https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1
Friday, May 13, 2016
j reacts to speculation on what jesus may have actually looked like
"If sheep, aud swiue, and lions strong, and all the bovine crew, Could paint with cunning hands, and do what clever mortals do, Depend upon it, every pig with snout so broad and blunt, Would make a Jove that like himself would thunder with a grunt; And every lion's god would roar, aud every bull's would bellow, And every sheep's would baa, and every beast his worshipped fellow Would find in some immortal form, aud naught exist divine But had the gait of lion, sheep, or ox, or grunting swine." - xenophanes fragment, from a long time ago in what is now turkey.
additionally.
"Ethiopians say that their gods are snub–nosed and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired"
see, i just came across an article criticizing white europeans for the representations of jesus as white. but, everybody does this. the book claims god created us in it's image. but, even the greek philosophers knew that in truth we constantly create our gods in our own image.
the truth is that there have been as many jesuses as there have been cultures that worship him, and they've all reflected, in some way, the indigenous cultures that the localized syncretic concepts of christianity have been constructed around. you get jesus as warrior-king, jesus as sage, jesus as fire-breathing zealot - it's a kind of blank slate to scrawl over.
if you actually trace the different representations of jesus through time, you get a variety of different representations. jesus seems to get a little whiter from the medieval period into the renaissance, as he becomes less italian looking. the byzantine jesus looks pretty greek. and, before that? well, he looks pretty jewish - that is, kind of tanned, but ultimately pretty caucasian.
i'm just pushing back against the idea that jesus would have looked like an arab, because it's pretty ahistorical. the arab migration into the region didn't happen for a few more hundred years. rather, at the time of jesus, migration into the levant would have been mostly moving from the north and the east: iranians, greeks and italians. and, so, it's not particularly strange that 4th or 5th century depictions of jesus make him look more iranian than arab.
i know. modern historians want continuity. but, this doesn't work with the full scale of evidence, it's just an ideological attempt to reject racism. see, i don't think we need to make shit up to reject racism - i think the evidence in front of us is strong enough.
the three different types of jews that exist today are all of various mixed ancestry: the ashkenazi have absorbed a lot of turkic and slavic, and the sephardi and mizrahi have both absorbed a lot of arab. if you work out the genetics, the closest thing we have to an ancestral population of jews is actually the kurds. this is a complicated and contested thing to try and sort through and understand but just about everybody agrees that it's actually true.
the conclusion is that jesus probably didn't look like an arab or a palestinian jew but actually probably looked something like this guy.
additionally.
"Ethiopians say that their gods are snub–nosed and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired"
see, i just came across an article criticizing white europeans for the representations of jesus as white. but, everybody does this. the book claims god created us in it's image. but, even the greek philosophers knew that in truth we constantly create our gods in our own image.
the truth is that there have been as many jesuses as there have been cultures that worship him, and they've all reflected, in some way, the indigenous cultures that the localized syncretic concepts of christianity have been constructed around. you get jesus as warrior-king, jesus as sage, jesus as fire-breathing zealot - it's a kind of blank slate to scrawl over.
if you actually trace the different representations of jesus through time, you get a variety of different representations. jesus seems to get a little whiter from the medieval period into the renaissance, as he becomes less italian looking. the byzantine jesus looks pretty greek. and, before that? well, he looks pretty jewish - that is, kind of tanned, but ultimately pretty caucasian.
i'm just pushing back against the idea that jesus would have looked like an arab, because it's pretty ahistorical. the arab migration into the region didn't happen for a few more hundred years. rather, at the time of jesus, migration into the levant would have been mostly moving from the north and the east: iranians, greeks and italians. and, so, it's not particularly strange that 4th or 5th century depictions of jesus make him look more iranian than arab.
i know. modern historians want continuity. but, this doesn't work with the full scale of evidence, it's just an ideological attempt to reject racism. see, i don't think we need to make shit up to reject racism - i think the evidence in front of us is strong enough.
