Since de-colonization, Africa has gone from a roughly late-19th/early-20th century Euro-American equivalency to, except in specific areas, roughly a mid-19th century level of development. If you think aid does not actively harm development, what is your explanation? Do you think Africans must be inherently inferior to Europeans? Our ancestors developed, rather than regressed, despite having to invent all the systems and technology for ourselves; the Africans, and other less developed countries, know what is possible and can even fairly easily find out how to do it. So if aid is not a problem, especially if you claim aid helps, you have even more to explain about the Third World incompetence.
Since de-colonization, Africa has gone from a roughly late-19th century Euro-American equivalency to, except in specific areas, roughly mid-19th century equivalent. If you think aid does not actively harm development, what is your explanation?
So, first of all, I don’t know enough about the topic to know whether the claim that you’re making is correct. I would appreciate a reference supporting your claim.
A natural explanation for the alleged phenomenon that you allude is that colonization introduced foreign elements to Africa which worked okay in juxtaposition with the colonial occupation but which caused serious problems once the colonial powers pulled out on account of these foreign elements meshing poorly with the native cultures.
It isn’t so much a claim as my opinion based on general reading rather than a specific reference. There are actually many potential differences and problems about development in African nations, I was pointing out that anyone making the claim that aid has any beneficial effect has to explain the apparent retrogression. For a good introduction to the problems of development, William Easterly’s books, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics and The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, are a good and fairly readable start.
You could also make the claim that colonization was in reality a massive aid campaign to the colonized lands, and that the problem has been caused by the effective reduction in aid since de-colonization. There have been several good studies that, contra the general belief, colonies were a net drain on the colonizers, and the colonized peoples gained more economic value than was extracted. The primary beneficiaries being a few large special interests.
Do you think Africans must be inherently inferior to Europeans?
I don’t think Africans are inferior to Europeans and I doubt anyone reading this site would subscribe to that opinion. On the other hand I’ve noticed that many people around here feel that it is likely that there are some cognitive differences between human population groups and that it is likely that those have a partially genetic basis (for a readable and not overly one-sided version of this argument see e.g. here).
It’s possible to imagine that cognitive differences between population groups would be important to consider in any project such as improving the lives of Africans and it’s possible that this factor is currently mostly left out of consideration. Maybe this is a factor in the aid-skepticism of some of our colleagues here so maybe it would do some good to address this head-on.
I’m personally agnostic on a lot of questions here and feel a bit overwhelmed by all the factors involved. My wife and I pay for the education of a child in Africa. I hope that does some good but I can’t claim any certainty on the question.
(for a readable and not overly one-sided version of this argument see e.g. here).
That article you linked to is horrendously bad. This guy starts talking about multiple lines of evidence for the hereditarian hypothesis, cites a prominent paper surveying these lines, and then proclaims that the best and most decisive evidence is provided by the regression-to-the-mean phenomena. Which is in reality one gigantic logical fallacy, and quite possibly the weakest and most flawed argument ever set forth by Jensen and other prominent hereditarians. He then proceeds to spin his misunderstanding of this already catastrophically bad argument into an even more elaborate web of fallacies.
I’ve now read both threads. While I did learn some interesting things I’m not really much closer to understanding the flaws in the reasoning of the article I originally linked to.
Neuroskeptic’s post on regression to the mean explains the concept clearly enough but I don’t really understand why he’s so hostile to it. Why does he think it’s not a useful concept? The trick is being able to spot it when it happens, and to avoid being mislead by it. If you’re not careful, it can happen anywhere. Uh, yeah. So why not have a word for it? Why not teach undergraduates about it? I don’t get it. Did he just have a bad teacher or something?
I understand you spent a significant amount of time digging into the literature on group variation in cognition—and ultimately were unable to tell who’s right. That’s a bit disappointing to me, I’d hoped that with a bit of dilettanteish reading I could have an informed opinion—and you’re probably better equipped to understand the literature than I am.
The term “regression to the mean” suggests time series and agency. But it’s just about what happens with two correlated variables, if the correlation isn’t 1. I suggest the alternative name: “a stupid prediction,” as in “Because the parents’ height is a stupid prediction for the children, the children of tall parents are not as tall as their parents.” Perhaps it would be less vulgar to use “naive.”
That’s just a suggestion. Perhaps someone can think of a better name, but I think putting the focus on prediction is the key to a better name.
