MeisterQuirk

Facts, Honesty, Integrity, and Truth balanced with an incorrigible, dark, and sarcastic sense of humour. Celebrating ironies and ridiculousnesses.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

@DreadTweeting @pauleholden It isn’t a magic eraser that makes everything before it causally irrelevant.

Your Jenga analogy doesn’t refute my argument.

It simply starts the game halfway through and pretends nobody is allowed to ask what the towers looked like before the first block was taken.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

You have completely misunderstood the argument.

The operating system includes history.

Colonialism, war, slavery, conquest, extraction, institutions being destroyed, institutions being created, technologies being imported, languages changing, education systems, political structures, norms, accumulated knowledge and everything else that modifies what one generation hands to the next are all part of the cultural operating system.

So saying, “You can’t separate culture from colonialism” isn’t a rebuttal to my argument.

I didn’t separate them.

You did.

But your Jenga analogy has a much bigger problem.

For it to explain the developmental gap, the two towers must have been roughly the same height before one started stealing the other’s blocks.

They weren’t.

That is precisely the historical question your analogy quietly removes.

Compare the Netherlands and the Congo immediately before European colonisation. Compare their literacy, scientific knowledge, metallurgy, navigation, military technology, commercial institutions, state administration, financial systems, educational institutions, productive technology and ability to coordinate activity over enormous distances.

Or forget Africa completely if that makes the issue emotionally difficult.

Take a Western European from 2,000 years ago and transport him into London today.

Same ancestry. Same human worth. Broadly the same human cognitive hardware.

He cannot function at anything approaching the level of a modern Londoner.

Who stole his Jenga blocks?

Nobody.

He simply arrived with an informational operating system accumulated for a radically earlier environment.

Now take his newborn child and raise that child in London today. The child acquires the modern operating system and becomes an ordinary modern Londoner.

Or reverse it.

Imagine aliens arrive tomorrow with a civilization 10,000 years ahead of ours. Suddenly every human on Earth is technologically primitive relative to them. Our finest engineers may not understand their machines. Our physicists may not understand their science.

Who stole our blocks?

Again, nobody.

We simply have not accumulated their informational system.

That is the point.

Civilizations begin from different historical states and accumulate knowledge, institutions, technologies and modes of organization at different rates. They also conquer each other, destroy things, appropriate things, trade things, copy things, improve things and sometimes lose things.

All of that becomes part of the next state.

Of course Leopold’s Congo matters. Of course colonial extraction matters. Of course slavery, foreign intervention and the destruction of institutions matter.

But acknowledging those things does not magically erase the state of the societies that existed before colonialism.

If you want to claim that colonialism explains the present difference, you have to explain the difference that already existed when colonialism began.

And then explain why different colonised societies subsequently produced radically different trajectories.

Japan is particularly inconvenient for your argument because Western powers forced it open, imposed unequal treaties and confronted it with overwhelming technological superiority. Japan responded by absorbing enormous quantities of foreign knowledge and transforming itself into an industrial power within decades.

Why was Japan capable of doing that?

That is precisely the kind of question my framework asks.

None of this requires believing that Japanese people, Europeans or Africans possess different human worth.

It doesn’t even require a genetic intelligence explanation.

Quite the contrary.

Same human hardware. Different accumulated operating systems. Different present capabilities.

Colonialism can damage the operating system.

It can destroy parts of it.

It can impose parts of another one.

It can alter its future trajectory for centuries.

But colonialism is an event inside the causal history.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

Those are questions about history, institutions, culture, geography, incentives, accumulated knowledge and state capacity.

Colonialism belongs inside that causal history. It doesn’t replace it.

And neither does IQ.

If you want to understand why Japan and the DRC have radically different outcomes today, the serious question isn’t:

“Whose genes are better?”

Nor is it:

“Which Western country is to blame?”

It is:

What accumulated informational, institutional and technological systems did each society inherit; how were those systems altered by subsequent history; and how effectively has each society been able to acquire, transmit, retain and compound productive capabilities across generations?

