bayesianhorse

Aiding and abetting terrorists can be and is punished.

Sympathy for IS or similar groups/countries is a whole different story. As long as they are at best voicing their support, or not even that, it's really difficult and contra-productive to prosecute.

If you want to morally condemn every Muslim for sympathizing with IS, you should keep in mind that most people fighting them are Muslim. You also should keep in mind that most Muslims don't sympathize with these kind of crimes or terrorism in general....

So Islam commands them have to rape Western woman? Most Muslim scholars would disagree.

I actually agree that Muslim immigrants are more prone to commit this kind of crime. That doesn't mean it's an Islam thing. It also doesn't mean innocent Muslims can be treated any worse because some of them commit crimes. Trying to solve this problem by blaming their religion is not going to lead anywhere good.

I don't know of any Muslim/Islamic party in Western Europe. Mosques are underrepresented, in terms of followers.

There is no indication, that Western Europeans are converting to Islam in droves.

Food is not a cultural influence of Islam, but of the particular ethnicity and home countries, not the religion. At best the amount of pork consumed by Europeans may be negatively affected...

Really, considering the number of Muslims, they don't seem to have any political cloud beyond being present. Most Muslim politicians I think of virtually ignore religious topics.

For me, opening ethnically themed restaurants and food joints does not count as "influence of islam". At best it is an economic contribution of people who happen to be muslim.

Mosques are very underrepresented, considering the number of muslim, and they have to fight for every single one.

Walking on the street is no influence on Culture. Even a fully cloaked woman does not hinder my sense of European culture. They don't make anyone else follow their rules, in any case.

I'm not aware of islamic parties with any significant influence, at least in western Europe, despite I would think there is a need for one.

There is currently no way to solve the multiple crisis which are displacing people. At least not without actually displacing much more people.

Turns out, Islam tends to have virtually no influence on European culture. All this talk about "dilution" is ridiculous. If at all, Muslim immigrants feel diluted.

And I am not denying that European societies have disproportionately many problems with Muslim immigrants. But we can't do anything about it without violating what we believe is a just society: No human should be punished for crimes another human committed. That holds even when both are muslim.

First of all, Israel is a special case. It has been founded artificially on a land that was predominantly inhabited by muslims, surrounded by countries predominantly inhabited by muslims.

I won't dive into any discussion if that was a good idea, or if they were right to do that, I am just stating that a lot of non-muslims streamed into a place where there were lots of muslims. The idea that this jewish state, would manage to keep out the majority population in the region without some major "ethnic cleansing" is ridiculous.

In Europe it's the other way around. The large majority here is not muslim, and there is a small (yes, it's tiny compared to the whole population) influx of muslims.

There is no reason to fear a islamification of Europe. The numbers just don't allow it.

It probably doesn't help that education systems in countries like Zimbabwe is barely able to teach basic numerical skills to a large part of their population.

(I don't want to imply this is necessarily the case in Zimbabwe, or everywhere in Africa, but I've heard in some MOOC that people in developing countries tend to have numerical problems with prices)

The US government can "print" staggering amounts of money, because the Dollar economy is staggeringly bigger than any amount they would want to print.

I think Duolingo is great for exactly that kind of situation, where multiple languages exist in one country, and that is actually the norm, rather than the exception.

For example there is also a course in the incubator teaching Catalonian for Spanish speakers, Catalonian being a language spoken in a part of southern Spain.

Do they make you write your answers? I find that to be a crucial feature.

Also memrise doesn't understand language the way duolingo does. The latter actually uses words in context, both in fragments of sentences and full sentences. These count as repetitions for the individual sentences, and there always seem to be some fresh sentences.

I think these differences make Duolingo a much superior tool as far as there courses go.

There is one referenced on their homepage. On average, 34 hours of study in the Spanish course would be equivalent to a full semester of language education in college. For me that would be about a month of practice.

I have seen the effects myself. After a month or so, even though I had learned some spanish before, native speakers suddenly slowed down (in my perception).

An important clue: Use the "Strengthen your skills" button frequently to keep the tree golden. Duolingo itself doesn't nag you enough to do that, but it's essential for mastery of the language.

The thing is that there have been US interventions and we tend to assume that it has an effect. But that can't ever be confirmed or ruled out. In Iran's case, who says without US interventions a democracy would have survived the conservative muslim beliefs in the population?

