before things go much further, I have a question for lskinner.
Is there any fact or figure that anyone here could show you that you would be willing to accept, and therefore factor into your arguments?
there is a term used to describe someone who ignores facts and refuses to discuss things that legitimately undermine their argument. I’m hoping that you’re not one of those types.
tomndebb posted a lot of the reasons why your cite is questionable. You do seem to ackowledge it, but then blow it off. But you’re not providing counter-sites. Which makes you look like you’re just here to stir the pot, which is against the rules.
So are you here to learn and educate, or are you just going to drop that “IQ Stats” link and then refuse to discuss it by the rules of the board?
What really did them in was not so much technology but industrial capacity. By the middle of the war it was very difficult for the Japnaese to launch a single carrier, while the U.S. was turning out Essex class carriers almost monthly.
Another thing to remember is that Europe wasn’t much “advanced” beyond the Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire, Japan or China until the 1700s. Europe’s standard of living was well below the eastern standard of living, the gold and silver looted from the Americas ended up in India and China since eastern goods were much higher quality. Remember the fabled riches of the orient?
It wasn’t until the beginnings of the industrial revolution that Europe began to have a decisive advantage over the rest of the world. India had once been the center of the world for cloth production, now the textile industry in Europe began to outstrip it, not in quality but quantity. And so on. So Japan and India and China and the Ottoman empire didn’t have to “catch up” with Europe, until very recently they were ahead of Europe.
Egypt was colonised for most of its modern history (by Turks, French, and British).
The Ottoman Empire was technologically well in advance of the west for much of its history. It just so happened that the industrial age coincided with a time of stagnation and decline in the Turkish world, otherwise things could have turned out differently. Also remember they were NOT that backward, even after centuries of decline they could still inflict two massive defeats on Britian during WW1 (Gallipoli and Mesopotamia).
China was held back by internal strife and Japanese occupuation, but as early the the 1950 they could hold their own against the US and its allies during the Korean war.
As I pointed out before Japan is only exceptional within the small group of developing nations that remained indendent during the industrial age. And even within that group its more accurately at the end extreme of the spectrum, in terms of technological development, rather than being a single lone exception.
Right, I would include industrial capacity, and even agricultural productivity, under the general heading of “technology.” The U.S. I think had a wide lead over Japan in both those domains.
I think that there’s a lot to be said for the fact that Japan had natural boundaries that allowed it to control contact to the rest of the world. Of course, that’s also part of what I think affected the ability of Ethiopia to avoid being overrun, too.
It’s not the only factor, but it’s certainly one of them.
A couple of points, here. First - while Yamato and Musashi had the largest guns of any battleship of the second world war, that’s not the same as saying that they were the best battleship of the conflict. Things like fire control, AAA suite, torpedo defenses, armoring and even secondary armaments all should be considered. If you want to read a fascinating look at the various battleships of the second world war, go here.
Secondly, tanks are of limited utility in jungle or island warfare. The Japanese didn’t have a main battle tank, in large part, because they had no need for one. Certainly while the US made extensive use of Amtraks in the Pacific war, there was only limited use of tanks. IIRC they were mostly used to counter pillboxes. And flame throwers and bulldozers were just as effective.
Yes. I’m open-minded which is how I ended up becoming somewhat non-pc.
I posted a statement signed in the last 15 years by dozens of prominent researchers. In most discussions, that would be considered pretty authoritative.
Rather than cite dozens of researchers who say differently, the response was to accuse one of the researchers of racism (without citation) and attack the motivations to the researchers (without citation). Classic argumentum ad hominem without even any support.
And yet you choose to challenge the guy who cites dozens of researchers rather than the guy who merely lets loose a few ad hominem comments in response.
There is a word for people who have two separate standards by which they judge peoples’ positions.
What about land area? The US lead in agricultural production was more due to its advantage in acres of arable land than to some magic/technological beans. Industrial capacity was due more to its decisions to mass-produce manufactured goods than to any superior scientific learning. I’d say your definition of “technology” s overly broad.
Just to add another factor to a polyvalent explanation, Japan was also one of three nations (along with China and Korea) to adopt Confucianism as an ethics-based philosophy and widely apply its principles – in political economy, in the civic structure, in education, and in family and personal values. Confucianist cultures are generally characterized by a high emphasis placed on social and political stability, social cohesion, conformity, enlightened self-interest (in which individual greed is subordinated to the general welfare), and so on. Confucianism has also been blamed for intellectual conservatism and stagnation, a deemphasis on technological and, especially, scientific innovation, and the devaluing of the worth of the individual and of free expression, so it’s probably not a uniformly positive legacy.