That question allows Leopold, Belgium, the United States, Mobutu, war, geography, precolonial institutions, local political choices, education, norms, state capacity and foreign exploitation all to be investigated rather than declaring one of them the answer in advance.

The people are not the operating system.

And confusing the two is precisely how we end up attributing differences in societal outcomes either to intrinsic human inferiority or to a single external historical cause when neither conclusion follows.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

Paul, the problem is that you have constructed a false binary: either differences in outcomes are genetic, or they are the consequence of colonialism and Western racism.

There is a massive variable sitting between those explanations: culture, by which I mean the entire accumulated informational operating system of a society — language, knowledge, skills, norms, modes of thought, institutions, political organization, technology, education, economic systems, social coordination and the mechanisms by which all of these are transmitted and improved across generations.

Here is a simple thought experiment.

Take a Western European from 2,000 years ago and transport him to London today.

Same human worth. Broadly the same human cognitive hardware. Yet he would be almost completely incapable of functioning independently in modern society. He couldn’t operate its technology, participate in most skilled occupations, understand its institutions, use its financial system or even speak its language.

Why?

Not because he suddenly has inferior genes.

He has the wrong operating system for the environment.

Same hardware and CPU; Windows 1 versus Windows 12.

Now take his newborn child and raise that child entirely in modern London. You would expect a perfectly ordinary modern adult to emerge.

That should immediately make us cautious about explaining differences in societal capability by jumping either to genes or to colonialism.

Of course Leopold’s Congo was horrific. Of course Belgian colonialism was extraordinarily destructive. Of course Cold War intervention, Mobutu’s kleptocracy, regional wars and continuing foreign exploitation matter enormously to understanding the DRC.

But listing historical atrocities does not establish that they are the complete explanation of the DRC’s present developmental position.

There is a prior question: what was the developmental state of the societies concerned before European colonialism?

Japan was not transformed from a pre-industrial society into a sophisticated modern state merely by avoiding Western interference. Before the Meiji Restoration, Japan already possessed centuries of centralized and decentralized state administration, widespread literacy by premodern standards, sophisticated commercial networks, cities, monetary exchange, craft specialization, educational institutions and a highly developed written culture. When confronted by Western industrial power, Japan could absorb, translate and institutionalize enormous amounts of foreign knowledge remarkably quickly.

That accumulated cultural operating system mattered.

Likewise, European colonialism did not encounter a blank slate in the Congo. It encountered existing African societies with their own political structures, technologies, economic systems and accumulated histories. Those starting conditions matter too.

Acknowledging that is not saying Congolese people are genetically inferior.

It is precisely the opposite.

Human worth ≠ intelligence ≠ accumulated cultural capability.

Imagine aliens 10,000 years technologically ahead of humanity arriving tomorrow and reproducing their civilization on Earth. Suddenly WE might be incapable of operating their machines, understanding their science or functioning inside their institutions.

Would that prove humans genetically inferior?

No.

We simply wouldn’t have their accumulated informational operating system.

And this is why pointing to colonialism alone is insufficient as an explanation of global development differences. Colonialism itself requires causal analysis. Why could particular European states project military and commercial power across oceans in the first place? Why could Japan subsequently assimilate Western technology and institutions with extraordinary speed? Why did different formerly colonized societies follow radically different trajectories after independence?

[Diego Angulo @AmoaHamlet]

Durante mi militancia en el marxismo asistí a muchísimas charlas. Y con el tiempo empecé a notar un patrón muy interesante:

Podíamos pasar diez horas hablando de cómo tomar el poder.

Diez horas hablando de revolución, de estrategia, de organización, de activismo, de cómo derrotar al enemigo de clase, de cómo transformar las relaciones de poder.

Pero había una pregunta que nunca aparecía:

¿Y después qué?

Es decir:

¿Cómo vamos a crear riqueza?