While you may find appeals to arguments from the regression to the mean to be “horrendously bad”, I can only report that, so far as I have been able to make out, the logical legitimacy of such arguments is pretty much taken for granted among the disputants on both sides of the IQ nature/nurture controversy.
The first link you point to, which seems most directly to address the issue of regression to the mean, in turn points to papers which were written about 30 years ago or more, without, it seems, anyone in the dispute taking them seriously.
Don’t you think that that would suggest that there’s something deficient in the argument that use of regression to the mean in this context is a logical fallacy?
Here’s the basic problem with claiming that regression to the mean in the context of, say, human traits is simply some mathematical artifact: it does nothing to explain WHY there should be a regression to the mean.
Yes, not only do the average IQs (or heights) of children regress to the mean from the average IQs of their parents; the opposite is also true—the average IQs (or heights) of parents regress to the mean from the average IQs of their children. Does that mean that there is no causal relation established by regression to the mean effects? No, absolutely not. It only establishes that the direction of a causal arrow can’t be determined from the fact of regression to the mean alone. But we know the direction of that arrow, if the cause is genetic (or environmental, presumably): it goes from parents to children, not the other way around. When we understand this, we can also explain why we see regression to the mean in the other direction as well; the same underlying set of causes are working, though, again, the direction of the causal arrow is opposite.
The fact of regression to the mean strongly argues that there is SOME underlying causal mechanism (be it genetic or environmental or a combination) that explains that fact. Why is it that the children of high IQ parents regress partly to the mean, but not all the way?
Regression to the mean in traits in both directions, from children to parents and vice versa, can be explained by luck—those parents or children who have greater IQs or greater heights are, on average, luckier than average; they are, in particular, luckier than their own children or parents, respectively. But what are they luckier AT? What have they received more of? If one says, genes that increase the trait in question, then a perfectly coherent explanation emerges. One might say that they’ve received a better environment—but that becomes a very difficult explanation in the case of IQ, since typically quite the opposite seems to be true (parents with high IQs have on average greater incomes and generally should establish a better environment for their children than they themselves experienced.)
In short, the existence of regression to the mean in the expression of traits across generations presents an important fact—one that one might not a priori expect. Something must explain that fact. Do you seriously think that that explanatory problem simply goes away by declaring that appeals to regression to the mean constitute a “logical fallacy”?
While you may find appeals to arguments from the regression to the mean to be “horrendously bad”, I can only report that, so far as I have been able to make out, the logical legitimacy of such arguments is pretty much taken for granted among the disputants on both sides of the IQ nature/nurture controversy.
The first link you point to, which seems most directly to address the issue of regression to the mean, in turn points to papers which were written about 30 years ago or more, without, it seems, anyone in the dispute taking them seriously.
I pointed out these papers because among the literature I’ve read on the topic, they present the best discussions and explanations of this issue. They are definitely not the last thing that’s ever been written on the subject. And while Mackenzie’s paper is indeed (yet undeservedly!) forgotten and obscure, Furby’s has been cited widely throughout the last four decades (just google for its title).
Furthermore, the logical validity of the regression argument is by no means “taken for granted” on both sides. I recommend that you read James Flynn’s 1980 book Race, IQ, and Jensen (dated, but still well worth reading), which presents a refutation of it by a prominent participant in the controversy. (It’s on pages 64-67 -- you might be able to find it on Google Books preview.) Another refutation, written by Nathan Brody, can be found in the 2003 volume The Scientific Study of General Intelligence: a Tribute to Arthur Jensen, edited by Helmut Nyborg (pages 404-407). The regression argument has also been dismissed as invalid in numerous books and papers by Richard Nisbett and many others, with refutations of varying detail and quality.
Also, an interesting critical discussion of the quality of Jensen’s statistics in general, which also addressed the regression arguments, was featured in the fall 2001 issue of the journal Chance. (Jensen himself also contributed.)
On the whole, unfortunately, a rather stupid situation has persisted since the seventies on this issue. Jensen and the other hereditarians stubbornly keep insisting on the same decades-old regression arguments, and their critics reply with more or less the same refutations. Neither side has made any further advance. However, while the anti-hereditarians can be blamed only for not coming up with more readable, clear, and in-depth counter-arguments, the hereditarians are, in my view, much more to blame because they keep bringing up the same invalid argument over and over.
