Why am I no longer an anarchist

[teo123]

I can't speak to specific words or assess the obviousness of anything with regards to its linguistic roots.

I think that what's going on is that something like folk-etymology (not necessarily "folk-etymology" in the technical sense of that word) is common in river names, and that's why many river names appear to be explicable by Croatian. To somebody who is unaware of the history, the name of the river name "Vuka" appears to be explicable as if it was coming from "vuk" (wolf), but, in reality, it derives regularly (not even via folk-etymology in the technical sense of that word) from the ancient name "Ulca". To somebody who is unaware of the history, "Karašica" might appear to derive from a rare Croatian word "karas" (crucian carp), but, in reality, we have the name "Karašica" attested in the 13th century with a non-Slavic suffix as "Karassou", making a Slavic etymology unlikely. That's why I think it doesn't make sense to exclude "Krapina" from my calculations just because it appears to come from "krap" (carp). What if "Krapina" comes from an Illyrian name such as *Karpona, or, less likely, something like *Kurrippuppona? I think that an apparent Croatian etymology of some river name is, at best, a weak argument to exclude it from my calculations.

However, if you're asking if any randomly selected expert in linguistics is probably right with regards to a criticism of your work, the answer is yes, probably.

It suggests much more that my work is slightly revolutionary, that nobody used this methodology (of attempting to apply information theory to the toponyms) before, than that it's wrong. It's different from anything the experts in toponymy have seen. The experts in toponymy even admit not to know much about information theory.
Now, whether my methodology is better than the mainstream methodology, I'd say yes, because mainstream methodology appears to be based on mathematically unfounded principles. One of the basic principles of mainstream onomastics is that etymologies from languages we know a lot about are more probable than etymologies from the languages we know little about. What is the mathematical foundation for that principle? It seems to me that there is no mathematical foundation for that principle. Furthermore, following that principle gives results which appear to contradict information theory. Mainstream onomastics gave the result that this k-r pattern is a coincidence, but basic information theory strongly suggests it is statistically significant.

First, perfect lockdowns must work to eliminate a virus -- if you isolate all infected persons until they are no longer contagious, the virus is gone.

But any real lockdown will have some people excempt from the lockdown, namely, the "essential workers". And it goes without saying that the virus will spread through them and that they will be hit by the virus the most. So, even in theory, a lockdown cannot eliminate the virus. I don't know whether focused protection would work in praxis, but at least it makes more sense in theory to expose the low-risk people to the virus than to expose "essential" people to the virus.

Whether lockdowns are successful in practice to slow viral outbreak (which was the point of them, to prevent hospitals from being overloaded) depends on how well they're followed by the people voluntarily locking down.

And isn't it obvious that a significant percentage of the population was not responding to the lockdown by staying home, but rather doing the opposite of that? Deaths from car accidents increased in 2020 compared to 2019. If people on average stayed home during the lockdowns, we would expect them to have decreased. And many mobile phone networks got overloaded in 2020. If people on average stayed home, we would expect, if anything, that the landline telephone networks get overloaded.

Then you need to compare them against other effects like depression and suicide that lockdowns could theoretically cause

Lockdowns are not the main cause of the mental health crisis. The country with the highest rise in suicide rate in 2020 was Japan, and Japan had no lockdown. Suicides also rose in Sweden, which also had no lockdown. If I had to guess, I'd say it's the media which are causing the mental health crisis.

not known confounders

But to me it seems that's precisely what the authors of those studies are doing when claiming to control for the distance from the equator or the rates of type-2 diabetes. It's not at all obvious those things play a big role. Distance from the equator? Take a look at Sweden or Norway, which are very far from the equator, but were hit relatively mildly with COVID-19. Rates of type-2 diabetes? Take a look at Sudan, a country with very high rates of type-2 diabetes, yet was hit by COVID-19 relatively mildly. Adjusting for those things appears to be unjustified p-hacking.

I would say talk to your therapist about it, but your therapist probably doesn't understand scientific methodology so probably would not be able to give sound advice on the topic.

Well, I gave a copy of my paper to my psychiatrist, and she told me it seems excellent to her.

[teo123]

By the way, @brimstoneSalad, I still don't understand, you said that Vukovar Massacre having happened wouldn't require a conspiracy, only people following orders, right? Well, I must admit I don't understand how it wouldn't require a conspiracy. Željko Raznatović somehow managed to assemble an illegal army consisting of hundreds of people (13 of which were convicted by the Serbian court of law) which massacred a hospital in Vukovar in 1991. Wouldn't that require a conspiracy of at least hundreds, if not thousands, of people? I say thousands because presumably most of the people Željko Raznatović asked to join the illegal army refused, but, apparently, also decided not to report him to the authorities. Presumably thousands of people must have been aware of the Željko Raznativić'es plot, but decided to either do nothing about it, or even actively participate in it. The fact that Vukovar Massacre succeeded is about as amazing as the Operation Snow White. Now, admittedly, Vukovar Massacre having been faked would have probably required an even bigger conspiracy, and lasting much longer, but you cannot say that Vukovar Massacre wasn't an amazing conspiracy.