¿Cómo vamos a organizar los incentivos?

¿Cómo vamos a asignar recursos escasos?

Silencio.

Y fue ahí cuando lo entendí.

El marxismo tiene una obsesión patológica con conquistar el poder y una pobreza extraordinaria de respuestas sobre cómo utilizarlo para construir una sociedad funcional.

La revolución está perfectamente descrita.

La sociedad posterior, en absoluta oscuridad.

Porque decir que algún día llegará una sociedad sin explotación, sin clases y sin contradicciones es muy fácil.

Lo difícil es explicar cómo llegas hasta ahí sin destruir en el camino los mecanismos que permiten a una sociedad producir y prosperar.

Y cuanto más preguntaba, más evidente se volvía.

El marxista podía explicarte durante horas quién tenía la culpa.

Pero cuando preguntabas cómo funcionaría concretamente esa nueva sociedad, las respuestas se hacían más oscuras.

Y quizá por eso, cuando intentaba ahondar en estos temas, la conversación siempre volvía al mismo lugar: cómo tomar el poder. No pasaban de eso.

Por eso hoy, cuando escucho a alguien hablar durante horas sobre la explotación, destruir el sistema y construir una sociedad nueva, mi primera pregunta es:

¿Cómo vas a hacerla funcionar?

Nunca verás a un marxista responderte esto porque literalmente no puede, no sabe.

Entonces deduce que, al igual que como con cualquier otra estafa piramidal, cuando hagas preguntas directas y concretas al marxismo, este intentará evitar en todo momento darte respuestas claras.

Nunca lo olvides.

[eNCA @eNCA]

41 ambulances, acquired for R41 million, have been standing idle at the Florida Park Fire Station for six years. The ambulances can no longer operate after Gauteng Health provincialised emergency medical services. Tune in to #eNCA on #DStv403.

[QE Infinity @StealthQE4]

Dylan’s rant as promised.

This was 15 years ago in 2011 after the GFC.

He basically nailed everything that’s coming home to roost today:

[Justin Glaser | Sweat 💧📘 @heyjustinglaser]

25 years ago, thousands of 9/11 survivors were exposed to the toxic dust and never got better.

Doctors told them "no hope." Then a forgotten detox protocol changed everything.

While writing my book Sweat, I discovered this story and couldn't believe it had never been told.

So we made a short documentary.

Their exposure was extreme. But with microplastics and environmental toxins everywhere in our lives, the question they answered is one we all face: can you actually get this stuff out?

SWEAT: The Untold 9/11 Story. 9 minutes. Free for everyone. 🇺🇸

[Ed @BreathingByEd]

https://t.co/wBVcyKWtJC

[Soxic @WhiteSoxic]

And his name was.....

[Mr_Fireside 🔥 @Mr_Fireside]

When did this I fell off the table.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

This is what civilization actually is: cumulative information.

Newton didn’t genetically upgrade the generations that followed him.

Neither did Galileo, Faraday, Pasteur, Darwin, Einstein or Turing.

They added information, methods and capabilities to the operating system inherited by subsequent generations.

And none of us individually invented the civilization we so effortlessly operate.

You didn’t invent your language.

You didn’t invent mathematics.

You didn’t discover electricity.

You didn’t develop germ theory.

You didn’t invent banking.

You didn’t create the legal system.

You didn’t invent the scientific method.

You didn’t develop computers.

You didn’t build the accumulated engineering knowledge behind the car you drive.

You inherited all of it.

By the time a modern child reaches adulthood, an extraordinary amount of accumulated civilization has been loaded into that person’s mind and embodied in the institutions, technologies and infrastructure surrounding them.

We are standing on an informational mountain constructed by thousands of years of previous human beings.

And because we were born on top of that mountain, we easily mistake the altitude for something intrinsic to ourselves.

That mistake profoundly distorts how we think about differences between individuals, cultures and civilizations.