Another factor that may have helped Japan is that it was probably less subject to a “brain drain” effect than many other developing and industrial nations. Japan’s most educated people were probably less likely to leave the country (due to a confluence of political, geographic, and social/cultural barriers) to pursue opportunities overseas, at least in comparison to similarly educated persons living elsewhere. The insular and difficult Japanese language (both written and spoken) have always discouraged outsiders from settling there as well, reinforcing the insular nature of the society and economy.
Except of course that your source article, IQ and the Wealth of Nations, seems to have some rather interesting goings-on. For example, a nation that doesn’t fit their profile is tossed out as an abberation (Qatar and Botswanna being examples in the linked wiki). this is usually known as observtional selection.
Maybe. Or it’s possible that the researchers in question are themselves guilty of non sequitur argumentation. And claims of racism are going to happen when one of your major sources is also well known for writing Eugenics: A reassesment(praeger, 2001)
You haven’t cited anything. You’ve dropped a link that states on the page you linked to that it may not be a non-biased review. Attempts to engage you on that subject were ignored in a previous thread, and dismissed as being non-critical thinking or some sort of HyperPC sensitivity.
Indeed there is. the problem is, you haven’t really stated a position. What you’ve done is the equivalent of a drive buy shooting. You’ve put out your position (IQ is why some countries haven’t done well) and now seem to be dodging the questions and statements that people are asking you about it.
If you’d like to debate the subject itself, you’ll find our Great Debates fora to be full of well read, well researched and well written folks that love to discuss non-PC subjects. Certainly better than I can.
I think you’ll be surprised, but you better be able to back up your arguement with more than one controversial source.
That’s an interesting criticism. However, the article you mention is completely different from the statement I linked to.
It’s also possible that the researchers are aliens from outer space and that you are living in the Matrix. So what?
I cited a statement signed by dozens of prominent researchers. The responder cited nothing at all. You criticize me and not him. Crazy world we live in.
Your claim is overly broad. The gold from the new world was inflationary (a lot more money chasing the same amount of goods), and you would expect some to travel to your trading partners. One could back up the claim that any of the areas you mention was ahead of any of the others. Europe was more advanced in some areas, such as clock making, mathematics, and astronomy from as early as the 12-13th centuries. The Turks were more advanced in some areas, I seem to recall they made the gun into something effective, China in some, etc. India was not the center of the cloth making industry, there was no center. (E.g., before central heat, wool clothing was way “higher quality” than silk in those parts of the world that produced it.) In short, everybody was trading something to somebody else, and both sides benefited from the trade.
I would argue that the Industrial Revolution both exaggerated the technology difference (a slight edge making a huge difference in productive capability) and was partly a result of Europe’s technological edge.
I think there is a key difference between Japan and most other countries. Think of early English history. England was the backward, third world country compared to the mainland. England produced raw material - wool - and shipped it to Flanders, which had the technological advanatage and made finished products. Eventually, England’s technology caught up, and it ceased play the role of raw material producer for others.
Unlike many areas, Japan’ did not have a comparative advantage over Europe for producing natural resources. Let’s suppose subsaharan Africa had been the technological equals of Europe, but had not depleted its natural resources. It still would have made economic sense for subsaharan Africa to produce raw materials and Europe to process them. Because Africa could produce raw materials more cheaply than Europe, and Europes processing strength was relatively greater than its maderial prodution strength, both sides were economically better off with Africa producing raw materials.
That wasn’t the case for Japan. For Japan, it made economic sense to process materials, not produce them.
I don’t think that is at all relevant. Pre-modern countries never had much migration anyway. At least, people might move away at times of shortage, but I don’t think the brain drain is relevant in industrial revolutions. It isn’t just a technology thing.
Well, there are a couple of famous examples of pre-modern “brain drain”. The most obvious is Spain expelling the Jews, where most of the rich banking families ending up under the protection of the Ottoman Empire. The other is the French protestant Huguenots, who fled persecution by catholic France and ended up in England and the Netherlands and taking their textile expertise with them.
I think Japan’s advantages are similar to Britain’s: isolated enough to avoid being overwhelmed by outside interference, yet still connected enough to benefit from outside innovations. And more importantly, Japan’s culture and leaders actually managed to use those advantages. I could easily envision an alternate history where Japan failed to use its geographic assets.
I have often wondered about two what-ifs:[ul]
[] What if Japan had started its expansionist policies immediately after unification, rather than the entering a period of isolationism first. [] What if Korea had chosen a path of rapid industrialization in the late nineteenth century instead of (or in addition to) Japan? [/ul]
Study the history of Islam in the 19th century, and you’ll find no shortage of Islamic idealists who desperately wanted to do as Japan did. Problem is, the leaders of their countries didn’t want to listen.
Then in the 20th century when modernizing leaders like Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir (aka Gamal Abdel Nasser) took over, they turned out to be despots.
I cited a statement signed by dozens of prominent researchers. The responder cited nothing at all. You criticize me and not him. Crazy world we live in.