[teo123]

Your work is probably wrong.

But even if it is wrong, it is still interesting and worth sharing. Even if I am misunderstanding statistics here, my misunderstanding is far less severe than that of anti-vaxxers or typical pseudolinguists. So much so that the initial responses from the experts in information theory were entirely positive. And the initial responses from the experts in linguistics were mixed.

[teo123]

Disproving the null hypothesis is the whole point of P value and statistical analysis of results. First, show there even is something there not easily explained by chance.

But the problem is that the proponents of mainstream linguistics seem to be fine with pointing to patterns in toponyms that support their narrative, all without a mathematical proof that they are statistically significant. Linguists will be happy to point you to this d-n pattern in the river names where Scythian was spoken in ancient times as evidence that *danu was a Scythian word for "river": Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, and Don. Now, whether that pattern is actually statistically significant... I don't know. Four river names out of God-knows-how-many beginning with the same two-consonant prefix doesn't seem particularly impressive. Especially since two of them have an apparently-unexplained loss of 'a' (which is regularly borrowed as *o in Proto-Slavic) and an apparently-unexplained yotation of the 'n' (completely unexpected if it was originally followed by a 'u'). The patterns that English 't' at the beginning of a word corresponds to German 'z' or that Greek 'h' at the beginning of a word corresponds to Latin 's' are so obvious that the mere suggestion they are a coincidence seems absurd, but that d-n pattern in the Scythian river names is far from it.

[teo123]

I've asked this question of why the d-n pattern in the Scythian river names is considered real if the k-r pattern in the Croatian river names is considered spurious, and a few people answered me that's because words starting on k-r are common in Slavic languages, while words starting on d-n are rare. But, as far as I understand it, that's a misunderstanding of the information theory. The only thing that matters about the language spoken there to calculate the p-values of the patterns in the toponyms is the collision entropy. There seems to be no way to modify my calculations to take into account how common a particular pair of consonants is.

[brimstoneSalad]

I've asked this question of why the d-n pattern in the Scythian river names is considered real if the k-r pattern in the Croatian river names is considered spurious, and a few people answered me that's because words starting on k-r are common in Slavic languages, while words starting on d-n are rare. But, as far as I understand it, that's a misunderstanding of the information theory. The only thing that matters about the language spoken there to calculate the p-values of the patterns in the toponyms is the collision entropy. There seems to be no way to modify my calculations to take into account how common a particular pair of consonants is.

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding their arguments. I suggest you take it up with them for more details.

Regarding Vukovar, I think your imagined account of how it took root is implausible and you should talk to a historian. It is almost certainly not the case that somebody was wandering around and cold asking random thousands of people if they wanted to join an army to do a massacre and not being reported. Asks are usually milder, probing, and not done cold -- the massacre was also probably not known to more than a couple people before the orders were given if it was planned at all and was not a botched operation of some other kind. Even so, reports were probably made, but lost or ignored in the context of disinformation and incompetence and them being lesser reports since plans of the massacre were unknown.

Talk to a historian.

[teo123]

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding their arguments. I suggest you take it up with them for more details.

I don't think I am. I think they really claim that the p-value of the d-n pattern in the Scythian river names is lower because words starting in d-n are relatively rare in Slavic languages. That's also what the comments I got on Linguistic StackExchange are claiming: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/49585/20821
I can kind of see how it may be intuitive to some people to think that, but the mathematics seems to suggest otherwise. Like it is intuitive for me to think that the Toricelli's Law is wrong and that the speed with which the fluid is flowing through a small hole has to be higher the more dense the fluid is. Well, mathematics proves otherwise. Intuition will not tell us that, mathematics will.

Talk to a historian.

OK, I will.

[teo123]

I've made another YouTube video about why I am pro-gun: https://youtu.be/_erW8uBfAXI?si=bReDL7BJjemGKRom

[teo123]

Anyway, my economics professor hasn't responded to my e-mail, and I am guessing she never will.

[BrianBlackwell]

I was curious what influences led you to anarchy in the first place. Larken Rose has duly addressed the concerns you've raised (though indirectly), yet it seems you've not heard these ideas.

As you've said yourself, we needn't provide a good idea to recognize a bad one, yet you seem to demand we solve antibiotics and economy before government is accepted as intolerable.

First, "government" doesn't exist as such. There is no such thing as the valid authority of man over man. To propose government as necessary or beneficial in any circumstance is to assert the superiority of falsehood over truth. Government is just men with guns.

Second, how does having men with guns throwing their coercive power behind certain ideas make better ideas more likely or influential? Is there something about these men that makes them prone to support good ideas over bad? Quite the opposite, as we know that power corrupts. So whatever the problem, how would government be a reliable solution?