When two populations have very different present capabilities or produce very different outcomes, our first question should not automatically be:

“What is intrinsically different about these human beings?”

We should ask:

“What informational operating systems have they inherited?”

What knowledge has accumulated?

How effectively is it transmitted?

What concepts does their language make available?

What behaviours and ways of thinking are rewarded?

How are children educated?

How is evidence evaluated?

How well do institutions function?

How effectively can strangers cooperate?

How are mistakes detected?

Can failed ideas be discarded?

Can successful innovations spread?

Does useful knowledge survive the death of the person who discovered it?

Can each generation begin where the previous generation finished?

Those questions matter because culture doesn’t merely transmit what we know.

It transmits how we think, how we interpret information, how we cooperate, how we solve problems and how we act upon the world.

That is why equality of human worth cannot logically mean equality of present capability.

And equality of present capability cannot simply be assumed because people have been placed under the same rules today.

Every human arrives today carrying an enormous inherited developmental history.

Different starting states can produce different outcomes without requiring any difference whatsoever in human worth.

The computer analogy does eventually break down in one very important—and hopeful—way.

Humans aren’t computers with permanently fixed operating systems.

We can update.

We learn.

We teach.

We imitate.

We experiment.

We discover.

We record.

We correct mistakes.

We build institutions.

We transmit successful solutions.

And the next generation doesn’t have to begin where we began.

That cumulative process is civilization.

So perhaps we should be much more careful when we attribute the achievements or failures of a civilization directly to the intrinsic characteristics of the people presently living inside it.

Much of what appears to be individual capability is actually accumulated civilization operating through the individual.

The human provides the hardware.

Culture installs the operating system.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

Here’s a simple analogy that explains something we routinely confuse about human beings, cultures and civilizations:

Take two computers with essentially the same hardware and CPU. One is running Windows 1. The other is running Windows 12.

Put them into an environment designed for Windows 12 and their functional capabilities will be radically different.

Does that prove that one computer has greater intrinsic worth? Obviously not.

Does it even prove that the difference lies in the processor? No.

The difference is primarily in the operating system.

Now apply the analogy to humans.

The hardware is our biological organism and underlying cognitive machinery.

The operating system is culture.

And by culture I don’t merely mean food, clothing, religion, music, traditions or customs. I mean the entire accumulated informational environment into which a human being is born and which is progressively “installed” during development:

Language. Concepts. Knowledge. Ways of reasoning. Education. Skills. Values. Norms. Institutions. Law. Economic systems. Technology. Scientific methods. Social expectations. Systems of cooperation. Ways of recording knowledge. Ways of correcting mistakes. And the mechanisms through which all of this is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Now perform a simple thought experiment.

Take a healthy Western European adult from 2,000 years ago and transport him instantly into London today.

Same species. Same human worth. Broadly the same human cognitive hardware.

Could he function independently?

Initially, absolutely not.

He couldn’t speak modern English. He couldn’t drive a car. He couldn’t use a smartphone. He couldn’t operate a bank account. He wouldn’t understand modern law, electricity, the internet, medicine, transport systems or most of the institutions surrounding him.

Put him into almost any highly specialized modern occupation and he would be completely incapable of performing it.

But here is the crucial point:

He isn’t stupid.

He is running an informational operating system constructed for a radically different world.

Now change the experiment.

Take the newborn child of that same person and raise the child from birth in a normal modern London household.

What would we expect?

A modern human being.

The child would learn English, use computers, understand modern institutions, learn modern mathematics and science, navigate modern technology and function perfectly normally in contemporary society.

The human hardware didn’t require 2,000 years of additional biological evolution.

The operating system changed.

Now reverse the experiment completely.

Imagine that tomorrow an alien civilization arrives on Earth that is 10,000 years technologically and scientifically ahead of us.

They reproduce their civilization here.

Their energy systems, mathematics, medicine, transportation, communications, institutions and technology are as far beyond us as our civilization is beyond something ancient.