(I have to add that on the whole, I have a lot of respect for Jensen as an intellectual figure, and I’m puzzled by his behavior when it comes to this particular issue. I should also stress that here I’m stating my opinion only on the specific issue of regression-based arguments, not about any other disputes that are relevant for this controversy.)
Here’s the basic problem with claiming that regression to the mean in the context of, say, human traits is simply some mathematical artifact: it does nothing to explain WHY there should be a regression to the mean. [...] In short, the existence of regression to the mean in the expression of traits across generations presents an important fact—one that one might not a priori expect. Something must explain that fact. Do you seriously think that that explanatory problem simply goes away by declaring that appeals to regression to the mean constitute a “logical fallacy”?
Honestly, with all due respect, I think you lack the necessary knowledge of statistics to reason about this issue correctly. Regression to the mean is not some unusual phenomenon that calls for a special explanation when observed. On the contrary, it is a mathematical necessity that happens whenever you have two imperfectly correlated variables (under some very generous mathematical assumptions, to be precise). For a rudimentary intuitive view, see the already discussed article by Neuroskeptic, and for detailed explanations, check out the above cited references.
In your post, you take the hopelessly muddled argument from Rushton and Jensen’s 2005 paper—which is, incidentally, restated in their 2009 rebuttal of Nisbett’s subsequent criticism of it, thus completing another round of the decades long non-debate I described above. You then proceed to make an even bigger muddle out of it. If you insist, I can post a more detailed criticism, but if you intend to debate these topics publicly, I would advise you to acquire a greater familiarity with the relevant literature and the pertinent topics in statistics. Reading through the above listed references should give you an idea of where the problems with your argument are.
Thank you, I will take a look at those discussions. I’m not an expert on this topic by any means and can’t claim to have developed an independent opinion of this regression-to-the-mean argument. A major reason this looked to me like a convenient article to link to was that it has a collection of links to recent articles by Jensen, Nisbett etc.
Thank you for providing a great example that you can get a lot of upvotes on LW for totally making shit up, as long as it resonates with some LWer’s prejudice.
For people naively upvoting billswift’s bullshit, look at real data. For example in the most populous African country Nigeria life expectancy in 1950 was 35 years. Last year it was 48 years. You’ll see such improvement in nearly every country, and this accelerated drastically in early 1990s, about the same time as Americans and Soviets stopped having proxy wars in which locals got killed.
This graph seems to offer a point against my claim that progress has been recently accelerating (while totally confirming my claim that billswift is making stuff up), so I’ll explain.
The late 90s drop you can see on the graph is a statistical artifact related to AIDS, early 2000s cutoff, and clustering countries into unnatural categories.
The worst affected countries were mostly in relatively well off countries like South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe (it was well off until recently) etc. that don’t really cluster with most of the poor Sub-Saharan Africa, and have incomes and standards of living more like Brazil or Turkey. Most of them had clear and very rapid rebounds in life expectancy since the worst in early 2000s in any case, trend-line won’t be significantly affected by that.
For the poor everyone else of Sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS had much less severe effects, and for many like Nigeria I mentioned you wouldn’t even notice anything just looking at life expectancy statistics. Here’s per-country graphs going to 2008.
An experiment someone should do at some point (if it hasn’t already been done):
Divide (educated Western) subjects into two groups. Ask the first group how much they think life has improved in a particular African country since decolonization, without mentioning the date of the latter. Ask the second group how much they think life in that country has improved since 1950 (or whatever the actual appropriate date for “decolonization” is for the country selected), without mentioning colonization. Compare the results.
Prediction: the second group’s answer will be higher.
There is no incentive for anyone in Africa to become an inventor or scientist, and little incentive to become an engineer, because of all that technology outside Africa.
One argument I have heard (no idea of the source, I might be able to google it up at some point) is that Western technology and prosperity has been achieved through the systematic exploitation of Third Worlders. This would argue that without slaves and colonies of their own to exploit, it will take Africans a much longer time to achieve the same goals.
There are plenty of counterexamples. Ignoring several other ones, let me present:
Japan.
Isolationist for a good part of its history, it did attempt to conquer outside holdings before this period (they failed however). The Japanese developed a sophisticated civilization, and once exposed to Western technology and institutions they quickly caught up. They only invaded Korea after they had already reached the level of middle tier Western powers.
This doesn’t prove prove that Europe didn’t benefit from colonialism, what it however does prove is that its possible to develop quite rapidly without it.