the three different types of jews that exist today are all of various mixed ancestry: the ashkenazi have absorbed a lot of turkic and slavic, and the sephardi and mizrahi have both absorbed a lot of arab. if you work out the genetics, the closest thing we have to an ancestral population of jews is actually the kurds. this is a complicated and contested thing to try and sort through and understand but just about everybody agrees that it's actually true.
the conclusion is that jesus probably didn't look like an arab or a palestinian jew but actually probably looked something like this guy.
j reacts to whether nate silver is biased, or just defending his model
i've never talked to nate silver, and so i'll acknowledge i don't know his personality well. but, it's probably less about bias and more about ego. yet, this itself is rooted in a warped concept of what an election is - and i've seen this a whole bunch of times with a whole bunch of other people and have been pushing back about it for quite a while.
the error is common and widespread across academic disciplines; it's called generalizing the specific. here's how this works. nate comes up with a pretty good model for the 2008 election - and it was a pretty good model. then, he assumes that this model is universally applicable, perhaps with just minor tweaks. so, he should be able to apply it to every other election. this is how you do science, after all, right?
but, understanding elections is not like building physical laws. the basis of science is repeatably demonstrable experiments. if you drop an apple on monday, it falls. if you drop it on tuesday, it falls. if you drop it next friday, it falls. it's always the same. that's physics. well, that's newtonian physics, anyways. but, what if you were to change the gravitational constant sometime in the middle of the week? well, you can't - not when you're doing physics, anyways. they're constants.
when you're analyzing elections, the constants are going to fluctuate dramatically year over year or even month over month. you could wake up to a single event that will throw everything out of balance. or, demographics could shift midway through the cycle. that is where nate's error really is: he's assuming that his 2008 model is a universal truth, rather than a good analysis of a specific election.
because he's made this bad assumption, he then needs to defend it. see, you're misinterpreting this as some kind of bias. it's really just his ego trying to uphold the universality of his model, based on the flawed assumption that you can have a universal theory of elections in the first place.
trump's win is largely a function of his opponents' errors and the weakness of the field. i don't think anybody really saw it coming from a distance, but when you saw the way things unfolded, it became obvious what was happening. there simply wasn't an electable candidate in the field. i don't know if you blame bush for being lacklustre or if you blame the banks for taking too long to figure it out. i don't know if you blame rubio for being transparently false or if you blame cruz for splitting the vote. but, he won by controlling the centre of the republican spectrum in the vacuum of a moderate candidate. i still think that kasich would have cleaned his clock, one-on-one, from an early point - if he had comparable media coverage. but, it just upheld what we know about open competition: it's not the best candidate that wins, but the one that is the most violent. if he had to fight against a strong, centrist candidate over a smaller field then he would have probably lost every state. so, i don't think he was wrong; i actually said something very similar, and i do stand by it. i just think trump's opponents were particularly incompetent, in ways that were hard to predict from a distance.
what he should have done with the democratic primary was build a new model with new information. reality is that there's lots of blacks that voted for obama because he was black, and it was reasonable to build a model around it. but, nobody is voting for clinton because obama is black. people may be voting for clinton because she's methodist, because she's female, because she's a hawk, because she's more conservative, because she'll tax them less - or, because they're old. that's the biggest takeaway, right. clinton wins when the voters are older, and loses when they're younger. had he crunched those numbers and built a new model, with new data, it would have probably been pretty good.
but, universalizing the specific means you don't do that. it means you assume the apple falls the same way every time. and, it means you have to defend your work against scrutiny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP7fxNdAs5E
the error is common and widespread across academic disciplines; it's called generalizing the specific. here's how this works. nate comes up with a pretty good model for the 2008 election - and it was a pretty good model. then, he assumes that this model is universally applicable, perhaps with just minor tweaks. so, he should be able to apply it to every other election. this is how you do science, after all, right?
but, understanding elections is not like building physical laws. the basis of science is repeatably demonstrable experiments. if you drop an apple on monday, it falls. if you drop it on tuesday, it falls. if you drop it next friday, it falls. it's always the same. that's physics. well, that's newtonian physics, anyways. but, what if you were to change the gravitational constant sometime in the middle of the week? well, you can't - not when you're doing physics, anyways. they're constants.