Suddenly we are Windows 1.

Our Nobel Prize winners might not understand their science.

Our greatest engineers might be unable to operate their machines.

Our doctors might not understand their medicine.

Our economists might not comprehend their systems of exchange.

Our most intelligent people could be functionally helpless inside their civilization.

Would that mean we suddenly became stupid?

No.

Would our human worth have decreased?

Obviously not.

We would simply lack the accumulated informational architecture required to function in their world.

And that exposes a distinction we constantly confuse:

Human worth ≠ underlying cognitive capacity ≠ present functional capability.

People can have exactly the same human worth while possessing radically different present capabilities.

And radically different present capabilities do not, by themselves, demonstrate radically different underlying intelligence.

They may simply reflect radically different informational operating systems.

[Mankind vs Modern Feminism @MankindVsModFem]

Men. When it comes to confronting women supporting Lindsay Clancy, say nothing. Just repost this incredible video that says everything we're saying... but it's an exceptional woman saying it.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

There is a simple analogy: same hardware and CPU, but one computer loaded with Windows 1 compared to the computer loaded with Windows 12. You don’t need a difference in raw processing power to get a vast difference in functional capability. The operating system determines what the hardware can actually do in the environment it inhabits.

That is culture in the broad sense: not just customs, beliefs, food or traditions, but the entire inherited informational operating system: language, concepts, modes of thought, accumulated knowledge, norms, institutions, technologies, systems of coordination, and the mechanisms by which all of these are transmitted and improved.

Take a Western European from 2,000 years ago and drop him into Europe today. His human hardware hasn’t suddenly become inferior, yet he would initially be incapable of functioning independently in modern society. He doesn’t have the operating system. Conversely, take a human infant from 2,000 years ago and raise that child completely within today’s culture, and there is no reason to expect an Iron Age adult to emerge.

Now reverse the experiment. Imagine a civilization 10,000 years ahead of us arrives tomorrow and reproduces its systems here. We might all become the Windows 1 machines. Our brightest scientists could be unable to understand their science, operate their technology or function within their institutions. That would tell us very little about their human worth or raw intelligence. They simply wouldn’t have the required informational operating system installed.

This is why human worth, intelligence and present capability must not be confused. Equal human worth does not imply equal installed cultural architecture, and equal underlying processing capacity does not imply equal present capability.

Civilization is cumulative. Each generation doesn’t start from zero. It inherits an operating system built, tested, modified and expanded by countless previous generations.

The genes supply the hardware. Culture installs the OS. And much of what we casually attribute to the capability of the individual actually belongs to the accumulated civilization running through them.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

What it does NOT establish is:

“There has never been a collapse in African living standards.”

Zimbabwe alone falsifies any country-level interpretation of that statement.

Nor does it establish that particular countries didn’t deteriorate following decolonization.

And it certainly doesn’t establish that decolonization caused the continent-wide increase.

Those are completely different propositions.

Reilly started with the wrong statistic.

You’ve now supplied a much better statistic.

But you’re still trying to make an aggregate regional time series answer a country-level historical and causal question that it simply cannot answer.

[MeisterQuirk @MeisterQuirk]

Noah, this is a much better statistic than Reilly’s nominal-GDP comparison. You’re using real GDP per capita adjusted for inflation and purchasing power.

But the conclusion you’re drawing from it does not follow from the graph.

You write:

“There has never been a collapse in African living standards since 1950.”

Your own graph cannot establish that.

First, look at the graph itself.

Sub-Saharan African real GDP per capita is approximately:

1950: $1,300
1960: $1,580
1970: $1,970
1980: $2,030
1990: $1,820
2000: $2,000
2022: $3,440

So real GDP per person actually declined substantially after 1980 and took roughly two decades merely to recover its previous level.

Calling that simply “some periods of stagnation” is rather generous. Stagnation means not growing. Your graph shows an actual decline followed by a long recovery.

But that’s not even the main problem.