Nitpick: while Japan’s (first) invasion of Korea failed, Japan did take Sakhalin, & Okinawa and the Ryuku Islands early on; depending on what time periods you are considering, Taiwan might also count.
All civilizations in the history of the world conquered some of their neighbours at some point. Since the earliest conquests are primarily people very similar to the ones doing the conquering and since they spend so much time together after the event, some of these events are later called unifications. Often the reason behind the similarities is the influence of previously existing empires! (the unification of Italy, the various unifications of China ect.)
What is an outside holding, the term I used in my previous post, is of course open for debate or rather definition since this is not a binary matter. However let me emphasise several ways the Japanese early expansion that you mention differ from say British expansion in Africa or India.
With the exception of Taiwan (even that region today barley musters 1⁄6 of Japans population) the regions are demographically irrelevant, for the purpose of “exploiting” masses of cheap foreign labour. Also even if they weren’t, this wouldn’t be a point in favour of the theory erratio presents since they are also all part of the first world today. The Ryuku language to top it off is very similar to Japanese having branched off a little after the 7th century. French control of Corsica or perhaps Spanish control of the Balearic Islands is perhaps comparable on the outside/inside scale. Is this really what first comes to mind when hearing the word colonialism?
The African medieval states I’ll link to in a moment expanded far more in terms of sheer square km, I’m also willing to bet that they had a greater proportion of “conquered peoples” compared to Japan (the only time where this may not be true is during the height of Japanese occupation of China, but by then Japan was a developed nation):
I will however admit that the expansion into Sakhalin is comparable to British settlements in North America or perhaps Australia, being mostly a process of settling and taking new land with little use for the natives beyond small scale trade.
This is quite common argument, nevertheless I have never seen any detailed explanation of how having colonies could speed the developement. Comparison between different European countries suggests otherwise. For long time possessor of largest colonial empire, Spain, has briefly profited from colonial wealth in 16th century, a period followed by relatively slow developement leaving the country among the poorest in Europe in 19th century. There are many rich countries that never had any colonies.
And there is also quite standard argument that access to cheap labour or even slavery does more harm than good, because there is no motivation for inventions.
And there is also quite standard argument that access to cheap labour or even slavery does more harm than good, because there is no motivation for inventions.
Right, this is in line with what Collier says about having an abundance of lucrative natural resources paradoxically being detrimental to a developing world country.
Since de-colonization, Africa has gone from a roughly late-19th/early-20th century Euro-American equivalency to, except in specific areas, roughly a mid-19th century level of development. If you think aid does not actively harm development, what is your explanation? Do you think Africans must be inherently inferior to Europeans? Our ancestors developed, rather than regressed, despite having to invent all the systems and technology for ourselves; the Africans, and other less developed countries, know what is possible and can even fairly easily find out how to do it. So if aid is not a problem, especially if you claim aid helps, you have even more to explain about the Third World incompetence.
So, first of all, I don’t know enough about the topic to know whether the claim that you’re making is correct. I would appreciate a reference supporting your claim.
A natural explanation for the alleged phenomenon that you allude is that colonization introduced foreign elements to Africa which worked okay in juxtaposition with the colonial occupation but which caused serious problems once the colonial powers pulled out on account of these foreign elements meshing poorly with the native cultures.
It isn’t so much a claim as my opinion based on general reading rather than a specific reference. There are actually many potential differences and problems about development in African nations, I was pointing out that anyone making the claim that aid has any beneficial effect has to explain the apparent retrogression. For a good introduction to the problems of development, William Easterly’s books, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics and The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, are a good and fairly readable start.
You could also make the claim that colonization was in reality a massive aid campaign to the colonized lands, and that the problem has been caused by the effective reduction in aid since de-colonization. There have been several good studies that, contra the general belief, colonies were a net drain on the colonizers, and the colonized peoples gained more economic value than was extracted. The primary beneficiaries being a few large special interests.
I don’t think Africans are inferior to Europeans and I doubt anyone reading this site would subscribe to that opinion. On the other hand I’ve noticed that many people around here feel that it is likely that there are some cognitive differences between human population groups and that it is likely that those have a partially genetic basis (for a readable and not overly one-sided version of this argument see e.g. here).
It’s possible to imagine that cognitive differences between population groups would be important to consider in any project such as improving the lives of Africans and it’s possible that this factor is currently mostly left out of consideration. Maybe this is a factor in the aid-skepticism of some of our colleagues here so maybe it would do some good to address this head-on.