That's not true. Memorization is the most efficient way of learning a language, but it often comes in forms which aren't as obvious. For example you can look at reading foreign texts as a kind of repetition for every word you encounter.

It's hard to master and complete a Duolingo course without getting a grip on the language. You'd have to pretty much ignore the "Strengthen your skills" button and never repeat anything.

Even after finishing a course you should use the repetitions for weeks and months to keep refreshing your memory. That's the only way it may stay forever.

The trick is to keep repeating the exercises for at least a few weeks after you have finished the course.

I can guarantee you that you didn't forget everything. If you completed the Spanish course, your brain has been rewired for Spanish...

To me this looks a bit like a "charity" investment. I've heard rumours Duolingo was running thin on capital while frantically searching for a business model.

However, despite not being profitable yet, Duolingo is doing a tremendous amount of good. I know quite a bit about language learning and learning in general, and I have never seen a better tool for learning the languages they offer. The combination of words, sentences, smart repetition and text-to-speech is pretty much unique, and the courses I've seen are quite well designed.

Caveat: No, Duolingo alone is not enough to get fluent in a language, but if you used it as your only (or major) tool, you'll get very close.

I think there is a Vietnamese course hatching.

I'm like you that I prefer to learn the theory before brute force memorizing. Just get a good grammar book and use it besides Duolingo, and you're golden.

I think the ability of the US government to influence democracy is largely overestimated. They can't introduce it and they can't exactly stop it, either.

They couldn't shoot it down, they would just confiscate the ground stations or just not let them into the country.

Cuba is way ahead of North Korea in terms of basic human rights. The Cuban government aren't saints by any means, but to put them on one level with whatever/whoever is ruling North Korea is unfair to them.

In Cuba, the authorities even have trouble locking dissidents up, more often than not. In NK, mass executions and mass imprisonment are the norm, and the differences between prison, labor and army service is at best murky.

Bandwith, yes. "Latency", not so much. We talk about a latency of milliseconds being important for e-commerce, online trading, API Access, but a sneakernet has a latency of at the very least days for the most "interesting" stuff, and months for other content.

So yes, the sneakernet can be used to distribute education materials, movies, texts and the like, but the real benefits of the internet only develop with low latency and multidirectional communication.

Cuban authorities would also be very interested, I imagine.

I know lots of Germans who speak almost no English or would very much prefer not to, in any case. That even includes recent graduates.

It's also somewhat like being disabled, e.g. you have to get everything explained to you personally.

For me this sounds like a broader application of insight from neuro science and especially from research into ADHD. While the latter is definitely a pathological condition, with major negative effects for the patients, there seems to be a continuum from extreme ADHD on one side (or even Finneas Gage) to fully enlightened buddhist monks who have trained their attention and focus for decades.

It may be well worth the effort to train attention, concentration and self-control in a more targeted manner, like through "Becoming a Man", but also martial arts, meditation, or certain other activities.

Living in Germany is relatively difficult without speaking German, even today.

I just recently read that foreign students in Germany are failing extraordinarily often. Mostly because of the language.

For someone who wants to go down that route in the US I would heavily recommend learning German intensively for at least two years before even going to Germany, and make sure you can read German almost as fast as their native (English/Spanish) language.

A good starting point is Duolingo.com!

I'd assume the real reason is that German is a very hard language rarely taught/learned in the US, and conversely, every German student with university access qualification has had at least 7 years of English lessons...

Marketing has next to nothing to do with R&D because most R&D is accomplished before market entry of a drug.

It looks as if revenues of one drug fuel investment into new drugs, and that may be true but it is misleading. There are a lot more sources of capital than just one particular companies own revenues.

Margins and marketing budget allow us to assume significant market power in favor of the pharma companies.

I think that "big pharma" companies act a lot like banks, and small companies act a lot like venture-capital backed startups.

Incidentally, both mechanisms allow spending a couple of hundred millions (or even billions) of Dollars for a potentially even bigger profit.

A third way is government financed research, which may be a competitive option in some cases.

I think the argument for patents, as incentive for development, is quite strong. There is no alternative system in place yet.

Also you probably underestimate the value and purpose of pharmaceutical regulation. Most rules revolve around production quality, scientific soundness, safety monitoring and so on. Come to think of it, the degree of safety in pretty much any drug on the legal market is quite astounding, despite exceptions and accidents.