You’re using a Sub-Saharan African aggregate to make a claim about whether African countries experienced economic collapse.

That simply doesn’t work.

An average can rise dramatically while individual members of the average collapse.

And Zimbabwe, which Reilly specifically invoked via Rhodesia, demonstrates the problem beautifully.

Zimbabwe became independent in 1980.

World Bank constant-price GDP per capita:

1980: ~$1,547
1990: ~$1,654
1998: ~$1,789
2000: ~$1,677
2003: ~$1,251
2005: ~$1,089
2008: ~$803
2015: ~$1,387
2020: ~$1,231
2025: ~$1,503

From 1998 to 2008, Zimbabwe’s real GDP per person fell by approximately 55%.

If losing more than half your real output per person in ten years doesn’t qualify as an economic collapse, I’m curious what would.

And after 45 years, Zimbabwe’s real GDP per capita in 2025 is STILL slightly below its 1980 level.

Meanwhile its population increased from roughly 7 million to 17 million.

So Zimbabwe can simultaneously have a much larger population, a larger nominal economy, and essentially no increase in real output per person over 45 years.

That’s exactly why Reilly’s original nominal-GDP argument was so misleading.

But there’s another problem with your graph.

“Decolonization” wasn’t an event that happened to Africa in 1950.

Ghana: 1957
Nigeria: 1960
Kenya: 1963
Botswana: 1966
Angola: 1975
Mozambique: 1975
Zimbabwe: 1980
Namibia: 1990

If the question is what happened following decolonization, then you need to examine countries around their actual political transitions.

A continent-wide average beginning in 1950 cannot tell you whether Zimbabwe subsequently collapsed, Botswana subsequently prospered, or Nigeria subsequently underperformed.

In fact, Botswana and Zimbabwe demonstrate precisely why aggregation is inappropriate.

Botswana is an extraordinary post-colonial economic success.

Real GDP per capita increased from roughly $394 in 1960 to about $6,800 today.

Roughly 17-fold.

Zimbabwe followed a radically different trajectory and eventually suffered a catastrophic contraction.

Average the two together and information about BOTH trajectories disappears.

And finally, “Africa is more than twice as wealthy as it was in 1950” sounds impressive only until you remember what happened to the rest of humanity during those 72 years.

The world experienced enormous advances in agriculture, medicine, sanitation, electricity, transportation, industrial technology, communications, computing, education and international trade.

So the interesting development question isn’t merely:

“Is Sub-Saharan Africa richer than it was in 1950?”

Of course it is.

The interesting question is how much economic progress it achieved relative to other regions that also began poor.

Your own Maddison dataset puts 2022 real GDP per capita at approximately:

Sub-Saharan Africa: $3,440

South & Southeast Asia: $8,380

East Asia: $21,730

World: $16,680

So yes, your graph establishes something real and worth acknowledging:

The average person in Sub-Saharan Africa produces substantially more real economic output today than in 1950.

[Grace Gym🏋️‍♀️ @GraceGym_]

Can you do it? 👅

[Roger Seheult, MD @RogerSeheult]

🚨🚨🚨Our paper (Which I believe is transformative and consider my most important contribution to society to date) is linked below and summarized below in this amazing AI generated video. Much thanks to @DanielSMatthews for putting this together. Not sure how I'm going to be able to beat this with a MedCram video - but I'll try 😆 There is more evidence but we are working on updating the preprint before publication....

If this hypothesis is true, it changes how we live daily.

Bottom line: Get outside as much as you can...

https://t.co/sH7feGYGB9

[𝑫𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒆𝒍 𝑺𝒄𝒐𝒕𝒕 𝑴𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒘𝒔 🇦🇺 @DanielSMatthews]

Photometabolism & The Quantum Mechanics of Interfacial Water.

I made a notebook to help me understand your paper, the video below is from it, I hope it got everything correct.

The full notebook is here, https://t.co/eyr8hn52XL