I’m personally agnostic on a lot of questions here and feel a bit overwhelmed by all the factors involved. My wife and I pay for the education of a child in Africa. I hope that does some good but I can’t claim any certainty on the question.
Apprentice:
That article you linked to is horrendously bad. This guy starts talking about multiple lines of evidence for the hereditarian hypothesis, cites a prominent paper surveying these lines, and then proclaims that the best and most decisive evidence is provided by the regression-to-the-mean phenomena. Which is in reality one gigantic logical fallacy, and quite possibly the weakest and most flawed argument ever set forth by Jensen and other prominent hereditarians. He then proceeds to spin his misunderstanding of this already catastrophically bad argument into an even more elaborate web of fallacies.
If you’re interested in this topic, here are some links to recent LW discussions where you’ll find a bunch of much better references. The first one specifically deals with regression to the mean:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2nz/less_wrong_open_thread_september_2010/2jpi http://lesswrong.com/lw/2eu/open_thread_july_2010/28v5
I’ve now read both threads. While I did learn some interesting things I’m not really much closer to understanding the flaws in the reasoning of the article I originally linked to.
Neuroskeptic’s post on regression to the mean explains the concept clearly enough but I don’t really understand why he’s so hostile to it. Why does he think it’s not a useful concept? The trick is being able to spot it when it happens, and to avoid being mislead by it. If you’re not careful, it can happen anywhere. Uh, yeah. So why not have a word for it? Why not teach undergraduates about it? I don’t get it. Did he just have a bad teacher or something?
I understand you spent a significant amount of time digging into the literature on group variation in cognition—and ultimately were unable to tell who’s right. That’s a bit disappointing to me, I’d hoped that with a bit of dilettanteish reading I could have an informed opinion—and you’re probably better equipped to understand the literature than I am.
The term “regression to the mean” suggests time series and agency. But it’s just about what happens with two correlated variables, if the correlation isn’t 1. I suggest the alternative name: “a stupid prediction,” as in “Because the parents’ height is a stupid prediction for the children, the children of tall parents are not as tall as their parents.” Perhaps it would be less vulgar to use “naive.”
That’s just a suggestion. Perhaps someone can think of a better name, but I think putting the focus on prediction is the key to a better name.
While you may find appeals to arguments from the regression to the mean to be “horrendously bad”, I can only report that, so far as I have been able to make out, the logical legitimacy of such arguments is pretty much taken for granted among the disputants on both sides of the IQ nature/nurture controversy.
The first link you point to, which seems most directly to address the issue of regression to the mean, in turn points to papers which were written about 30 years ago or more, without, it seems, anyone in the dispute taking them seriously.
Don’t you think that that would suggest that there’s something deficient in the argument that use of regression to the mean in this context is a logical fallacy?
Here’s the basic problem with claiming that regression to the mean in the context of, say, human traits is simply some mathematical artifact: it does nothing to explain WHY there should be a regression to the mean.
Yes, not only do the average IQs (or heights) of children regress to the mean from the average IQs of their parents; the opposite is also true—the average IQs (or heights) of parents regress to the mean from the average IQs of their children. Does that mean that there is no causal relation established by regression to the mean effects? No, absolutely not. It only establishes that the direction of a causal arrow can’t be determined from the fact of regression to the mean alone. But we know the direction of that arrow, if the cause is genetic (or environmental, presumably): it goes from parents to children, not the other way around. When we understand this, we can also explain why we see regression to the mean in the other direction as well; the same underlying set of causes are working, though, again, the direction of the causal arrow is opposite.
The fact of regression to the mean strongly argues that there is SOME underlying causal mechanism (be it genetic or environmental or a combination) that explains that fact. Why is it that the children of high IQ parents regress partly to the mean, but not all the way?
Regression to the mean in traits in both directions, from children to parents and vice versa, can be explained by luck—those parents or children who have greater IQs or greater heights are, on average, luckier than average; they are, in particular, luckier than their own children or parents, respectively. But what are they luckier AT? What have they received more of? If one says, genes that increase the trait in question, then a perfectly coherent explanation emerges. One might say that they’ve received a better environment—but that becomes a very difficult explanation in the case of IQ, since typically quite the opposite seems to be true (parents with high IQs have on average greater incomes and generally should establish a better environment for their children than they themselves experienced.)