when you're analyzing elections, the constants are going to fluctuate dramatically year over year or even month over month. you could wake up to a single event that will throw everything out of balance. or, demographics could shift midway through the cycle. that is where nate's error really is: he's assuming that his 2008 model is a universal truth, rather than a good analysis of a specific election.
because he's made this bad assumption, he then needs to defend it. see, you're misinterpreting this as some kind of bias. it's really just his ego trying to uphold the universality of his model, based on the flawed assumption that you can have a universal theory of elections in the first place.
trump's win is largely a function of his opponents' errors and the weakness of the field. i don't think anybody really saw it coming from a distance, but when you saw the way things unfolded, it became obvious what was happening. there simply wasn't an electable candidate in the field. i don't know if you blame bush for being lacklustre or if you blame the banks for taking too long to figure it out. i don't know if you blame rubio for being transparently false or if you blame cruz for splitting the vote. but, he won by controlling the centre of the republican spectrum in the vacuum of a moderate candidate. i still think that kasich would have cleaned his clock, one-on-one, from an early point - if he had comparable media coverage. but, it just upheld what we know about open competition: it's not the best candidate that wins, but the one that is the most violent. if he had to fight against a strong, centrist candidate over a smaller field then he would have probably lost every state. so, i don't think he was wrong; i actually said something very similar, and i do stand by it. i just think trump's opponents were particularly incompetent, in ways that were hard to predict from a distance.
what he should have done with the democratic primary was build a new model with new information. reality is that there's lots of blacks that voted for obama because he was black, and it was reasonable to build a model around it. but, nobody is voting for clinton because obama is black. people may be voting for clinton because she's methodist, because she's female, because she's a hawk, because she's more conservative, because she'll tax them less - or, because they're old. that's the biggest takeaway, right. clinton wins when the voters are older, and loses when they're younger. had he crunched those numbers and built a new model, with new data, it would have probably been pretty good.
but, universalizing the specific means you don't do that. it means you assume the apple falls the same way every time. and, it means you have to defend your work against scrutiny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP7fxNdAs5E
you have to expect the conservatives to yell and scream and have a temper tantrum over this, because the process will rightly have the end result of removing their ability to win majorities with a minority of support (and, you can't compare the liberal's 40% to the conservatives' 40% due to the way the spectrum aligns - it's just yet another dishonest argument from tom mulcair). but, that's too bad - the liberals have a majority, here, and should use it to plow through the av as quick as possible, so that voters have time to understand it.
the worst thing that can happen is for this to drag on until a month before the election, as the backlash could push them out. they want to push it through quickly so that people have time to calm down and realize it's a net benefit to the stability of the country.
and, that's going to mean ignoring the temper tantrums, until the opposition tires itself out and goes to sleep.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wherry-liberals-electoral-reform-1.3579651
the worst thing that can happen is for this to drag on until a month before the election, as the backlash could push them out. they want to push it through quickly so that people have time to calm down and realize it's a net benefit to the stability of the country.
and, that's going to mean ignoring the temper tantrums, until the opposition tires itself out and goes to sleep.
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wherry-liberals-electoral-reform-1.3579651
who is going to do a better job fulfilling the unstated role - an by all accounts capable woman who just happens to be the prime minister's wife, or people that have some training and legitimate interest in the topic? who will be more accountable?
it's kind of a broader issue. what is more efficient: private charity (which is what she's being expected to do...) that is accountable to nobody or public servants that are accountable in the traditional manners? i vote for public sector services over private sector charity.
...which means that she should have an office, it should be accountable to the house and it should be handed over to the next wife or husband
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sophie-gregoire-trudeau-overwhelmed-1.3580164
it's kind of a broader issue. what is more efficient: private charity (which is what she's being expected to do...) that is accountable to nobody or public servants that are accountable in the traditional manners? i vote for public sector services over private sector charity.
...which means that she should have an office, it should be accountable to the house and it should be handed over to the next wife or husband
www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sophie-gregoire-trudeau-overwhelmed-1.3580164
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