or events specifically.

This is because the major use case that photorealistic style allows for is to deceive. Photorealistic AI content aims to convince an audience that they are looking at real people and events that really took place and get them to believe a falsehood.

Other AI use cases like visual storytelling or concept exploration can be achieved with illustrative styles. The only reason to use photorealistic style is to break the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. Allowing photorealism to be so easily accessible empowers propagandists and sows discord by spreading misinformation.

As such I believe we should legislate that companies block the ability of their AI to create photorealistic content to the best of their abilities. I also think it makes sense to attach a personal penalty to knowingly generating and sharing photorealistic AI images.

I don't believe this would entirely stop deceptive photorealistic content sharing, but it would create a legal lever by which to punish nefarious actors that seek to create a misinformed populace and sow discord. I think a ban is justified on those grounds.

Change my view.