In short, the existence of regression to the mean in the expression of traits across generations presents an important fact—one that one might not a priori expect. Something must explain that fact. Do you seriously think that that explanatory problem simply goes away by declaring that appeals to regression to the mean constitute a “logical fallacy”?
liberalbiorealist:
I pointed out these papers because among the literature I’ve read on the topic, they present the best discussions and explanations of this issue. They are definitely not the last thing that’s ever been written on the subject. And while Mackenzie’s paper is indeed (yet undeservedly!) forgotten and obscure, Furby’s has been cited widely throughout the last four decades (just google for its title).
Furthermore, the logical validity of the regression argument is by no means “taken for granted” on both sides. I recommend that you read James Flynn’s 1980 book Race, IQ, and Jensen (dated, but still well worth reading), which presents a refutation of it by a prominent participant in the controversy. (It’s on pages 64-67 -- you might be able to find it on Google Books preview.) Another refutation, written by Nathan Brody, can be found in the 2003 volume The Scientific Study of General Intelligence: a Tribute to Arthur Jensen, edited by Helmut Nyborg (pages 404-407). The regression argument has also been dismissed as invalid in numerous books and papers by Richard Nisbett and many others, with refutations of varying detail and quality.
Also, an interesting critical discussion of the quality of Jensen’s statistics in general, which also addressed the regression arguments, was featured in the fall 2001 issue of the journal Chance. (Jensen himself also contributed.)
On the whole, unfortunately, a rather stupid situation has persisted since the seventies on this issue. Jensen and the other hereditarians stubbornly keep insisting on the same decades-old regression arguments, and their critics reply with more or less the same refutations. Neither side has made any further advance. However, while the anti-hereditarians can be blamed only for not coming up with more readable, clear, and in-depth counter-arguments, the hereditarians are, in my view, much more to blame because they keep bringing up the same invalid argument over and over.
(I have to add that on the whole, I have a lot of respect for Jensen as an intellectual figure, and I’m puzzled by his behavior when it comes to this particular issue. I should also stress that here I’m stating my opinion only on the specific issue of regression-based arguments, not about any other disputes that are relevant for this controversy.)
Honestly, with all due respect, I think you lack the necessary knowledge of statistics to reason about this issue correctly. Regression to the mean is not some unusual phenomenon that calls for a special explanation when observed. On the contrary, it is a mathematical necessity that happens whenever you have two imperfectly correlated variables (under some very generous mathematical assumptions, to be precise). For a rudimentary intuitive view, see the already discussed article by Neuroskeptic, and for detailed explanations, check out the above cited references.
In your post, you take the hopelessly muddled argument from Rushton and Jensen’s 2005 paper—which is, incidentally, restated in their 2009 rebuttal of Nisbett’s subsequent criticism of it, thus completing another round of the decades long non-debate I described above. You then proceed to make an even bigger muddle out of it. If you insist, I can post a more detailed criticism, but if you intend to debate these topics publicly, I would advise you to acquire a greater familiarity with the relevant literature and the pertinent topics in statistics. Reading through the above listed references should give you an idea of where the problems with your argument are.
As a fence-sitter on this topic, I’d put in a vote for such a discussion, when your schedule allows.
Thank you, I will take a look at those discussions. I’m not an expert on this topic by any means and can’t claim to have developed an independent opinion of this regression-to-the-mean argument. A major reason this looked to me like a convenient article to link to was that it has a collection of links to recent articles by Jensen, Nisbett etc.
Thank you for providing a great example that you can get a lot of upvotes on LW for totally making shit up, as long as it resonates with some LWer’s prejudice.
For people naively upvoting billswift’s bullshit, look at real data. For example in the most populous African country Nigeria life expectancy in 1950 was 35 years. Last year it was 48 years. You’ll see such improvement in nearly every country, and this accelerated drastically in early 1990s, about the same time as Americans and Soviets stopped having proxy wars in which locals got killed.
For anyone else who, like me, saw taw’s callout bubble up in Recent Comments and wanted to find life expectancy data to check it, a graph:
The bottom line (in teal) represents sub-Saharan Africa. Vertical axis is life expectancy in years, horizontal axis is year.
This graph seems to offer a point against my claim that progress has been recently accelerating (while totally confirming my claim that billswift is making stuff up), so I’ll explain.
The late 90s drop you can see on the graph is a statistical artifact related to AIDS, early 2000s cutoff, and clustering countries into unnatural categories.
The worst affected countries were mostly in relatively well off countries like South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe (it was well off until recently) etc. that don’t really cluster with most of the poor Sub-Saharan Africa, and have incomes and standards of living more like Brazil or Turkey. Most of them had clear and very rapid rebounds in life expectancy since the worst in early 2000s in any case, trend-line won’t be significantly affected by that.
For the poor everyone else of Sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS had much less severe effects, and for many like Nigeria I mentioned you wouldn’t even notice anything just looking at life expectancy statistics. Here’s per-country graphs going to 2008.
Disregarding AIDS, the most recent decade has been the best one ever for Africa by nearly any metric, be it average income, equality, poverty rates, democracy, peace, etc.
An experiment someone should do at some point (if it hasn’t already been done):
Divide (educated Western) subjects into two groups. Ask the first group how much they think life has improved in a particular African country since decolonization, without mentioning the date of the latter. Ask the second group how much they think life in that country has improved since 1950 (or whatever the actual appropriate date for “decolonization” is for the country selected), without mentioning colonization. Compare the results.
Prediction: the second group’s answer will be higher.
There is no incentive for anyone in Africa to become an inventor or scientist, and little incentive to become an engineer, because of all that technology outside Africa.
Of course, this is a post-hoc just-so story.
One argument I have heard (no idea of the source, I might be able to google it up at some point) is that Western technology and prosperity has been achieved through the systematic exploitation of Third Worlders. This would argue that without slaves and colonies of their own to exploit, it will take Africans a much longer time to achieve the same goals.
There are plenty of counterexamples. Ignoring several other ones, let me present:
Japan.
Isolationist for a good part of its history, it did attempt to conquer outside holdings before this period (they failed however). The Japanese developed a sophisticated civilization, and once exposed to Western technology and institutions they quickly caught up. They only invaded Korea after they had already reached the level of middle tier Western powers.
This doesn’t prove prove that Europe didn’t benefit from colonialism, what it however does prove is that its possible to develop quite rapidly without it.
Nitpick: while Japan’s (first) invasion of Korea failed, Japan did take Sakhalin, & Okinawa and the Ryuku Islands early on; depending on what time periods you are considering, Taiwan might also count.
All civilizations in the history of the world conquered some of their neighbours at some point. Since the earliest conquests are primarily people very similar to the ones doing the conquering and since they spend so much time together after the event, some of these events are later called unifications. Often the reason behind the similarities is the influence of previously existing empires! (the unification of Italy, the various unifications of China ect.)
What is an outside holding, the term I used in my previous post, is of course open for debate or rather definition since this is not a binary matter. However let me emphasise several ways the Japanese early expansion that you mention differ from say British expansion in Africa or India.
With the exception of Taiwan (even that region today barley musters 1⁄6 of Japans population) the regions are demographically irrelevant, for the purpose of “exploiting” masses of cheap foreign labour. Also even if they weren’t, this wouldn’t be a point in favour of the theory erratio presents since they are also all part of the first world today. The Ryuku language to top it off is very similar to Japanese having branched off a little after the 7th century. French control of Corsica or perhaps Spanish control of the Balearic Islands is perhaps comparable on the outside/inside scale. Is this really what first comes to mind when hearing the word colonialism?
The African medieval states I’ll link to in a moment expanded far more in terms of sheer square km, I’m also willing to bet that they had a greater proportion of “conquered peoples” compared to Japan (the only time where this may not be true is during the height of Japanese occupation of China, but by then Japan was a developed nation):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Empire
I will however admit that the expansion into Sakhalin is comparable to British settlements in North America or perhaps Australia, being mostly a process of settling and taking new land with little use for the natives beyond small scale trade.
This is quite common argument, nevertheless I have never seen any detailed explanation of how having colonies could speed the developement. Comparison between different European countries suggests otherwise. For long time possessor of largest colonial empire, Spain, has briefly profited from colonial wealth in 16th century, a period followed by relatively slow developement leaving the country among the poorest in Europe in 19th century. There are many rich countries that never had any colonies.
And there is also quite standard argument that access to cheap labour or even slavery does more harm than good, because there is no motivation for inventions.
Right, this is in line with what Collier says about having an abundance of lucrative natural resources paradoxically being detrimental to a developing world country.
No motivation for inventions, or no motivation to improve the tools that slaves use?
Precisely, less motivation to improve work efficiency.